Things That Call Roll in the Night

Every year in August I get the back-to-school back-to-teaching nightmares, even those years I taught summer school and had thus not really been away from teaching. It's something about August, particularly warm August nights, so rare here in the Bay Area. But tonight is warm. The electric fan is buzzing, and I remember how it was back in Virginia before air conditioning. The electric fan didn't do much good. It just invested a great deal of circular motion, the result of which was the movement of large volumes of air short distances to dubious effect. If that's not a metaphor for teaching, well, roll your own. Tonight I am going for lucid dreaming, that state in which you dream and know you are dreaming and control your behavior in the dream. I'm going to dream about teaching and I won't be late for class or be without my notes or, as in the rawest of nightmares, know nothing about who I am or where or I am or who these people are sitting in the seats, knowing only that here is a class and it's my job to teach it. Tonight I am going to cultivate the dream state, and we shall see what we shall dream.