Distilling the Goop

Characters are initially so hard to wrap your head around!

Unfamiliar names, you don't know how to pronounce, refuse to make the hippocampus transition.

As the pages turn, new names go into the blender and churn out a homogenous pink goop, 

hints of flavour and spice might jump out at you but there is no texture to delineate one individual from another.

The beginning of the school year is like this for teachers;

a new book,

is exciting-

because you KNOW it will take you on an adventure,

far from your usual reach, 

challenges and insights,

beauty and exhaustion,

But, that beginning part, not being able to discern the goop of faces,

is unsettling.

Who are they? What will they churn out over the course of the year? How will they respond to myriad stresses? What kind of community? Will they/can they form?

The novel pushes forward.

Characters plunge-

Forth, each page, mustering for their futures, for their development; 

isolating or mingling, 

You begin to see,

And, understand them-

each with their own stories, the characters in the book become real and memorable,

they begin to fit under your teacher umbrella, 

which you grasp your entire life forward,

as an old cat friend sitting next to your lawn chair, 

you finally look down and see her,

she has been looking up at you for a very long time, 

you pat your knee and she knowingly jumps up,

plops down and swirls into a tight ball of warmth,

you smooth her fur,

seeing and understanding, 

her in this moment of stillness,

finally, 

a memory is made.