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"do you know that outside of new york city, every school has an elevator?" - a parent, to their physically disabled child, who has clearly never been to a school outside new york city.

this is the dawning of the age of aquarius

feels conditional...

time told on a book costs fifty dollars from the brooklyn flea.

"i'm in mourning for my life"

when she wasn't around, everyone at my elementary school referred to the art teacher as "adolf hilftler."  it was a pretty novel historical reappropriation for our time, so was probably thought of by a fifth grader.  i don't remember very much about her class, only that ms. hilft was "mean."  she yelled a lot.  she didn't let kids play their gameboys after class.  (even the girls couldn't play their gameboys).  one time, she "threw a desk at a student" and lots of people knew someone who saw it happen.  the only other teacher as mean as her was mr. lanton, and that's because he had a handlebar mustache.

we only had art class once a week, and it felt like ms. hilft spent the six days that she didn't see us plotting all the ways she would torture us on the one day she did.  looking back, i wonder if she even knew my name.

there was a "right" way to make art in ms. hilft's class, and that was ms. hilft's way.  if your pinch pot flattened out in the kiln, yours didn't match her example and it was wrong.  if you used too much water in your water color, yours didn't match her example and you would be lucky if she allowed it a space on the drying rack. one time in third grade, i drew a cat when we were asked to draw a picture of our best friend, and ms. hilft laughed at me. when i got the tip of my index finger cut off in a yarn-weaving accident in fifth grade, ms. hilft was lethargic in her responsiveness.

ms. hilft's number one rule was "no black." there were no black scented markers in ms. hilft's class.  there was no black playdough or glitter or pipe cleaners or felt; all the boxes of crayons were incomplete. if you absolutely needed to use black while you were painting, ms. hilft might let you mix together brown and blue.  but that would just come out a weird pukey-grey, and ms. hilft would display it as an example of how colors even close to black ruin paintings.

i think ms. hilft must have been sad.  it is always the most closeted person in the room who is spewing homophobia, or the bully that pushes you on the jungle gym who really wants to give you a kiss.  i've never met someone as militant about the exclusion of darkness as ms. hilft, which makes me believe those were the feelings with which she most identified.

still, i absorbed a great deal of negativity due to ms. hilft's repression, and my elementary shool art portfolio suffered because of it.

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the olympics makes me so xenophobic.