Quote Post: Tracy Letts Writes A Beautiful Analogy on the Passing of Time and Human Desire

“My last refuge, my books: simple pleasures, like finding wild onions by the side of a road, or requited love.” 

― Tracy Letts, August: Osage County

At the threshold—Janus facing back and ahead—I’m placing this self-portrait with a line from Tracy Letts. © 2025 Stones of Erasmus

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It’s My Birthday — So, Here’s a Special Post

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I feel like I have good people I love and know scattered across this crazy world. I’m scattered. So it works. Today is my birthday. It’s always an in-between day, but I’ve learned to stop worrying and love the bomb — I mean — the day!

The People Who Take You There

I think people carry with them certain memories—especially from early childhood into adolescence—that surface later in adult life, unbidden and strangely intact. Not the big moments. Not the milestones. But the people who were simply there.

I definitely had a coloring book
like this when I was a kid in the 80s!

One of those memories for me is getting on the school bus in LaPlace, Louisiana. I must have been in third, fourth, or fifth grade. LaPlace was—and still is—a small hamlet pressed up against the Mississippi River, defined less by buildings than by the levee system that holds the water at bay. The Bonnet Carré Spillway, that vast and mostly invisible protector, loomed in the background of daily life. Flooding was always a possibility. Order was something you trusted other people to maintain.

Every morning and afternoon, I got on the bus driven by a man named Mr. Barry.

That is the memory.

Mr. Barry was a quiet man, probably in his forties—or at least that’s how I remember him. He was dark brown, with a face worn gently by time, gray-black hair thinning at the crown. He didn’t say much. I don’t remember conversations. I don’t remember jokes or discipline or instruction. What I remember is his presence.

On cold days, I can see him sitting in the driver’s seat before we boarded, eating out of a lunch container—not a tin exactly, but a proper lunch box. Inside was red beans and rice. In Louisiana, that meal is more than food; it’s ritual, warmth, care. I somehow knew his wife—or someone who loved him—had made it. He ate it slowly, with relish, like it mattered.

I don’t even know when he ate it. Maybe between routes. Maybe in the afternoon before the ride home. Memory doesn’t care much for logistics. It keeps what it wants.

Mr. Barry wore jeans, usually a collared shirt with a T-shirt underneath—sometimes red-and-black checked. Once the bus got moving, he’d turn on the radio. Rock and roll, whatever was on FM at the time. Occasionally, in the mornings, the news. There were only so many stations then. The world arrived filtered and faint.

Here’s the strange part: I don’t remember how he drove. I don’t remember a single thing about his skill behind the wheel. I don’t remember rules or reprimands or even the sound of his voice. But I remember him. His face. His name. The constancy of seeing him every day.

He probably didn’t know my name.

And yet, decades later, I carry him.

In high school, I had another bus driver: Mr. Greg. He was different—more talkative, lanky, tall, with a mustache and an easy smile. He played country music. He was also a police officer in Madisonville, Louisiana, where I lived at the time. I knew more about him. I saw him occasionally outside the bus, sometimes in his patrol car. He had a brother who also drove a bus, though I can’t remember his name.

Mr. Greg had rules—bus drivers always do. Sit down. Don’t move. Don’t test the limits of a vehicle that is both transportation and controlled chaos. Bus driving is hard. You’re responsible for dozens of children while piloting something the size of a small building. You’re caretaker and authority and witness, all at once.

I don’t know where either of these men are now. Mr. Barry could be in his sixties, his nineties, or gone altogether. Mr. Greg is probably in his fifties or sixties. Time gets slippery when you start measuring it against your own life. I’m now roughly the age I once imagined Mr. Barry to be. Or maybe older. Or maybe not.

And that’s the point.

We spend so much time worrying about what will matter—what we’ll be remembered for, what impact we’re making, whether our actions register. But memory doesn’t work that way. People remember presence. Consistency. Care. The way someone showed up, quietly, day after day.

Mr. Barry and Mr. Greg probably have no idea they live in my mind. They weren’t teachers. They weren’t family. They weren’t friends. They were simply the men who took me from home to school and back again, safely, repeatedly, without drama.

And yet they carry a kind of solace for me now—a reminder of a time when I had less agency, less freedom, and other people quite literally carried me where I needed to go.

I know for certain I could never be a bus driver. That job requires patience, endurance, and a tolerance for chaos I do not possess.

So this is a quiet thank-you—to Mr. Barry, to Mr. Greg, and to all the people whose labor is invisible but essential. To the ones who never make speeches but leave an imprint anyway.

You never really know who will remember you.

And maybe that’s the grace of it.

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Teaching on the Edge of “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”

I used to think teaching looked like a scene out of the novel-made-classic movie — the musical version I like is Goodbye, Mr. Chips, with Peter O’Toole in the title role. Mr. Chips is dapper. He nibbles biscuits, dispenses quiet wisdom through action, and his students adore him. That was my gestalt of teaching, a script I absorbed in childhood. I idolized my teachers — middle school, high school, even college — as if they could make order out of chaos (or show me the pattern inside the chaos, which is sometimes even better).

I became a teacher at twenty-eight, after a decade in the arms of Mother Church — first a seminarian, then a religious brother. I left that life for a parallel calling. And I’m still here, now in my forties, a little more tired, a little more rushed. The backstage parts of the job take up a lot of oxygen — grading, uploading this file and that one, posting grades, reading emails, responding to some of them. It’s office work except teaching isn’t an office job — it’s a command performance. The show thrills me; it also wrings me out.

This morning I cried in the shower. It was cold. My commute from Queens to my school in Washington Heights is about an hour and a half. I don’t love that part. I check my email and skim the news on my phone, but mostly it feels like time I can’t get back.

I started this year with gusto. Classic me — the Energizer Bunny. I’m either all-systems-go or in a deep morass of my own patheticness. People tend to like me when I’m bouncy and ready to wrangle sixth- and seventh-graders — the tribe I travel with these days. Teaching happens in the moment, but it demands a plan — lesson arcs, pacing calendars, data cycles. And yet my favorite moments are the improvised ones: a student’s random share, a series of unfortunate (and comic) events, that flash when a question sparks real curiosity. That’s the stuff that keeps me in it — kids doing, being, thinking, and seeing.

It’s my first time teaching in a public school after years in private — tuition-free places and tuition-paid ones. I got my certification after I’d already been in classrooms for a while. The shift to the public sphere is a whole story on its own. What I can say is: my students talk. They interrupt. They test boundaries. We’re nearing Christmas, and the behaviors have a pulse. That tracks. I should feel blessed — three more weeks and then hibernation. But I feel anxious.

Part of it is last year, which was a disaster. Let’s leave it there. Part of it is now: I’m learning two curricula, juggling four classes, and directing drama club (we meet once a week, which should be manageable, right?). I have a parent advocating hard for her seventh-grade son to get into a private school for eighth — which I respect — while I try to keep everyone learning today. I’m teaching everything new, following a set curriculum that still requires a million tweaks to fit the real humans in front of me. It drives me a little mad.

So I write. My therapist says writing is therapy; this is that. I’m not a naturally organized person. I survive on intuition. Sometimes I collapse under the pressure. I took a sick day today — I needed to breathe — and now I’m second-guessing the choice. My armor plate has shifted. I don’t feel as confident as I “should.” I’m not kind to myself; I can be brutal. When I stumble, the echo chamber inside me amplifies the mistake.

I’m not a perfectionist — far from it. I’m the teacher typing the slide deck minutes before students walk in. But like Mr. Chips, I believe in the humanity of this work. I’m teaching actual human beings — kids with desires and wishes, different from mine, but real. In the story, Mr. Chips falls in love. I always thought Goodbye, Mr. Chips felt a little queer-coded. There are plenty of us — gay men who found a home in the profession. When people ask (and they ask a lot), I sometimes joke that I’m saving myself for Mr. Right. I’ll even make up a beau — Marc Antony — no relation to the historical figure. He’s also been A.G. Millington or Uncle Faroger. It’s a little neurodivergent of me, maybe, to chat with my alter egos. It’s only a problem if they talk back, right?

My salve is Friday after school. New York City does something to me on Fridays — a little joie de vivre. I’ll walk along 37th Avenue in Queens, duck into a bodega, or browse a 99-cent store. I’ll treat myself to a café au lait (no sugar!) and remember that joy still sneaks in, even when I’m running on fumes.

Here’s what I know from my own mistakes: teaching isn’t osmosis. Papers don’t grade themselves. Lessons don’t float from the ether. But learning can be wondrous. I’ve built Stones of Erasmus from that conviction — it started “just for fun,” and in the pandemic it became a haven for the kinds of lessons I crave: resources that bring arts and letters to life, that challenge me and my students to go deeper. On my best days, I design the kind of work that makes adolescents sit up — not because it’s flashy, but because it’s alive with big ideas.

I’m still not Mr. Chips — I don’t want to be. He’s a sweet fantasy, a tidy narrative where the biscuits are always warm and the Latin epigrams always land. My classroom is messier, louder, more human. And when it’s all too much — when the commute freezes me, when the schedule crowds in, when the curriculum needs more tweaking than time allows — I remember why I came: to spark wonder, to foster thinking, to help kids map the disorder and sometimes find the hidden order inside it.

So, goodbye to the fantasy — and hello to the practice. I’ll keep showing up, tweaking, failing, trying again, and laughing at my own slide-deck-at-the-bell chaos. And on the days I manage to create a little stillness amid the storm — a circle of tea, a shared poem, a question that lingers — I nod to that dapper gentleman in my imagination and whisper, with gratitude and a grin: Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

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3 Things I Love About Teaching ❤️📚

Hey, y’all. I know social media is full of teachers talking about how tough this job is (and honestly … they’re not wrong). But today I’m flipping the script. Here are three things that make teaching amazing for me:

1. I’m a celebrity.
Only at school, but still! Nothing beats leaving the building, turning a corner, and hearing, “Hey, Roselli!” from the same kids I was just trying to convince to take notes. I’ll take my hallway fame, thank you very much.

2. Kids' writing blows me away.
As an ELA teacher, I get to watch kids put their hearts on the page. My 7th graders are writing about A Long Walk to Water right now, connecting the story to compassion, responsibility, and the suffering of others. Sometimes their insights stop me in my tracks. They’re that good.

3. The beautiful mirror effect.
I’m older, I’ve got more mileage as a reader and thinker—but then I see students making connections, asking questions, and showing a spark that reminds me of my younger self. Sometimes they’re even sharper than I ever was. Watching their potential unfold is the best part of this job.

Sure, teaching is hard. But these moments? They’re why I stay.

(And yes, I’m rocking my Janus shirt. You can grab one on my store 😉)

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Gratitude Friday from a Middle School English Language Arts Teacher

                 

                   This video captures me at my most exuberant.

Commuting, Teaching, and the Strange Existential Quiet of 7:00 A.M. 

Since September, my day has begun at 5:00 a.m. in Queens. By 6:00, I’m on the E train heading for Washington Heights — an hour and twenty-five minutes of subterranean meditation before first bell. I transfer at Port Authority, usually early enough to glimpse the city before it fully wakes. By the time the A pulls into 168th Street, the sky is pulling its first threads of light across the station roof.

I walk past the old Croton Aqueduct tower; a reminder of a New York that once survived on a narrow ribbon of water; and up toward my school. But most mornings, I barely register the history around me. I’m thinking about lesson plans, attendance sheets, and the unpredictable weather systems known as seventh graders.

Teaching has its rituals: unlocking the classroom before anyone arrives, flipping on the lights, setting the day in motion before the din begins. By 7:55, the “buffalo” arrive — loud, hilarious, tender, exhausting. On good days, I can match their energy. On others, I’m simply the adult keeping the world stitched together.

This year, the work has felt especially existential — not in the dramatic, philosophical sense, but in the way teaching forces you to be utterly present. A sixth grader whispers she’s bleeding and needs the bathroom. A student confides heartbreak. Someone forgot breakfast. Another kid, sensing I am taking care of someone else, decides to pick up a chair in a show of strength. "Make good choices," I say, partly to them, partly to myself. Someone else forgot how to be twelve. You meet all of it with whatever grace you can muster.

Lately, though, I’ve felt something quieter: a strange numbness, the kind that slips in when the body is tired and the mind has carried too much. No one tells you in teacher school that caring deeply has a metabolic cost.

But here’s what I’m learning: numbness isn’t failure. It’s a signal. A reminder that even teachers—keepers of routines, holders of storms—need tending, too.

And tomorrow, at 5:00 a.m., the alarm will ring again.

The city will rise.

So will I.

Not because I’m unshakeable, but because this work—messy, human, and profoundly alive—still calls me back.

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I like to remind myself: "Self care, yes, mama!"

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© 2025 Stones of Erasmus

Finding Purpose: How I Stay Creative Without Burning Out

Hey y’all 💭 Feeling the Sunday scaries and thinking about what keeps me grounded lately. Erik Erikson talks about generativity— that stage when you want to give back, to nurture others. Teaching middle schoolers has me living that out every day. I don’t have biological kids, but I do have “brain children”—ideas, stories, and students I’ve helped grow. 🌱

Lately, I’m trying to stay creative and generous without burning out—through music, reflection, and connecting deeply with others. How do you tap into your own spiritual energy and stay generative?

#TeacherLife #SundayReflections #Generativity #ErikErikson #MindfulTeaching #CreativeEnergy

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