I lose sunglasses. They don't stick around long.

The other day before going outside for lunch duty I snagged a pair from Sean's room--perhaps confiscated from a student. They are cheapo plastic Ray-Ban Wayfarer knock-offs, black with red arms.

The kids love them.

standing outside the ring of salvation

What follows are the concluding sentences to the most sickening piece of fiction I have ever read:

We will be isolated in our agonies as the bundles are lit below us. We will be burned to cinders and our ashes scattered.

And God will come to know our secrets. At our immolation He'll appear to us and pour His gold out at our feet. And His grace that we kicked away will become like a tower on which we might stand. And His grace will raise us to such a height that we might glimpse the men we aspired to be. And His grace like the heat of the sun will burn away the men we have become.

I love that passage. I find it remarkable.

That being said, I don't mind sharing the last lines with you because I honestly do not feel that anyone should read that story. I recommend it to no one. When I finished the story a couple weeks back, it left me a puddle of horrified illness. It made some of the other awful things I've read seem sterile and weightless. Worst of all, the story, though fictionalized, remains substantially historical and true.

So was it worth it?--worth it to read that horrifying story for that beautiful ending? I don't know, but I believe that if those lines stick around after the details they follow fade, then the answer will be yes.

After a wonderful evening at the McGee's last night, I threw Unreal is Here into my truck's cd player to soundtrack the drive from Richmond to Charlottesville. Fog and intermittent rain paid little heed to my dilapidated wipers.

I am, to borrow a phrase from Jay last night, getting my ass handed to me at school. Even so, life is very good.

When my students borrow a pencil or pen, I make them leave me a shoe in exchange. It's pretty hard to forget your shoes, although just yesterday one of my students did just that.

On Tuesday I gave out tests to the poor little darlings. I didn't require a shoe that day. It seems a bit cruel to make a child take a test without one of their shoes.

I lost more pencils and pens that day than I did in the whole seven weeks preceding it.