“Without even thinking about it, I used to be able to fly. Now I’m trying to look inside myself and find out how I did it.”
                -Kiki’s Delivery Service

                I wonder if there are some moments we live and relive, until we find how to stand in them. For years and years and years, I had the same recurring nightmare (I’ll try to tell you about it, sometime), and then, finally, I sat down and told someone about the imagery of it, the hurt, the idea.  I got my arms all the way around it, and held it, and I haven’t had it since. Perhaps there are other moments in our lives that symbolize some struggle, some transformation, some opportunity; we only live these once, but they teach us something about many other moments. That’s the kind I want to write about today.

                I absolutely loved my first year at Amherst. I worked hard, and loved working, and learned and played and made new friends. Then, the summer after my freshman year, I completely freaked out. I was scared and confused. I didn’t want to go back; or rather, I really wanted to go back, but I didn’t think I could work like that again, learn like that again, open my heart to new people again. I didn’t know how I’d done it. I didn’t think I could do it. I feel that way in other situations, too: one day I’ll teach a good class, and the next day I won’t know what we should do. I’ll start a story I like, and then have trouble continuing because I’m worried I’ll mess it up.

                At first, looking at that moment poised between the two years, I thought it might be a matter of perspective. I loved my second year as much as I loved my first. That’s not to say I wasn’t scared and confused sometimes, or that I didn’t hurt some of the people I cared about. (I did. I am, deeply, sorry). But I had done that the first year, too. Looking back, I saw what I had done–the friends I’d made, the papers I was proud of, the new ideas I’d started to consider. Looking forward, I saw what I had to do. There’s something in that, but it’s not quite right. Kiki doesn’t fly because she’s looking forward or because she’s looking back. Maybe this is better: once I went back for year two, I saw Professor Sofield’s classroom (instead of seeing the idea of a classroom), I saw Michael sitting across the table (instead of seeing the idea of a new friend). I saw books by Rilke and Weil and I read them. I saw dirt and I played with it.

                Kiki flies again. She flies when she needs to. She flies, not because she wants to, not because she somehow understands who she is, but because someone she loves needs her to. In that moment, she can. In the end, she doesn’t do what she wants to do. She doesn’t do what she should do. She looks out at the world. She does what she can for the sake of those she loves.

                “Look around, look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now.”
                -Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton

                I wanted to write something short and snappy: a bit of flash and a lot of fun, with an ocean or two of depth behind it. You know: life affirming. Holistically hilarious. Like Buddha telling a really good knock-knock joke, or at least like a disciple–okay, a tourist–repeating the joke as well as he could remember. Instead I’m lying on the floor eating snacks, trying to believe that inspiration will come with the next cracker.
                Crunch.
                Nope.
                Mmmm.
                Crunch.
                Well?–No.
                In the back of my mind, I often think that lying on the floor like this, not knowing like this, is a kind of moral failure on my part. “How lucky we are to be alive right now”–I feel like I should live up to the moment with something bold and dramatic. But what if that’s the wrong way to look at it? What if lying on the floor not knowing is part of the “alive right now” I’m lucky to share?
A little while ago I read something about children and boredom. Thumbs up, it said; let them be bored. I just looked for the article again. I couldn’t find it, but I found a lot of others. Now I have a lot of reading to do. The psychoanalyst Adam Phillips argues that boredom is an important part of the process through which we decide what is important to us, and what we’ll spend our time doing. Dr. Vanessa Lapointe says simply, “I. Love. Bored.” Walter Benjamin writes, “Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.” I do not need to stay here, lying on my floor. But I think I can pause here, be here, for a moment.
                Look around, look around. It feels different now.
                I want the world to be bright and dynamic and exciting. It is. It’s also quiet and confusing, overwhelming and frustrating. It’s painful and pleasurable and inspiring and surreal and solid. And it’s boring. This is where I grow. This is where I am a part of everything that lives and grows. There are breaths to take with no direction, no purpose, no aim. Take a breath. It’s fascinating. There is work to do, texture to feel, friends to make. How lucky we are to be alive right now.

                “…a family that wanted to love you, wanted to keep you safe and sound, but didn’t know you well enough to do anything but hurt you.”
                -Seanan McGuire, Every Heart A Doorway

                There are many worlds in Every Heart a Doorway: fairy worlds, wild worlds, worlds of Logic or Nonsense or candy or Death’s quiet elegance. Sometimes children go to another world where they belong. Sometimes they stay there forever. Sometimes, willing or not, they come back.
                This afternoon I yelled at my eleven year old brother. I was angry. I also wanted to help him, to teach him that such-and-such was unacceptable. (And I was wrapped in my own little ego of being listened to. Perhaps he refused to do as I said for a similar reason: the individuality of refusing). Looking back, I don’t think yelling helped. We learn some things from people being Angry With Us, but I wonder how often the lessons we learn are the lessons the ‘teacher’ intended.
                At the beginning of Every Heart A Doorway, Nancy, a teenager, has come back to our world from the King of the Dead’s cold halls. She lived in those halls for years. She stood for days on end, still as a statue. In that stillness she was content, calm–full with the fullness of being. When she returns to our world, she is still the quiet, watchful, still person that she’s become. Her parents want her to “get better.” When they send Nancy off to a school for troubled youths, Nancy packs the clothes she wants: long, quiet clothes in subdued colors. Remembering a louder little girl, her parents replace these clothes with the colorful ones she used to love. And now cannot stand. They mean well. They want their older daughter back. And they don’t see the daughter, the changed, kind, quiet daughter who has come back already. They don’t see her. They send her away.
                If we don’t understand, then perhaps even our attempts to love are crosswinds instead of winds to fill our loved ones’ sails.
                This is a story with sadness in it, but I don’t think it’s a sad story. Nancy learns to love herself again, and to love others. My little brother told me that what I was doing didn’t help him learn. I wrote this, wondering if he’s right. He is, I think. I’m grateful he and I could talk about it. I’m not sure what I’ll do instead, but tomorrow I’m not going to yell. Tomorrow he can wear gray clothes or purple clothes or a Chewbacca suit (which is, perhaps, the most likely), and whatever it is, I’m going to try, again, to understand the him inside it. After all, I love him. Tonight we’re going to go look at the stars.

 

                “She said they can get anything published in Britain, ever, it doesn’t matter about out of print. […]
                Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization.”
                                -Jo Walton, Among Others

                Lately I’ve been borrowing books from the library. Most of them weren’t even in the building when I first looked: I clicked away online, and someone far away put them on a truck and sent them over just so I could read them. Soon I’ll give them back and someone else will read them, or a kid will stack them into a fort somewhere around G in the Fiction shelves. Which, by the way, is another way of respecting books, and should be encouraged. But keep an eye out near Fiction.
                When I think about civilization, I think about roads and pyramids, laws and technologies, rights and representatives and spaceships and fortunes. Those things are powerful. They’re important to think about. But civilization is quiet, too, and unremarkable unless you look closely. The chance to quietly learn from each other, and to help each other learn; the chance to hear voices from across the world and down through time; the help of a librarian typing an interlibrary loan; these are wonders of the world. When I think about the world I want to work for, I think about a girl going to the library. I think about a librarian listening to what she wants to learn, having a sip of his tea, and making sure it gets to her.
                Glory’s a funny word. What should make us famous? What makes a civilization splendid? What makes us proud? I imagine King Arthur, holding up Excalibur. And then I imagine Jo Walton’s child, holding up her library card.

                “I tried to escape. But escape is like sleep. And when sleep is permanent, it’s death.”
                        –The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail, Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee

                There’s that question: “What d’ya want to do with your life?” I don’t know what to think about it, but the earliest answer I remember giving is, “I want to be friends with Reepicheep.” To be honest, I still do. When I got old enough (or something enough) to think I needed an answer that involved a career, I imagined helping to run a school. The school would be somewhere beautiful, where students could study and then hike off through the hills to climb mountains, make friends, read poetry, get lost, and do some finding. Listening to all that, my friend Mike said, “You want a haven. A wild, safe place for people to grow up without some of the concerns they’ll face when they’re older.”
                I thought about that.
                “Yeah.”
                I still want that: for myself, for others. I want a spring of water where we can drink for a moment, and remember the simple wonder of drinking. I want a safe, warm fire. I want cliffs to climb with new friends. I want a little grotto where we can rest–and wake up. I think we can find that place. In the play, Thoreau finds it at Walden. He finds it in jail. Last week I found it (a glimpse of it) at Rodeo Beach.  I think we can make that place, for ourselves and for each other. I go back there when I laugh with my brother, or move rocks in the creek with my dad, or make art with my mom. There’s a “real world” out there, but this place of wonder, this wild, safe haven, this place is real, too.
                Mike pointed out that, sooner or later, students would have to leave school and go into a place where politics are what they are, and hunger is what it is. And they will. As long as there are politics and hunger, they should, because we need their help. But I think it’s important, sometimes, to step back into sanity. To step back into safety. To step back into the magic world of young wonder, family love, and friendship like a creek laughing. We shouldn’t sleep forever–we should sleep sometimes. It’s how we put together yesterday’s lessons, and prepare for tomorrow.
                We talk about an escape, but maybe it’s not an escape at all. Maybe it’s our well: we lower ourselves down, and hoist ourselves up, a bucket brimful of water gathered beneath the ground. Brimful of something to give.

                “And, if you should come upon this spot, please do not hurry on. Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is.”
                -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

                Rodeo Beach lies just north of the Golden Gate. Yesterday, for a moment, I saw it. I saw the varied black of the sea stacks, the changing white of the spray, the deep blues of the surging ocean, the dappled greens of the field above the bluffs, the shadowed orange of the flowers. Such colors are probably always there, but for a moment I learned to drink them.
                After reading it, my students often say they want to remember The Little Prince and reconnect with their own creativity, imagination, and sense of wonder. They say the little prince is wholly, fully himself, and reminds us to be ourselves. They say they want to remember “what makes them happy.” And that’s wonderful. But I don’t think we should stop there.
                The book sings childhood, and childhood isn’t only about itself. A kid wants to be included, wants to be cared for, wants a stick that can be a sword or mud that can be a pie, but whenever I’ve watched a child really playing, the game isn’t about her. It’s about the friends around her, or the tree she’s climbing, or the creek she’s directing. It’s science and magic and love. Near the beginning of the story, when the pilot draws a crate with three air holes, the little prince can see the sheep inside. For the whole book, he cares whether the sheep is awake, or asleep, or hungry. He cares about others’ lives. He walks across new earth. His imagination shows him life beneath the surface.
                The little prince reminds us to connect with our own hearts, with what gives us joy and makes us question and play–but out heart, in turns, connects us to the world. By approaching with curiosity, joy, and awe, the little prince sees the stars and the desert, and drinks from the secret well hidden in the dunes. He learns from everyone, and shares his heart with everyone. He makes friends with a fox.
                So if you come to this spot–the spot just beneath a star; the spot with a horizon in front of you; the spot with someone else who might be a friend–please do not hurry. Wait for a time. Wonder gives us the world.

                “The One You Feed” -Entirely Unclear

                There’s a story that gets passed around, often as a Cherokee legend. Most recently I saw it on Zenpencils.com. (Which, by the way, is excellent). In the story, an old wise man describes the two wolves fighting inside his heart. One is anger, guilt, false pride, and arrogance; the other is kindness, peace, humility, and compassion. One is often black, the other white. The wise man ends by telling his student, “The same fight is going on in your heart.” The student asks, “Which one will win?”
                “The one you feed.”
                Sometimes I find myself being too critical in my response to narratives. At one point, I could have gone on at great length about why, specifically, I thought the Harry Potter falls short of exploring human hearts. To kill a few more darlings, I’m also deeply troubled by Cameron’s Avatar, Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, and America’s favorite To Kill A Mockingbird. Just typing that, I’m tempted to dive in and explain why. I think that’s a useful thing to do. We need to look for what’s wrong, what’s skewed, what’s thoughtless or prejudiced or shallow in the stories we tell.
                As the same time, I think all the stories I named (even–sigh–Basterds) have something important in them. They touch on real emotion, or share a useful perspective. So which do I look at? Do I read a story to learn what it can tell me, or to recognize where it leads me astray? Once I realized that was my question, the answer seemed a little clearer: both.
                The wolf story is almost certainly not a Cherokee legend. One famous version comes from the evangelical Christian Billy Graham. The sentiment looks Western: there’s God and the Devil, Good and Evil at war. The Native American teachers I’ve heard speak are less quick to pick up that story. In any case, I find it troublesome on several levels. First, there’s the question of why (if it’s not a native American myth) we keep casting it as one. Second, there’s the identification of black with evil and white with good. I’ll get out of the way while Muhammad Ali takes a swing at that one. He makes me smile and he makes me think. Third, I don’t think you can divvy up emotions or even characteristics into “goods” and “bads” like that. I’ve felt anger when a student disrespected and hurt another student–and I don’t think that was bad. I think my anger was useful, important. And guilt? Someone without guilt would be scary. While it’s uncomfortable (and can get out of hand), guilt, respected and given its place in the garden, leads us back when we’ve started stepping on growing things. Try it for yourself–think of an emotion, a “bad” one and a “good” one, and ask yourself if the same thing could be useful, could help (or hurt) if you held it in a different way in a different situation. Looking through my own garden, I haven’t found any evil plants. Some are poisonous and some are sweet, some have thorns and some are soft, but poisons can be important medicines, and thorns can teach us respect.
                And there is still something beautiful in that wolf story. I think we do become the habits we make. We do “feed” different perspectives, different identities, different ways of being in the world. We grow into who we choose.
                So I’m troubled by the story, and I like it. I push it away, and I follow it.

                “Your brain, it turns out, in a very real sense constructs your emotional states — in the blink of an eye, outside of your awareness — and people who learn diverse concepts of emotion are better equipped to create more finely tailored emotions.
                This is why emotional granularity can have such influence on your well-being and health: It gives your brain more precise tools for handling the myriad challenges that life throws at you.” -Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett

                Last August, my classes and I read a short article from Psychology Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett as we sailed off into poetry. I think we should be careful about dividing thought into departments: sure, there are different fields with different landmarks, but all these fields share the same soil and a playing child runs happily between them.
                The article’s about “emotional granularity:” the ability to precisely identify and describe your own emotions. Someone with low emotional granularity might sometimes feel ‘happy’ or ‘sad.’ Someone with high emotional granularity might sometimes feel ‘joyous,’ ‘content,’ ‘accomplished,’ ‘fortunate,’ ‘determined,’ ‘frustrated,’ ‘worn thin,’ or ‘thespian,’ to name a few. And all of those would be different. (And yes–you can definitely feel thespian. I work with drama kids, and some of them feel thespian an awful lot).
                Professor Barrett claims that our brains actively construct emotions, which serve as tools to help us through the day. Emotions are the horses that pull our intellectual cart: they’re also the guardian angels that bring out flaming swords when our loved ones are threatened, and the little fairy-lights (“hope”) that dance ahead of us, encouraging us to keep trying. If you practice feeling, differentiating, and understanding different emotions, then your brain has all different characters to send to your side. You have lots of different emotional tools. If you don’t practice all that, then you have a screwdriver called happiness and a hammer called sadness, and whenever you run across a bolt, a rivet, or an unhappy child, you hit it with the screwdriver or the hammer and wonder what’s wrong.
                I don’t mean to use science to prove art–as far as I’m concerned, they both have legs to run with. I do mean to point out another way that they play together. According to Professor Barrett’s research, increased emotional granularity improves your health–and not just your psychological health. Physically, your body operates better when you know and can experience different emotions. The health benefits don’t just come from “good” feelings, either: even a more nuanced experience of “negative” emotions is good for you. (Soon I want to think about this separation of “negative” and “positive” emotions, because the more I think and feel about it, the less it makes sense). But for now, we can bring art into the dance and realize that the average school kid has felt this for years. Almost everyone I know who likes music seeks out all different kinds of melodies: hopeful, harrowing, haunting, hyper, hilarious, and maybe even some that don’t start with h. These kids know (or maybe feel) that feeling is healthy–that it deepens us, and opens the fullness of what we are.
                Lately I’ve been feeling sad, and hurt. I don’t know if the purpose of emotions is to be used, but I do believe that every laugh, every year, and every fear can help. I haven’t just been feeling sad: I’ve been feeling hopeful, too, and kind. And in fact, the hurt I feel is a response to what I see, it’s a kind of ‘why do we do this to each other’ hurt, and it helps me to see where I can help. (More h’s). That doesn’t mean I’ll give up and sit here in the hurt. It does mean that the hurt has something to offer. It does mean, I think, that storms rolling in carry your power, lightning shines your light, rain has water for you to drink, and warm twilight’s share your peace. You are someone who can dance with all of that and more.

                “Who you are has always had to make room for what you are.” John Scalzi, Zoe’s Tale
                “‘If that’s true, then the thing’s been using you all this time, Mr. Holloway,’ Soltan said. […] ‘It doesn’t bother you?”
                “‘Not really,’ [Holloway said].” -John Scalzi, Fuzzy Nation

                In Zoe’s Tale, the alien Obin have intelligence but no consciousness. (The Obin were created by the Consu, a species so advanced that they sometimes act like gods and almost never wait around to explain anything). The Obin can make space ships, but they don’t enjoy (or fear) flying. They can communicate, but they don’t have that much to say to each other. They don’t mind living, or dying. If a mind means a framework of preferences, values, and relationships, they don’t seem to have minds at all.
                Somehow they feel that they’re lacking something, and they set out to find it. At their insistence, a human scientist creates devices that allow Obin brains to have consciousness. As a species they flip the switch, and then realize they have a lot of learning to do. They don’t know how to deal with thinking, and feeling, and caring. So the entire species turns to Zoe, the young daughter of the human scientist, as a kind of Goddess-Guide-Child. Two Obin caretakers live with Zoe (and her human adopted parents), and record their experiences with her. They share those recordings with the entire species, and the entire species learns how to feel, how to care, love, hate, be hurt, and heal by “growing up” with Zoe.
                A big part of Zoe’s Tale is about the pressure and demand of growing up for a whole species as well as for yourself. It’s about the responsibilities that land on Zoe because of what she is: the Obin’s symbol for consciousness, and their leader in learning what it is to be alive. Scalzi sets up  tension between that and who she is: her own wants, her own perspectives. While most of us might not have the Obin beside us, we all do have responsibilities because of what we are: responsibilities because we’re a father, or a son, a teacher, a lawyer, or a cook. To Zoe, who’s often wise and kind, these responsibilities feel heavy.
                In Fuzzy Nation, the adorable cat-monkey Fuzzies don’t have a chance against the humans who are destroying their plant. They can’t even get the humans to recognize that Fuzzies are conscious creatures–until “Papa” Fuzzy uses a man named Holloway to understand more about humanity, and to push humanity to understand more about the Fuzzies. Papa is using Holloway from their first interaction; after a while, Papa likes Holloway, and he keeps using him. Papa has a planet to protect, a species to save. When Holloway figures out he’s being used, he does something wonderful. He understands, and doesn’t mind, and keeps on trying to help.
                Sometimes we’re in a place to help something larger than ourselves. Come to think of it, we’re always in that place. It’s a good place to be. I was just talking to a student, and he said it’s strange how we always tell young people to “look inside” and “find their passion.” He doesn’t know what his passion is–at least, he doesn’t have some overriding dream. But he doesn’t think he needs one. Instead of looking inside to find this “passion,” he wants to look around: he wants to see who’s struggling, and what kind of help they need. He wants to look for what he can do that the world needs, and then he wants to do it.
                I think it’s important to remember ourselves, respect ourselves, and value our own talents. And I think that “living for yourself,” even if it becomes the catchphrase of a culture, can lead toward sadness and loneliness for you and uncaring disconnection for the community. So I’ll live for me–for me, for you. And when who I am (my wants, my preferences) had to take a back seat for what I am (a person with jumper cables when the other guy’s battery is dead; a teacher; a brother), I’ll smile.
                It doesn’t bother me. It’s good work if you can get it.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.” -Rumi

                Pick up a stone that fits inside your hand. Feel the weight of it. Feel its touch.
                For ninety-one weeks, in words and words and words, I’ve been trying to figure something out. I’ve been trying to help. I’ve been trying to solve problems, provide answers, offer support and understand. And there’s something wonderful in all of that.
                But there is also quiet.
                A breath.
                Pick up a stone. Any stone. Feel it. Sometimes that is my doorway to the field. I don’t find healing there, but I do find a pattern larger than all my hurts. I find something like peace and strength. I find being.
                There is quiet.
                A breath.
                Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.
                I’ll meet you there.