Ponderings ...

I've learned some things about myself these past few weeks.  Mainly that I shouldn't make resolutions.  I had good intentions of fully participating in my 365 self portrait project and did really well with it and then I got PMS and the hell that follows and discovered that I am either incapable of taking good pictures during that time of the month or am just especially unphotogenic during that time because I could NOT for the life of me take a good picture let alone one I deemed passable of myself.  Anywho ... sort of took the wind right out of my sails.

On another note, every weekday I drive past my old elementary school at least 4 times a day and specifically I drive past the windows that look in on my 4th grade classrooms.  In the nano seconds that it takes for me to drive past them I have such clear and vivid memories of 4th grade Sherry.  I remember the sounds, the smells, the anxiety, the joy, and the wonderment of it all.  I remember my teachers and their voices. I remember looking out the windows ALOT and getting in trouble for it. My hypothesis is that because these two classrooms had huge windows that looked out onto the world it allowed me to make a true and honest connection to the world and created a psychic gateway of sorts and probably something dealing with a time/space continuum  - I don't know - but it is the strangest thing.  When I first got out of college I was a substitute teacher in that same school and found these same two classrooms and even went inside them and didn't have near the connection that I have to them now from merely driving by them.  I have a similar relationship to a particular spot on the playground where I can remember 1st grade Sherry raking together the pine needles with her hands to make an enormous birds nest for her and her friends to sit in.  I feel fortunate to have these memories because they are markers of my own development and journey and grounding points in the universe for me but I wonder if kids today are given much of the same opportunity to connect with the world while at school.  More and more older schools with beautiful architecture and big windows are torn down and replaced with carbon copy models of the same design.  True, some rooms have windows but the tasks put before students today are not exactly complimentary to day dreaming out the window and recess (when it is still available) rarely even allows for such time to sit still and access those part of our brains that are stimulated by letting your mind drift away.