The city appears as little more than a smudge on the horizon.
“Where is it you want to go? Dispatch didn’t give an address.”
“134 Highland Row.”
He doesn’t show emotion. His identification photo looks like self-portraiture. I briefly entertain the idea of jumping out and hailing a different taxi but rain has christened itself jewel of the season so I sow my bum to the seat. I soon learn silence is unimpeachable for him. What I don’t know is that he has six kids and a recliner he sits in when home that they climb like newly fallen snow. He’s tolerant of them but especially child number six who unwittingly helped to heal his wife’s broken heart.
I chose this city because it felt so spatially distant from my own. Light bounces down streets and corridors of steamy traffic in broad swaths of bright and night.
The text caught me on the precipice of sleep.
Needed substitute teacher. Indefinite period due to sick leave. Working with classes you’ve previously taught here. Immediate start. If interested, call me.
“Hi, Helen.”
“Ciara, how wonderful to hear from you. I take it you’re interested?”
“I am. I’m on my way now.”
“Fantastic. Thank you. We’re so glad it’s you.”
St Catherine’s is a truly special place. It’s a place that gave a voice to the voiceless. It taught me that the syllabus forever contends with the soul as a fortress of divided heavens. It is here that a student told me
“When I lose interest, I lose that envy that makes me want to learn.”
I’d felt for him. I’d felt like we were two sides of a collapsing bridge rebuilding its collisions. He’d been narrating what needed to be known.
It is here I assigned a creative writing exercise and a student wrote about a bird who swooped under bridges to capture what disappears. It ended with a broken beak and her storyteller starved.
I’d asked her to explain why the bird had to die and she’d told me that something always breaks the reflection of the birds. I’d sent her story to a competition and the judges commented that ‘this is what artwork does, it doesn’t hide’.
I wanted to offer her some personalised feedback but it seemed too unworkable and too absurdly abstract to say tuck your knees into your chest and bend your head well when you tumble.
I arrive after fourth period has begun. When I walk in, someone comments ‘Oh, look! The storyteller is back’. The comment receives a tight canopy of giggles. I walk to the whiteboard and write today’s word of note
Antinomy
I ask the class if anyone can help me define it and wait for any conjecture. When none comes, I say
a fundamental and apparently unresolvable conflict or contradiction
My breath catches slightly as I offer the examples
“In great beauty there is evil. In great evil there is beauty.”
My work is done when the voices kickstart a debate.