Leaving tomorrow for Hokkaido and a bit of skiing. But let's talk about me instead. I'm feeling sad now to leave my students after developing these relationships with them.

Sometimes... well usually, I don't want to go to work and my head is filled with the trivial tediums and accountant's lists of energy expenditures required to motivate, to get through, to at least be payed attention to by my students. And it's cold out in the morning. And I'm only four. Arriving at school I sit by the warm comfort of the stovu and drink in my liquid will to live. I scratch at the nameless worries at the back of my head and listen to the incomprehensible ocean of ideas sweeping past my island; the occasional flotsam drifts to the shores of my understanding, but mostly I am left in isolation. I sit and only that.

And then my first class. The students are sleepy, but still. My responsiblity comes awake in the classroom and I open my eyes to it. Slowly I feel myself becoming alive. Slowly I feel students becoming awake. I feel the breath of communication that we both share, students and I. In and out together. Even in the worst case there's some condensation on the mirror. In the best of times we animate our sloth-golem selves to dancing.

It's rare but it happens. And after long months of vacant stares I'm now following students in the halls and lifting up their backpacks all sneaky-like. Bikurishta! Pretending to ninja fight. Asking about movies and music. Being playful and alive and human.

Now in a short while it will be over and it makes me sad. I don' t know what else to say about it. I've got my reasons for leaving. I don't wanna teach forever. I'm 32 and need to Move On to the Next Thing. Start my own business, get more involved with the family business, Settle Down... yada yada. But that shore seems so obscure now and my motivations... what were they when I made my decision? How true my compass? Am I moving towards something or running from something?

...and isn't it ironic that this once ghost world that I moved so silently and invisibly through is now becoming the more solid, the more safe?

Does anyone remember where I parked?