I get my heart broken most of these days. This is not due to the loss of a love. The source of this is not unprocessed trauma. It is the end of the semester. I am reading essays from students about giving and the nature of the world and their change of heart. The best essays are from students from whom I expected less. Their description of how their hearts have softened, how they have grown more compassionate, how they can never again shoot a poor beggar a dirty look—these all break my heart. There is a place in my imagination where I apologize to them for concluding that they didn’t have that sentiment in them. 

However, in the real world, I see myself at the front of the classroom right at the edge of sarcasm. I am fatigued and cannot get a conversation going about the assigned reading. Internally, the attention is on me. What can I do? What have I failed to do to make this dialogue happen? The topic of the day is about the unanticipated consequences of charity. Certainly, a good enough subject for young people to address. But, then I move very quickly to attacking the students, their lifestyle, their attitude, the way in which they have been indulged and don’t know it — this all in my internal deliberations.  So, it is these sins of judgment for which I am atoning with my tears. And, beyond that, there is the sweet heartbreak of a work well done, to know that I know these students a bit, that we have spoken to each other across the generational and authority divides and there is a relief in that. Some of my peers have gone over to the other side. They cannot talk with anyone other than people just like themselves, so the faculty cafeteria is full of stories of the lack of fitness of this generation for the education we have crafted for them. 

My heart also breaks during my strolls through my neighborhood, tethered to my dog with his leash (actually, our leash) and to some Philip Glass on my iPod. These two tools are my auxiliary sensors. The pace of the dog works against aerobic effect. He is a naturalist in a way that I cannot match, his nose attuned to the great variety of life, unavailable to me. With Glass as background, my thoughts move into a narrative. A story emerges with Glass as the soundtrack. Again, my heart is broken. The landscape along our daily journey is remarkable, as are all places, given enough love. 

Walking with the soundtrack from the Hours by Phillip Glass. I was so present at that film that I could link images on the screen to passages in the music. Buying this music was a dangerous move. Two characters commit suicide in this film and others are not far from that act in both the sense of their emotional involvement with the actors but also from their own consideration of suicide as a choice. This morning, I thought, “I could so easily drift away from the life I have made.” I have thought this before but this morning, I felt particularly apart and away from the business of my life. What I had characterized as a lack of roots that enabled me to move from one job to the next, to reinvent myself has to do with this same sense. The feeling that I could be anywhere. It would matter but not deeply. I could move along again. So, when I bought the Hours, I knew that it would take me away. I would be swept off, teetering close to some depressive edge as I do every Christmas holiday. I could take precautions, but I never do. It may be my penance. 

Along the way today, I saw a cross with the words “Christ is risen” fallen over in front of a shed, just a day after Easter.  I saw a man, aged in the way someone would be in Appalachia, wearing a railroad engineer’s cap. I saw a young man with a Bluetooth device curved around his ear. He was talking in a cadence of black minister about the wrath of God who sends us this mild weather to warn us of eternal fire. Yesterday, I smiled at man who was waving hello a few streets away. Then, he blew me a kiss and whistled.

I think it is all this nonsense that detaches me, that reminds that my attempts to impose order are futile. I walk a tightrope between the rational and the absurd.