NEW SITE.

www.tehlemonsmith.com

Goodbye old blog, hello new domain.

Necessary Tools.

9:15 and still finding time to procrastinate from homework and packing. If you notice the blog acting janky, it's because I'm working on changing a few things on the interweb front.

Stomping the Yard or Garbage.

Summer officially begins in June, but it feels like it's already upon us. Summer brings fresh beginnings. For me, it's going to be a summer home. As of this morning, my current home contains me and me only. All the rooms are barren of furniture and belongings. My room will hold onto my things and me for a couple more days until I move down the road. New roommates, new home, new atmosphere. stoked.

365 Minus 144 Photos.

I was persuaded into starting one of those photo a day challenges. I haven't spent time with my camera in some time, so my hope is that this will get me into that groove again. Also, I'd like to see my photography improve. Practice makes perfect.

What does this have to do with the blog? Expects pictures up the twiddle dee twiddle dum.

May 25

May 26

May 27

5 Seeds.

I have five seeds that sit on my window sill. They sit there quietly, biding their time until they are placed in a more hospitable habitat. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them. When I first found them I reactively decided to throw them out, but then hesitated. These seeds could produce any sort of vegetation. It is entirely plausible for these seeds to birth a mighty tree or rare breed of talking flower. Am I doing the world a great disservice by not planting these seedlings? Or maybe they are poisonous seedlings that will cause turmoil and strife wherever they grow. These are the types of questions and thoughts I need to mull over before I make an absolute decision. I will let you know of the outcome at a later date, until then they shall sit.

September, The First Day Of School

I

My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.

Each fall the children must endure together
What every child also endures alone:
Learning the alphabet, the integers,
Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff
So arbitrary, so peremptory,
That worlds invisible and visible

Bow down before it, as in Joseph's dream
The sheaves bowed down and then the stars bowed down
Before the dreaming of a little boy.
That dream got him such hatred of his brothers
As cost the greater part of life to mend,
And yet great kindness came of it in the end.

II

A school is where they grind the grain of thought,
And grind the children who must mind the thought.
It may be those two grindings are but one,
As from the alphabet come Shakespeare's Plays,
As from the integers comes Euler's Law,
As from the whole, inseperably, the lives,

The shrunken lives that have not been set free
By law or by poetic phantasy.
But may they be. My child has disappeared
Behind the schoolroom door. And should I live
To see his coming forth, a life away,
I know my hope, but do not know its form

Nor hope to know it. May the fathers he finds
Among his teachers have a care of him
More than his father could. How that will look
I do not know, I do not need to know.
Even our tears belong to ritual.
But may great kindness come of it in the end.

-Howard Nemerov



When I am lucky, I mean really really lucky I get a call from my boss asking if I can wake up at 5:30 in the morning to work the before school starts shift. I don't talk much during the shift, because my body doesn't truly awaken until around 8ish. So I sit on the table and watch the parents drop their children off. Some farewells are all smiles but others remind me of this poem.

I got a new computer.

and i think it might be a robot spy.