I love Peter Gabriel’s Secret World. The song creates such a profound feeling of reconciliation and acceptance in me. Not always things I seek in music, but that’s why we have big iPods.

Why am I interested in that now?

The most obvious thing is the closing of the school where I teach. I love math and science. When I have engaged students, it is a true pleasure to teach. I’ve just about finished all of the paperwork to get a substitute teacher’s certification in the Hawaii state school system. My years at a private school count for nothing with respect to certification. I must be going through the Kubler-Ross stages. I found myself staring wistfully at the grounds on Friday, the last day students were on campus. This after just gritting my teeth and getting through the graduation ceremony the week before. Seniors graduate a week before the lower grades complete the school year at my school.

Anger, denial, acceptance.

Another song that ends with reconciliation and acceptance is Layla. The coda is a beautiful, completely non-verbal representation of reconciliation to and the acceptance of not being able to have Layla. I associate that song with romance and violence (from the perversely marvelous use Scorcese puts it to in Goodfellas). So it doesn’t fit here.

Secret World is about losing something, and living with what you have, and wondering about how you got to where you are. And it’s about loving the love that you now have. Guess I’ll have to love math and science in front of some new group of students. “What was it we were thinking of?”

And I get to spend this week taking inventory of all the textbooks and computers and whatnots. I suspect that will cure me of any nostalgia.