“The strange words rolled through his mind; […they] talked wonderfully and only half-understandably, a terrible beautiful magic […]” -Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, in describing John’s love for Shakespeare’s poetry

                I want to talk about two different styles of teaching, and then see something about living. It might even work.
                I remember sitting in a college English class, listening to the professor discuss Jack London’s “To Build A Fire.” I read that story as a teenager: it’s harsh view of life as something that can so easily shimmer and seep away frightened me, confused me, made me grow. In the professor’s hands, the story was an example of changing society. He pointed out that the language itself looks like an instruction manual. In society’s new view, he argued, life becomes something that we either succeed or fail at doing. (‘To build a fire you arrange the wood like this; if you don’t, the fire doesn’t catch.’ I think, by the way, that he’s onto something, and I think it’s an incredibly dangerous way to look at life). Walking out of the class, my friend said there were two ways to teach a story: either you use your theory to try to get closer to the story, to move into it and see more of it, or you use the story as a supportive structure for your theory. In the first approach, your goal is to engage with the story itself. In the second, your goal is to explain and defend a theory. My friend said she wanted the first kind of class. I agreed.
                Which is why I was surprised, and to be honest rather discouraged, when I realized last week that I was doing the second in my class. I was bringing in beautiful poems, but I brought them in as another step on the intellectual staircase we were building. I did that because I was trying to present the class as a unified movement, a series of thoughts that we could follow along. I wanted the students to feel how each thing led to another. I wanted them to know what to expect and what to learn, so they could learn it. So they wouldn’t be left behind.
                That approach has its place, but right now, I want my class to do something else. I want to find John, who comes alive in learning from something he only half understands. I want to give students the chance to be confused. To muddle about. To interact with things that don’t seem connected, and connect them in their own ways, and fall in love (reasonlessly, witlessly) with a story for its own sake. I want them to build something new. These stories are overwhelming: there are oceans of life in them. I could limit that, I could pretend there was an easy, progressing path by hiding the story behind a wall and giving us a pinhole view. That way there would be a lesson. There would be a staircase, but staircases only lead to one place. I want the ocean and the wind. I want them, together and alone, to remember that they can swim.
                Confusion, waves, new rhythms to stumble after, and overwhelming loves–all these flows toward us from all sides. In that there is magic.

                “It’s a big challenge for us […] to get the kids to realize their potential, the fact that they’re a gift to somebody else–it’s not easy.” -Father Edwin Leahy, Headmaster of St. Benedict’s Prep
                “Ben Turnbull’s unhappiness is obvious right from the book’s first page. But it never once occurs to him that the reason he’s so unhappy is that he’s an asshole.” -David Foster Wallace, in reviewing John Updike’s Towards the End of Time

                I almost didn’t want to use David Foster Wallace’s line, because it includes a word I don’t much like. In the end, I think that’s why DFW uses it. Selfishness, arrogance, and possessive disregard for others can look moody, dynamic, and impressive when they’re dressed up in the right clothes, but underneath the pose, they’re ugly and shallow and simple.
                Turnbull isn’t an idiot. He’s not evil. It’s just that, according to DFW, he thinks that one escapes despair by being able “to have sex with whomever one wants whenever one wants,” and living by that self-involved power fantasy makes you act like an asshole. Some of my high schoolers who haven’t thought about it very much might agree with Turnbull’s idea of happiness–but then again, they’re high schoolers who haven’t thought about it very much. The fantasy of being able to “have” (and what a strange euphemism that is) anyone anytime makes sense, I think, for someone who’s just thinking about erotic touch for the first time, and who’s bewildered by that great roar. It’s an easy response to a confused, exciting, frightening topic. Hopefully, by the time we’re Turnbull’s age, we’ve realized it’s an adolescent fantasy and leave it behind with giga pets, smoking in the bathroom, and internet quizzes that tell us our one true love.
                All that’s connected to another “easy response” that we can get stuck in: selfishness. The idea that my life is only for myself. I think most of us want to believe what Father Leahy reminds us: that each of us is a gift to someone else. When we give that up, it’s because we’ve become convinced that there’s nothing except self interest. It’s because we’re discouraged enough to say that people are beyond being helped. It’s because we’re scared enough to say that our own little heart couldn’t help. When we give that up, everything is lessened. We stop offering what we have to the world, we’re inconsiderate, and we hurt inside. We hurt because we want, want desperately, to have lives that reach out beyond ourselves–and because we’ve decided that we don’t. We’ve decided that we can’t.
                So, here, I’m writing it down. I’m listening to Father Leahy. I’m telling you. Go ahead and live for yourself, eat a mango, drink in that taste of the world; and while you live for yourself, live for us all. Work for us all. Be part of the sea that is us all: sometimes a quiet drop, sometimes a wave.
                You are a gift to somebody else.

                A Practice: “I am alive for…”
                I want to share a practice that, an hour ago, this writing gave me. Driving into work, for a moment, I didn’t see why it was worth writing, or thinking, or teaching. How could these stories and discussions matter? And then I thought about Father Leahy. And then I thought about my family, my friends, and my students. And then I thought about you. If you’re interested in sharing my practice, I invite you to take a few minutes, and say out loud who you are alive for today. Say their full name, all of their full names, and in the end, say “I am alive.” Who, today, do you live for?
                I started this, and found that I wanted to say name after name after name. I am alive for so many. I am alive for you. I am alive. And I know why.

                “If you can keep your head…” -Rudyard Kipling, “If”
                “Have you reckoned the earth much?” -Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
                “Under the pink quilted covers  /  I hold the pulse that counts your blood.” -Anne Sexton, “The Fortress”

                In my new Poetry class, we’ve been reading Anne Sexton, Walt Whitman, and Rudyard Kipling. It’s almost the beginning of a good joke: “Three poets walk into a bar…” I can’t think of the joke, but the three of them did weave together to offer me a metaphor.
                When I was fifteen, I was required to memorize Kipling’s “If.” (I had to recite it, too. Fifteen other students had already recited it, and the class was bored with listening, so I tried to rap it instead. Rudyard raps well–which isn’t surprising I suppose, for as Hamilton shows, Rap and Poetry are the same body in a different pose. Anyway, my teacher kept telling me to “slow down”). I fell in love with it. I fell in love with this strong, stoic picture of who I could be, what I could strive for. I felt Kipling’s hand on my shoulder, I saw his smile as he looked at the stars, raised a hand, and said, “Aim there.”
                Whitman’s “Song of Life” overflows and overwhelms me: it is the world, all of it, running along beside and above and below and through, and I have to run to keep up. It is as expansive as oceans and as deep as night skies. It has a mountain’s roots. The first time I read it, really read it, I was walking through the fog of an Amherst night, reading by street lamps, saying the whole thing aloud in one long song. It ran off ahead of me, leaving me behind in its rush toward the world. In running forward, it found me.
                Sexton’s “The Fortress” sinks down deep into a moment. She wrote it “while taking a nap with Linda,” her daughter, and the three page poem takes place while she looks at her daughter’s sleeping face. There she sees a beauty mark, and in that mark she sees the threat of illness, and then the cruelty of a world that she can’t control; and then, in the end, Sexton remembers the love that is all she can offer her daughter. The love that, given, cannot be taken away. Sexton’s poem looks down into into where she is, into now. She stands right here until she grows roots, until she becomes a stem through which life blossoms.
                Kipling, Whitman, Sexton; looking up, looking out, looking down. The three are different, almost opposed, and I think I need them all. If we went to climb a mountain, we’d have to start by looking at the peak–looking at where we intended to go. Then we’d need to look at the hills ahead–look at the wide world, rich with rock and grass and opportunity, and engage with it. There is so much more than just what we intend. Then we would need to look down, see where our feet actually stand, see this place, here. See myself so I can grow into myself. In order to go anywhere, in order to grow into anything, we need to start where we are. Kipling, Whitman, Sexton; looking up towards what we hope, looking out toward all that is, looking down into our hurts, our hopes, ourselves. They’ve reminded me that I need all three, in fluid, easy sequence.
                Sometimes I find my balance, not by trying to stand still, but by throwing my hands to left and right, throwing my head back, and calling to the sky.

                “And yet thy heart / The lowliest duties on herself did lay.” -William Wordsworth, in his poem “Milton,” which praises the old poet for his “virtue,” his “freedom” and “power”–and his willingness to work.

                In India, a friend told me there were two ways to brush your teeth: you could try to distract yourself, try to get past the task while doing something else–or you could pay attention to it, feel the brush, feel the water as you rinsed, and see it as something worth doing on its own.
                That reminds me of another moment in India. After their evening study hall, the senior students were supposed to sweep their classroom floor, and most of the time they didn’t want to.  There were about thirty in the class. They would sit, chatting, after study hall had ended. Then one would slip off as though he had “forgotten,” then another would slip off, then half of them would be gone and the rest didn’t intend to get stuck doing the work for everyone.
                One of the teachers was a grandmother, a matriarch who’d guided the school for decades. One night she noticed the last students leaving the classroom, and looked in to see that the floor wasn’t swept. (Maybe grandmothers always notice that kind of thing). She stepped into the room. One of the students saw her, and came back to see what she was doing. The broom was an Indian style broom, about as long as my arm, so to sweep with it you had to crouch down or kneel. The grandmother had the broom and she was kneeling. The student rushed up to her, insisting, “Akka–akka–I’ll sweep akka!” (“Akka” means “elder sister.” It was the respectful, familiar way that students addressed older women). The woman smiled and shook her head. “I’ll sweep,” she said.
                Other students, hearing the first one, came back. The whole class came back. And the grandmother didn’t let go of the broom until she’d moved, slowly on her old joints, across the whole floor. The students watched. Then two of them helped her to her feet, and she let one of them put the broom away. She walked out from the room.
                If I had done that, I think I would have been trying to shame the students. To push them to see that if they didn’t pick up the work someone else would have to. But I’ve thought a lot about that woman, and I think she was doing something better. She wanted the room clean. Perhaps wanting the room clean, wanting that clearly, meant that she wanted to sweep. Or perhaps not: perhaps what she wanted wasn’t her focus just then, the room was. I wish she had said something before walking out, something I could think about. She didn’t. If she had, I wonder if it would have been, “There’s no shame in being one who works.” Perhaps, better, she would have said that there is pride.
                Sometimes we think of certain work as “lowly,” as beneath us. Wordsworth says that the noblest hearts remember to kneel and sweep. Perhaps that connection between pride, position, privilege and work can help to heal us, in little moments and in big ones. Last year, a student pointed out that Macbeth seems more interested in being king than in “king-ing;” in doing the work of a king. Perhaps (the student said) that’s where all the bloodshed began. I wonder what would have happened if Macbeth had found worth and pride in a broom instead of in his ambition. I wonder.
        And I’m looking forward to brushing my teeth tonight.

                “‘Is the good, true, and beautiful in my nature as strong as the whispers of the demons and the monsters?’ And we need to answer yes to that question everyday.”
                -Angeles Arrien, anthropologist, Gathering Medicine: Stories, Songs, and Methods of Soul Retrieval

                Earlier today I watched the trailer for Planet Earth II. Earlier today I walked out into my little city park, where a grasshopper stood in the road and a bird bickered at me from the trees, and the wind blew me forward on the way out, and backward on the way back; and throughout all that there was something deeper than a thought running through my mind. There was wonder. There was the thrum of all that is good, true, and beautiful in my nature, resounding to the touch of all that is good, true, and beautiful in the world around me.
                It’s easy for me to get discouraged. There is so much that we do wrong. There is so much that I do wrong: so many ways I fall short, so many interactions in which I offer less than the fullest part of me, so many times when I veer off from living for the blank comfort of just passing time. I think it’s important to think about that. I think it’s important to ask the “What’s wrong with this?” questions. They’re our mechanic questions, pointing us toward what we need to fix. But why do we bother to fix our car?
                I say it’s because a car lets us ride an explosion down the road. At first I was hesitant to use that metaphor, because there is so much wrong with cars: they pollute, they’re inefficient, and they lead to a lot of deaths. They’re also useful. They’ve saved lives. They’ve given the Planet Earth crew a ride out into the wild, and, with a rush of wind, they offer the joy of movement and the wonder of traveling. I think we should acknowledge our shortcomings, and the flaws in what we make. I think we need to celebrate ourselves, the steel and flame that we shape, and the shaping that the world does to us. I need that.  I need, sometimes, to be a string on the instrument of the world, and to hear the music. I need to remember that, whatever else I do and try to do, I am always that.
                We humans are destroying things. We are. But we are also building. We are also witnessing. We are also being witnessed. We are part of a world that is beautiful and varied, part of a cosmos vast beyond my imagining. The good, true, and beautiful in me thrills as part of the endless good, true, and beautiful all around me. Look at the grasshopper. Hear the birds. See the penguins and the great waves they swim through.  For a moment, this moment, I celebrate the world as the playful, wonder-struck child that we can all sometimes be.
                Even as a child I heard the demons whisper. I had my nightmares. And as a child I knew why I would struggle against them, survive them, learn from them, or move past them. It’s because–well, look outside. Look at those you love. Feel the touch of a stone. It’s because of all this.

“Do, or do not. There is no try.” -Yoda

                This line’s been in my head since long before I saw the movies. (I wasn’t allowed to watch them, because of the violence; so I would hide outside my brother’s door and listen. I thought I was sneaky. I’m sure I wasn’t. Later I was allowed to watch Yoda’s scenes. By the time I watched the whole thing, I knew his words backwards and forwards. And it is probably this interest on my part, this participatory myth building, that makes Yoda mean so much to me. We all take the stories we read and write them with our own ink in our own hearts. Otherwise they would never touch us). It’s been with me, but it came back to me tonight.
                “Do, or do not. There is no try.” That’s silly: I try to do things all the time–unless Yoda is asking me to think of tasks in a fundamentally different way. I see a mountain, and wondering what it would be like at the top, I start moving. If I am “getting to the top,” I can fail. There might be ravines I don’t know about. I might twist my ankle. There might be saber-wielding Sith. It seems like there is a “try.” But Yoda ask, “Know you what you are doing?” Well, what part of this task am I actually doing? What part can I actually do, all within myself? I am stepping forward. That is something I can do. Whatever happens next, in that moment, I do it.
                With my actions, I often intend to create some certain result. I would like to see the peak. But that result relies on a whole world of factors beyond my control: the mountain, the weather, the continued beating of my heart. If a task includes other people, all of them have their own intentions, their own actions. There is more to life than just me. I can look at the endless, changing web of action and interaction and result, but I don’t think I can fully understand it. I certainly can’t hold it all in my hands. I can choose my own action. I can lift my foot for another step.
                I wonder what it would be like to understand more of my actions in this way. Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep: instead of trying to fall asleep, I could chose to be lying in the night, breathing. Instead of trying to get over an illness, I could put water on to boil. Tomorrow, as an experiment, I’m not going to show up and teach a good class. After all, it might be a bad class. But if there is school tomorrow, and if my car doesn’t break down on the way, then there will probably be a moment when I listen. If there is silence, I will listen to that. If there is speech, I will listen to that. There will probably be a moment when I speak, and share whatever there is to share in my heart. Those sharings might be welcomed and might be missed. Which of those happens is not something I choose. What I do is listen.  What I do is share.
                Do, or do not.

                In the end, Ted Naifeh’s comic book series Princess Ugg is about making peace between different worlds: the rich lowlanders and the wild mountain dwellers, the mountain dwellers and the giants. In the end, after thousands of years of bloody war, red haired Princess Ulga talks with the giant chieftain about how the two peoples could live side by side. He says,
                “I dunno why, girl, but yuh scares I more ‘n any bloodhead I ever met.”
                “‘Tis because I’m offerin’ hope. Did yeh mither never tell yeh? ‘Tis hope makes yeh fear.”

                I think Princess Ulga (Ugg is a nickname the lowlanders give her, though she accepts it) has a point. Over the last few weeks, my students have been designing new countries, new communities where they would want to live. When it comes to a growing wage gap, or prejudice, or a social order that abandons some groups, many of these students have said: “But that’s always going to happen. That’s inevitable.” I wish they were willing to hope a little more, and be afraid. I wish I was.
                I’m not sure what “hope” means. Etymologically, it’s related to “trusting” the world and those around us, having “confidence” in the future, and “expecting” (or even assuming) that what we’ll get what we desire. I’m trying to arrange all of those meanings, and my own experiences, into a better understanding of hope. I haven’t done it yet.
                But I know that, when I step back and assume that you and I will not be friends, that the world will only get crueler, that we can’t be anything but the worst of what we are now–when I lose hope, I’m less afraid. There’s less to be afraid about: less life, less value, less of a world. I’m less, in my own heart. Less interested. Less engaged. Less energetic. Less kind. Less in love, with others and myself.
                Ulga reaches a helping hand to the world that has, in many ways, hurt her–which (of course) is the same world that has given her mountains to climb, freezing water to swim in, and friends to make. She knocks heads together, when she needs to. She stops when she can. She cries and does not hide her tears. She stands between two worlds, recognizing them both as real. She’s hurt, and has the courage to heal: not just herself, but the giants, who she knows have been hurt by the same war that took her mother’s life.
                Hope makes her more afraid: afraid she’ll fall short of making peace. Afraid she’ll lose the friends she’s made. Hope makes her more alive: alive enough to make her world kinder, brighter, wider. So perhaps those fears are fears we should not fear to have.

                “[We choose to do these things] not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” -John F. Kennedy
                “Never forget that the first syllable of convenience is con.” -Bill Bryson, I’m A Stranger Here Myself

                The con, of course, is that my life will be better when my car locks itself automatically, my pens never leak, my clothes never wrinkle, and every dinner takes no more than a minute in the microwave. The con is that making communication easier and easier (facebook; texting; snapchat) helps us to connect. The con is that my life’s better when all my shopping ‘needs’ are met by one big mall, or better still, by Amazon where I can shop without wearing any pants. I’ve fallen for it: most of my slacks are made from that fabric that’s not supposed to wrinkle, and a bit ago I bought stamps online.
                Convenience is from Latin: the root’s the same as “convene,” which comes from com- (“together”) and venire (“to come”). “To come together:” to choose a place, and meet there. In the late 1600s we get the transition to “conveniences,” the material possessions that make our lives more comfortable. There’s another con: “comfort,” from conforten, “to cheer up,” which is itself from the Latin com- (an intensive prefix; like an early “hella”) and fort (“strength”).
All good cons are lies based on truths. I do want something near here: but I think, more than the ease of instant communication, I want the effort of meeting together, a standing here and sharing. I do want comfort, but I want the kind that means to make strong–not to make easy. Not to make thoughtless, simple, or quick. To truly comfort is to help roots in growing, branches in reaching, the tree in standing tall.
                I carefully arrange my errands geographically so I can take the quickest, most convenient path. I don’t look forward to them. But the truth is, when I finally get out the door, I usually enjoy them. I like seeing people. I like talking with someone about which radishes to buy, I like holding the door open, I like sharing a smile. I like all the little things that say, there are other people here, living their lives. I have my wrinkle-free clothes. My roommate irons his instead. His always look a bit better, and whenever I see him ironing, he seems to honestly enjoy the careful attention, the play of heat and water, the smoothness of the fabric.
                The con is that we can go back to being babies, with everything done for us; and that, if we could live that way now that we’re grown, we would like it. The con is that worth comes from ease, not work. Like all great cons, it catches us because we choose it. It plays on what we want–or what we think we want, and then we’re left with less: less messiness, less work to do, less life. And like all great cons, it’s built upon some truth: the truth of coming together, of being here with you. The truth of growing stronger in mind and body, not so we can do less, but so we can dance with the wind.
                We choose to do these things, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

                “Shall I find genius only among Geniuses?”
                                -Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

                Sometimes I’m in danger of being a snob. I go to the library, and I only want to read Good Books: Impressive Books: Books of Genius. Whenever that habit puts on its fedora and tries to lead me around, I think back to a poetry reading with Richard Wilbur. At least, Wilbur was in the room, sitting in the second row: another poet, far less famous, was reading. Afterward, I heard someone behind me: “history will forget him.” Perhaps they were right. This other poet’s lines didn’t seem to soar like Wilbur’s do. They didn’t land on the windowsill, tap the glass, and set off flying, inviting me to join them. At least, they didn’t seem to, not to me–and then Wilbur spoke up with a careful question, and I realized that, of all of us, he had been listening the most attentively. In Wilbur’s hands, these other poems that could, perhaps, have been lesser, weren’t lesser at all. There was genius in them, and Richard Wilbur found it.
                When I’m in danger of reading only Good Books, I think back to that night. That’s led to a little habit at the library: whenever I go to pick up the volumes I want, I also take something, almost at random, off the shelf.  Sometimes that’s led me down a rabbit hole that, frankly, seemed to dead end in the dirt, and I came out muddy and not much else. But sometimes that’s opened up a world where I didn’t know there was one.
                Genius, I think, is a good thing. Or at least it was, before it stepped to the start of the sentence: because while genius is promising, the idea of Genius, yawning open with that capital G, hurts us. It hurts us when we think that good ideas, balanced solutions, and perfectly baked cakes can only come from the Noble Few. (For one thing, we don’t bake as many cakes). It’s dangerous if we think we’re a Genius, because that means putting ourselves over others; it’s dangerous if we think we’re not, because that means discounting our talents. So I don’t want Geniuses. I want to find genius wherever it lives, growing with the mushrooms, dancing in the games of children, changing in the steam of a boiling pot.

                “I hope she’ll be a fool–that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

                For years and years, I didn’t like The Great Gatsby. I think I prided myself on not liking The Great Gatsby: first off, there can be something fun in saying “huh!” about the treasure an English teacher offers you (that’s why I try to avoid saying “I love this book” to my classes; although I love lots of books, so I usually mess that up), and secondly, I didn’t think I felt Gatsby’s aching need for money, fame, and a ‘perfect life.’ He wanted the parties that leave a mountain of pulped oranges: he wanted a wife who turned everyone’s jealous head, and then went home with him in a whisper of innocence to a bed of open desire. And (I said; I lied) there wasn’t a part of me that wanted that.
                Today I was talking with a student, and she snuck up on me: she didn’t talk about Gatsby, but about his “love” Daisy, who wishes once that her daughter would grow up to be a “beautiful little fool.” Thinking about that, my student said, “I can understand the wish. It would make things so much easier, at least for a little while.” A few minutes later she added, “Oh, I hate Daisy.” Listening to her, I felt her courage: the courage to include herself in the story. The courage to see a shortcoming and, instead of distancing herself with the simple “That’s bad,” admit out loud the more honest, “That’s me. That’s a part of me.”
                Without that courage, I was safe–or seemed so. Without that courage I saw Gatsby’s failings, and judged him–perhaps pitied him–before turning away. Without that courage I didn’t learn much from him. In order to change things, we need to understand where we are, who we are. The truth is, there’s part of me that responds to the myth of Daisy, as horrible as it is. There’s a part of me that wants what Gatsby wants, even though it destroys him. Until I realize that, any plan I have is based upon a lie (the lie of my own perfection), and it will crumble.
                I still have my problems with The Great Gatsby, but I feel something in it now. It is a book full of people who are almost great: people who should be wonderful, who should be kind, who should build so much. And instead, misguided, lost, hurt, competitive, afraid, alone, they build empty castles that fall apart. Perhaps what I’m really learning as I go back to the book is compassion for all those breaking people. It feels nice to admit that I am one of them. And perhaps, as with mosaics and stained glass, we can start making something wonderful with the pieces.