Uproar – a quote every Wednesday

451: “As Long As It Helps Us Hope” (Weiwei & Stamboulis)

                “I think that it doesn’t matter whether poetry is good or bad… / …as long as it helps us hope.”
                -Ai Weiwei and Elettra Stamboulis, Zodiac, p. 154

                Sometimes I sit and listen to the resonance between experiences. Between these three, for example: 1) When I taught high school poetry in the twenty-teens, one of my favorite practices to do with a class was “short order poetry. Each student asks another for a poem (“about the first day of school,” “about a cracked windshield”). Then in ten-ish minutes each writer makes a poem to give back to the asker. This practice positions poetry as community, a gift between friends. The time limit can also help me stop worrying about “how good” the poem is and focus on putting lines together. 2) Some years after those classes, a mentor and I started talking about a teaching moment when you let go of worrying “how good” your classes are, recognize students’ work and interest as so much larger than you, and focus on offering what you can and supporting your students’ work how they ask you to. After that moment, paradoxically, our classes felt “better”—but something else had shifted, too. 3) During the worst years of feeling farther and farther away from my writing, writing felt more and more like a place where I had to perform expertise and less and less like the reach toward community that made me want to write. In the middle of those years I started writing flash fiction. Tiny paragraph- or page-long stories that touched one moment of connection, movement, need, loss. Writing those came to feel—well, like walking down to the beach every day to splash my face with the water. Or like letting the ocean wash its face with me.The practice helped me start finding my way back toward what I love in writing.
                When I finished reading Zodiac, I sat for a while, listening to the resonance between Ai Weiwei’s thoughts and so many of my (shared) experiences and relationships. I think the sitting—the quiet—was a way to turn towards and understand how the question “how good is this?” gets planted almost everywhere around me. And recognizing that planting is also a chance to stop planting, to focus instead, perhaps, on the ground the question grows in. The ground of what we’re doing, together. Of how what we’re doing together weaves our lived experience. How that doing makes it easier (or harder) to hope actively, playfully, courageously, communally.

by Azlan

450: “A Place For You” (Jasmine Walls)

                “Or, if you want, there’s always a place for you here with me.”
                -Jasmine Walls, Brooms (p. 230)

                I’ve been thinking lately about how so many of the places where I’m at home and feel connected, feel able to help—so many of those places are actually people.
                I’ve moved a fair amount in the last fifteen years. Massachusetts to California to Andhra Pradesh to a different part of California to Oklahoma to Illinois. And while I’ve largely stayed here since 2019, I’ve also moved six times inside Illinois. That doesn’t count the trips to visit folks elsewhere. If I look at any place, if I look at how I was and who I was in a place, what I find is people. My friend Krishna in Andhra Pradesh, the two of us at a table supposedly playing chess but moving more thoughts and smiles than pieces. The rabbits who nested near my front door my first year in Oklahoma. My friend Fin in Illinois, the two of us lying beneath the trees and talking. And on and on: there are so many friends to remember, so many people making a place for me with them.
                When I started working on this post, I was focused on how people become the “where” of my life. But as I sit with this, revising it—that’s one of the wonders of revising: sitting with words like muddy waters, as the clay settles, as I see another shape in the slow current—I’m also thinking about how wheres grow the communities who become my life. Fin and I became connected while watching the trees together. More than anything else, the rabbits and I shared grass, its a green delight. Krishna and I became friends in the shade that dappled our table. So I’m focused less, now, on how one leads into the other, and more on how they blend together: how here and us can weave together so there’s always a place for me with you. For you with me.

by Azlan

449: “Nuance” (a color gradient puzzle)

“English acquired ‘nuance’ from French, with the meaning ‘a subtle distinction or variation,’”
-from the box for “nuance,” a color gradient puzzle produced by Robert Frederick Ltd

                I don’t usually pay so much attention to color. Sometimes I do: my orange jacket is next to the orange foam roller I use to help relax the muscles of my back, and as I sit here thinking, I’m enjoying the difference in their shade. The way they’re both shadowed by the room’s one light. The way those shadows paint the pale cushion my jacket’s sitting on. But I probably drop my jacket there a lot, and the roam roller’s usually beside that cushion. I’m looking at them now because I’m thinking about this puzzle. 
                A couple years ago my partner and I did the puzzle together. Starting with the edge, like we usually do, and then the corners. I think about that sometimes, because early on I wasn’t at all sure I could do this puzzle. There were no lines to follow. No horizons, no lakeshores. But then doing the puzzle together turned into a playful game of feeling with our eyes: there’s a lot of green here, but what feels really green? Or in all these purple pieces, what feels really purple? And surprisingly often, looking at all these pieces, I had a feeling to follow along to a piece that fit. I think I’m remembering that tonight because I want to spend more time being open to the orangyness of the orange, the shadow of the cushion: the wash of changing color, luxuriant as paint washed along my skin.

by Azlan

448: “It Needed to Read My Reactions” (Martha Wells)

                “It needed to read my reactions to the show to really understand what was happening.” -Martha Wells, Artificial Condition

                The “it” here is a super intelligent AI starship pilot, very much an important character in the series, and the speaker is our main character murderbot — a part organic/part synthetic construct designed as contracted security that’s now playing around with its hard won freewill. Playing means lots of watching tv, it turns out, and the AI pilot wants to watch too — but since its whole experience is being a spaceship and piloting a spaceship through space, it needs murderbot’s reactions to help fill in the meaning and context of the tv shows. It needs to watch together.
                I think I need to watch together. Because my partner and I have been reading Wells’ novellas together, and it’s lovely to sit with how much of what they mean flows from our lying in bed at the end of every day and reading together. Because I’ve gotten more interested in gardening (see all my gardening and compost metaphors in the last months/years), and that has a lot to do with my friend Dusty, who gardens a lot and who I sometimes get to garden with. And what gardening means — my understanding of what we’re doing, what gardening is, and my attempt to be with soil/water/seed/plant — has a lot to do with watching and sharing in Dusty’s reactions. Because my novel manuscript grows from talking with so many friends about how we experience gender, community, fear, magic. Although maybe that adds a layer to “reaction.” I think it’s in our shared sensing, our overlapping experience. That’s where I feel us making a happening out of all this is in front of us. We weave into so many sensings to find our way here.

by Azlan

447: Typos, Hot Dogs, Improv (Shel Silverstein)

“I asked for a hot dog
With everything on it,
And that was my big mistake,
‘Cause it came with a parrot,
A bee in a bonnet,
A wristwatch, a wrench, and a rake.”
                -Shel Silverstein, from “Everything On It”

                The hardest I ever laughed over an uproar post was because of a typo. Or because of a friend. Or both, I suppose? I don’t remember which post it was, but I ended up writing “shifting me weight” and a friend, reading, started laughing and repeating “shifting me weight!” in a funny accent while bouncing side to side. That would’ve been fall 2020. I still think about the way she grinned, the way the line became a bit we went back to.
                Somehow as a kid I picked up (like so many of us pick up, maybe, and for me it wasn’t from my parents) this fear of making a mistake. It’s nice to remember that something as simple as a typo (and simply complex as a friend) brought me all sorts of laughter that my regular careful revisions often don’t. I believe in the serious revisions. I like them. But I’d also like to seriously pursue hilarity and chaos a little more, and I think we can. When I coached improv comedy I watched people throw themselves into stupid chance and ridiculous choice again and again, like kids practicing belly flops, like poets stacking wristwatches and wrenches on a hot dog. And it worked. The improv came alive. And then we were laughing about barrels of basalt and no one really knew why, or how we got there, but it didn’t matter because here we are.

by Azlan

446: “Crunchings and Munchings” (Lloyd Alexander)

“Oh joyous crunchings and munchings!”
                -Lloyd Alexander, The Book of Three

                The last three nights, after crawling in bed, my partner and I have been reading a novella out loud with each other. Well, we finished the novella, actually, and tonight we’re starting the sequel, and it’s so lovely to fall into story together. To feel the rise and fall of different voices. To get drowsy (and awake! We stayed up too late last night, but there were only 60 pages left) in these shared places.
                Growing up my parents read to us. My siblings and I all still read to each other sometimes. As an English teacher my students and I would read in class, sometimes reluctantly and sometimes excitedly (though I always have a rule: you don’t need to read aloud if you don’t want to), and so many of my lovely friends are the kind who every now and then share a page aloud from the book in their hands. Or read a play, divvying up the parts. Or speak a whole book of poetry while sitting at an empty bus stop even though the bus isn’t running today. These moments live through me in a way I can’t really explain. Four years ago, for instance, I might’ve said I barely remembered Alexander’s The Book of Three. Then I heard my brother reading it to his kids. And I was a kid. And I read a chapter aloud, hearing others’ voices in my voice. And I remember all those rhythms. Those places. These people. These crunchings and munchings are treats I eat and eat again, months later, years later, circling back, remembering, circling forward and becoming. And how delicious they are.

by Azlan

445: “Each Player” (Uwe Rosenberg)

“Each player takes a quilt board, a time token and 5 buttons…”
                –Patchwork rulebook; game designed by Uwe Rosenberg

                I don’t have a “finished” thought today. Maybe, instead, I have a kind of game.
                The board game Patchwork is pretty new to me, and I keep thinking about the way it mixes two game mechanics I’ve played lots of times. Part of it is arranging blocky shapes on a grid—like Cathedral when I was a kid, kneeling on the carpet, or Tetris. Part is “engine building” by creating a collection that earns you increasing “income”—a core mechanic for so many things, from Spice Road to Res Arcana to Monopoly. Patchwork simplifies both ideas and puts them on top of each other. I start playing and think I’ve played this before. And I think no I haven’t.
                So for a few months now I’m going around and around, interested in the kind of newness that happens when two familiar things sit on top of each other in an unfamiliar way. The game equivalent of a kimchi quesadilla (new to me, at least, and delicious)? Maybe: but it feels more like the time a coworker and I played frisbee golf inside the empty high school as a break from grading finals. Spaces we often walked through, games we often played—and now we’re wondering, wait, what is this? And I’m wondering, what would you put on top of what?

by Azlan

444: “Walk to the well” (Rumi)

“Walk to the well. 
Turn as the earth and the moon turn,
circling what they love.
Whatever circles comes from the center.”
                -Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi p. 279

                This evening I had the wonderful chance to walk with my friend Roger. That’s part of how we became friends: long rambling walks, through the woods of Amherst, MA, to the ponds where little lives glowed at the kiss where earth met water, to the hill where stars scattered, and back beneath the trees, limbs creaking. Shadows alive. We became friends on long walks and in conversations that felt like long walks, circling through hopes and dreams, ideas and curiosities, and back to shared silence. Pauses that felt like long drinks of cool water. Circling back to each other. 
                Today we walked with each other through a phone call. Less good? Perhaps. I certainly wish we could walk together in person more often. Like so many of my friends, we’ve moved away from each other with jobs and degrees and all the steps that felt necessary. But tonight, sharing voices, we felt close again. And instead of saying we moved away from each other, I thought, we’re walking to the well. Circling what we love. I think I love walking because of its stillness and its movement. Running, or driving, or riding a bike—I feel the rush, the excitement. And stretched out on the grass I feel at ease. Although, in another way, that’s not true at all: in the middle of running I sometimes find a moment where all there is is breath, stillness, and in lying on the grass I sometimes feel roots digging, sun pouring down, blood circling. 
                Walking with a friend has a way of bringing me back to the kind of center that can stretch all the miles from here to there, that can live inside a phone call. I’m so grateful, and so glad. Walking to the well, and sometimes walking is its own drink of cool water.

by Azlan

443: “What do you think games do?” (Yoon Ha Lee)

                “[…] what do you think games do? What are they about?” [asked Jedao.]
                The flippant answers weren’t going to be right, but [Captain Kel Cheris] had no idea what he was after. “Winning and losing?” she said. “Simulations?”
                -Yoon Ha Lee, Ninefox Gambit

                Years ago, in college, I started playing pool–and ended up liking it!–because “Do you want to play pool?” seemed like a more socially acceptable question then “Do you want to hangout and see if maybe we’re friends?” In graduate school I’ve played a lot of board games for a similar reason: I like the games, and I especially like the space they make to spend time with people. Although that’s not all they do: they also end up frustrating. Sometimes they encourage a kind of competition that ends up changing my interactions in ways I don’t like. Although that’s not all they do: they play out little versions of reality. What if we were kids trying to crack someone’s codes (The Initiative)? What if we were a group of explorers lost below ground (Sub Terra)? And of course, that kind of “what if” also isn’t all games do.
                I love Yoon Ha Lee’s playful (and in context, deadly serious—if you read the book you’ll see) explanation of games because it opens into answers behind answers. What a game does, what it’s about, depends on how we engage with it. How we pick it up. I’ve been thinking about that today because I’ve been playing games on boardgamearena.com and just getting more frustrated. But then again, the way I’ve been playing, I wasn’t enjoying the time with other players. (In 2020 boardgamearena.com was a wonderful and bizarre way to share twenty minutes with people social distancing all over the world). The way I was playing, I wasn’t relishing how a simple set of rules makes different strategies possible. I was playing as I worried about the other tasks I had. Playing as a kind of pretend avoidance, or as the pretense of doing something while I worried about being productive. Yoon Ha Lee reminds me that “playing a game” isn’t always an answer for what I’m doing. It’s also the beginning of a question: what’s that “doing” about? What are all the different things that “doing” might do?

by Azlan

442: “Thursdays” (Douglas Adams)

“This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
                -Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

                Since starting this blog — 441 weeks ago! — I’ve noticed something bewildering. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed the same thing. I’ll finish a post, revise it, get it to a place I like. I’ll post it on Wednesday night. And then the very next week, Wednesday comes along again.
                Remembering back to Adams is a lot of fun. He’s been part of my head for — twenty years? More. And here he is, celebrating the fundamentally mysterious in the blatantly obvious. I’m having trouble getting the hang of Wednesdays, myself. And the funny thing of being a me who remembers me but the other mes agree and disagree on different things, and want different things, and memories blur them together. And trying. That’s a weird one. I’ve been rock climbing more, and sometimes it’s hard to tell when I’m really, really trying, pulling on the rock with everything I can, and when I’m kinda sorta trying. A few days ago I didn’t get the hang of that and came home with a bruised hand. Or dishes! Has anyone gotten the hang of dishes? Or mornings? Or evenings? Or eating a last chip but only after the chip bag’s closed so you don’t get another last chip, but how can you close the bag properly when you’ve got a chip in one hand?
                I spend a lot of time thinking. Learning. Working things through. Adams makes me chuckle with the thoughtless, the perfectly possible but somehow always impossible, the spilled, the confused. I never could get the hang of Wednesdays.

by Azlan