“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.”

                “We fight. We try not to be killed. Sometimes we are. That’s all.” –All Quiet On the Western Front

                “Surely her cockiness, her optimism and energy, her pizzazz, will get her out of this. She will think of something. But I know this isn’t true.” -Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

                The Handmaid’s Tale is the chilling portrait of a fallen United States, where fundamentalist religion has become government and people have once again become property. Atwood gives us two powerful figures: a wild, resourceful friend, and a cocky, loud, energetic mother. Reading, we want these people to change things. We want them to turn into heroes. Atwood gives us moments of hope, but moment by moment, page by page, most hope breaks in the America she’s envisioned.  Why does she do that?
                We like stories about those who beat the odds and “win,” or about those who die on their feet rather than live on their knees; about heroes who turned their suffering into something grand, something important, something shining. Maybe wars don’t look like that. Torture doesn’t work like that. That is a kind of alchemy we cannot do. As much as we like a story about a homeless person who turns their struggle into brilliance and wisdom, the truth is, going hungry is cruel, it’s lessening. It breaks you apart. We can heal afterwards, we can try to make something good with the ashes, but wood burns. No matter how solid it’s grown, no matter how firm its heart, no matter how tall it stands, wood burns. History has proved that bodies do, too. Atwood won’t let us forget the horror of that.
                There is something beautiful, even here in Atwood’s horror. There is something to hope for. These days, many of the moments that break us and others are at least in part man made. We engineer them. And if we do that, that means we don’t have to. The trick isn’t to practice courage so that we can face our torturer with a witty quip and an unbreakable will. The fight happens before that. The fight isn’t even a fight: it’s law, it’s practice, is the slow creation day by day of a society that refuses torture. The trick is not to kill and be untouched by killing. The trick is not to battle victoriously. Atwood’s truth comes before that. It comes when we will not let our garden become a place for tanks and drones, cruelty and hate. When we fight, we’re hurt. Sometimes when we’re hurt we heal. But we can fight less. We can.
                We should be careful, breathlessly, intensely careful, about what we ask our troops to do. I don’t think I’m a pacifist. I believe there can be just war. I admire those who are willing to fight it. But the fighting itself is not pretty. It is not good.  As a culture, I think we need less tales about those who took horror and would not be broken, and more gardeners who give their plants the daily water with which they grow, and let them feel the sun. We need days, not moments; we need lives, not gestures.We can like the unbreakable Man of Steel, but we do not have the many chances he has, and our minds, torn, may not regrow. Perhaps sometimes, instead of hoping for heroism, we can work to be humane.

                While talking about the year after his mother’s death: “To try to tell it is like trying to tell the passage of a sleepless night. Nothing happens. One thinks, and dreams briefly, and wakes again; fears loom and pass, and ideas won’t come clear, and meaningless words haunt the mind, and the shudder of nightmare brushes by, and time seems not to move, and it’s dark, and nothing happens.” -Orrec in Gifts, by Ursula K. Le Guin

                I’ve had a bit of a funny connection with Le Guin’s books. I started by not reading them–I picked up the Earthsea cycle when I was fifteen, and got bored, and stopped. Later I picked them up again, and it was like picking up a fire, or a seed that grew and grew until it was an oak I held, an oak that was holding me. Occasionally I still find myself bored by one of her pages, and yet her books are among the most powerful stories to ever sit down beside me, tap my eyes, and remind me that I can see. Why is that?
                I think there’s a theory of literature somewhere in here, and within it, a theory of being alive. Lots of modern writers write go go go. We get a series of events and twists. (Before the credits, before everything but the music, James Bond shoots the audience). We’ve asked for stories with a hook, and they have hooks, and we’re reeled along from line one. “One of the worst mistakes writers make,’ a professor once told me, ‘Is thinking they have time. You have no time.’ He’s right–depending on what you’re writing. Or reading.
                Le Guin has all the time in the world. She sits, and stares, and walks. “Nothing happens.” When we talk about sadness, it’s easy, it’s tempting, to tell it in turning points: he picks up his mother’s comb, and cries, awash in loss; he picks up her pen, and realizes he can continue the stories she wrote. But Le Guin says that doesn’t happen. That’s not true. “Nothing happens.” Sorrows and lives spell themselves out in shades and dappled light, not clear cut letters. If we want to understand where we stand, who we are, then we need to be willing to read those quiet signs. Le Guin insists on it.
                Some of my students say that Gifts moves slowly. The truth is, sometimes it does. The truth is, why not. Life isn’t a series of happenings. The truth is, nothing happens–nothing but moments, ages long and overlapping, and we can choose to stand in them. When we do, we find a moment of presence. When we do, we mourn for our loved ones. When we do, we fall in love again.
                How did we fall in love?
                Who can say? How can we know? After all,
                            –nothing happened–
                                            and what poignant, beautiful, heart-filling nothing it was, there in the moments I cannot say.

        “The time has come,” the Walrus said,
        “To talk of many things:
        Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
        Of cabbages–and kings–”
                -Lewis Carroll, “The Walrus and the Carpenter”

        There’s a sound to words, but there’s also a rhythm, a feel, and a taste. Carroll’s lines are simply a delight to say. Go ahead, say them. Purr them. Feel them dance in your fingers. If these words were in a language I didn’t know, I’d think, while I listened, that they were some charm being cast. And there are so many things to talk about.
        It reminds me of a story: an art critic is taking a train through Europe. When he gets to his seat, he realizes he’s beside a famous painter. The painter’s next to the window. He seems entranced: outside, some power lines run along the tracks, and beyond them are rolling hills, a river slipping in and out of view, and little villages.
        The critic has always admired this painter: his work shows a clear eye for what’s there, for light and shadow, movement and stillness. The critic wants to say something–he’ll never get a chance like this again! He looks out the window, too, trying to find something to comment on. Eventually he goes with the obvious:
        ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ He says
        ‘Yes,’ says the painter. ‘The way a powerline go on and on, mile after mile, a single sweeping stroke…’

        There are so many different things to see. When I was eight or so, I was getting into the car with my dad for a seven hour drive. “I don’t even have a toy to play with,” I said. He looked around, and picked up a piece of dried tar from the road–at least, I think that’s what it was. It was black, and it had been liquidy once, though now it was hard to the touch.
        “How about this?” he asked.
        I didn’t play with it at all during the drive–I tried to, and didn’t see how. I was a stubborn kid. Perhaps part of me didn’t want this thing to be a toy, because I’d wanted some other toy. Then again, looking back, I’ve thought about that piece of tar as much as some of my favorite childhood toys. Perhaps I knew, even then, there was a mystery inside it, a mystery I was missing.
        At my grandpa’s funeral, one of his friends stood up to say something. I don’t know the man’s name, but he started with: “‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said…”
        ‘Me and Jack,’ he went on, ‘We never knew which one of us was the Walrus, and which one wasn’t. I don’t know who wrote those lines, but we decided a long time ago they were at least a bit about us. We talked about a lot.’ Later that day, I told him who’d written the lines. He told me something better. Apparently, if an old man’s to be trusted, talking to a walrus (or being one) is quite enough to make a life.

        This week isn’t a quote: it’s an idea Professor Kim Townsend gave me, and I want to give it to you. After all, ideas belong to those who need them.
        I sometimes wonder, while writing these, “Why am I so dang dark? Lighten up! Make jokes!” I wonder the same thing when I write fiction: it can be pretty heavy, and sometimes I think, “Come on now, where’s the humor, the gentle, playful connection? Where’s the bounce?” And I think those things are good–and I think you can practice them. Looking back over these posts, I see some darkness and I see some light, I see some play and I see some pain. And I want to tell a story.
        When I was nineteen I walked into Professor Townsend’s office. I wanted to ask something, though I didn’t know how to say it. Looking back, I wanted to ask whether there was something wrong with me. I loved being in college, but I also had hard times: times when I left my dorm room, running and crying. Times when moments pulled tight around me, and I felt myself crushed to something small by the pressing need of the world, by the pressure I put on myself, by the seeming impossibility of doing something. I tried to explain that to Townsend. Was there something wrong with me? Was I broken?
        Townsend is one of the warmest, kindest, wildest, most willing teachers I’ve ever had. He used to say things you’re just not allowed to say, but that needed to be said, and he shook many of us out of our sleepwalking. In this moment, he listened carefully, thought for a long time, and then answered, gently, with a metaphor.
        In order to pump blood through your body, he said, your heart goes through two phases. Diastole is when your heart expands, bringing in new blood; systole is when your heart contracts, pushing blood through your body. Our hearts do both of those: systolic motion, contracting, tightening, confining; diastolic motion, an exuberant release, a forward rush, a new discovery. And that’s not a problem. The problem comes if you get stuck in one of these: that’s a heart attack. That’s death.
        Townsend told me to see the cycle, instead of focusing on one side. He said our emotional lives can beat like our hearts, and we need both phases: if all my moments were emotionally diastolic, I would drain myself away as power seeped out in all directions. If all my movements were systolic, I’d clench my heart tight and tighter until I’d wrung the life from my body like blood from a cloth.
        “But as long as you have both, Azlan,” he told me, “as long as that pressure finds its movement, and your movements find their pause, I think you’re okay.”
        Over the next years, we talked a lot. I learned a lot. I know my teacher had his pains, and I know he gave to the world. We wondered and laughed and shared meals. Sometimes the world gathered in, and sometimes it opened up: a beating heart, alive within its cycle.

“A Request”
        Ursula K. Le Guin

Should my tongue be tied by stroke
listen to me as if I spoke

and said to you, “My dear, my friend,
stay here a while and take my hand;

my voice is hindered by this clot,
but silence says what I cannot,

and you can answer as you please
such undemanding words as these.

Or let our conversation be
as mute as patient amity,

sitting, all the words bygone,
like a stone beside a stone.

It takes a while to learn to talk
the long language of the rock.”

        When I think of kindness and connection, I sometimes think of a man I met in Vietnam. I don’t remember his name. I called him chú. We never said more than two words to each other, and they were always the same two words. He would shake my hand with a warm, supportive strength, he’d smile at me with a loose affection, bottomless as the sea, and I’ll remember him forever.
        It was in Hue, halfway down the Vietnamese coast. I was traveling alone, and one of my stepfather’s friends sent an email to a family who lived there. The parents didn’t speak any English, and they let their two teenage children (a daughter who was a little younger than I was, and a son who was a little older) speak for the family. I didn’t speak any Vietnamese.
        Sitting in front of their house, they started to teach me. “Chào em,” they said. I repeated it: “Chào em.” I asked the daughter what it meant, and she said, “Hello.”
        Then the daughter said, “Chào ahn.” We played, laughing, until I could pronounce the new sounds well enough.
        “What’s it mean?” I asked.
        “Hello,” she said. And her brother started teaching me: “Chào chú,” he said. I practiced, and asked what that meant; “Hello,” he said. I was confused for a little while. Then I understood. In Vietnamese, “hello” changes depending on who you are talking to. So they weren’t just teaching me “Hello.” They were teaching me to say, “Hello little sister,” “Hello big brother,” “Hello aunt” and “Hello uncle.” They were teaching me to be part of the family. Every time I came back to the house, the father would hold out his hand and smile, and I would say, Chào chú. We wouldn’t say anything else to each other for the rest of the evening, but I would see the smile in his eye, and I’d feel his kindness, his consideration, his quiet, well-meaning company.
        Le Guin’s poem has a darkness to it, a sense for the kind of loss that leaves us unable to talk. When she wrote this she was getting older, and I can feel death behind the lines; but she doesn’t seem to fear death. The poem isn’t about death or the dying. There is something in the mute silence of “patient amity,” even for the young and the wild. Looking back, I wonder if chú was teaching me a little of “the long language of the rock.” While I can talk, I’ll talk, while I can listen I’ll listen; while I can look, I’ll look. But if it were all I had, I think simply sitting side by side with you would be enough, once I learned to do it.