“I’m terrified of my eyes liquifying and running down my cheeks like two great tears.”
                -Neil Gaiman.

                “I wish I wasn’t afraid all the time…but I am.” -Evey, V For Vendetta

                When I heard Neil Gaiman speak in Tulsa, someone asked him, “You write such frightening stuff–does anything actually scare you?”
                “So many things scare me,” said Gaiman. He gave a few examples. And then: “I’m terrified of my eyes liquifying and running down my cheeks like two great tears.”
                Most of the time, I interact with fear as either a kind of mental misstep (“Don’t be afraid; you’ll make new friends”) or as an indicator that I should do something, now, against whatever I’m afraid of (“That’s a wasp! Kill it!”). In both cases, my interaction is about ending the fear. About making it go away. Thinking back to Gaiman, smiling, and, if he’s to be believed, often afraid, I realized there’s another option. I could accept that fear sits here sometimes. I could decide that’s okay, and make room for it on the bench.
                In V for Vendetta, the hero, V, tortures Evey until she’s ready to calmly choose death over cooperation with an oppressive government. In the moment that she does, V says, “You have no fear anymore. You’re completely free.” The image, here, is of fear as a cage from which we must escape. What if V has mistaken the problem? What if Evey’s struggle doesn’t come from the fact of her fear, but from its prevalence? What if our fear is not a cage to be broken, but a frost on the lake–a frost that makes me shiver, that suggests I move, that reminds me to pay attention? A frost that’s just a part of things?
                When I was younger, on a kayaking trip, I paddled out ahead of my group. The river swept me around a bend, so it looked like I was all alone. Below me was an adult bear in the water. I was frightened. I started back paddling as the current pushed me forward. The bear clambered up on the bank, looked back at me, and disappeared. I didn’t know what to say when the adults caught up with me. I was still afraid. I also felt lucky. I felt awe.
                Maybe my fears are the bears–better yet, the jaguars–in the forest of my mind, ferocious, sleek, sometimes slipping quietly in the shadows and sometimes roaring. Maybe I can listen to them, be careful of them, learn from them, or stand quietly as they go by. The next time I’m afraid, I don’t want to set up a hunting party. I don’t want to assume that being afraid (or being sad; tears, says Gaiman) is some kind of character flaw. “I’m afraid,” I could tell myself. “And that’s okay. That’s one of the things that’s here. What’s it doing? What else is here? And what now?”

                “The only thing she always knew she wanted was love, was Derek, was her boys, but then even that went wrong, and she didn’t want anything at all. And so she began to feel as though there was no want, there was no you.
                What do you want?”
                -J. Robert Lennon, Familiar

                It’s hard for me to figure out how to want. I certainly have wants: today, when I got home, I wanted to sit down and nothing. That’s often what I want at the end of a work day. Sometimes that’s what I do, and sometimes the nothing turns into an hour, or two. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with resting, but I don’t feel rested at the end of the two hours. That happens with a lot of my wants: they lead me toward places I don’t want to go, they conflict with other wants, or they don’t even get to the thing they’re after.
                Maybe the problem is that my nothing isn’t really nothing: like many Americans, it’s the static of screens and entertainment, the muddied mumble of webpages, TV, changing light and catchy sound. If what I really want is to rest, to find a place of quiet inside my body and my head, then all that stimulus isn’t the right road to walk.
                Thinking about my wants seems useful. It’s a way to try to understand, to weigh them against each other, to choose. At the same time, I don’t want to be some martinet, forcing each song to quietly raise its hand before it sings. Where’s the place for dancing? On the other hand, many of my wants really do seem like poor guides. If a cool looking dog kept leading you into a swamp burping with foul gas, you wouldn’t keep following the dog. What do I do when I am the dog? And the swamp? And the person deciding whether or not I’ll follow along?
                Sometimes I think there’s something important in the fire of want. It certainly gives you a nice little shove. It might be an ingredient in the paint that gives things color. Sometimes I think letting go of my wants lets me see the rich color that already exists all around me, swirling through the world. Sometimes I watch myself sleepwalking along, “wanting” the things I’ve been told I should want. Sometimes a passion comes like sunrise, and I look away. Sometimes I warm myself. Most of the time, I’m confused.
                Today, instead of sitting down after work, I chopped some veggies for dinner. I felt the knife rock back and forth across the cutting board. (“Chop wood, carry water,” my mother would say; maybe that means take the step you can, or focus on some work in the world). I didn’t really want to, at least, not when I started chopping. By the end I was smiling. Had I disciplined my wants, or followed them, or understood them?
                “What do you want?”
                Do other people have an easy time answering that question? And how important is that question, compared, for instance, to ‘What does the world need?’

                In Quack This Way, Bryan Garner asks what David Foster Wallace thinks about “officialese,” the strange, formal language that airport officials use when they say “Keep your personal belongings in visual contact at all times,” instead of something like “Please keep an eye on your stuff.” DFW says that, as a language guy, that kind of phrasing used to make him mad. These days he has a different first response:
                “There are reasons behind this stuff. Very complicated reasons. I’m not sure they’re good reasons or not, but there are reasons.”

                I copied out this quote, and then I lay on my bed (and my floor, and the deck out back) for three hours, writing and rewriting and scrapping pages of text in response to David Foster Wallace. I couldn’t say it quite right. I couldn’t even decide what the “it” was I was trying to say. Then I went for a walk. There was a reason I lay on my bed for hours, struggling with my keyboard–DFW’s simple statement was a treasure chest, and I wanted something from inside. There’s a reason I didn’t get where I was going–I was frustrated, and lazy, fumbling my way through muddied concepts. There’s a reason why going outside made things clearer: I’ve read human brains perk up when we see nature moving, and whether that’s true or not, I like the taste of the trees, the touch of the wind, the dance of the ground. There’s a reason I’m okay with spilling out pages of splintered junk as I try to follow an idea: sometimes I’m too quick to quit, and holding myself to the task is important.
                When I look at something and it bothers me, or it’s incomprehensible, or it just seems stupid, there’s probably a reason behind it. There’s probably a reason why someone built the thing that way, or goes about doing the thing that way. (In the airport case, DFW suggests the loudspeaker wants to sound like the voice of abstract authority, so that we quietly go along with what it says while feeling both controlled and protected). The reasons are complicated. They might not be very good. All the same, they’re there. If I don’t understand them, or at least consider them, I might have a hard time changing what’s in front of me. I might be surprised when people resist the changes I suggest. I might create solutions that don’t take into account the entire situation.
                The next time I’m doing something that seems stupid, or lazy–the next time I see someone else doing something that just drives me crazy–I’m probably going to say “that’s dumb!” It’s my habit, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to escape from it immediately. But a second later I’m going to remember DFW and say, “Wait a minute. What are the reasons behind this stuff?”

a flute can
be made of a man
nothing is explained
a flute lays
on its side
and prays a wind
might enter it
and make of it
at least
a small final song
                -Ross Gay, “ode to the flute,” Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

                I used to think that life was about becoming something, about building my fire higher, shining my thoughts brighter. What if, instead, I lived trying to make myself a flute, to hold myself in a way that lets a wind blow through me. Held that way, what I am is not that important. The song is important. Or maybe, better still, “important” is a silly word. There is this bit of moving me. There is a world. The winds and the stuff I’m made from have lasted for lengths of time that I can’t quite imagine. (I’m trying; it’s fun to try). I can build walls to hold back all this around me. I can open up to it, and let it sing through me. My choice? Yes, my choice–but not all choices are the same.
                Nothing is explained. I don’t think that’s a threat, or a complaint, or a plea. I think it’s an observation. We learn and wonder, question and explore. We make discoveries about how light bends or plants lift water above our heads. We make art about color and movement. Our knowledge brings us closer to the mystery, but it doesn’t explain our curiosity or how come the laws are as they are. We learn how the world turns, but that’s not really an answer. Things reach to us with their existence, not their explanations. As they blow by we can struggle, or open our mouths and let them sing.

                “I guess that’s what happens to everybody who comes, he continued. We forget what we came for, but there’s this reflex to act like we still have some secret plan.”
                -Yuri Herrera, Signs Preceding the End of the World (trans. Lisa Dillman)

                I don’t have a plan. Yep. No plan. I’ve checked the drawers of my desk, the spare inches of my bookshelf, the complex filing system that might look like a pile on my floor. I have a lot of ideas. Some pencils. Socks that need washing. Seashells, and orange leaves. A turkey feather and glass beads. Walnuts from the back yard. But a plan?
                Part of me keeps thinking that I’ll figure out this teaching thing. I’ll find the steps, A then B then C, and then I’ll just follow those and my students will Learn, Understand, Care, Work, and other Actions with capital letters. Another part of me–Todd, we’ll call him–looks at that first part and says, Plhhh! If you did that, says Todd, you’d stop moving, you’d stop questioning, wondering, dancing, and it’s that questioning wonder you’re trying to teach anyway. You’d be bored. You’d be boring. You’d try to force people through your ABC sausage machine, and if those people had actually Learned anything about Caring, they’d rebel. And possibly, adds Todd, throw you in a lake.
                Every time a class doesn’t go perfectly, I get mad at Todd, and I tell myself I should figure out those three perfect steps. Then for a few days I act like I have a secret plan. I act like I’ve understood everything, weighed everything; like it’s all solved, and I’m certain. Don’t worry about me, I say with my smiles: I’ve got it all figured out.
                Sometimes that feels good. Sometimes that feels constricting–I stay on the same path, or break violently away from it, to make it clear that I’m Doing Something. Sometimes my Doing Something gets in the way of all the other somethings (lower case “s”) I could be doing. Sometimes, inside, it feels like I’m doing all this because I’m scared. What if I wasn’t–or at least, what if I wasn’t scared of that, scared of the hurly-burly?
                There are things I’d like to do. There are journeys I started years ago, journeys I hope to continue for years to come. I have values and friends and loves and communities. I have skills I practice, and skills I’d like to pick up. I have work I intend to keep doing. I have habits: walking, occasionally vacuuming, trying to help. I don’t, however, have a secret plan. I don’t understand everything that’s happening. Do you?

                “The effort must be total for the results to be meaningful.”
                -Professor E. M. Ashford in Margaret Edson’s W;t

                “Now is a time for simplicity. Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness.
                I thought being extremely smart would take care of it. But I see that I have been found out.” -Professor Vivian Bearing, Ashford’s former student, near her death in W;t

                Until recently, I thought that whatever important work I managed in my life would happen in “important moments.” Inspired moments. I tried to find my way toward ‘total effort’ because I thought that’s how you find transcendence. (Poems that sing themselves. Laws that are fair. Houses that really, really house). These days I’m not so sure. That’s one way to transcendence. When I’m climbing a mountain, I love the immersion of skin and stone, the world poured into a touch. But I don’t think it’s the only way.
                W;t follows Professor Vivian Bearing as she struggles with the idea of living, the idea of dying, and the pain of chemotherapy. Bearing tells us near the beginning that the play will end with her death. A little bit before that end, Ashford, Vivian’s old teacher–the one who said that “effort must be total”–comes back into her life for one more scene. Ashford climbs up onto Vivian’s hospital bed. She reads a children’s story to the grown woman who was once her student. In that moment, I don’t think Ashford–who’s probably brilliant–is using the far reaches of her intellect. I don’t think she’s pushing the edge of what’s possible. I think she’s sharing a moment with someone, and with simplicity. She’s being present. She’s being kind.
                I think lots of the work I do in the world is done in little moments. Genius is fun, and lightning is bright, but it’s long, soaking rains that refill ground water. If any spirits are out there reading this, and they’ve got a bottle of inspiration to pass around, I’m not saying I don’t want a sip. I hope to taste lightning again. But until that sip I’ll be here, working where I am, loving where I can. Breathing, for here, for now, and sharing in whatever little half-way ways I can.
                I don’t have that bottle of lightning, but there’s water here, and a few minutes. Following Ashford, following Bearing, what I have I’m happy to share.

“Today, my small child, Joyce,
love your self’s self where it lives.”
                -Anne Sexton, “The Double Image”

                Sometimes my self’s self lives in melancholy. Sometimes it lives in colors: the walnut stain on my hand, the water stain on a tree trunk, the changing oil stains when it rains. Sometimes it lives in dense, difficult texts, the kind you crawl through like a spelunker, trusting your light and getting your whole self muddy, and sometimes I feel claustrophobic inside those close pages. Sometimes my self’s self lives with people. I look up and I’m overjoyed, wonderstruck, giggly at the thought of talking, laughing, sharing. Sometimes it lives alone in the quiet of rooms I don’t know how to open up for others. Sometimes I live in the sweet of ice cream, and sometimes in the sizzle of oil and onions.
                Over the years, I’ve gotten mad at my self’s self for living where it does. I’ve pointed out other impressive homes that it should move to; I’ve watched the neighbors, and asked my self’s self why it doesn’t have her easy smile or his dancer’s grace. I’ve thought that my self’s self would only grow when I questioned it, when I demanded answers from it, when I stuck it with pins and measured its responses and gave it a workout routine. There’s a lot of work I want to do in the world, but reading Anne Sexton, I think one of the hands that lets us reach from ourselves to the world is love. Or maybe, more clearly, it’s love that lets us plant ourselves in the world.
                Imagine this: you walk home, with a breath or a smile or a meditation, and find your self’s self building something on the porch. You walk home, and find your self’s self crying in the grass. You walk home, and find your self’s self lost looking at the stars. And wherever it is, wherever it wakes up, you love your self’s self where it lives. Imagine that.

                “I thought, This will be a comfort. It will remind me of my friends and I’ll be able to make some connection between the past and the present.”
                -Wendy Wasserstein, Uncommon Women and Others

                In some ways, I feel like the same person I’ve always been. I’m not quite thirty (not yet!), but in other ways, those past selves seem far away.
                I remember being in India. I remember the cave in Cave Rock, a dark gap that was actually a tunnel that we could crawl through, sliding our hands through the dust. I remember another rock on top of the hill, like a stone boat on top of a stone wave, with overhung sides tall enough that I could only climb up with someone’s help. And by making a pile of rocks to use as a step ladder, I think. I’m not sure. I remember the faces–the friends, and I think they are still friends, though I haven’t talked to them in years. That would have been in early 2012. The memory fades.
                I remember playing with legos on the floor in my room. I remember shapes I used to make–if you start with only the square pieces, and connect them diagonally to each other, using only two opposite corners, you can make a solid surface that bends back and forth. You can make a circular tower. I remember the pattern, and the feel of it in my hand. At least, I remember remembering.
                I remember the sprig of ivy that found its way through our wall in Santa Rosa, California, like one of Bacchus’ mischievous smiles, there in our living room.
                I remember a very, very tall tree–the picture in my mind looks a bit like an oak–in Windsor, California. A firetruck came. Someone’s parakeet had landed in the top of the tree and wouldn’t come down. I’m not sure how much of that image I’ve constructed since then, while hearing someone else tell the story.
                I remember a person who climbed rocks, and a boy who built legos, and a child who stood, watching the tree.
                Do I string myself onto one line, like beads on a necklace, and call that me? What about when the beads seem to catch the light in different ways? What about when they roll apart? When you look back, are you one person, living through time–or are you solid surface built from many pieces, bending back and forth, or birds landing and flying from a tree? Are you a tall hill, with children climbing around you? What do you do with your present and all your pasts?

                “Do you ever think that what makes you a person is also what keeps you from being a person?” -Wendy Wasserstein, The Heidi Chronicles
                “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?” -Rabbi Hillel

                I think one path won’t lead you all the way through the forest. There are different paths, and different ways of walking them; follow the setting sun, but not forever. Swim the lake, but then climb out and warm yourself on the stones. Close your eyes and follow the taste of the air–until it’s time to see again.
                To be a person you need to believe in your own heart, your own mind, your own life. If you don’t, you won’t value yourself talents enough to hone them; if you don’t, you won’t value yourself enough to care of yourself. If you don’t, you won’t be able to help, because you won’t think of yourself as the kind of person who could help. We start by believing in our own worth–we start by being for ourselves–but if we’re only that, what are we? We’re lost, I think. “Sad” isn’t strong enough–we’re forlorn. We’re smaller than we should have been, cut off from what we should be a part of.
                These days I hear people say “you do you.” It’s a good idea–or at least, the beginning of a good idea. As a teacher, I see students who’ve forgotten how to make a mistake, who don’t remember that they’re curious. I tell them to learn for themselves. I tell them to follow their hearts into whatever questions and dreams they see. I think that’s an important path, and it takes us into the woods. But if I want to come out of the woods–if I want to have what I am become something more than just what I am–I need to find a different path once I’ve begun. I need to find something that goes beyond me.
                It’s like inhaling and exhaling: unless you’re doing both, you’re not breathing. We look at ourselves to see what gifts we have, to see what we can share with the world. We look at the world to see where our gifts are needed. The next time I forget that, I’ll try holding my breath until I realize that just inhaling won’t get me very far.

                “Pessimism is an emotion, not a philosophy.” -Immortal Technique, “Mistakes With Lyrics”

                Sometimes I feel pretty discouraged about it all. My work, the world–the possibility that my work could help the world. I get in these rational tailspins where I explain to my friends, intensely, that I just can’t do enough to make it matter. Over the last year, I’ve noticed that when I’m in one of those spirals, I really want the other person to somehow disprove what I’m saying. I want someone to point out my logical mistakes. Of course, in that mood I’m also an arguer, so once I pick the point I’m defending I want to sink in my canines and just hold on. I’m not quite as determined as the dogs you play tug-o-war with, but it’s close. I want someone to pull me out of it, but as I growl and argue and argue, I usually just go deeper.
                When I’m stuck in that place, I understand what I’m doing as ‘explaining the truth.’ I pretend I’m pulling back the pretty picture of all my illusions, and seeing things how things really are. Really I’m just hurting. I’m just sad, and confused. A week ago, I would have said that “pessimism” meant seeing the worst parts of things. I would have said it was something like a philosophical perspective. I would’ve been wrong. Pessimism, for me, is a gasp of pain, and I don’t want to follow that gasp into an approach to life.
                If you follow the word back, pessimism comes from ped-, meaning “foot.” (The meaning probably evolved from “lowest;” I don’t mean to get all pedagogical with you fellow terrestrial pedestrians, but our habit of demeaning what is ‘earthly,’ what is ‘low,’ is itself pretty weird.)  Despite what I’ve told myself, pessimism is not a rational conclusion; it’s the rationalization I fumble towards when I’m feeling hopeless or hurt. It’s an emotion, not a philosophy. Sometimes it might be where I’m standing, it might be the soreness of my feet or the thorn bush beneath them, but it’s not me, it’s not a way to walk, and it’s not where I’m headed. As soon as I find my way back to philosophy–to love of wisdom, or love of anything else–I recognize pessimism as just one of the plants in my garden, and I stop trying to read the future in its leaves.