Kids Clubbing Kids at the Kid’s Club

What day is today?
—04.26.2000—

Sitting across from me on the deck of the Spirit today, on the way back from St. Mary’s, Liz asked me in her Kiwi accent and mock-serious-but-actually-serious tone, “Why are you wringing your hands Dominik Schulz? Why all the tension?” I hadn’t noticed, but I had been. She has this way of pinning me with her genuinely frank observations, so I answered her in kind instead of saying, “Aw, nothin’.”

I had been thinking about the Scilly Kids Club today and presenting the kids with versions of their logos that I had transformed on the computer from rough sketches into working marks. All the kids voted on their favorites. In the first round everyone could vote for as many or few of the marks as they liked. One of the kids, Loki (“You can call me Loki, Lok, Lo or LT.”) received only one vote for his logo, and that vote was his own. The sad irony is that Loki is always the first to tell me how great his projects are, to show them to me, to brag, to over-indulge in bids for (or perhaps starving for?) recognition.

After the group had picked their favorites, Loki sulked to Nikki (who was assisting the class) about how the voting should have been by hidden ballot because, in his view, he would have gotten more votes. As it stood, he thought the process was unfair because he knew one liked him and that’s why no one voted for his mark. He said it happened at his last school and it was the same way at the this school. He seemed quite affected by it all.

Another boy, Daniel, who had been sitting next to him, and listening in the way kids do when they’re trying to look like they’re not, piped up, “You know why? I can tell you. Two simple words: ‘You’re annoying.’ We keep trying to tell you, but you just keep on doing it.”

“I am not. You’re annoying!” was the retort.

There was the start of some real communication there. Loki felt ostracized and it seemed Daniel was at least trying to tell him why this was happening. I didn’t get them into specifics though. I didn’t ask Daniel to explain what it was about Loki that was bugging him, and therefore couldn’t get Loki to respond to the criticisms. Nor did I share with him how I felt about his bragging and self-aggrandizing. So I told Liz (who shares a birthday with my ex-girlfriend Beth—freaky!) that I felt that I had done both of the kids a disservice by not facilitating better communication between them. I felt like I had lacked something. What was it? Courage of conviction? Skill? Practice? The will to carry through what I felt in my heart perhaps? Oh, that old thing... I must really try to honor it when I can feel it tugging. Slow down the pace. Slow down time in that moment and offer myself out to the world.

“So what did you say to them?” Liz asked me. “I don’t remember. I don’t know if I said anything beyond, ‘Hmmm’.”

“Yeah, it seems like you're the kind of person that just doesn’t say stuff sometimes.” I felt like she was reading me like a book. “Really!? What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know that’s just the way you seem.”

Hmmm. After we finished our logo discussion, all the kids went into the main Kids Club room. A few minutes later a small group of them came running back. “Loki’s just hit Natasha and she’s crying.” And let me tell you there are few things sadder than seeing a kid whose face is painted with circus makeup and melting, right in front of you, in a flood of tears.

I have to say Natasha seems to be in the same ballpark that Loki’s in, always waving her hand madly in discussions, Oh, me, listen to me for a second. This is just a quick one. or *I* think, that...blah, blah, blah, I just like having the floor, blah, blah. And she tends to annoy the other kids more because she wants their attention whereas Loki seems to mostly want attention from his instructors. It’s not hard to see how these two could have gotten on each other’s nerves.

Could it have been avoided? Perhaps. Could I have done more? Sometimes it seems like kids just want you to listen, that they’re not looking for answers. I still felt like I didn’t follow through and fully engage with them today. Maybe I could have helped them steer clear of violence. And that’s why I felt pensive on the boat today.

——

Last night was my first night in the shed. The extension cord that delivers power comes through the front door at the moment, so the door is propped open all night, extending an invitation to wind, mice, spiders, and anything/anyone else that’s passing through. So far it’s just been the wind and those bugs that look like prehistoric-sized mosquitoes.

You should have seen some of the spiders I found while I was cleaning the place up last weekend. There were plenty of run-of-the-mill daddy long legs, which were easy to vacuum up, as well as some more dangerous looking ones with spiky—whoops, just had to kill another one—spiky-legs with big, evil, round abdomens. But then, under the eaves of the tin roof, I found a beast so big I almost wanted to save it for curiosity’s sake. The damn thing was silver-dollar sized—no lie—just huge.

In the end I didn’t know how to get him out without sucking him up and didn't have a place to put him anyway. So I went after him with the vacuum cleaner nozzle. First let me say I hope I’m not sounding like some big wimp, concerned with a few spiders, because this thing was truly king-sized. When I pointed the nozzle into the crevice it struggled... but actually managed to just walk away from the end of the hose! Then it disappeared and I couldn’t reach it. “Whoa, shit...” I thought. What kind of spider is able to walk away from the end of a vacuum cleaner nozzle!? There was no way that I wanted to see that thing walking across my sheets at night. When it popped out of its lair again, I jammed the vacuum cleaner nozzle in there so fast it didn’t have time to react. I thought I heard it whooshing down through the hose to a dusty death. Yiieeeeee!!

—04.28.2000—

I saw Hans on the beach with the tractor the other day. He was out collecting seaweed to fertilize his garden. Seeing him at a distance, from the top of the quay, the red tractor’s huge tires covered in white sand, just made me think of Christmas.

——

The sky looked greasy tonight. It surprised me. The clouds were smeared across the horizon in the last light. The smell of a coal fire wafted over from a chimney next door.

We had a little slide show at Elder Farm tonight because Hans found the projector in the back of the closet. Jon painted a screen-sized portion of a kitchen wall white, then set up the projector amongst the piles of paper, pots hanging from the ceiling, and the jars and jars of who knows what.

A few days earlier I’d brought over a book that I had found on the shelf at Pengold. It was a copy of Longfellow poems that had been published in the 1880s. I thought it might be valuable and be better kept at Elder instead of in their holiday rental. This evening Hans used it to prop up the projector.