Uproar – a quote every Wednesday

578: “Sensory Hairs” (Ed Yong)

                “Sensory hairs are versatile structures. They can be actively pressed against surfaces to produce tactile sensations, as whisking rats and oripulating manatees do. But they can also be passively bent and deflected by flowing air or water. By responding to that pressure, an animal can detect the flows created by distant objects, touching things from afar without needing to make direct contact.” -Ed Yong, An Immense World, page 172

                Sometimes I play a game with myself: I look up at the sky and imagine a vaulted veiling, sometimes above the treetops, above the bird’s flight paths, above the clouds. I’m trying to take a sip of just how much open space I’m seeing. Something similar has happened when I stood high on a mountain ridge, looking across a valley to another peak: all that expanse, as far as a long day’s hike, as close (it seems) as cold lakewater cupped in my two hands. It can be hard for me to see how much this how much is, how deep, how wondrous. And so I practice.
                And I practice with what I can’t see. Yong goes on to describe an experiment in which two manatees could clearly feel the slight vibrations—movements of less than a millionth of a meter—of a submerged sphere a meter away from their flanks. What would that be like, to be so in touch with the flow of the water you swim in? I don’t know. I imagine it. Just as delightedly, I remember that I don’t know. I imagine how little I see: how narrow a face of the world my eyes give me (wondrous as they are). I look at my skin, my arm hairs, sensitive in so many ways. I feel how much I have to learn from a manatee about being touched.

by Azlan

577: “[A Tool] Made By Someone Else” (Min-zhan Lu)

                “[Because of how I was taught, it seemed that the tool of language] was made by someone else and was then acquired and used by me. How the others made it before I acquired it determined and guaranteed what it produced when I used it.”
                -Min-zhan Lu, From Words To Silence, p. 445 

                Today I started teaching a seminar for university instructors to come from across campus and discuss what we’re doing when we teach writing, and how we can do it better. It’s a wonderful, experimental, interdisciplinary conversation, with people joining from around the world and from many different fields. Sometimes—at first—it can be hard to get on the same page. We all come from different disciplines, and so we have different ways of talking about writing and writing instruction. Today we suddenly landed on that shared page by remembering Min-zhan Lu and asking: well, what are you doing when you write? In your learning, what is the tool of writing for?
                For assessment, said several instructors. Reflecting on their own educational journey, another added: writing is how I put together my thoughts. Another: writing is where I build the puzzle that I hope to share with you, inviting you to rebuild it and  work with it in your mind. Another: writing is where I release some of a day’s stress. Another: writing is one place I go to understand who I am and where I’m headed. All these answers, and the tensions between them, led to the first great conversation of our seminar. When writing is being used to judge how well you did, it can be hard to take up writing as a tool for weaving together all the threads of a complex thought. But we like that tapestry. And I like the reminder: when we’re working together across perspectives and trainings, we can step back to ask, what do our tools do? What do we want from them? Who told us to use them that way, and what other things might I want to do with this shovel, this pen, this question?

                And because I love writing as a puzzle you get to remake for yourself, here’s a riddle from the poet Symphosius (late 7th or early 8th century) as translated by Richard Wilbur. The question is (as the question so often is) what am I?

                “Long daughter of the forest, swift of pace,
                In whom old neighbors join as beam and brace,
                I speed on many paths, yet leave no trace.”

by Azlan

576: “Footnotes” (Nghi Vo)

                “‘Cleric, make sure you note the story as I have told you, and not as my young foolish sisters have done.’
                Chih nodded, because that was what footnotes were for.”
                -Nghi Vo, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, p. 102

                Well, my friends, my dissertation is just about complete. There’s a bit more to do. There can always be a bit more to do. But I’ve just been looking over the entirety as I complete some revisions: an introduction, five chapters, three interludes (these are my favorite), an appendix with the script for a writing workshop I love leading, and hundreds of footnotes. I love footnotes. I poked around with different ways of adding them here, but all of the formats felt fussy, so instead how about a list that isn’t quite a list:
                Footnotes are wonderful for when
                a) someone said something so beautifully well that I have to include it, all of it, even if I don’t know how to fit their paragraph into mine. And so: footnote.
                7) there’s something else I’d really like to talk about—a book I read, and a friend who gave it to me. All that’s a wonderful rabbit hole I’d like to invite you down, but the chapter or the story’s headed somewhere else. Footnote.
                iv) folks have very different views on whatever we’re discussing, and right now I want to follow one view enough to understand how it moves and where it’s looking. But it’s also important to remember the story’s told another way, to go in another direction. Footnote.
                ?) really I just want to share a joke, a delight, a moment of seeing, like the rabbit who poked its head up from the tallish grass to look at me, and then went back to eating. Which makes me hope you have a snack nearby.
                Writing forms make it easier to say some things (and harder to say others). I love forms that open up linearity: that unfold flat space to show there are always different paths and thoughts moving through here, even if I’m arranging some ideas into a sentence with sequential words. Forms like footnotes. And lists that aren’t quite lists: no beginnings, no ends, and a web that makes sense all together.

by Azlan

575: “Where Unfriendly Eyes Might See It” (Nghi Vo)

                 “There was the name I called him, of course, but the habits of a lifetime die hard, and I do not wish that written down in any place where unfriendly eyes might see it.” -Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune, page 69

                 Nghi Vo’s wonderful novella shares this line in the dramatic, dangerous world of high politics and spies and secret messages, but it also captures something I feel in almost all my writing. At least, all of the writing that I imagine being read by more than one person.
                 In a conversation or a letter to a friend, we know the garden in which we’re sharing these words. We know each other: maybe we don’t know if the other one has read and loves The Empress of Salt and Fortune, but we’re somewhat familiar with one another’s interests and worries, with the complex weaves of intentions and relationships that live behind me saying Nghi Vo captures something I feel in almost all my writing. In writing that is read more broadly, the shared space of our conversation’s garden only exists if we make it inside the act of reading and writing. And people might come into the garden of this shared paragraph in other ways. They might come in with their heavy boots on, thoughtless of where they’re stepping, or more. They might come in unfriendly, looking to take what isn’t being shared.
                 I think that’s why I often find myself writing to specific people. To old teachers, some of whom I know will never see this. To distant friends, people I’m still close to or with whom I’ve long since lost touch. To authors still alive or from long ago who talk to me in their writing, and so I am talking back, imagining the space where we could meet and share. That situates the writing inside a seeing that is friendly, or at least respectful, or at least relational. We are thinking about how we see each other. Who we are to each other. And the way writing is used, sometimes that reflective, careful thinking can be left behind: the words torn up, and there are so many roots that I want to share but that I do not wish written down in a place where unfriendly eyes might tear them.

by Azlan

574: “TEMPORAL ALLEGIANCE” (Ross Gay)

                “I have since begun cataloging delights that I will save for a future date, which, while stacking delights in itself is a useful activity and practice (sounds like a Denny’s pancake breakfast special: Delight Stack), it defeats this book’s purpose of TEMPORAL ALLEGIANCE, which I actually wrote on my hand in the bathroom of Darn Good Soup in Bloomington today…” Ross Gay, The Book of Delights, page 107-8

                This from near the beginning of Ross Gay’s 35th delight in The Book of Delights, as he’s reflecting on his project of writing a delight every day (more or less) for a year. As he’s noticing patterns, five months in, in how he looks for delights, how he writes about them. These words meeting me.
                This also being the page I opened to just now after my love and I came back from a late summer walk, the evening cool and then warm as we washed through it, muscles waking up after a day inside, fireflies flying their fires, neighbors walking their dogs, the zipline carrying a kid across the playground (and the kid carrying the zipline into his games). Which is to say: I also notice patterns. I’ve been writing Uproar for 570-some weeks. Which is to say: I sometimes start “saving up” Uproar posts, making sure I’ll have them. Have enough. Which is to say: that saving turns away from what I love most about Uproar. Remembering, that is lovely. (Just yesterday my love recalled something funny we’d said, and said it again, and without meaning to I said “good remembery!” Remembery like a spell, like magic, I think). But instead of saving up because I’m worried about having enough, these posts for me are about abundance. About what I’m surrounded by and enmeshed in. Abundance of thought and creativity, abundance of lives and relationships, abundance of community powers and vitalities and delights. 
                TEMPORAL ALLEGIANCE, Gay says, “means, simply, dailiness.” The dailiness of walking into this. The dailiness of being met by so many wonders, and meeting them, open armed and ready to join not just with the possibilities I’ve saved up but the daily possibilities lighting like fireflies or pausing to chat like neighbors.

by Azlan

573: Little Red Riding Hood

                Today I was talking with a student about Charles Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood” (1697) and Jacob Wilhelm Grimm’s “Little Red Cap” (1812) and all the other versions of Little Red that we’ve met in books, TV shows, games, conversations, and our own or shared imaginations. This student didn’t like that the parents never tell Little Red why the forest can be dangerous, or go with her to teach her how to navigate its dangers. Now that my student mentioned it, I don’t like that, either. I started wondering about a version of the story where the parents and the child listen to each other, learn from each other. Help each other. I started imagining a version of the story that started with a different family and a different Little Red.
                One of my favorite things about folk tales is the way they invite us to ask what if, what else, what if we turned another way, or learned together, or met each other anew. So sitting together, while my student wrote her version, I wrote (and I’m just going to give you the beginning!)

                There once was a wolf called Little Red Patch because she’d been hit in the side by a hunter’s bullet when she was only a pup, and ever since, the fur there had grown red. Despite the wound and maybe a little in response to it Little Red had also grown curious. She was curious about the birds in the sky, and sometimes got dizzy from staring up for so long as she listened to their singing. She was curious about the glistening stones in the river and sometimes she dove into the water to touch them. She was curious about the woodcutter nearby and sometimes followed her nose toward the cooking smells that came from his cabin. Her mother told her to be careful.
                “Sometimes humans are scared of us, and they can attack the people they’re scared of,” said mother wolf. “Sometimes they just don’t want to share the food of the forest so they kill us. You can’t go to the woodcutter’s house!”
                Little Red listened to her mother, and for three days she swam in the river looking at the stones and watching how quick the fish were. But…

                In this version of the story Little Red is still curious. But what if Little Red tries to listen to her mother while still feeling her curiosity? What if her mother sees her curiosity, and decides, not to teach her a lesson, but to help her learn how to move safely? What—we might wonder—then. Or maybe your wonder goes off in another direction?

by Azlan

572: “I Love Being a Frog” (Reale & Lobel)

                “I love being a frog in the warm sunny summer—”
                -Frog in Willie and Robert Reale’s A Year With Frog And Toad, which adapts the books from Arnold Lobel

                I’ve been thinking about heat lately—perhaps because the temperature keeps laughing past 90; perhaps because I’ve been remembering my time teaching in India, where the temperature kept laughing high numbers—and then my partner and I listened to A Year With Frog and Toad on a long drive. The heat washing down from the sky. The rain washing, too, though briefly, a flood across the windshield that dried a few minutes later. And my partner said, “There’s so much love for the everyday of life in this.” This the musical. We keep talking about it as something that’s going on. (It is, in my head, like the sun and the rain). This the drive together. This lounging on the couch now as the shade deepens toward evening. This being welcomed home as who you are, as Arnold Lobel was eventually welcomed home. Later his daughter Adrianne Lobel commissioned the play.
                Jay Goede gives Frog his singing voice in the original Broadway cast. He swells up with “looovveee,” drawing it out. Holding it up. As if there’s as much of it as there is warm sunny summer. As, I suppose, there is. When I first heard the song I didn’t like it as much as some of the other numbers. I wondered if it was too much. I wasn’t sure what it was about. Now it’s been running through my head for days, delightfully. And I realize: oh, yes. It’s—in part, at least—about this.

by Azlan

571: “For My Mother” (Malka Older)

“For my mother, Dora Vázquez Older, 
whose careful and appreciative first readings 
encourage me through every book, 
chapter by chapter.

There are other ways to live.”
-Malka Older, dedication for The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles

                My partner and I are in Illinois again, back from our trip to spend time with my parents, siblings, and niblings. Tonight we’re starting a new book: Malka Older’s The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles. Tonight I’m also sending the revised draft of my dissertation to my mom and my dad. Both of them appear in it. They’re there with me, learning and teaching and walking along.
                Whenever I write, I read what I’m writing out loud. I listen to the words, feeling how they rise and fall, wondering if they say what I mean. Wondering how they might carry us along, and to what kind of meeting. When I read I hear my parents’ voices in my voice. I think I was thirteen or fourteen when my dad first read a story I’d written out loud. I listened, surprised, because in his voice the possibilities I’d imagined came to life just like The Lord of the Rings. (He read those to me a lot, at home but also along rivers and up on mountain passes). When my niblings were young I’d go sit with them while my mom read a bedtime story. Some of the stories I remembered, like Enid Blyton’s The Magical Faraway Tree. When I didn’t remember these characters, this world, I always remembered her voice, rising and falling, pausing and dancing along as it carried us. There are so many other ways to live. I listen, grateful for all the ways my family (and Older’s family, and so many families) encourage us to reimagine the possible, chapter by chapter, and in the relationships between us as we share chapters.

by Azlan

570: “King Arthur Ct” (Street Sign)

“King Arthur Ct”
-street sign in Santa Rosa, CA

                Last week my partner and I took our two niblings for a walk. Or maybe our niblings took us: they wanted to scooter to a playground, and we adults went along for the swings and the giggles, the careful faces at crosswalks and the delighted sounds at little free libraries. (We brought back a book of ciphers, but we haven’t started decoding it). Along the way we stopped at a house that had 14 dragons out front, as far as we could count. We talked about witch’s brews. We talked about anime demons and the songs that can become magic.
                For a block, we also turned down King Arthur Ct. It’s a little connecting road between Horseshoe Drive and Rainier Avenue. Sitting here, now, it also seems like a delightful (and fraught) reminder of all the ways our myths and fairytales give us characters and motifs and relationships and pieces of meaning to arrange into concepts of courage and family, loss and hope, friendship and power. Perhaps because in two weeks I’ll be teaching a course in all that. I didn’t know King Arthur Ct was there until I saw it on my phone’s map, and announced that’s where we’re turning. Of course I did it playfully. Of course my niblings teased back: “No we’re not!” “There’s no such place!” “You’re teasing!” And then we turned the corner, talking about dragons and witches, groaning at what a fool I was. Walking near Camelot. Or near the places we reimagine as Camelot. Or, passed Camelot, toward the transformed place we make for our witches on their way home.

by Azlan

569: “350 Recipe Testers” (Peter Reinhart)

                “First of all, there are nearly 350 recipe testers that must be thanked again and again.” -Peter Reinhart, Whole Grain Breads, page viii

                A few days ago my sibling Maple and I went to the library. I brought back poetry—Billy-Ray Belcourt’s The Idea of An Entire Life. Maple brought back another poetry—Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads. And last night we were up late, walking, talking, watching the trees shadow and sway another poetry.
                We’ve been talking about expertise. Maple loves incremental progress: bake the same recipe, again and again, look carefully for what went right and wrong, and bit by bit your loaf transforms into what you imagined it could be. I like that too. I mean, this is week 569 of uproar, and part of that is the practice of looking, listening, listening deeply, trying again. But I think my love sways away from “progress” and toward community. Maple is an amazing baker. I’ve shared their bread. They’d probably say they were only a “good” baker, shying away from the amazing, but for me a recipe is about all the testers and tasters and hungry friends. Or maybe I’m making a distinction where I mean to make a connection. We practice what we have to share. I love that. We show up to eat together. I love that.

by Azlan