I just wanted to say that I am going to get a couple of pics up on this blog, I just need to finish the roll. Yes, that´s right, I´m still pissing about in the film age of still photography. A took a series of pictures of stencils in San Cristobal de las Casas, where there are one or two very busy stencil artists.
The camera´s a piece of crap so no guarentees about how they´ll be. Maybe they won´t be.
Ever since writing that last bit about the grackles I´ve been meaning to correct what I said: grackles really are everywhere in Mexico, including meadows and forests as well as city streets. I was just trying to emphasize something about my grackles here in town.
Now that I´ve got that birder´s moral crisis off my mind I can move on to say that everything you´ve ever heard or thought about the mediocrity of teaching English far from home is true.
The hours, the endless marking of error-filled papers and tests (¨she want to be marry with the Arthur¨), the greasy indifferent teenagers acting like idiots at every possible moment, the crappy tape decks and vcr´s that should have been left in the 1980´s: its all a giant pain in the ass. You know you´ve become a teacher the first time you find yourself counting the number of desks in an empty classroom. It´s only mildly horrifying I admit, like sneezing chalk dust.
It could be worse though. The endless cries of ¨Teacher! Can I go to the bathroom? Can go to the bathroom Teacher? Can I Teacher? Can I? Can I?¨ always end when everyone leaves. The greasey, hyperactive sixteen year old boys with their backpacks carefully placed in their laps and smartass grins on their faces aren´t going to kill you. Of course its just a phase you´re going through Javier, you living piece of slime. You´re not bad guy, just a drooling piece of egomaniacal adolescent trash who needs to learn to shut his attention-crazed mouth.
We´re good pals, Javier and I. You should have seen Javier and his clown buddy Francisco in our multimedia session yesterday. It was the paralympics of hyperstupid sixteen year old dipshits, pretending the keyboard wouldn´t work, jacking up the computer speakers ¨by accident¨, highfiving the glazed window with fellow dipshits on the other side. It was a beautiful thing, gold medals of drool for them in the pairing category. I love these assholes. I makes you want to invest in a nine pound hammer and make society just a little bit better. Of course I allowed them to sit together, so I´m just an accessory. But they´re good kids, aren´t they now?
You can see that its bringing out the best in me, this teaching business. The wholesome hours I spend every single day with these fine upstanding youth of the Mexican United States of Mexico just keep bringing me closer to that fountain of youth I´ve always wanted to dip my toes into whenever the opportunity has arisen.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Monday, May 08, 2006
Grackle for you, grackle for me.
The grackle is a resourceful bird, a hustler, a busybody. Here in Mexico they are everywhere, the way crows are everywhere in points north.
The grackle is the most prehistoric bird my untrained eye has ever watched. That mechanical back-and-forth movement of the head when they walk comes straight from the dinosauric raptor of old. Its ´saurusness is acccentuated by a beak that is, in some individuals, continually open, even during flight. The grackle is a ground bird, constantly seeking its food, nest materials, etc. on the street or sidewalk or peering from a fence, ready for another sortie to the ground. Its song is a mix of short tsks and longer cries, all loud and distinct and loudest when in negotiation with others of its kind, just like all birds, but greedier.
What strikes me about the grackles of Tuxtla is the spastic intensity of their social behaviour, the sheer nervousness of them. Alone they are more composed, preoccupied with their next hustle, a groundscore or something in a fig tree that will be had for the searching. Their wings are lengthy enough to generate that beating sound one associates with pheasants in the bush or ducks taking off from water. But these grackles seem uninterested in such ´natural´ habitats. They´re for the streetcorner, the shade tree, a telephone wire. Its intense eye seems to be saying,´I´ve got business here, people to see, deals to finish, I don´t have time for pissing around in forests and meadows´.
Business indeed.
The grackle is the most prehistoric bird my untrained eye has ever watched. That mechanical back-and-forth movement of the head when they walk comes straight from the dinosauric raptor of old. Its ´saurusness is acccentuated by a beak that is, in some individuals, continually open, even during flight. The grackle is a ground bird, constantly seeking its food, nest materials, etc. on the street or sidewalk or peering from a fence, ready for another sortie to the ground. Its song is a mix of short tsks and longer cries, all loud and distinct and loudest when in negotiation with others of its kind, just like all birds, but greedier.
What strikes me about the grackles of Tuxtla is the spastic intensity of their social behaviour, the sheer nervousness of them. Alone they are more composed, preoccupied with their next hustle, a groundscore or something in a fig tree that will be had for the searching. Their wings are lengthy enough to generate that beating sound one associates with pheasants in the bush or ducks taking off from water. But these grackles seem uninterested in such ´natural´ habitats. They´re for the streetcorner, the shade tree, a telephone wire. Its intense eye seems to be saying,´I´ve got business here, people to see, deals to finish, I don´t have time for pissing around in forests and meadows´.
Business indeed.
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