I’ll warm myself by the flames as the cities burn. #2
My wife finishes her coffee looking out the back window toward the ocean. We actually can't see the ocean or the spectacular stretch of route one Maine coastline, but it's out there.
We're close, about a quarter mile, in the fall when the leaves are off you can see a sliver of gray water, from the second floor, out of the corner, of one window. In fits of fancy she's been know to refer to our domicile as foliage dependent, ocean view.
The morning light is kind to her. I have know her now for almost thirty years, since she was 23. Looking at her now is like seeing her then, but through a thin sheet of ice, the sharp edges are blurred and softened but the beauty remains.
We aren't a good match on paper, given a choice at any given situation she will unerringly choose the altruistic option. The best for all involved. I on the other hand will initially choose, always, regardless of the question, dope and strippers.
My growth curb has been needless to say...steep.
We live in a bucolic seaside community that we really can't afford to live in. In third world countries, the destitute flock to the sea, because...there's food floating around in it. But in countries like the US, it's the rich that are lulled to sleep with the song of the sea coming through their inert gas filled, polarized ,triple pane, floor to ceiling windows.
She's a literary specialist, she diagnoses and then formulates lesson plans and strategies for children who can't or have trouble reading.
Now at this day and age it sounds like carving quills from whalebone for calligraphy. But a significant portion of the population can't read at grade level.
She's been doing this for longer then I've known her. And it's been a fistfight every year for budgets and funding because "fuck poor people"who this historically effects.
There has been a sea-change in the last ten years. All those tow headed, straight toothed scions from all that multi generational money in all those seaside manors are dumb as bags of hammers. The online, social media, Instagram technology diet that they are raised on are putting them out of reach of their most expensive tutors.
Putting them on parity with their less fortunate brethren, those hailing from and smelling of double wide , fry daddied domiciles with hands calloused from pulling lobster traps or stacking cords of wood to season.
The moneyed gentry find themselves in a quandary, they wholeheartedly support and champion the small, rare earth saturated phones screens whose cruel blue light washes the humanity from their children's faces but save 's them from the ball shriveling , to be avoided at all costs, personnel contact from their self involved, self destructive, self loathing prodigy.
This, though my lovely wife would never admit has been a windfall. Well to do children, too stupid too be granted admission, even under the weight of the considerable legacy, are causing funding to flood into her program.
If this allows her to tuck some kid whose mom is pulling double shifts at the local Wallymart in the wake. Who is standing there with a dog eared copy of LOTR looking hopefully at her. I think she is probably cool with it...how dope and strippers of her...