tablesaw | Beezle-Nut! ROT! ROT!

Eleven days later, I commemorate the birthday of Dr. Theodore Seuss Geisel by reading Horton Hears a Who to the fourth grade class of my elementary alma mater. This is the first time I've ever read this book, and I was partially inspired to perform this one by a Horton tie I received as a Christmas present. It was a hard decision, though. I didn't want to do something I hadn't done before (which ruled out Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, Fox in Socks, The Lorax, Yertle the Turtle, and The Sneetches), and I didn't want to do a book without the story structure (Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are, On Beyond Zebra, If I Ran the Circus, etc.). I thought about doing The Butter Battle Book, but I don't know if kids growing up in a post-Cold War time would find the same resonance in it that I remember as a child. The Berlin Wall fell not to long into my lifetime, but I still remember the time when nuclear missiles were lined up to fire en masse, before they were smugled into briefcases destined for subways. So Horton Hears a Who it was, a story about the power of democracy, about making the voice of the small reach to the ears of the big.

Also, I seem to have lost my copy of Fox in Socks. I've fallen out of practice saying it, and I've forgotten a few lines. (At one time, I could spout off the terrible tongue twister in two minutes and forty-five seconds, but I haven't been in that condition in a while.) Without the book, I can't find the missing links in my memorized stream, so no Fox in Socks for the fourth grade.

A friend says I'm up too late, right now. Said friend has bigger things to worry about then whether I miss an hour of sleep, but she's still probably right. My problem has a simpler solution, of course, stop typing, postpone emails, then put on the sleep mask; but I've still got some more stuff I'm going to do. I'm not good at following advice, I suppose.

Leaving a place sends one's brain into a different state of thought, similar to life slowing down before a collision. "Feel everything more," becomes the order for the day, "soon these feelings may be gone forever." And too much feeling makes it hard to think or do anything useful at all, often. Ultimately, my heart goes out less for my friend, but to the cause of my friend's problem, with whom I empathize more deeply. Today, he will probably hold a slight emotional upperhand, balanced delicately, thinly precariously over all events colliding at this end, but not in a month; not when he wonders what paths were lost in his last feeling days. And I've stopped talking about him at all, haven't I?

I think it's going to take me a whlie to get to sleep anyway.