Thunderbolts*

Date Night

Yerres, Path Through the Woods in the Park (1878)

There’s a bend in the path where the light changes. It’s not a cliff, not a fork in the road—just a slow, almost imperceptible curve. That’s what I see in Caillebotte’s Yerres, Path Through the Woods in the Park: not decision, but tension. A moment held in suspension. A pause in the dappled hush of trees. And that’s where I find myself now—not running, not resigned, just quietly pausing.

I’ve been a teacher since 2007. Nearly two decades in alternative education. That role has shaped everything about me—my rhythms, my values, my sense of self. I came to this field believing in second chances, in the redemptive power of education, and in the dignity of young people who had been failed or forgotten by traditional systems. I still believe in those things.

I believe in restorative practices. Not as a soft alternative to discipline, but as a harder, more human path—one that requires listening, reflection, accountability, and repair. I’ve seen it work. I’ve watched students transform not because they were punished, but because they were heard. When restorative justice is done well, it heals.

But that vision is harder to hold onto now. The work has changed. The ground beneath it has shifted.

Technology reshaped the classroom—but more than that, phones did. Not the neutral presence of a device, but the compulsive, addictive reality of it. A second world lives in their hands—urgent, unfiltered, insistent. It’s harder now to reach a mind always half-elsewhere. And the systems that surround us often prioritize compliance over connection. As long as the spreadsheet says "engaged," no one asks what was lost in translation.

Discipline used to be a question of boundaries. Now it’s a legal gray zone where the fear of litigation outweighs the safety of the room. I've had students walk in high—sometimes legally, sometimes not. I’ve had to mediate violent outbursts, only to be told afterward to “reflect with the student” or “hold space.” I believe in holding space. But I also believe in standards, and it’s exhausting when those are no longer held by the system, only by the few teachers still trying to do both.

Graduation, once a milestone of mastery, now feels like a manufactured outcome. It's no longer about passing classes, growing in skill, or earning knowledge. It's about playing the game—filling in boxes, clicking through credit recovery, retaking multiple-choice quizzes until the system yields a passing score. Students don’t drop out anymore; they "transfer to homeschool"—a bureaucratic sleight of hand that allows schools to preserve their numbers while quietly shedding their most vulnerable learners. To pretend we are being honest about what’s happening—and what it means—has been lost in the optics of schools as political battlegrounds. We don’t ask, “Did they grow?” We ask, “Can we get them out?” The message is clear: learning is optional, optics are not.

And yet, I still show up. Still care. Still fight. But something cracked this year—quietly, like a seam that had been stretched too long. I found myself going through motions I didn’t recognize as mine. I passed a student I knew wasn’t ready. I followed a directive I didn’t believe in. I sat silent in a meeting while every part of me ached to speak.

That’s not just burnout. That’s moral injury. A phrase I didn’t have until recently, but one that now explains everything. It’s the pain of violating your values in the service of an institution that no longer shares them. It’s the quiet erosion of integrity, decision by decision.

I used to find comfort in the myth of the noble teacher. The tireless mentor. The self-sacrificing saint. That myth was my armor. It made the long nights and emotional labor feel sacred. But over time, it has come to feel like a trap. A story used to justify neglect. A script that demands we give everything while asking nothing in return. I don’t want to be a martyr anymore. I want to be whole.

That’s why Caillebotte’s painting has me transfixed. That winding path—it doesn’t demand an answer. It just bends. There’s light, there’s shadow, there’s something ahead—but it doesn’t force a pace. It simply invites you to walk.

And yet I stand here, frozen. I fear leaving. I fear staying. I fear what I’ll lose if I walk away—my income, my routine, the identity I’ve worn like skin. But I also fear what I’ll become if I stay. Bitter. Blunted. Disconnected. A ghost in my own profession.

Psychologists call this ambivalence tolerance—the ability to live in the tension of opposing truths without demanding immediate resolution. That’s what I’m trying to practice. To resist the pressure to “figure it out” and instead feel it out. I remind myself daily: clarity doesn’t come at once. Sometimes it arrives like a faint shaft of light through the trees—enough to see the next few steps, no more.

And there’s another layer to this: identity. I don’t just teach—I am a teacher. My name, my purpose, my story. Who am I without that story? What happens when the role I’ve given my life to no longer reflects the person I’ve become?

Maybe that’s why I can’t let go of the painting. Caillebotte’s trail isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t scream turning point. It simply bends—quietly, gracefully, into the unknown. And that’s how change really happens. Not always in leaps, but in hesitations. In small, brave pivots of the soul.

Thomas Merton wrote, “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.”

I write those words again, slowly. Courage. Faith. Hope.

I don’t yet know which direction I’ll take. But I know I cannot keep pretending this is sustainable. I cannot keep applauding a system that asks me to be less human in order to be more efficient. I cannot keep hiding behind the myth. The cost has grown too high—not just professionally, but mentally. Every compromise chips away at something sacred in me.

So I stand at the bend. Listening. Waiting. Not for clarity, but for permission to be honest. To want more. To believe that the path ahead—whatever it is—might still hold purpose, even if I step away from what has always defined me. I am learning that wanting more is not a betrayal. It’s an act of survival.

And that just maybe my purpose begins here—in the pause. In the not-knowing. In the courage it takes to remain soft and awake in a world that urges numbness. In the faith that the self I am becoming is worth trusting, even if I cannot yet see who he is.

Maybe the path isn’t asking me to decide today. Maybe it’s only asking me to keep walking. 

Lovers and Lautrec (n.d.)

Some people seem to understand love in a language I never learned. They speak it fluently—unafraid to be seen, to be vulnerable, to let their guard down. They know how to read subtle cues, how to repair conflict, how to remain soft even when it would be easier to shut down. I admire those people. But I’ve never been one of them.

I’ve only had three serious relationships in my life—my first girlfriend, my high school sweetheart, and my ex-wife. Each one arrived with the thrill of discovery and the promise of something lasting. And each one ended, as so many loves do—not with betrayal, not with drama, but with weariness. With misunderstanding. With two people who tried, and still somehow missed each other. Looking back, I can see how each relationship taught me something about what I wanted. But it also revealed what I couldn’t yet name: how deeply I long to be chosen, and how fragile that hope feels when held out to someone else.

Love, as the psychologists tell us, is both attachment and risk. To love someone is to say: I will let you matter to me. I will let you influence me. I will hurt if you go. The brain lights up in love the way it does with addiction or hunger. We are wired to seek it. But wanting love doesn’t mean we know how to sustain it. Esther Perel once said that modern relationships must hold what once took a whole village to provide—security, adventure, belonging, eroticism, friendship. It’s no wonder so many of us feel we’re failing. We’re asking the impossible of ourselves, and still we keep reaching.

So when I see Joseph Lorusso’s Lovers and Lautrec, something in me still stirs. The painting is quiet—just a man and a woman standing in a gallery, looking at a painting. But there is a hush to their posture. The woman leans into the man, her head almost resting on his shoulder. Their bodies don’t just stand beside each other—they echo the embrace they are looking at: a painting within the painting.

That inner image is In Bed: The Kiss by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Two women lie entwined in soft linens, their kiss more a breath than a declaration. It’s intimate, not performative. You feel like you’ve stumbled upon a moment you were never meant to see. Lautrec painted the fringes of society—sex workers, drinkers, dancers—but he painted them with grace, not judgment. In this piece, he paints love without spectacle. It’s not the first kiss, or the last. It’s one in the middle—familiar, folded into routine, and still tender.

Lorusso chose this painting for a reason. In placing his couple before Lautrec’s lovers, he draws a line across time, across art, across forms of connection. Both paintings ask the same question in different voices: What does it mean to stay close? And as the viewer, I find myself caught in that question too. The artists are not just speaking to each other—they're speaking to me.

I think about how often I’ve tried to answer that question. I’ve turned to dating apps, trying to find a spark in an endless scroll of faces and bios. I’ve composed careful messages, each word weighed and reread. And still, I’ve never made it past messaging. Something just doesn’t click. The digital world flattens everything. A profile can’t capture the gravity of longing. A match doesn’t mean mutual understanding. It’s all frictionless—until it isn’t, until the silence comes.

I listen to the Modern Love podcast and read the essays, and sometimes I find pieces of myself in those stories—other people yearning, fumbling, waiting. They remind me that this ache is not mine alone. That people everywhere are trying and failing and trying again. There’s comfort in that chorus. But there’s also loneliness. Because no matter how many love stories I consume, I still come back to the same quiet truth: I miss being chosen. I miss being in it. Not just dating, not just hoping, but held.

A psychologist might say I have an anxious attachment style. Maybe that’s true. I’ve always leaned in, even when I should have stepped back. I’ve romanticized too quickly, clung too tightly, believed too deeply. But even knowing that, I still believe in love—not the kind that sweeps you off your feet, but the kind that sits beside you in the dark and doesn’t leave.

And that’s what I see in Lovers and Lautrec. Two lovers, and behind them, two more. And then me, watching them all. The museum becomes a mirror. The longing isn’t solved, but it’s seen. The artists don’t offer resolution. They offer recognition. They say: We, too, have known the quiet ache. We, too, have stood beside someone and wondered if they still felt it too.

So I return to this painting not to be comforted, but to be understood. Because in a world where love feels harder to reach—where messages disappear and moments are curated—it’s something rare to feel seen. And if love is, at its core, the desire to be known, then maybe this painting is a kind of love too. A brief moment of being known, without having to explain a thing.

Ornithogalum umbellatum

I Think of You

I Think of You
By Dave

Do you think of me
when you sip your coffee
and the steam curls toward your face?
When you take the long way home
without knowing why?
When a song you didn’t mean to hear
lingers too long in your chest?

Do you think of me
when you reach for a thought
you can’t quite name—
when something’s missing
but you don’t know what?

Because I loved you.
From the moment I saw you,
before there were words
or reasons
or rules.

You were light still forming,
a kindness I did not deserve,
a future I was never meant to touch.

And I—
I was the one who knew.
Who counted the cost.
Who turned away
not because I didn’t feel it,
but because I did.

You didn’t know what you offered.
And I loved you more
for that.

So I became the silence.
The closed door.
The steady hand that let go
so you could walk free.

You may forget me.
You may go on
never knowing the truth.

But if ever—
in some quiet hour,
on some ordinary day—
you pause and wonder,
just wonder...

Then know:
I think of you.

Side Eye

May Blooms