Dancing While the World Burns

I had to turn off the radio. I was listening to NPR as usual while making dinner. It was All Things Considered. It was Syrian “peace talks” and Egyptian devolution. An hour earlier, the TED Radio Hour was all about technology and how quickly our lives can be hijacked now that we rely so heavily on it. Not only that, but the terrorists are even more adept at using it than we are, and it helps them kill more people all the time, with more precision. I felt sick, so I switched over to First Wave on the XM radio and listened to the music I loved in college – REM, Cure, The Smiths… I danced as I sautéed, instead of crying.

 

How much of the world’s news is enough to know, and how much can I get away with not knowing? As it is, I never feel like I know enough. Bruce will come in with, “Did you hear…?” And of course I won’t have heard. I know I’m supposed to read the NY Times and the Daily Beast and countless other publications. I do listen to NPR a lot because I can listen and do other things at the same time. Shamefully, though, I don’t seek out any other news sources. I can’t read and accomplish things at the same time, plus I hate being on the computer. Mostly I feel like I just can’t spare the time to keep up with it all when my everyday life is more pressing. And then there’s the fact that I just want to not know, even though I know I should know.

 

I’m a hypocrite. I berate my students for not knowing anything that’s going on in the world. Oh, are there wars happening? Oil spills? Earthquakes? Ships sinking? And yet I too want to shut my eyes and ears. I want to walk outside under the glittering winter stars and feel microscopic flakes of snow hit my cheeks. I want to skate and ski and play card games with Cedar and Bruce. I want to meditate and exercise and cuddle with the cats. In addition, I need to plan and teach classes, serve on committees and boards, cook, clean, eat, sleep, etc. How am I supposed to keep up? Should news be a priority? Is it cheating, even sinful in some way, to block out the evil, the painful and horrifying?

 

What if it came here, I think? What if I were that Syrian mother with her child wrapped in her arms? Wouldn’t I want to know that out there in the world some other mother was feeling it with me, maybe even trying to help? But it’s the help part that’s the problem. I don’t see how I can help. And if I can’t help, then I would rather not know.

 

I do read our local paper because it is small and manageable and I can find out which of my students were arrested, whose relatives died or had babies, and what big things are happening in our small town. I would much rather focus on the two new hotel projects, controversial as one of them is (because it will be five stories tall and block people’s view of the lake), than try to get my mind around all the deaths in the Middle East.

 

One death is comprehensible. A hundred thousand deaths are not. Recently an Australian soldier came to our small town, stayed one night in a hotel (long enough to send an email to his father, bequeathing his personal possessions) and then climbed a mountain, went to sleep under a blanket out in the open, and died of hypothermia. On purpose. He had served in Afghanistan, another place of death that I can’t get my mind around. This soldier came back from there and felt he needed to die, so he came here to do it. No one knows why. But his odd story and his handsome face captured our imaginations. Many local people searched for him in bitter, below-zero cold. When they found him they treated his body with honor and sent it back to Australia. Almost every day in the last few weeks I’ve seen his picture in the paper and cried. Even though I don’t truly understand his actions, I can get my mind around him. His story is small enough and close enough to home.

 

I have heard many times about street people, homeless, who get change handed to them blindly by people trying not to see them, and who are so grateful when people do see, when they are seen as people, even by those who can’t help. So perhaps we do have to look, even when we can’t do anything. We have to at least see what is happening. It isn’t enough, but it is something.

 

I don’t have television, and I still don’t have time to read, but I will continue to listen to as much as I can handle. When I hit my limit, though, I will change the radio station and dance, because if no one is dancing, then we are wasting the blessing of not being in Syria or Afghanistan, and that doesn’t do anyone any good.

 

 

 

 

Back to School

As I sit down to prepare for the spring semester, I wonder, once again, what is enough for students in English Composition at a community college to learn? The master course outline states that they should learn to “write complete, correct, serviceable sentences that exhibit a reasonable degree of structural variety…; write effective, serviceable paragraphs;” and of course write some good essays as well. They should learn that writing is a process of pre-writing, drafting, revision, and editing. They should learn to do academic research, write an 8- to 10-page paper using at least five reputable sources to support a thesis, and document it all in MLA style. This is more than enough for 15 weeks with 2 ½ hours per week of class time. But wait, there’s more… Because of course in order to do this, they need to know how to read difficult pieces of nonfiction, and comprehend them, and use them to make inferences relating to their topics.

The students who do well in English 101 tend to be the students who already know how to do most of this stuff. But what about the others – those who come in as almost blank slates, having never read any more than was absolutely necessary to scrape by. (And don’t fool yourself into thinking that included all the books assigned in high school. There is no need to buy Cliff’s Notes anymore. Just Google the title to get a complete short synopsis.) These are students who string endless clauses together in their writing, put apostrophes where they don’t belong and not where they do, and either don’t use commas at all or spill boxes of them all over the page.

But before I can even hope to correct any of these issues, I first have to try to get them to care because half the students sitting in front of me are only there because someone told them they needed to be. They don’t know what they want to do in life. They are trying to get their basic classes “out of the way.” But not knowing what “the way” is, they once again do the bare minimum, or what they think is the bare minimum, not realizing that the standard for just barely not failing is higher in college. These are the students who complain about college being “13^th grade” when they are the ones who make it that way. I don’t wish to suggest that all my students are like this, but they are ones I worry about. They take other classes in which they do scrape by, and someday – perhaps – they may actually graduate from this college. In that eventuality, given that in 15 weeks there is no way they can learn what should essentially have been the entire K-12 curriculum (taken to a higher level, of course, because this is college), what do they need to know and be able to do that it is actually possible for me to teach them in this amount of time?

Well, what do average people need to know how to do in “the real world”? For one thing, it would be nice if they could send a clear email that could be recognized as English. (There’s your drafting, revising, and editing.) But of course they laugh when I tell them that I will sometimes go over an email 10 times before I send it. I do it because I want to make sure the message will be received as I intended. Then again, I have had lots of experience with badly received emails, both as the sender and the recipient. Sending a well-written email is an essential life skill.

Imagine reading this from a college student:
hi I dont know when I’ll be back in class but what did imiss last week ….

Students also laugh at me when I tell them that when I find a typo in my work I feel like I’m standing in front of the world in my underwear. Considering what we see on TV and on YouTube (and in emails like the above), they probably think that’s a good thing!

The academic research papers are a part of the curriculum I wonder about. The pieces of the process are important – being able to find good information, read it with understanding, and use it to make an argument – but does it have to be 8 to 10 pages? Does it have to have five sources? Does it have to be documented in MLA style? Is MLA style (or APA or any of the specialized documentation systems) even relevant anymore when almost all the sources students use are electronic and can be Googled in the time it takes to flip to their works cited page?

And then there’s course content. English 101 is a skill class, with almost no inherent content. We are not after all, going to write about writing. So I want to use content that opens their eyes to the world they’re preparing to enter – things like income inequality, consumer manipulation by media, wars around the world, and their chances of getting a decent job when they graduate. I also want to fill them with the beauty of the world – of nature and art and human beings (sometimes) and great writing. And most of all I want them to care about all this. In fact if they do end up caring, that might almost be enough to make up for all the other stuff. Almost.

The problem is that the fun stuff, the stuff that helps make them care, is not the same stuff that teaches them how to write good emails or read a scientific article that might help them weigh the pros and cons of different treatments for their husband’s cancer or their MS or their child’s epilepsy. But those things can be easily learned if one wants to learn. If there were just one thing that I could teach, even at the expense of everything else, it would be a desire to learn. If I got two things, the second would be persistence. If my students got both those things from my class, that would be enough.

Right on cue, as I am writing this, my husband walks in, and our daughter asks why he was watching a documentary about Emma Goldman for the second time. His answer: “Because I want to learn something.”

The desire to learn, once ignited, is not easily quenched. I have exhausted myself this past year. I was so grateful to turn 46 in November because I felt like I had been 45 for 10 years. I was – still am – so tired that sometimes I just sit and stare at nothing. And yet as soon as I pick up a book, suddenly I want to know something. Sitting down to start planning English 101 for the spring, which was a chore I’ve been putting off for weeks, was what triggered me to write this post, when I’ve had no desire to write anything in months. Suddenly I’m asking questions and looking for answers – in the textbooks and websites I went through this afternoon and now in the web of my own words. And I have found my answer. What is enough to teach? A desire to learn and the persistence to do what it takes to learn. Now I just have to learn how to teach those things. I suspect it will be harder than teaching where the apostrophe goes or how to document a source in MLA style. I hope I can be a good enough teacher to do it.

 

Watch This Space...

... enough will come again. Soon. In three weeks, definitely, but maybe sooner.

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is about gratitude for all the wonderful things in our lives -- family, friends, food. It is so wonderful to have enough of these things to be able to celebrate, to hold a feast, a potlatch, a ceremony of eating and drinking, and enjoy this abundance. At this time of year many of us also donate food to others whose feast tables may not be quite as full. I know I never give enough, but what enough would be, I never know. I can only hope that everyone will have a full belly at the end of a day spent with people they love. If you don't, email me, and we will try to find you a space at our table.
 
This year, we will have my mother and three friends over for the big meal. I am so excited to be able to host it in my own home. That doesn't happen very often, and there is something so satisfying about cooking for hours and having people over to enjoy it, especially on Thanksgiving. This is a day when I, at least, am overwhelmed with gratitude for the abundance in my life (so much so, that I usually end up eating about three times more than my stomach can hold, and then lying around groaning for the next few hours, until enough space opens up to start picking at the leftovers.)
 
As always, enough is too much, or at least too much for my little brain to handle. Stop eating when you're full. Duh. Nope, not smart enough to do that. At least, as a non-sugar-eater I get some break from dessert -- but no, wait, there's my wonderful no-sugar apple pie*. I think I will still be lying on the couch for a while.
 
Just before Thanksgiving this year, I turned 46. This occurred after having been 45 for what felt like 10 years. That was one long year. I am grateful, though, to have had these years, and all the ones before, with all of my parts still working. Even if my hair no longer produces color without liberal application of L'Oreal Preference and even if my joints are all silted up, I am here. The world from my window is white with snow. I went sledding with two wonderful children today. We screamed as we flew down the hill, faces being slammed with frozen powder as we went. It was awesome. I am thankful for snow and for sledding and for 10-year-olds who carry their own sleds back up the hill. I am grateful for the fuzzy grey cat stretched out in a half-moon on the floor in front of me. I am grateful that my drive to Burlington in the soggy snow last night did not end up with our car on its side in the ditch, and I offer my best wishes to those whose did.
 
I am grateful for my "precious human birth", as Pema Chodron calls it, and for the preciousness of the humans around me this year -- Cedar, Bruce, my mom, my good friends. I am so blessed; the turkey should be just an afterthought... but it won't be! I wait all year for this meal! It will be good, and with any luck, it will be enough.
 
 
*Whenever I've written anything about one of my recipes, people always want it, so here is the very scientific one for no-sugar apple pie. Make a double crust, with butter, not that scary Crisco stuff. Fill a large bowl with peeled, cored and sliced Cortland apples (they make the best pies). Throw in some cinnamon, a hint of nutmeg, some lemon juice, some butter, and some flour. Mix it all up and pack it into the shell, making sure it mounds up high. Put on the top crust, pinch it on well, cut a few slits to let the steam out and bake it around 400 for as long as it takes to start bubbling out the slits. Pretty easy, and especially yummy with plain whipped cream (just put in a dash of vanilla).

Steamroller Blues

 

I have drunk many cups of tea whose teabag tags bear the wise words "When God made time, he made enough of it." That may be true, but I think he only gives it to people who go to church (or synagogue, or mosque...), which is why you are not gettting a full blog post this week. The post exists and awaits only the application of large jolts of electricity, mental and otherwise, to make it rise from the table and walk. However, it is hard to reach the jumper cables from under the steamroller. Fear not, though; before long there will once again be enough Enough to satisfy all. Hope to see you next week!

A Clover and a Bee

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

Emily Dickinson is the poet of enough. Dwelling in “possibility”, “a fairer house than prose”, she knows we don’t need the whole prairie to be happy. Consider this:

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —
 
Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —
 
I've known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —

How many friends does a person need? If you have a good one, or two, can you close the valves of your attention? What else can the soul select and then stop, satisfied? If I could do that with everything – with food, work, stuff – then to be alive truly would be “Power… Omnipotence --Enough.”

 
It’s not just Dickinson. All poetry is about enough, really, because the poem stops when the writer feels he or she has said enough. Still, a small aspect of enough in poetry comes from small poems about small things.

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

We get the taste and feel of the cold, juicy plums. We get the questions in our own mind – should I really do this to my friend? Should I really take these plums? And we get that feeling of guilty pleasure. That this is enough to make a poem and that these plums were enough for the speaker is somehow both incomprehensible and satisfying at the same time. It is the same with William Carlos Williams’ other famous small poem about the wheelbarrow. Is a wheelbarrow really enough for so much to depend on? Its mere existence in the world, its redness, next to the white of the chickens, is somehow integral, is enough to contemplate, to make a poem.

Sure, there are more complicated poems. But even they end, and thus at some point the writer said, “Enough. It’s done.”

But why should we single out poetry as being sole representative of enough? Other works of art – short stories, novels, paintings, essays (blog posts?) – also eventually end, their creators saying, “Enough.” And what about us humans? Our lives begin and end, and I don’t know if we have a creator per se, but eventually God or our DNA or the Higgs Boson steps in and says, “Enough.” And then we die, but was it enough, after all?

…would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

Maybe the fact that so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow is a reminder that our lives, too, are enough, that somewhere, somehow, something depends upon us, even if we are completely isolated, even if our only companions are chickens.

 

The following picture comes from http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/so-much-depends-upon-a-red-wheel-barrow, a collection of many permutations of this poem.

 

Me and Fibber McGee

The other day Bruce said he was tired of living in a warehouse. I replied that I would love to live in a warehouse; warehouses are huge. Right now we are living in a closet.
                                               
It’s true that our house is small, but that is not the problem. The problem is all the stuff in it. After all, there are plenty of families larger than ours living in single trailers. And then there’s the “tiny house” movement, where people live in places that are only 100 square feet total. Actually, when I first met Bruce, he was living in just such a tiny house, aka a vacation cabin that had been converted to year-round rental use, long before tiny houses became fashionable. I don’t think the place was much more than 100 square feet, certainly no more than 150. And yet it was homey and neat, and he had somehow managed to shelve and hang everything he owned so that the place felt plenty big enough (until I tried to take a shower and kept banging my elbows on the walls). Ironically, now we live in a place about 10 times the size of that cabin, and it feels tiny and crowded.

Why? Well, from where I sit, I see an expensive doll that’s been played with about five times in two years, a bottle of Rit dye with a little left in it that “might come in handy”, two shelves of cookbooks of which we generally use three or four and never crack the others, and a manila envelope decorated by my sister, which used to house some photographs she sent. There are antiques and quasi-antiques thrown up on walls and mantles (most not really arranged, just put). In a corner is a brown pottery crock containing a rarely used metal detector, an old-fashioned rolling mouse stick toy, a yard stick, a couple of wooden “swords”, a “bow” made of a bent stick and string, with a pipe insulation “arrow”, a stick horse, a baton, a feather duster, a watercolored fabric flag on a stick, a long cat toy that’s like a feather duster, a small broom, two walking sticks, a dowel, and a random piece of one-by-one wood. This is just one crock in one corner of the house. Almost every corner looks like this, and not just the corners. The cabinet under the TV is stuffed with blankets and quilts, as is the hall closet. We wouldn’t even need this many blankets if our house became a Red Cross shelter in the next ice storm! (We should get rid of some, yet how do we pick which ones? They are all cozy, and many were gifts; two were Cedar’s bed comforters as she’s grown up, and how can we throw that part of her childhood away?)

Looking into the kitchen, I can see a teddy bear in a pirate kerchief next to my daughter’s placemat on the table. This table gets cleared off periodically, but within 24 hours is always re-covered with newspapers, mail, papers brought home from school, wallets, keys, pocket change, to-do lists, and, obviously, stuffed animals and other toys. Two of the five chairs are generally un-sat-upon in our family of three. They are layered with sweaters, coats, hats, snow pants (yes, already!), and bags. The stairs going up to our bedroom are no better. They hold the newspaper box; brushes, combs, and potions for Cedar’s wild hair; tissues; books to be returned to the library; the pumpkins we painted for Halloween; anything needing to go upstairs; and all the papers we’ve taken off the table to make room for eating.

I have just described maybe 10 percent of the stuff I can see from where I’m sitting in the living room. Just think of the bedrooms; the bathrooms overflowing with magazines (the New Yorker comes every week!), towels, gifts of soap and bath salts (not to mention the litter box and all its accoutrements); and the back office in which we can barely turn around, let alone stand up, because above us is a loft full of, guess what, more STUFF!

We have gotten rid of many things, but still we are drowning in them. Over the past couple of years we have given boxes and boxes of books to the library sale, and recently we threw away crates of old music cassettes and video tapes. These were emotional partings. Those tapes had held the music of our teens and twenties, as well as mixes lovingly made for us by friends. And it’s not that we don’t still own a cassette player, because we do, but we never play tapes anymore, so it was logical to toss them. Unfortunately, logic and emotion don’t mix well. It’s been months since the tapes went to the dump and just last night Bruce was still lamenting their loss.

It’s amazing that we did let go of the tapes. Normally around here, emotion wins. I have never been able to bring myself to throw away my sister’s envelope because she spent so much time decorating it with magic marker shapes. And then there is all my daughter’s art. I have trouble even tossing coloring book pages that took no creativity whatsoever, let alone her actual artwork. And then there are the toys. Even she (a serious pack rat) is finally starting to feel weighed down by the amount of stuff she has, so she proposed getting rid of a children’s Sudoku game. She never plays it, but it has these beautiful little jewel-like animals to place in the squares. She was willing to let it go, amazingly, but I wasn’t. I love those little animals!

Basically, our house is one loooooong paragraph in the story of our life, full of words and sentences that have just enough meaning to resist being tossed aside, but still overwhelming to both reader and writer alike. Natalie Goldberg, in her wonderful book Writing Down the Bones, says that writers should be samurai, cutting away all the fat from our work. I can generally do that with my writing. After all, words come easily; I can always replace them. But how do I replace the Guess Who game, made for three-year-olds, that Cedar and her friend Reuben used to play for hours every day? It has not come off the shelf in ages, except to afford access to something underneath, and yet if it were gone, I think I would feel the hole in my life forever.

I have a feeling we’ll be in this closet for a long time.