“Say, lad, have you things to do?
Quick then, while your day’s at prime.
Quick, and if ‘tis work for two,
Here I am, man, now’s your time.”
                -A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

                Housman’s poem reminded me of a line from the Pirkei Avot, the ancient Jewish “Teachings of the Fathers.” I couldn’t quite remember the line, so I asked google, “Tail head lion.” I found what I was looking for: “…be first to greet every person, and be the tail of lions rather than the head of foxes.” (Lovely). That’s what I remembered–but Google also gave me a modern reworking of the quote: “Better to be the head of a dog than the tail of a lion.” That second line, so similar in imagery to the first, suggests an opposite approach to life. It makes me wonder: when did we start worrying so much about being the head of things?
                I think we’re worried a lot. At least, I am. I’m worried about being important. I’m worried about proving myself. I’m worried I’m not enough, and if I am, I’m worried that being enough isn’t enough, I have to be recognized, too. I’m worried I’ll never be recognized. I’m worried, worried, worried. And so I try to prove myself, to force recognition, to demand my own importance. I end up trying to be a dog’s head instead of a lion’s tail.
                I’d rather be the tail. Perhaps that’s all I ever am. I’d be a fool to think I grew my garden all by myself. I have seeds because of a plant, and that kind of plant has been watered by gardener after gardener for generation after generation. It’s been watered by the rain. No matter how well I tend it, it grows because of the water I did not make, and it grows toward a sun I cannot look at.
                I think the greatest gift we can be given is good work well-suited to our hands. I’m proud when I lead, but I’m at peace when I help. I have my own projects, but there are far more good ideas than the few that will occur to me, and most good ideas take more than one pair of hands. (The projects I began that took flight only found their wings because others stepped in to dream with me). So, my friend, if there is work enough for two, here I am, ready to pick up whatever piece I can. I’m grateful for the gift: the gift of working, side by side.
                Like the seeds, we swim through time and the seasons. Like the seeds, I want to grow: not the whole world, but just my little part, my blade in the field, my leaf to sing with breathing wind.

                “I pushed on, filled with mild disquiet, feeling like someone swimming too far from shore.” -Bill Bryson, A Walk In The Woods

                There are a lot of things I like about Bryson’s book, but one of the biggest is that, in the 176 pages I’ve read, he’s as bumbling, inexperienced, and confused as I often feel–and he’s still doing something wonderful. Bryson and his friend Katz set off to hike the Appalachian Trail, a 2200 mile stretch that connects Georgia to Maine. Along the way Bryson happily, playfully shows us his own stumbles: his first look at the overwhelming pile of his gear, his despair at another dinner of noodles, his brief consideration of toenail clippers as a weapon against bears. (Probably wouldn’t work). He takes cabs to get around sections of the trail, wanders around without finding the trail, and wonders what the heck he is doing. But he keeps doing.
                Years ago, I was backpacking in the Sierra mountains with my older brother. We set up a rock climbing rope and he (four years older, several inches taller, a good deal handsomer as far as I could tell) climbed a section of cliff. I belayed him. Then it was my turn. Halfway up the hard granite there was a thin ledge, perhaps an inch deep, with a sharp edge. The trick was to put both hands on it and heave yourself upwards to the next handhold. I tried, and couldn’t read, and fell until the rope caught me. I tried again, and couldn’t. I tried. I couldn’t. By this time my hands hurt from the sharp rock. My brother, handling the rope behind me, suggested I stop or take a break. He suggested we set the rope on a different section of cliff. I refused, angrily, loudly, and kept trying until my hands were cut. Eventually, crying in frustration and hurt and anger at myself, I stomped off without a word to sit by a little pond.
                My brother let me have my space for a little while, and then he came over quietly.
                “You know,” he said, “The challenge was never the rock.”
                Bryson doesn’t come off as an accomplished mountaineer, or even as an experienced hiker. (He does come off as a connoisseur of hamburgers). But the challenge was never the Appalachian Trail: the Trail was his starting point, the doorway to his adventure. It’s the main thread of his book, and it’s a thread he can’t hold onto: it breaks when he tries to grab it, and the trail goes on without him. But that leaves him someplace else.
                By continuing to walk, and watch, and think–by listening, to others and himself; by reading about the land around him; by writing–he is finding his adventure. I’m not sure where he’s heading (I finished the book since starting this, but it seems fitting to let him stay where he was, wandering off ahead of me), but I know this is a book where the writer did not manage anything close to what he set out to do, and still did something truly wonderful. I love that.
                The challenge is never the rock. The real challenge, the challenge my brother and I hiked into the mountains to find, is inside. Like Bryson, we can trust that something happens when we swim in the sea out past our shore, when we’re open to the disquieting and the mysterious. We can live on, not through what we planned to see, but through what we find.

                After describing a long backpacking trip with his friend, and the closeness they developed: “At the airport, I realized we were already in different universes (he in a “Where do I go to check in?” sort of distraction, I in the distraction of knowing that my family waited, that the car was badly parked, that it was nearly rush hour in Washington), so we parted awkwardly, almost absently, with hasty wishes for a good flight and promises to meet again in August for the conclusion of our long amble.” -Bill Bryson, A Walk In The Woods

                I’m with my family on Kauai. We’ve swum with turtles, jumped from rocks into waves,  and eaten the kind of pineapple that jumps on you like a niece who love-love-loves you. I’ve held my niece, who I love love love, and who likes me at least enough to pull my hair and (once) give me a slobbery baby kiss. But all in all, I think what we’ve really done is be here, together.
                That’s often a hard thing to do. I really like my roommate. When we get up and stomp into the kitchen the other’s there, but somehow it’s still hard to find time together. It’s not just our schedules: it’s the rhythm of how we live. It’s the places, in the world and inside our minds, where we tend to go. Those places are shrouded, so it’s easy to pass each other without even realizing the other’s nearby. (And, of course, there are the technological, SEE-ME places we go to behind our screens and between our headphones). Simply seeing each other takes a choice, and it doesn’t always work. Sometimes it helps to step out from our individual routines: we go get lunch, or go for a walk and talk. Both of those are ways of saying, “We’re meeting here.” (When we go to lunch, we often drive together; it’s funny that we’re usually less ‘absent’ at the restaurant than we were at home ten minutes before). Sometimes all it takes is sitting an extra moment in the living room. I want to learn to be less “absent” in my meetings and greetings, even without lunch or a trail.
                I think we came here, my family and I, just to be together. And we could be together in California, or Oklahoma. We could be together in a park or a shopping center, but sometimes it’s easier when we travel. It’s easier when we purposefully leave our own patterns behind. It’s easier when we choose a new here to share. Maybe, in setting aside this time to come together, we’re maintaining the trails we use to come together the rest of the year.
                So many of our passings (and our meetings) are awkward, almost absent. I want some time in the same universe as you. To do that, I’ll plan more long ambles through the woods. To do that, I’ll practice remembering: even when I’m inside, even when I’m in the middle of my routines, I want to walk in a way that lets me walk with you.

                “It was just as Mandrag said: Nine tenths of alchemy was chemistry. And nine tenths of chemistry was waiting.” -Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things

                Slow Regard follows Auri, a young woman who is beautifully lost and found while also, perhaps, being the strangest, silliest, and most interesting magician I’ve ever met in a book. (And I tend to read the kind of books where you meet them). Auri tries to help the world back into its own patterns: creatures lost away from the woods want to find trees again, and children frightened at night want to be reminded of joy and wonder. Auri doesn’t stop there. Leaves can be lost, and little stone figurines: by looking at them carefully, listening to them intently, she tries to help them home. At one point she tries to find a place for a big brass gear she found in some rubble. She isn’t trying to repair the machine it came from: she’s finding where the gear belongs. Only she can’t seem to find it: she tries place after place, but can’t quite see what the gear needs. She keeps trying. Reflecting on this in her final essay, my student Allison wrote: “Auri knows time is not an issue. The gear will find its place, but in time.”
                In time. What a beautiful line.
                I get frustrated with the speed of things. I get worried that my book’s not growing quickly enough, or that the day’s going by at a run and I’m behind in grading and washing dishes. I get frustrated when I’m with a friend, and we’ve chatted, but not really connected yet–not deeply, and I haven’t seen them in so long, and I only have so long to talk with them now. I get impatient when I’ve read fifty pages, but I think I should’ve finished sixty.
                In time, in time…
                When I was younger I would always ask how long. When I went skiing, I would ask how long each ski run would take. (It drove my dad crazy). When we designed a backpacking trip, I asked how long: how long would we be gone, how long would we have to hike each day. I saw time as a commodity, a currency: so much of it for all of that, and I wanted to make a good purchase. Some people recommend that perspective: they say we get 1440 new minutes to spend each day, like golden coins, and we should spend them wisely. And okay. I see that. But also, no. I like Auri’s way.
                In time, in time.
                At Amherst, Professor Ferguson once quoted his meditation instructor: “If you’re doing the most important thing in the world, it doesn’t matter how long it takes.” You don’t shout at a seed to grow more quickly: you give it earth, you give it water. And you wait. You don’t walk toward the hanging mountains by beating your feet against how long–or if you do, you’ll end up sore footed. You walk to the mountains by walking: by seeing how the peaks caress the sky: by being part of it, within it. That doesn’t mean we can’t work, but perhaps it means that, when we’re working (or playing, or hiking, or growing), we can trust the speed of things. We can let the moment go. This, here, is worth the time. This–this moment, this connection, this thought, this work, this heart, this life–is growing. And if it’s growing in the way it can, it doesn’t matter how long it takes.
                It’s just as Mandrag said: nine tenths of nine tenths of magic is waiting.

                “The Answer to the Great Question […] Is […] Forty-two.”
                “…that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.” -Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
                “I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” -Rainer Maria Rilke

                Hitchhiker’s is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, and it’s got a secret: the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. (If you keep reading the series, you also get the secret to flying). Problem is, the answer turns out to be 42. When two super-intelligent (though perhaps not very wise) creatures finally get their answer from Deep Thought, the computer their people designed to solve the question, they’re worried about being lynched. “Forty-two” isn’t the most reassuring teaching to offer masses who think they’re about to be enlightened.
                Whenever I get a new puzzle (and I like puzzles), I want to solve it. I want to figure out how it works. But if I figure out how it works while just trying to figure out how it works, then I get bored with it pretty quickly. The more interesting part is the interplay in the music of its pieces: how this mirrors that, and spins around, encircling, setting free. I start trying to figure it out without looking, like someone wandering through a room in the dark. “Locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language…” In some matters we can look for answers, and we can find them, but before there were answers there were questions. “Summer day” doesn’t get an answer. Neither does “you and me.” They weren’t made of the stuff that needs answers, just like courage isn’t made out of carbon and a turtle isn’t made out of nihilism.
                Rilke and Adams might not agree. Rilke says there really are answers, and we get closer to them by focusing on living. Adams seems to find the whole idea of an answer rather ridiculous. He might not be serious enough to disagree. As I read them, though, they do have something in common. They both feel like joy. The answer (or the way toward it) is hanky-panky and hootenanny; choice and rejoice; nonsense and incense, which (before you get all incensed, because it’s not logical) has the upside of smelling good.
                The answer is 42. It’s a grand answer: an answer with mountains and thunderstorms, differential equations and violins. We get to pose the question. We get to live into our answers. We get these books written in a language we don’t understand, with letters that spell mysteries and cast spells. So hootenanny and hoedown, and learn to fly.

                “I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night’s labours should be burnt every morning, and no eye ever shine upon them.” -John Keats

                That brings me back to what might be the best career advice I was ever given. I was a senior in college. As far as I could see, I had no idea what to do next. So I asked a professor to connect me with B. Alan Wallace, a visiting scholar (with an inspiring personal history) who’d talked to our class. The professor agreed, and I ended up in a skype call with Mr. Wallace. He was sitting at a meditation center in Thailand, I was in Massachusetts, and I asked him, “Mr. Wallace, part of me wants to head off to New York and wear a suit and earn some hefty money, and part of me wants to go to graduate school, because I’m worried education is a bridge you can fall from. And part of me wants to try teaching high school. What should I do?”
                He was thoughtful for a long, quiet moment, and then he gave me his piece of advice. “Azlan,” he said, “The day will come when you die. When you do, it won’t matter how much you have in the bank, and it won’t matter if you’re a tenured chair at Cambridge; but something will matter. I hope you find that something sooner rather than later.”
                At first I was a bit frustrated. I wanted advice. I wanted direction. But Mr. Wallace didn’t discuss careers any more. He smiled. The last thing we talked about was how the sun was rising up behind him in Thailand, a little while after it had set behind me in Massachusetts. “Beautiful symmetry,” he said.
                Looking back, I am only thankful. The day will come when I die. And there are some things we do whose truth goes on forever, even when they end. There are some labors that are simply how our hands reach out to meet the world. The sun goes down. The sun comes up. Beautiful symmetry. Perhaps Keats needs no eye to “shine upon” his words. That is pleasant–it is good to share our shining–but the words of a true poem shine for themselves. They shine in the moment of their speaking. They shine in their own small forever.
                My friend, I hope you find that something sooner rather than later.

                “‘You’ve got a good heart,’ she told him. ‘Sometimes that’s enough to see you safe wherever you go.’ Then she shook her head. ‘But mostly, it’s not.’” -Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
                “There’s no shame in crawling when one can’t walk.” -Kristin Cashore, Graceling

                Too often I assume that “seeing me through” means seeing me through safely, but having friends is never safe. Caring is never safe. Pogostick races down the creek are never safe, but admit it, it sounds like a good idea. (Oh come on, think about it).
                The quote from Neverwhere is a prophecy near the beginning, when our lovably British and very frumpy hero Richard Mayhew sets off for London. Richard will grow through the story: he’ll face monsters and an Angel (who turns out to be much worse), he’ll bleed and fall and blabber, he’ll wonder about his sanity, be offered roast cat meat, and make a friend. And help them. He won’t be safe. He’ll get muddy, he’ll get hurt, he’ll get lost. But in the end he’ll be where he needs to be, and he’ll realize the joy of being there, of caring, of trying to help. When I first read Neverwhere, I thought the prophecy meant that having a good heart usually wasn’t enough. I was wrong. The books offers a new kind of hero, a hero who is kind in the way that Hercules is strong, or Odysseus is clever. Perhaps enough doesn’t mean safe. It doesn’t mean perfect. It means raise your head and stumble on and laugh and eat when there’s food, and get drenched, and smile, and do what you can, and care for those around you.
                In Graceling, Cashore says that, when we’ve walked and tried and fallen, there’s nothing wrong with crawling. Lately I’ve been doing my share of it: I’ve taught classes that didn’t work, tried to build connections that didn’t last. I’ve dropped the proverbial ball and stepped on the comical rake and felt it bop my inquisitive nose. I’ve wondered, what am I doing wrong? That’s a good question to ask, because we get to pick our strategies, are paths of approach through life. But it’s also a silly question. I am messing up sometimes, but perhaps messing up doesn’t always mean doing something wrong. (Just imagine Jackson Pollock painting: no way he stayed clean). I am trying to have a good heart. That might not be enough “to see you safe wherever you go,” but it’s worth trying, and in the end, it might, without the safe, be enough. Sometimes teaching a bad class is part of teaching. Sometimes building a connection that falls all to grumpy pieces is part of connecting. The messing up is part of living, and we’re doing it here, already, now.
                So I’m going to try to keep walking. I’m going to try to forgive myself when I slip, and end up crawling. And if you have two pogosticks, I’ll meet you at the creek.

“Take away darkness and there is only more darkness. Darkness can exist by itself. Light cannot.” -N. K. Jemisin, The Broken Kingdoms

                In her Inheritance trilogy, Jemisin dares to imagines a deity of the night. I won’t say that much more about this god: the books do that. But he/she is dynamic, inspiring, and so much fun to read about, and he/she has me thinking. If we opened up to the night, what would we find?
                Maybe the dark isn’t a bad thing. Maybe it isn’t evil, as we’ve so often said. (The Dark Lord in Tolkien, the ‘forces of darkness’ in all sorts of things, the ‘dark side’ in Star Wars; and on and on). When I was little, and scared of the dark, I would clutch for a lamp. Light would go out streaming, bouncing off the walls, the windows; showing me what was there–or part of what was there. At night, with a lamp on, windows are mirrors: they gave me back myself, a scared little child, and, having clutched for the light once, I soon became scared again. And again.
                Light shows the surface of things. Sight is our most controlled sense, and we’ve come to use it the most: I can close my eyes, turn my head, choose what to look at and what to ignore. Ears work differently–we’re always listening. Touch works differently. Perhaps that’s why, hungry for control, we’ve become seeing creatures.
                Looking this way, I can focus on these words, make out the small distinctions in the letters; but behind me, outside, I can hear the wind blowing. I can hear my housemate in another room, turning a page in his book. Our sight makes a bright world, but it makes part of a world; we choose it, and it makes our world. It sees the surfaces of things. It does that clearly. But at night, when we’re afraid, it makes the windows that should let us see outside into mirrors that show only ourselves. And if we only see ourselves, we only see part of ourselves: roots need earth to be what they are for more than a quick, withering moment. I am who I am because of you, because of the world.
                Perhaps the dark was never evil. Here, shh, child, the child who I was (and am): you don’t need to be afraid. Here, in the dark, here we have our thoughts growing. Here we have sounds we cannot understand, because they speak to mysteries of which we are a small part. Here is a place of resting and becoming. It is a peaceful place, this night. It is good to not know everything. It is good to have the world wrap its arms around you and hold you close, as close as pitch black when your eyes are open.
                It is good to close your eyes, sometimes, when you kiss. And the world’s kissing you. Mother, daughter, son, brother. The dark is kind, it is the place of more than me, more than my choice. All that you are comes from here, and blends with here. This is the place, not of distinctions, but of unities–the place where lamp and table, book and letter, I and other flow together. It is good. Be here. In the light we see what is: in the light we work. In the dark is all that is and ever was: endless opportunity: endless grace. Yes, in other places, in daylight, I am not you, and wall is not door is not shadow. But in this place, all is one.
                What do we find in the darkness? With the lamp off, the window is still a window. We can see outside. Look, there are stars here, and deep dark clouds that lay like blankets, keeping us warm, bringing rains–rain that falls unseen, bringing life.
                Our thoughts are like rain. It’s easy to let yourself reach up into them, like a mountain–and then they easily go running off, down past you in streams. You can also be the valley, where waters gather and trees grow. Where moments deepen into pools, helped by gravity itself, by the weight of the world. And the valleys are darker.

                “Dear Laura. If it were just the two of us again, sitting together at the kitchen table late at night, I would probably just call this document an apology.” -Amity Gaige, Shroder
                “i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)” -E. E. Cummings

                Shroder is the story of families, broken and made whole by love’s dimness and fullness. It’s told from a father’s perspective as he tries to apologize to his soon-to-be ex-wife, Laura. In the midst of their divorce, he took their daughter to New England without telling anyone. Kidnapping, the police call it. I don’t want to defend him. I don’t want to attack him. Perhaps, at some point, we have to choose one of those, and sort out the consequences: the changes we’ll make in our lives. Shroder, I think, comes before that. It’s a book about how often we hurt and are hurt by those we love. It’s about apologies and (perhaps) forgiveness, and it dreams of how our connections might survive.
                Are there things we do that are unforgivable? That’s an interesting word–for (perhaps meaning “completely” ) with give. It once meant ‘to give up one’s right to punish.’ In that case, it is an action from the one who forgives, isn’t it? You do not “earn” forgiveness. You do now “owe” forgiveness. It is given, and like all gifts, it is not made in reference to what is deserved or required. “Give” is from the old English “giefan,” which also means “devote, entrust.” Trust, an act we do: our own special breed of lovely insanity. I trust you. I choose to.
                “Apology.” In Greek, it means a legal defense speech, the kind of thing you give at a trial. (That meaning hangs over Schroder: the hurts in his family are large enough to bring in judges and prisons). But we use apology differently, now; it’s an expression of regret. I call myself responsible, and I am sorry. I don’t know another word for that: to make amends? But “amends” means to make right, and so much of what I apologize for I can never make right. Our words don’t make cuts close up again. Atonement? I didn’t think of that one at first, because it feels religious–but the root, here, is simply “at one.” To atone is to become one with others, after being fractured apart. How can I ask for that, knowing I am imperfect, and will hurt you again? How can I offer that, having been hurt? What word do we have for the action of asking to remember love after pain, to return to a time when it was “just the two of us […], sitting together at the kitchen table late at night”? How can I ask for that, without defense or justification? I do not know a word that powerful. But I have meant it.
                In reading Shroder, I hope that his daughter forgives him for what he’s done. I hope his wife does, and I hope he forgives her. (There are hurts on all sides). Perhaps we cannot always become one again, but we can protect connections instead of barriers. I can remember that, within everything else, you were trying to do the work of loving, of caring. I was trying. I fell short, and I’ll fall short again, but if we could find our way back to a time when we were sitting together and listening to each other, I would say I am sorry. I would mean it. And in that place, I think perhaps I could hear you, no matter what you’d done. Could you hear me?
                I’m glad, in the Acknowledgements at the back of the book, to hear Amity Gaige thank her husband for his “love” and “wonder.” She’s captured a family that couldn’t hold itself together. Not all can, or should; sometimes there are so many recurring wounds, and you must stop yourself from being cut. I’m glad that she can write out all this pain, and help us sort through it; and I’m glad that, in those few words, she also gives us the example of a family knit by “love” and “wonder.” I think, perhaps, there must be some forgiveness there, too, heart-full and freely given.

“All the world’s a stage.” -Our own Billy Shakes, As You Like It

“The powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” -Walt Whitman

                Today, in my class, is Theater Day. It’s one of my favorite activities all year. Here’s what we do: first off, we give Mr. Gillmore, who is in charge of the theater, a really, really, really big smile, so that he clears off all the saws and ladders and impact drivers, and lets us use the stage. (Our stage is also our scene shop, because we don’t have a scene shop: so the buildings and backdrops grow where they’ll live. All in all, a magical place, to be sure). Mr. Gillmore is also susceptible to take-out Chinese food. It’s good to know. 
                Next, I walk my class over, and step onto the stage to explain what we’re doing. As I do, I feel the space itself. The space says, something’s happening.  The space says, look here. It’s like the whiteness around the poem, the silence before a symphony; the breath you take (you have to take) before some really good cheesecake. The stage says, listen. It says, we’re about to grow, become. As I said, it’s a magical place. 
                I start, each time, with Shakespeare’s line: “all the world’s a stage.” How many of us struggle to say what we truly mean? How many of us struggle to feel our own emotions, to know our lines, and to step into our role? How many of us see the whales and dolphins of our ideas go dashing by, and reach out a hand to point, only to find ourselves spitting sea spray instead of saying clearly the direction of those thoughts–or the joy of their movement–or even, perhaps, where they’re headed? Today, this is our stage, and today we’re going to try. 
                I give the students a paper with prompts on it. The prompts each put them in an imaginary scenario, and ask, “What would you say?” One by one the students walk up on stage; they climb to a place that says, pause, here, and breathe, and try to speak. And then they raise their voice. 
                Sometimes they cry. Sometimes they find poetry. Almost always they pause, and stumble, and then move forward with a rush, and watching, we realize that stumbling and flowing forward are equally important. The pauses say as much as the words, when both are meant. I’ve had a student, wise and determined, who planned everything out–and then realized, as he watched his friend cry and feel and try, that he’d somehow missed his chance. He’d charted a course. She’d stepped into the unknown, where all possibilities swirl and wait, washed by the raw stuff of living. 
                The prompts put us in imagined circumstances, but in imagined circumstances we find our own hearts–our hopes, our fears. In imagined circumstances we find our connections. So I wanted to share a few of my prompts (in the comments), and to invite you all, today, to walk up on stage, breathe, and speak–not just for yourself, but for us all. 
                “All the world’s a stage.” 
                “The powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”