tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-107709462024-03-05T08:06:05.440-05:00Dancing Madly BackwardsWriting on writing and teaching writingAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-88500078223987492122015-03-20T18:34:00.000-04:002015-03-20T18:34:06.161-04:00Where do we have room for people we would want to have a conversation with?<br />
<br />
Here is the beginning of my list:<br />
<br />
Hypatia, the scholar from Alexandria<br />
John Wesley Powell, the Civil War soldier, explorer, classifier of Indian languages, conservationist. He walked across Wisconsin when young. <br />
Lieutenant Chamberlin, who defended his position at the Battle of Gettysburg, scholar, politician, and rhetoric professor.<br />
Mark Twain<br />
Malcolm XAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-57638641544847844792014-09-13T13:41:00.000-04:002014-09-13T13:41:14.287-04:00Everything I Was Told About Writing Was Wrong<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHFBLivkv0rY4Zke2Jz_j287U1UnDeS7Iby8CIgYluAcTccvTwo9XlRm2aF8FZPF5LIuXIUaLw3OvGMRZSTenXiI1FTtGjbkGf7VWs2gQkh4pRq2yDOf2pAYPdUEQYicxLClYfvQ/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHFBLivkv0rY4Zke2Jz_j287U1UnDeS7Iby8CIgYluAcTccvTwo9XlRm2aF8FZPF5LIuXIUaLw3OvGMRZSTenXiI1FTtGjbkGf7VWs2gQkh4pRq2yDOf2pAYPdUEQYicxLClYfvQ/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hi, there.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is a pleasure to correspond with you,
writer-a-writer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sometimes tell my
students that no matter what else might make us different (my great height and
musculature, winning smile and trust-fund confidence), what gives us all
authority to participate in this course, as teacher or student, is our ability
to write.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then I backpedal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Our culture has a great many weird ideas of being a “good writer,” and I
should say up front that I’m not sure what that term really means, or even if
it is useful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is a “good” writer someone
who produces numerous books? One who writes in a way that makes you cry out of
emotion? Or is it someone who writes technical materials perfectly?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who gets the prize:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Thomas Jefferson<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Steven Spielberg<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Jonathan Franzen<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Wendy Belcher <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Louise Erdrich<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hard call.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And were
they all always good writers?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Born that
way?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A sort of Calvinistic
predestination for quality prose?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I try to account for all these differences by saying that
good writing arises out of practice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s writing that meets its purpose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Technical, creative, philosophical, reflective, pedagogical writing,
whatever kind of writing, is good when it achieves what it came for. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br /><div class="MsoNormal">
Still, that doesn’t quite satisfy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It just pushes the question back on “what’s a
good purpose”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for me, a good
purpose is like a good lens: it catches and focuses passion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This passion may be in the form of an
argument (scholarship is like this), an elusive plot or character (fiction),
sound-and-image art (poetry), a need to re-see the world (parody and irony).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But
here is the trick to it all, for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Writing daily and regularly <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">brings
forth</b> this passion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The process of
writing turns a heavy inert observation into a question, a problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New questions branch off the line of
inquiry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Poet William Stafford said it
best for me: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">A writer is not so much someone who has something to
say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things
he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Regular practice gives us time to use writing as a way to
find things to say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know an artist who
says to draw well you have to “put some miles on the pen.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know this is contrary to conventional
wisdom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was always told to figure out
what I want to say just write it down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But based on my experience, I suspect that writers do best when they run
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">out</i> of familiar things to say and
talk about, and, while running on fumes, take a leap and try to say something
new, even to you, the author.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is
the process William Stafford (above) seems to be talking about: finding a
process that takes you places, as opposed to clinging tight to familiar facts
or emotions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you think you are a
particularly generous and kind person, you might find that only when you can
write a story with mean-spirited characters do you really start this thing
called “good writing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’ll feel
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will challenge you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Arthur Miller put it this way: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The writer must be in it; he can’t be to one side of
it, ever. He has to be endangered by it. His own attitudes must be
tested by it. The best work that anybody ever writes is the word that is
on the verge of embarrassing him, always.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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So this is what I mean about a level playing field for
writers, no matter if they are teachers or students, experienced or novices,
fiction or technical writers, introverts or extroverts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What matters is that we are willing to be
“endangered” by what we say and share, that we risk being endangered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Good” writers have to reboot daily to find
that challenge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might mean taking on
a new and complex topic, or just practicing using direct language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s easy to write in extremes: desperate,
agonized, cute, florid, impassive or gory. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hard part is being strong and brave enough
to develop a practice that will lead you to, not just proceed from, what you
passionately need to understand.<o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-36875785821335863162013-05-10T11:32:00.002-04:002014-09-14T00:27:28.440-04:00A Writer's Progress BlogIf you're interested in following a writer's daily work on a long nonfiction project, check out <a href="http://tullyvalleyblog.blogspot.com/">http://tullyvalleyblog.blogspot.com</a><br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-64482949503891623972013-02-11T11:40:00.000-05:002013-02-11T11:44:33.825-05:00Gopnick on Music<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEenzKfgfHfkS8_MFKJGLYTsRtVKXYa0gvCSSdGXGGm-luM_MOhFwvxIs3Ck9TpTPeSTIA0SDFqY5D7pkd4fzd3bPEpxiNGklWuYQ1swEA6JXNNIoWmHFF6nWcHRku_ZmqptAhTQ/s1600/Music.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEenzKfgfHfkS8_MFKJGLYTsRtVKXYa0gvCSSdGXGGm-luM_MOhFwvxIs3Ck9TpTPeSTIA0SDFqY5D7pkd4fzd3bPEpxiNGklWuYQ1swEA6JXNNIoWmHFF6nWcHRku_ZmqptAhTQ/s200/Music.png" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="p1">
Thoughts about the Gopnick essay? There is space at the bottom to share your thoughts.</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Here is what I wrote in my email:</div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Thought you all would rock to this essay. </i><i>The center of this attached article for me isn't really all about a new fancy technology for making stereo into 3-D sound, though that's very interesting.</i><i>What's cool to me is that he's led to reflect on how we listen to music, how its meaning changes.</i><i>He shows us what music can mean when it's in the foreground (old school), not the background (as my kids often listen to it, their earbuds hanging from their shoulders, distorting wildly as a thousand buzzing flies). </i><i>He talks as a pianist, as someone who makes music, not just a distracted auditor. In my book that gives him street cred. </i><i>Plus, I own several fancy amplifiers and speakers, and sort of revere hi-fi, and so does he, I think, which makes him my stereo brother. </i><i>Enjoy if you have time.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Here is the essay again:</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2CbtcUJssxTcTRVTHZ3U3dGajQ/edit?usp=sharing">https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2CbtcUJssxTcTRVTHZ3U3dGajQ/edit?usp=sharing</a> </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-36816985453949949342012-07-31T11:24:00.000-04:002012-07-12T21:33:13.835-04:00A Day in the Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have the honor to work with a small group of committed teachers in the <a href="http://cortland.edu/7VWP" target="_blank">Seven Valleys Writing Project </a>who have been thinking hard about their practice, their craft, in a way that's both generous and critical. We've managed, I think, to hit that sweet spot between our impossible aspirations and the easy "business as always" model. Like a carpenter or lawyer, trash collector or dancer, we wake up every day with the goal of accomplishing things. We have a plan, skill, experience and a lot of unknowns, and we are evaluated on our performance. I'd like to pause for a minute to say that, although it seems obvious,our work really is a "performance": we are operating on a tight-wire held on one end by our training and on the other end by the expectations of our students, colleagues, national affiliations, department, collage and discipline.<br />
<br />
I want to talk today about the challenges of their performance. We in Seven Valleys have been talking about ourselves as teachers, about our identity, the one we create through our practice and the one handed to us, and and how these two fit -- and don't fit. Here is my reflective piece:<br />
<br />
I suspect that the image of a teacher -- in my case that of a college writing teacher in a rural New York college -- is skewed, sometimes slightly and sometimes beyond recognition, by conventional images. As a teacher-character, I would never make a compelling character in a movie or novel, I'm afraid, and a sitcom based on my teaching work would be both strange and more sit than com. It's hard even for those who have been to college to get a good snapshot of what a classroom day would look like.<br />
<br />
My character does adhere to some of the conventions: I have a grey beard, I don't iron well or frequently, and sometimes what I am reading is as real to me as the hallways and offices where I spend most of my time. I get lost driving. I have trouble matching colors. I can quote from lots of dead people.<br />
<br />
In the movies, male college teachers teach with the confidence of Moses parting the Red Sea, usually on great literature that gives their students purpose. (There is a sub-genre of the college English teacher cliché where English teachers get disaffected students and heroically convert them to the discourse of high literature, represented always by the august plays of Shakespeare, and in result watching them drop their gangster ways and become deeply civil with each other. In one, Marky Mark makes a rap song out of Romeo and Juliet, gets married to a nice white girl and buys a Subaru. Ok, I may be exaggerating. And he was a high school teacher, but the cultural context still applies). In the movies the teachers are always trying to sleep with their students, get drunk, smoke pot and quote more Shakespeare. I don't really fit well in those images.<br />
<br />
But the reality for a college writing teacher, much like that of a medical doctor, is that we are actually bureaucrats. For every arresting moment, there is the academic equivalent of reading drug interaction warnings or driving around town in the squad car. I sit through endless meetings where we discuss how there is no money for the initiatives the college requires us to perform; writing recommendations; advising students; sending email. The last is the most uninteresting. Though it is technically "writing," my email writing consists of well-crafted five-sentence explanations of a problem and the necessary solution. My latest drama consisted of finding ways to get the registrar to lift the electronic block that kept a certain course from being offered in the fall of 2011 before advising. Finding someone with enough clout to change this situation took me most of a morning; writing the emails took an hour; calling on the phone took fifteen minutes; the followup to my colleagues, the chair, the registrar, the person-with-clout, and the potential teacher took the rest of the afternoon. That's why I take papers home.<br />
<br />
If you made a film of my professional life and stayed in through thick and thin, eventually you would indeed get a picture of me standing, bearded, in front of a class of undergrads with my hand in the classic "holding the grapefruit" position. I do lecture. I sometimes do know more than my students about the history and context of things, and my job in some ways is to make connections between the things my students say and write. In fact, with James Porter in his influential article <a href="http://sullivanfiles.net/WID/assignments/discourse_field/porter_intertextuality_discourse_comm.pdf">"Intertextuality and the Discourse Community,</a>" my job is often to weave together scraps of text--spoken and written--into an intertextual whole. But the point of the class is not--as is often assumed and well described by the two Thomases (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Slow-transformation-practices-Viewpoint-Education/dp/B002UX6Z9K/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1279292909&sr=1-3">Thomas Patterson and Thomas Crumpler) in "Slow Transformation"</a>--to test students on their ability to interpret literature in the way I want them to. In fact--and this is rather radical and a good argument why tenure is needed--I don't teach literature. I love it, I read it, I hope to sometimes write it, but I don't teach it. So what, in the 20% of my time that I actually spend in the classroom, does this writing teacher <i>do?</i><br />
<br />
I teach students how to become writers by having them write, collaborate, revise and read. I help them find things that need to be said about our reading and their lives (and why those texts needed to be written). The whole goal is not to increase their abstract "skills" but to help them learn those skills by writing important things. They don't write great literature. That's an absurd goal -- they haven't lived enough, written enough. But they are absolutely capable of making meaning by assembling and ordering and explaining what they see as important. For instance, recently we've been reading zombie fiction from Max Brooks. That stuff is a lament, a reflection on a fallen world. Me, I see it as stylized grief for the human and natural degradation we gleefully participate in daily. Each of us is becoming less "natural" and less human. But the theory isn't as important as these first-person narratives they write. My students need to take on this voice -- they need to weave their own personal towns, friends, and griefs into these strange post-apocolyptic narratives. In my class, these kids were able to produce some of the most exciting and powerful writing that I've read in years. Several of them said that their zombie pieces were their "best writing ever." Now, I'm sure that won't be true for long. But the fact that they can identify something as their "best ever" implies a trajectory, a developmental arc -- and ability to change and grow, to improve. And that, really, is what I do. I help kids draw an arc of themselves as writers, attending to their "skills," abilities, interests, drive, audience and curiosity. That is what I do -- when I'm not writing emails.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com63tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-12926438990372317242012-07-10T15:51:00.003-04:002012-07-11T11:44:12.049-04:00Stories<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGfg4qgJ1ZnYVXr-XtcCaLl8x7g6d7gP6-YgQuLqvQ2_VcgxJ_NR4pv8nyToQe85CoIDr-JDEVP__qd3P3hxmSaEpcwl7X-2if8DFiUqrIu9Mn7TVvz61UtU5kydCNvCDr0LrziQ/s1600/storiesatwork.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGfg4qgJ1ZnYVXr-XtcCaLl8x7g6d7gP6-YgQuLqvQ2_VcgxJ_NR4pv8nyToQe85CoIDr-JDEVP__qd3P3hxmSaEpcwl7X-2if8DFiUqrIu9Mn7TVvz61UtU5kydCNvCDr0LrziQ/s200/storiesatwork.jpeg" width="198" /></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(In 2010 I was lucky enough to sit in on the Seven Valleys Writing Project's first Open Institute, a six-day intense hands-on technology seminar -- my experience from that first day stays with me and made me think about stories in a new way, which I share below). </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Open Institute was devoted to MAKING: teaching strategies, practical knowledge, connections with other teachers, radical claims about technology, ways to teach writing. What struck me was the deep way the participants, all teachers, were thinking. At one point we were discussing whether speech transcribed was writing — that is, what’s unique about writing, what’s special about it. What does it do that speech (or video) doesn’t do? Lots: it makes the writer’s understanding proceed word by word, creating an extraordinary sensitivity to the meanings of words (or just driving the writer crazy with the complexity and the surging surplus of it all) — their rhymes, allusions, homophones, histories, syntax, etymology, and the like. Walter Ong lists a lot more of this in his articles, and Bob Yagelski picks up on this in his </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">(<a href="http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3220" style="text-decoration: underline;">http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3220</a>).</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> R.D. Walshe also adds some wonderful thoughts in this vein in his "Learning Power of Writing" (English Journal, 1987). </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">What got me enthused from stopping in is that the group was able to grab on to fundamental questions, not just safe ones such as “Does spellcheck make writers lazy” or “How do we protect kids from pornography on the web?” or even "Does Google make us stoopid?" </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Yet what struck me then and still engages me is the discussion about stories. The teachers were saying that classrooms are really story factories. That stories are attempts to make meaning, to find explanations for complexity and to arrive at satisfactory endings. How stories are all we really share when we talk about process, history, development, reflection, and learning. How stories are really the big challenge of FORM: finding a beginning, a buildup, a payoff. I racked my mind looking for a genre that had no narrative. A time-less collection of data with no beginning, middle, or end. I guess painting might not “tell a story” sometimes. An index. A grocery list. But just as any circle, no matter how un-face-like, will become very face-like if you put two eye-dots anywhere in it (try it, you’ll see), any list of more than one item starts to become a story, something that Stanley Fish discovered in his essay “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One."</span></span><br />
<h4>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">So the real issue becomes, for us as teachers and students, what do we want our stories to do? Whatever the answer, I am pretty sure everyone wants their stories to be memorable, sticky (<i>pace</i> Malcolm Gladwell), even transformative and restorative. But what would such a story look like? I can be sure that it’s a story that develops over time and grows up—that is, starts to accumulate a history, the callouses and shine that comes from frequent re-telling. It starts to play a role, the characters become mythologized, the act of telling the story is socially sanctioned (or creates a social situation) that is recognized by others. In other words, our stories start to tell stories about us when they are taken up as a collective, not just by one storyteller in first person. One way to think of the purpose of the classroom is not as a tarmac for developing skills or knowledge, but as a campfire meant to elicit the art of storytelling in teachers and students. If we do this through technology, great. But whatever medium we use, the problems ultimately are of storytelling, not of spellcheck or pornography (though those are the sorts of stories that are more convenient and lurid to tell). This Seven Valleys group was able to push for better stories regarding technology, and I found that thrilling.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">And this is my story of that event.</span></span></h4>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-61539316700115426662012-02-06T09:06:00.001-05:002014-09-13T14:07:58.174-04:00Schematics<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: right; text-autospace: none;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">So I went into the basement the other night, back a long
stretch of weeks ago, before my father died, and started rooting around in the tall
metal stack of junk amps I have there, most of them found at the side of the
road and hauled home in my trunk. I dug for
a while and exhumed this really lovely Kenwood amp, the same kind I used
through college, but this one was my Dad’s and had been shorted it out at the
speaker wires. My dad really never
understood how anything mechanical worked.
His wiring mistake had killed the power supply section. It was powerful its prime (dual mono power amplifiers), rugged and mechanical all the way through (no computerized
functions and twitchy delicacies like that). It was amazingly heavy, an anvil of an amp,
and I rescued it from his house years ago when he moved into assisted
living. When I got home to New York I just
threw it into the basement. Too nice to
toss, too damaged to use, too expensive to repair. So one day, given that I had tons of papers to grade,
recommendations to write, emails to send and bills to pay, pulling the amp out of the basement and
plugging it up — just to test it, purely out of curiosity, won’t take but a
minute — seemed like a sensible choice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I’ve been messing around listening to old music lately,
mostly because of Pandora.com. I can aim
my musical compass at one band or guitarist or song, letting the invisible algorithms
shuffle songs all day long. My wife and I
set it to play on autopilot while we were preparing for Thanksgiving. Cleaning the kitchen was done to a flock of
songs in a Tommy Bolin vibe; the living room was vacuumed to Walter Trout and The
Black Keys; the dining room got Bach and those guys. We argued intensely through a Neko Case playlist
and made up to Peter Green. You cover a
lot of ground that way. Sarah Vowell
says in her book on the Puritans that the Indians of the time – the ones the
Puritans exterminated, of course – were in the habit of calling any excellent
thing “Manitou,” the name of their Higher Power. Any form of excellence would count: A great
mountain lion (they were everywhere back then), a storm, a true speech, surprising
immunity to smallpox – all Manitou. I
think of it as saying “There is spirit moving in there.” So that’s what I heard while we were prepping
for Thanksgiving – a lot of songs with the spirit moving in them. It doesn’t seem a bad way to think of a Higher
Power’s manifestations, as well-wrought tones, not stentorian voices. As displays of power and grace in motion, not
diplomas or assertions. It was fall and
the hillside behind our house was still senescent and the light was weightless and fair, coming
in now at quite an angle, the cusp of the season, the place between two worlds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Tracing my mind over old songs is strange because they were
first embossed in my mind when I was between 14 and 30. I bet the same is true for most of us. I heard somewhere that some species of birds learn
songs not from their DNA, but learn them from their own species – which means
birdsongs would change slowly over time.
Would we even recognize the call of a medieval North American meadowlark,
singing to the oblivious mammoths and saber-toothed tigers? What a delight to even contemplate the tenor
of that ancient accent. We are desperate
to know the lyrics of our own species, that I’m sure of. I remember ritualistically, intently, writing
all the words to Neil Young’s “Needle and the Damage Done” on the side of a
yellow forklift at some low-paying high-ceilinged warehouse when I was eighteen
and working in Chicago. I suspect these
tribal songs perform a biological role, locking us in to a people and a history,
marking us as members of a particular village or tribe. It’s a watermark on
your heart that you can still see if you hold it up to the light just right. Although the songs I know best were in fact
distributed by mega-corporations trying to get rich, it doesn’t matter. It’s still <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my</i> history and it’s still the moment of history that shaped me.
I’ve tried to be cool and avoid looking like I value things that might mark me
as an nostalgic fuddy-duddy, but I don’t care about that any more. I can listen to most old songs much better
than I can listen to, say, the Black Eyed Peas. (I have no idea how one would actually sit down and listen to that music. I think it is meant to play in the background while you aerobicize with weights or dance with drunk girls. Neither of these occasions presented itself recently at my house, so I have to admit to speaking without experience). Traffic’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys</i>,
I can understand. I know how to pay
attention to the pacing and the suffering, their amateurishness and
wonder. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">So I carried the heavy, dark, glinting, arcane, stainless-steel
amp upstairs. I flicked it on, waited
impatiently, and turned it off. Dead as
a doornail. But then it occurred to
me. Though the power amp part was dead, I
really liked the front section of this machine, the part called the "pre-amp" that that controls the volume and tone, the expensive feel
in the massive volume control, so I looked around online and found a post from
someone who was thinking like me. He said
that he was able to open up a similar amp and cut the right wires, solder in a
connection, and pipe the signal to an external power amp. This is just the degree of Macgyvering and
hacking that so appeals to me. Nifty
bypass. When I find a piece of furniture on the side of the road, it becomes mine
only when I can take it apart and rebuild it, repairing it with paint, compression
clamps, solder, glue or solvent. If I
just carry it indoors and set it down, what’s the point? Unless it involves me in some way, why
bother? How can you care about something
if you don’t have a history with it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Finding the schematics for the Kenwood wasn’t easy. People want to sell that sort of electrical information
to you, not give it away for free, so I searched until I found a discussion
list where I caught wind of a Russian website that might still carry the
info. I went to Russia from my living
room, got a password, and started searching for my particular amplifier’s
info. During my time following down
clues on the computer, sitting there as I do for many hours a day at work,
watching the screen, I was thinking about a conversation about music I had with
a friend a few years ago (you can tell that by now this minor project of just
“plugging up the amp” has become a side project). This guy—a good singer, very knowledgeable
about bands, songs, artists, dates, instruments—he and I were listening to
some Wal-Mart-quality blues guitar – no one memorable. The guitarist would make some runs in one
key, then make some runs in another with all the grace of someone setting a
table – fork here, knife there, all correct – but there was no development, no
call and response, no <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">storyline </i>to
the music. The tone was generic, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">statement </i>was muddy even if the notes
were clear and I complained about this to my friend – the guitarist was hitting
the correct notes, but not really <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">saying</i>
anything<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.</i> If he were a writer, we’d say he had no
“voice.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">But my friend, he had no idea what I was talking about. He doubted all this “development” or
“storyline” stuff. He had no concept of the
blues “completing” a statement or coming back to reiterate a point. It was all
just a package of notes, just sound, a notch above noise. He reminded me of my college kids who read a
poem and think the figurative language is just padding to the poem’s Real Point. The guitar, to my friend, was padding, a bridge
back to the singer. So I’m thinking
about this, amazed that this guy didn’t get it, and wondering what he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">did</i> hear when he listened to guitar music. And I’m thinking of the guitarists who can
haunt, celebrate and testify with their guitar, <i>vindicate</i> with their guitar, quote
<i>Scripture</i> with it. They can carry on a
conversation and yet assert the Noble Truth that human suffering is undeniable and demands to be confronted. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What is and what should never be</i> – that is what Mr. Page laments as
eloquently as Mr. Plant. What Dicky Betts and Walter Trout understand.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">So I got the schematics. They were in English, not Russian,
but it hardly mattered. They were still a
maze. They had the same abstract relation
to the actual amplifier wiring as subway maps have to the subway tunnels, but
without labels, colors, or people sitting around to give me advice about taking getting off at the next stop. The schematic diagram was simplified, and, of course, two dimensional. The actual wires dove into and under printed
circuit boards, thorough obscure knobs and switches. They emerged unpredictably as a snake popping
out of a woodpile. But after a while it
started to make some sense. I sought and
found the three wires, right, left and ground, that passed through a gap
between the front and back of the amp, between the controls and the power, three
thin threads that carried the decisions about tone, volume, balance and such to
the primitive cerebellum of the machine, the power amp section. They
were thin as nerves, and I was thrilled to find them. I could almost touch the solution. As I closed in, I noticed how well made this
whole thing was inside – neat and thought through. The source selector was on a
long rod that ended in a delightful device in which a ball bearing rolled inside
a ring under a taut metal tongue; to make the right connection, the bearing
would snap into a little indent in the inside of the ring, held there by the tongue. The ball bearing was a perfect conducting
surface – it was metal, it rolled, so it wouldn’t get gummed up, and it would
be impossible to break. Very cool. Some Japanese guy thought of that while in
the shower one day and probably burst from the shower shouting “Eureka” and running
naked through the streets of Fukuoka. I would
have done the same, I’m pretty sure, but might try shouting “Manitou" because an eloquent jig like that definitely reveals a spirit moving through it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">So on Craigslist (another apostrophe dies) I found this old
Onkyo power amp to take over for my Kenwood’s power amp, a huge monster with
giant VU meters that glow yellow while the huge capacitors are filling and then
changes to green when everything’s ready.
Powerful, yeah, but it’s those old-school meters that I wanted, big as a
billboard and expensive. I called the
guy, talked him down, figured it was hot, and before I went over to buy it, I
decided to give the Kenwood one last chance.
With a pair of little bookshelf speakers, I plugged the amp in and
turned it on. Nothing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">As for my dad’s death, there are rivers of words and plains
of silence to explain that, but in the end, I can’t really. This is what it felt like, though: "nothing
you can say." I feel silly for even
mentioning it since I’m not exactly the first child to lose a parent and
because the event was, any way you look at it, a tiny bit more tragic for my father
than for me. But somewhere in this
narrative he died, and it might well have been here, while I was standing in the
room, in an empty house, listening closely.
Waiting patiently, playing with my childhood toys.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">For at least a minute, nothing. But deep into the second minute, deep inside
the steel box, a loud “ping” sounded. After fiddling with it, the room was
filled with music. There is no way this
can be, but it works [now some weeks later, it still works.] It works!
Wonderful! I suspect it always
worked — I was just never patient enough to wait for it. In my rushing, forcing myself through the
last few years of raising kids and watching my parents decline, buying houses
and falling in love and climbing the ladder at work, I assumed the amp was broken
because at no point could I stand still like that, in an empty house, listening. So I unplug it all, find some stainless steel
polish, Q-tips and a steel wool pad. I
clean it meticulously. It shines like a
wet rock. Ok, I know it might be slightly
wishful thinking, but right now I’m listening to Pink Floyd’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dark Side of the Moon</i> and the detail and
separation are great. Here is what I
think: the past sounds better through this amp than any other. I think: it’s a machine for reverence. Against the backdrop of dark chords I quietly
sing: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Far away across the field /<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The tolling of the iron bell /<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Calls the faithful to their knees /<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">To hear the softly </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">spoken </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> magic </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> spells.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">My memories are getting watery. I think I recall long ago sitting in the
basement room of my parents’ house listening to that song in the middle of a
winter night, my back to the sliding glass doors, thinking about the future and
the past. I seem to remember the pattern
on the couch, the taste of the cigarette, the way the light played on the wall
across from me. As a young man
everything was the future, and the future was opaque. It was like driving into
fog on an unfamiliar road, and you’re late, and you’re not very sure you even want to be there. And then one day, after enough people die and you start to see the mortal
rhythm, after you sense a time signature emerge from the noise, you see that the
latest wave of musicians — those generations at their song — have grown old and
failed to prove themselves immortal. And
you’re surprised! —which itself seems
strange to you, since you saw this coming, even then, even now as you are standing
there in an empty house in one season or another, waiting for some sort of
resolution, for your life to fall into place and start making sense. And do you at that solitary moment sense the
way ahead coming clear, more clear maybe than you want it to be? Do you know when you pass over that
moment? When you hear the spirit moving through it? Is that where the belief starts, when you start to suspect that learning to play the blues, learning to bend your oh-so-suffering
heart to the living day seems not so much a cheap cliché as a schematic for living rigorously? And with joy? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;"></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-60862074963538919462012-02-06T09:00:00.000-05:002013-04-20T20:56:41.377-04:00Gratitude<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
didn’t appear with angels,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
though they’d be nice, all that hubbub</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and buzz and the onerous nod from above.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s more like the flump at the top</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
when the stair runs out of steps</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
before you do, <span style="text-indent: -0.5in;">or the basketball</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
you threw in desperation</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
that hits the rim for three</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
bounces, then finds its way</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
through the simple middle. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
Or it appears this morning,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
unfolding myself from a dark bed</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
like a letter to the day</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
and knowing what to do,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
happy to carry a thermos of coffee</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
to the car and stand under the vague sky,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
stars <span style="text-indent: -0.5in;">letting in light like bullet holes</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
over new snow, over<br />
the car that starts while the heater</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
does its good work. A straw of dark<br />
steam <span style="text-indent: -0.5in;">rises from my chimney </span><br />
<span style="text-indent: -0.5in;">and the ashy light falls down on us</span><br />
<span style="text-indent: -48px;">( & x 1000 </span><span style="text-indent: -0.5in;">sleeping houses), </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="text-indent: -0.5in;">all my brothers and sisters and me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-22183381361044035612011-09-17T07:51:00.001-04:002012-04-23T15:06:46.101-04:00Honeymoon Sharks<br />
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2rqOOBBQoLNePO2gRiEkYXnObMTUVe9E2aiIhf5wjpnYb3U-Yg3mDCTUoO2lAYvxZa0xp6auzeQYuLLU-bn7LXRcVoGsd3wHMvNLGvafQDiRDD0px6LaU1cTdV0gFXIHpvLtNKA/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2rqOOBBQoLNePO2gRiEkYXnObMTUVe9E2aiIhf5wjpnYb3U-Yg3mDCTUoO2lAYvxZa0xp6auzeQYuLLU-bn7LXRcVoGsd3wHMvNLGvafQDiRDD0px6LaU1cTdV0gFXIHpvLtNKA/s320/images.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Honeymoon Sharks</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I learned to swim in Iowa, a skill that’s about as useful
there as knowing how to skin a platypus.
There are no lakes in Iowa, or if there are, everyone assiduously avoids
talking about them. I suspect that’s
because you can’t plow or plant a lake, and as we all know, Iowa is crops. Lakes are anomalies and appear on their maps as large
blank wet useless blotches. I’m not sure
they are even named. Just: blotch, as if someone set a wet coffee cup on your new oak table. Lakes are a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">faux pas</i> in all that rich
cropland. A true Iowan's attitude is: Yes, it happened. Now what,
really, is there for a person to say about it?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was wrong about all that, about the problem with lakes.
The main reason we eschew lakes, I came to realize on summer evening in
1975, walking out of the theater, clutching a strangled box of popcorn with
both terrified hands, is that in water, as the movie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jaws</i> had just amply proved, is where large, really large, really <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really</i> large hungry animals can and
routinely do swim up from the unnamable dark grainy depths to eat people. I can still feel on my skin the shift of
temperature a swimmer must realize as cooler water is pulled up behind some
great carnivore. I can picture the glimpse of the line of fin or tooth just
under the rippling surface. I can enter
the realization that you are going to die in stereo -- both by being pulled
under the surface gripped by the creature’s enormous teeth until you drown <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as well as</i> being simultaneously torn
limb from limb in water so deep there is not even enough light to see your own blood. This is all scary, but the
final words in your head would be “Gee, I could have lived <i>if I had only stayed
on land</i>.” But you chose instead to sit
there, bobbing up and down like a cork or a worm on a hook, your little legs
dangling down and kicking feebly. No matter
what horror you feel, there is no way can you climb on top of the waves, no way
to outswim this cylinder of muscle that is squeezing its way through the water
to your defenseless thigh. You’re screwed. Rather than learning to drive a
tractor, you chose swimming lessons. Great
choice, white boy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For me, this image slowly hardened into one small lesson: don’t swim
in the ocean. Lakes, streams, and even
bathtubs were suspect, but swimming in the ocean was just asking for it. I never looked at this very hard. The choice between violent wet death and a long dry
life seemed pretty stark and simple. Furthermore,
if you make it a rule never to swim in the ocean and you live in Iowa, there’s
not much to lose. As I grew older,
though, I found that not all the things that scared the bejeesus out of me were
geographically sequestered. Getting
married, for instance, made me pale with anxiety for about a decade. Raising
kids, and, later, getting divorced took a long time to accept as part of my path. I drew it out as long as I
could, with agonizing slowness. I never
was one to plunge into something new. It
took me thirty years to quit partying, which is the pace of a glacier,
especially given the amount of evidence I had to work with that it was <i>time to stop</i>. But the biggest challenge, even bigger than
eating sushi for the first time or dancing in public, was getting remarried. I had met a woman I couldn’t ignore, one who
was a lot less <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cautious</i> than I was,
and a lot less interested in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">figuring it
all out</i> than I am, and I found that delightful. After eight years of courtship, we had moved
in together, mixed our books together (a shockingly intimate gesture, it
turns out), and even gotten married. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am
standing on the lip of a ship with my huge black foot fins bouncing inches
above the cold Pacific ocean. I’m wearing a wetsuit that makes me look like a
seal and my face is crammed into an scratched and translucent snorkel mask. Below me the water is broken into loose
triangles, like pieces of pie, and we’re surging up and down. I’m the next-to-last passenger on the boat
but for my new wife, and I think how ironic and irresistible a story it would
be if we were eaten by a great white shark on our honeymoon. I reflect back on our wedding presents, some
still unwrapped, our thank-you cards just begun, her wedding dress still hung
up in our closet. Everyone would say
what a great wedding it was and someone would give all my vinyl records to my
brother, who would cry a little and probably play Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t
Fear the Reaper” really really loud in his own little cathartic ritual. Everyone would be so sad.
But before I can really complete this fantasy, a guy pops out of the
water and yells to the first mate SHARK!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I take a small step back from the
edge. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Soon, the boat is full of parents
and kids, honeymooners and tourists, all talking but also scanning the water,
looking for the thin line of a fin or tooth just under the water, or breaking through
the water, or a dark shadow travelling under the boat, perhaps nudging it just
a little, enough to make the bell in the crow’s nest ring once or twice. We all know the narrative. We all saw the movie, and some of us had
expected this all along.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To his
credit, the first made suited up and jumped into the suspect water. I waved goodbye and wondered who would get
his vinyl records. I was also proud of
him, doing his job like that. When he
finally emerged, he was ecstatic. “It’s
a Thresher Shark,” he exclaimed. “You
never see them! It’s got to be four feet long! I haven’t seen one in years!” At
some level, I shared his excitement. It
had been a long time since I had seen a Thresher Shark – my whole life, in
fact. But at another level, I thought he
was being careful to leave out some important information. “Tell me,” I said to him quietly, when he returned alive to the deck. I leaned in so as not
to embarrass him or cause him to lie if he didn’t want to share this
information with the others onboard, “Have you ever heard of anyone, anywhere,
<i>ever</i> being hurt by one of these sharks?”
He paused just a second and said “Nope.” I looked back at my wife, and
at the one other guy in the water who seemed as scared as I was, but kept
trying to convince his wife to jump in as a way to conceal his own
nervousness. “That’s good enough for
me,” I said. And I jumped.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s hard
to breathe. The mask blocks your nose.
The snorkel is full of water and when you come to the surface you have to blow all that water out, not inhale, it’s unnatural, you desperately want to
look down to see the shark coming up at you but you also want to look up to see
where the heck the boat is. You’re a lot
further away than you expected. There is
a forest of kelp here, leaves sliding across your goggles. Breathe.
Breathe – you can hear your breath in the tube. Words "esophagus" and "trachea" come to mind, as
do works such as "blood," "calm," "swim," and "air." The splash behind you is your wife -- you hope -- and when you whirl around you see she’s having trouble with the mask, can’t make it work, doesn’t breathe
right. You bob alongside of her and wait
for her to figure it out, your four legs dangling down, mindful that you are ignoring
everything below you, and you wait to feel the rush of cold water that you’re
sure precedes the inevitable attack. Her hair is tangled up in the fittings. You wait.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s still tangled up and she tells you to go
on, but you wait more and you can see that she is grateful. When it’s worked out, you both turn your
faces to the depths and immediately lose track of each other, watching instead
the desultory schools of bright yellow fish that wander like strange
goldfinches in the undulating clumps of kelp.
The yellow fish give way to blue ones, bright as flowers or jewels, and
they seem neither afraid nor inattentive.
I realize, suddenly, that I’m in a forest, at the very top, and the
water is clear all the way down, 30, 40, 60 feet to giant rocks that have
rolled out of the hills from the nearby cliffsides and ended up here eons ago,
now covered with green and yellow plants I can’t name and have never seen
before. The school of blue fish slip silently and frictionlessly along the
bottom. I see green mottled fish that
look like the mottled green clouds before a storm -- “maculate,” I think they
call it. The fear of the shark has
faded. I’m in an ancient forest of
water-trees, staring down at the wild animals, and they don’t care. I’m starting to regret, just a little bit and
in the abstract, not seeing the shark.
Maybe just a glimpse of it as it shot out of this area toward deeper
water. Or the manta rays they say
scuttle along the bottom of these waters or even, maybe, just saying, a whale,
for there are supposed to be whales all over around here, and I’d like to see one,
just for a moment, lying on its side, sliding by, making me feel how light and
insubstantial my body is in the water, how unprotected all these animals are, and
because of that, how beautiful. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-83327354676203041322011-09-08T13:16:00.000-04:002011-12-18T23:51:59.351-05:00What I do for a living and why I do it<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Today was the my college's first day for Tuesday/Thursday classes, and I went in excited after the summer, full of more ideas for our first day than you could shake a stick at. I am one of the few people I know who can honestly say he has "good work." I know what I want to do, I know what the challenges are, I know what not to waste my time on, and I know what a good risk feels like. But what puzzles me is something simple: how is it that my understanding of what I do and others' understand is so very different? Or to put it in another way, what sorts of assumptions do my students and peers have about what I do that don't match up to my own experience? Even more simply: why do people have such odd ideas about this job?<br /><br />First of all, I should come clean and admit that I'm a writing teacher. I might be called a "comp" teacher when I teach comp, a "tech" teacher when I teach technical writing, or a "creative writing" teacher when I teach that. For each role there are some subtle differences in the picture. The creative writing teacher might be expected to elicit people expressing their inner selves, a sort of Dr. Phil with a degree in English. A tech writer might be expected to teach one rigorous and methodical quiver of invariant forms for gaining Success in the Workplace, the holy grail. And on. Each role has its own costume and clichés.</span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />But as a writing teacher, the biggest umbrella, I think of myself as a rhetorician.</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What's that? Since "rhetoric" usually means showy style, the opposite of substance, I should take a minute to defend the choice of the word "rhetoric." It doesn't mean bullshitting people, nor does it mean tricking them, being self-serving, or being insincere. Plato comes out and condemns rhetoric for these things (and implies them) in such dialogues as the </span><a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Gorgias</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">, the </span><a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Phaedrus</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">, and</span><a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/seventh_letter.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The Seventh Letter</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">, and he was not exactly a fuzzy thinker, so there is a lot of momentum to this assumption. Today it is almost impossible to use the word "rhetoric" without it carrying a pejorative spin, as in "Johnny told the truth, but Billy just used rhetoric." Like the words "liberal" or "intellectual," it's difficult to say what you mean when you use these words.</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">But the tradition and the potential for useful meaning is such that I think "rhetoric" is a word worth using. For me, rhetoric, straight from Plato on down, implies a love/hate affair with our own power to use language. It's a frightening thing when you think about it to realize that we as humans live in a world that is </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">more</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> made up of the words that people use together, oral and written, than the physical world itself. We live in a world of signs, surrounded by human sounds and sights. If someone says something particularly nasty to you, probably that will be as real as (or more so) than the sting of a bee. It's in skillful language that the Hitlers and the Ghandis galvanize great change in huge populations. Skillful use of language is volatile. These folks are powerful. Rhetoric -- and here I'm thinking of it as "the ability to get others to take you seriously" -- is dangerous. </span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It's also natural. We can't avoid our attempts to get others to take us seriously. My kids were literally </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">born </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">with the skills and desire to get their mother and me to take them seriously. Still are! When they are young, rhetoric is all about making sure the self is fed, clothed, and loved. Without getting to far afield, it seems to me that rhetoric is also about giving love, too, as that seems to be a fundamental human need (not just a nice thing to do). </span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So if rhetoric begins as persuading people to take you seriously, that has two big implications. First, it seems pretty selfish. Getting humans to do what you want (using that unique system, human language) is an interesting, challenging, endlessly engaging activity, but it has little to do with their well being. It's all about maintaining and increasing your individual capital. In this, rhetoric is power, like muscle power or military power, to get what you want (though of course you can get what you want by cooperating with others, too, the motive is the same). What do we do about this rhetorical selfishness? Is there room to look at motives and ethics with rhetoric, or is it all manipulation? Is teaching kids "rhetorical" skills the most crass sort of education?</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Secondly, if rhetoric is about getting people to take you seriously, what sorts of things do you want to get people to consider? That is, how do you know what you want (even when you want it for others) is a good thing? How do you choose your battles? How do you choose your words? </span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">These are not new questions. Plato asked most of them, and there are entire continents of interesting stuff done in the 20th century that revived these questions [need bibliographical link to starting places here]. What this implies for me is that 1) rhetoric can be deliberately developed through education. 2) In fact, education IS rhetorical in several senses, and it is rhetoric that brings up these questions about ethics, motive, and judgment 2) writing is where the rubber meets the road in questions about expression, learning, developing a concept, etc.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-48765590054695486192010-10-24T17:56:00.003-04:002012-07-11T09:39:39.499-04:00Old Month, New Place<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">September: Wrong to call it timid,<br />
I remind myself, shambling<br />
into work. More of an alertness<br />
reflected in the bright black eye<br />
of starlings. Flocks massive and light<br />
in the sumac at the edge of the lawn.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Or Tibetan prayer flags attentive<br />
to the smallest change in breath<br />
coming now out of the door<br />
labeled north. I can see<br />
the whole valley as the leaves<br />
give up. Morning is dark. The heart<br />
crumples and expands<br />
like a paper bag.<br />
It wakes in a dark room, </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">my September body,<br />
with light trickling in</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">the windows of my eyes.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-60459511655295768502010-09-28T07:49:00.011-04:002010-09-28T15:19:15.958-04:00HEAT<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_zxOw2jqWSTzeGhJHERlxXsUjrFWPKpxZf7xI3CI453tCi3dNvRzgFWHbxrvEg8C0XzwgYAnRAaCgFXjVyoQ52amzAf1iBr_vETQO9DP7TyEiWseWyeChfNTlMgCLJfDEVK1G1A/s1600/images-1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_zxOw2jqWSTzeGhJHERlxXsUjrFWPKpxZf7xI3CI453tCi3dNvRzgFWHbxrvEg8C0XzwgYAnRAaCgFXjVyoQ52amzAf1iBr_vETQO9DP7TyEiWseWyeChfNTlMgCLJfDEVK1G1A/s200/images-1.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Got it going, the 100,000 BTU furnace. Something primal there. Saying HEAT </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">to the cold, saying NOT HERE to the phlegmatic winter. Watched them set the tank full of propane with their small crane. A beluga whale full of liquid gas explosive. It is smaller than I thought, and I am actually rather fond of it, sitting like a good dog next to the storage shed. I could take a picture, but there are so many dumb details of the actual reality that a photograph would distract you with: errant blackberry branches, bits of wood, irrelevent tufts of grass, shanks of broken pipe. If I were to </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">paint </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the scene of tank-and-shed I would clean it up by running it through my consciousness, and that would organize the scene, simplify it. Maybe attention is like an ore, needing to be refined and tempered. It takes a long time to learn to do that, and then it gets called something voodoo like art or skill or expertise or taste or wisdom. Observing simply and simply observing is an accomplishment. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <br />
All this is to say that I know I’m a bit strange in my enthusiasms. Rather German, perhaps. The register boots are new and when you look down the grates you can see light—reflecting back from the shiny new tin. The boots are in turn connected to new big pipes, also shiny, running in parallel between the joists. They are connected to square heat runs from which the runs sprout. The whole thing is sort of like a very shiny beetle with pipe-like appendages extended everywhere. The entire assembly links up to the furnace, of course, and it’s a very good furnace. When it’s on, you can barely hear it, and it sucks new air through a 4 inch straw from outside and vents through an identical pipe. It’s amazingly efficient at putting heat into the air, leaving none to slop around, so the exhaust can run through PVC pipe (!) to the outside. The blower ramps up very slowly and then, at eight minutes, kicks in to high power, all very quiet, though the force is so strong it actually blew one of unscrewed register grates off the wall upstairs to clatter into the hallway and scare the kids. <br />
<br />
I enjoyed that very much.<br />
<br />
So we have heat now, very fancy, state of the art, but down in the basement we also have an old inefficient wood-burning stove that will, if you keep it stoked, heat the entire house and it smells good – though consuming literally tons of wood and creating piles of ash. I’m going to use it this winter. I look forward to overcast days down in my newly created high-ceilinged basement, six-foot florescent lights and 1,000,000 lumens falling from between the free joists, banks of screws, bolts, caps, pipes, boards, nails, screws, springs, washers, and tools all on one wall, books on the other, a chair, a table saw, a big-ass vice bolted to a sturdy workbench, fire in the woodstove, and all around me the silent and odorless backup of propane heat, thrumming through the pipes over my head, running heat to my family above me while I work on interesting solutions to interesting problems written in wood and wire (and paper). Re-threading, leveling, connecting. Breaking things down and making things coherent. There is a certain joy in that, leaning against all that is insubstantial. </span> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-65673617241888329892010-09-27T12:05:00.018-04:002010-10-01T21:06:56.146-04:00Wheel inside a Wheel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfQ5WzXsl9BZjjDauZAiTQ8ge0X7k-hXYMsZ8SQXaebS0pQgMCXq2_RjuYQ4fmWuJVf0uPNi9BseJ_-dRklC4YnWFNE_M91AcRYIfyTXVh9WewovFlVjf6Ne39rEPS-NDYB9zGAA/s1600/images-2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfQ5WzXsl9BZjjDauZAiTQ8ge0X7k-hXYMsZ8SQXaebS0pQgMCXq2_RjuYQ4fmWuJVf0uPNi9BseJ_-dRklC4YnWFNE_M91AcRYIfyTXVh9WewovFlVjf6Ne39rEPS-NDYB9zGAA/s200/images-2.jpeg" width="168" /></a></div>This morning I parked my car in the lot and got out into a light rain. Nothing surprising. The sky was low and the asphalt was riddled with dots. In contrast to the car’s coffee and exhaust, the parking lot, near a stand of trees, was fresh and sharp, wet and cold. Fall in the air and the same sort of feeling that drives the geese to array themselves and travel hit me as it does every year. Must be the slant of light, the cold, the smell of autumnal weeds fizzing at the margins of fields and yards, the colors: raspberry and yellowpurplecrimson, the sort of colors that make me think of dyed wool and medieval celebrations (not sure where that last one comes from). Doesn’t matter. At my age there is a certain resonance to fall that gets deeper every year. The urge to travel, to find horizons, to build fences and fires. Maybe I can blame it all on my pituitary gland. Circadian rhythm. The earth is a drum.<br />
<br />
And as I get out of the car I’m thinking vaguely of Yeats’ political theory about the gyres, two intersecting spirals that represent the apposition and opposition of everything, that explain history and my place in it. I think it’s cool Yeats found an image, a figure, an emblem to crystallize his feelings about growing older in troubled times and the poet’s role in that turmoil. Such a literate mind at work, it invents an ideogram.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVr7u4BzUAdtYTQkVbDbKKPvs0rbOgMW3QKFReEDWa0MWeW6qPjEDwtJI38PEffU8T-2RR5vV-RuBkwMdA2zr7Tsz2jDteHvILzlmTN4EHTdA2WV8qVdGYEmbDazg3iYG186RXyQ/s1600/hailfire-overall.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5521582129770627634" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVr7u4BzUAdtYTQkVbDbKKPvs0rbOgMW3QKFReEDWa0MWeW6qPjEDwtJI38PEffU8T-2RR5vV-RuBkwMdA2zr7Tsz2jDteHvILzlmTN4EHTdA2WV8qVdGYEmbDazg3iYG186RXyQ/s200/hailfire-overall.jpg" style="cursor: move; float: left; height: 150px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 200px;" /></a>My ideogram is a wheel inside a wheel inside a wheel. These appear in clocks and car transmissions as far as I know. There is a complicated mathematics to the synchronized wheels, as any kid using a Spirograph can sense, but my feeling as I get older is that there are many, many wheels, maybe an infinite number, that all spiral, spin, and revolve. At times, a master wheel – in this case, the seasons – pulls the contraption around to a particular notch and the inner and outer wheels turn madly on their frictionless pivots in response, compensating and adjusting. So the wheels today are being 50, fall, the beginning of the day, the end of rain, the opening up of a new part of my heart work in my new house, the death of my acquaintance Matty, the end of the book, and the like. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinvNTT7jG-YkdDjezBnLr0ORKgvU3UkPM26Z10g_xe5ZS8P_Lx71pyIpidVGPYwE5aIKlComddNLcZbAGqrj4OeH_K9ftFv3mR9QyE6viidLWELO-JrPh-0IlJzRRPxNFCLcpWwQ/s1600/math-Z-spec-formula-DHD.gif" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5521582360590174866" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinvNTT7jG-YkdDjezBnLr0ORKgvU3UkPM26Z10g_xe5ZS8P_Lx71pyIpidVGPYwE5aIKlComddNLcZbAGqrj4OeH_K9ftFv3mR9QyE6viidLWELO-JrPh-0IlJzRRPxNFCLcpWwQ/s200/math-Z-spec-formula-DHD.gif" style="float: right; height: 96px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; width: 200px;" /></a>This entire system can be ported to language, where rhymes (slant, rich, and full) stand for the various synchronicities that the wheels carry. Where characters and their motives are the distances between stars. Where genres are the toothy wheels. (Caution: Extreme number crunching needed to communicate between these two systems. See the formula at the right).<br />
<br />
Regardless of the system, today I felt in the balance. I remember learning to ride a bike and realizing that it’s not in the hands and head, it’s in the butt. You drive with your ass. It’s correcting on the fly, not pointing, stiff, white, and vector-like, at the end of the driveway. It’s pointing and cycling, spinning and wobbling. Balance is dynamic. Look again at the formula above. It’s obvious.<br />
<br />
Sometimes in poems there is attempt to talk about the plentitude of accepting what’s around us. I remember the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young lyric “Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice / But to carry on” or the poems of Stevens, and I found it again recently in a poem from a friend of mine, Brian Fay:<br />
<br />
The sun shines over the bare branches of trees<br />
unconcerned with autumn, unafraid of the cold winter,<br />
focused only on buds, blossoms,<br />
and cool green leaves in all this sunlight.<br />
<br />
So for me, this morning, there was a moment when the constellations aligned. When my age was exactly the time of year, of day, of the decade, of my waking hours. <br />
<br />
Locking the car, I hefted my books and walked inside.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-82268078891168513092010-07-20T20:40:00.010-04:002013-06-15T07:55:17.210-04:00White Geese<div style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Vu88SEYiHy2QbtrFpN-L8nOacsUMiYn8HNwBvZ6p50HSAD40aBM2_DRQF7p9ias7DbBgtGZxZT_notKlPXz17aCIztryIlF-9YW8rgeAkc_MBMY1y7cnTrFPVYvfnxOXyX1B9w/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Vu88SEYiHy2QbtrFpN-L8nOacsUMiYn8HNwBvZ6p50HSAD40aBM2_DRQF7p9ias7DbBgtGZxZT_notKlPXz17aCIztryIlF-9YW8rgeAkc_MBMY1y7cnTrFPVYvfnxOXyX1B9w/s200/images.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">I</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">n the beginning, just the barn. The barn and the old house, left there by the absent owners, a broken and fascinating thing, an artifact lit by bare bulbs over a floor my father forbids us to walk across. <i>You might fall through.</i> Falling </span></span></span></b></i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">through </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">a floor is absurd. Behind the kitchen sink, outside the window there, a high pile of cans and weeds, broken glass and blue-bottle flies, tall nettles, wild hemp and ragweed grown over my head, a forest during the day, stalks thick as my arm. </span></span></span></span></b></i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">They never spoke. Or I don’t remember them speaking. My father rented a dumpster and worked hard in the way parents do, invisibly, on the periphery of a child’s awareness. My mother stayed home, I think. I spent most of my time in the field of the new farm, tracking down a litter of rabbits who died one by one in my bedroom later. I would also walk down to the fence where the bull used to kill people. Or that's what they say. Down the way a ways was a thin vein of water and I followed the creek, oblivious to the mosquitoes, hoping to get ticks I could pull out of my scalp when I got home.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It was weeks we drove out to work around the abandoned farm, pulling up nettles and bed springs, rotted clothing and chicken bones, plows and gears and cardoors, milk jugs and tin pans burnt thru. Manure three feet deep in the barbed square paddock where they cows had been kept and ignored until they starved was fuel for the weeds that grew madly there, their enthusiasm and joy arching over the kid paths we created. My parents kept working silently on the cinderblocks and broken chairs, and we kept getting warned about exploring the dilapidated house until one night my father drove off with a red tin can of gas in the trunk of his Dodge Dart and that evening the whole farmhouse—the bare lightbulbs, the pornography stuffed in the walls, the swaybacked floors, the whole flimsy tinderbox of it all went up in a scorch of fumes and fire and light and burned for three days even after the tornados and rain came. He said teenagers in a white car did it, and I believe him. The heat made the air ripple hard, it radiated too hot to stare at even through the carwindows and you had to turn your head as if seeing something shameful.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">My parents separated and then got back together and she said her nose broke from tripping on a toy or a chair. And we went back to the farm to continue working, my mom more gone this time but me left with new pants striped all the way to the ends of the b<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ell-bottoms but they are the wrong size but they fit. We are ported to Bible camp where we learn how to believe </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and about true faith. We learn </span></span><span style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">about Muslims </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img height="20px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Lq57-8KKLioNTVhVh-EYcQYv3WDW13V4ihuxvAoFbqW9SibAr7rDupbtxUwXzE9GTJF6ym-Lj_DT3Nf_0Oh9KPI_4AZkVGb0bL3Y3h3Gd6L_ioeyOA" width="20px;" /> and Jesus <img height="20px;" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/GBsxwSi_7i0w8KyRR-888gsl90Pxu8yL3m1xGa0TTwl9CCcYpayTH-Nso6Pl50eKi0cyurLu7T9qhH14IGvKq7jMRix-VkFeA5j_KVL2g0SGMTZuXw" width="20px;" /> </span></span><span id="internal-source-marker_0.7370744929648936" style="text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and memorize daily verses for a prize at the end -- a framed picture of Jesus -- and I find </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">thrilled smile and there may be a picture of skinny me</span> somewhere smiling with long hair and striped jeans with Jesus looking sidewise at me over my head in a box in some little Iowa church in Altoona or Napier or Nevada or Boone, but I’m pretty sure there is no way to find it, I hear the whole town was sucked up in a tornado, the windbreak poplars and the buildings and mobile homes and the spare junk we leave lying around.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">That</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> tornado stepped around our farm. Th</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">e barn stood empty, that is what we were told by the former owners. There are many more days of cutting and hauling, trees to cut up. Not till long after dad he bought the place do we finally fight down the debris and underbrush and my dad he is at the barn door, exploring, and opens the door and inside he is horrified, he sees a dozen white geese penned up for weeks <i>no water no food </i>burst out of the half door screaming for water </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><i>this is what I saw</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> and clamor down to the creek there<i> </i></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><i>this is what I remembe</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><i>r</i> and drink and flutter and crash about<i> </i></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><i>I saw this </i></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">they have been there all along weeks now </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><i>this is true</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, we ignored them, our derogation, terrible to contemplate and I feel inside what it means to be captive and the barn is empty finally, the door hanging open and blackness inside and the geese escaping down the creekbed, white bodies smudging the creekbed and for years the dreams that burst out late at night in the summer that the white geese are penned and waiting for me, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">still there, </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">and I should do something but it’s too late, should have rescued them, should have opened the door to something I did not yet know how to name.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-73170910474399886932010-07-16T11:04:00.001-04:002010-09-27T09:40:21.860-04:00Powerlines / Endicott / rhetoric<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">Power</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">lines</span></span></p><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 96px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE-ouRP8_QxFGMZbnQf21OOrF3l8DIHfgAU7xMDa2n9BwS0SMrAv-QrGjrEGommvJBfVh-yZvvhAyfOeLHk4EneOMabeHkWnD9fIsVhZBNFtVD1UrbK9aNQFiSq3OAYiq4KUvcaQ/s200/images.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494523577697687042" /><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">T</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">he powerlines up above the place where I'm staying in </span></span><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&q=endicott,+NY&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF8&split=0&gl=us&ei=1uknSr6qOabAMvOkzbUF&z=13&iwloc=A"><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:nonecolor:#0011ED;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">Endicott, NY</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';"> is one of those torn up places that give off an odd mix of sense of desperation and possibility. You know the sort of place: wheel ruts dug deep in the clay from stuck jeeps, small pools of tepid water, green bursts of opportunistic weeds surging up in the margins. It's the sort of place that makes you want to toss your beer bottles against rocks or the horizon. The sort of place that attracts teenagers and pigeons. It’s a broken place where anything can happen. And it’s hard for the cops to get to.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">I always appreciated such places for their moon-like beauty. My S.O. said she once went up to these same powerlines and punched a guy in the face when he dared her. Then he dared her again and she hit him again. I guess he hadn't worked out the nuances of flirting quite yet. She's not a teenager now, so that must have been...a long time ago. But the powerlines haven’t changed much, she says. I suspect it’s one of those permanently scarred places that will always elicit a sense of poverty so powerfully that it almost makes you giddy. It elicits blunt force trauma. I imagine my S.O. and this guy taunting each other near the fence at the top that surrounding the buzzing electrical exchange station. It hogs the best view, but you can stand with your back to it and look down on the whole city to see the distant, symmetrically carved hillsides that slope down to the rivers like the keels of capsized boats. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">This must have been an </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">invigorating</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';"> place a hundred years ago. Imagine overlooking the confluence of the Chenango and the Susquehanna rivers and the long undulating wooded valley they muscle through. The possiblity! The exotic distances brought close! The fecundity of 10,000 trees! <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">It's still beautiful here though it's a rust-belt city that’s been exploited for jobs, polluted, and ditched. We have a brownfield down the hill from here where IBM dumped </span></span><a href="http://www.vhl.org/newsletter/vhl2000/00antric.php"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">trichlorethylene</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';"> for years, creating a carcinogenic plume under the city. The </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">New York Times</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';"> says the </span></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/nyregion/04mbrfs-ibm.html"><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:nonecolor:#0011ED;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">case</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';"> is now to the Supreme Court, but regardless of what happens there, people aren't going to move. Where do you go? Hawaii? <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">It's sort of numbing to see how the place has been torn up and how people have been treated. We’ve lost a sense of possibility here, of futurity. It's hard to imagine this place supporting people (much less indigenous creatures and forests) in the future. My dad says that Michigan, where he grew up, used to be a vast woodland; now it's mostly an interstate with some nice ranch-style houses. Oh, and there's Flint and Detroit, making the pollution of Endicott and Love Canal look like nothing. Yikes. Now that GM is bankrupt and they've closed the plants in MI (highest unemployment in the nation, the web tells me), I suspect powerlines all across that state will be teeming with teens.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">It's hard to overestimate the weight of the American Dream when it breeches and capsizes on a city. Cortland, where I teach, has been waterboarded for years as various industries left or died (Smith Corona and Corning Glass chief among them). Here we have the abdication of IBM, Endicott-Johnson shoes, and many others. The effect is not only on specific companies and the network of tangential organizations connected to those companies (restaurants, parts suppliers, public works projects, schools and on and on), but it's felt in the heart as well. When we lose communities and neighborhoods, it's vastly alienating. It tends to strip those who remain of any sense of shared enterprise. Thus there's no speed bump that slows your thinking as you sit in your car contemplating the erection of yet another Walmart in the last green lot left. It doesn't matter anymore. The fact that what seems like a good idea today will be a tax-barren empty shell in 20 years literally isn’t conceivable.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">As the economy dies down, daily life is eventually lit only by the blue flickering of our own individual desires, which sometimes can be stoked enough to illuminate our immediate family, sometimes not even that. When you're only worried about surviving day to day, you can’t notice ugliness of culture, architecture or food. When you're in it for yourself, you lose your senses. We become </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">inured</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';"> to the needs of others and the inner lives of other people. People and events that stand outside our lifetime fade like photographs and atrophy. Family disappears from our stories. We lose a sense of our grandkids and great grandparents. Reviving receding phantoms is a hard sell for a culture that has trouble meeting the demands even a short book represents to the imagination, for a culture that can’t picture what hundreds of gallons of trichlorethylene does for generations of kids in your hometown.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">Sometimes I think we're spiders. We're in a web, a net of relations that ties us together in various forms of cooperation, even in the midst of competition. What's easy to forget when things are going "well" (that is, when we can ignore the fact that everything changes), we can also ignore that we depend on each other. The irony of a working system is that the very systemicity that gives it identity tends to fade from view, the way a novel or movie can lose its material immediacy when we're caught up in it. It's ironic when that happens, but it's also unreal. Problems bring us back to our fundamental interrelation (</span></span><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:nonecolor:#0011ED;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=bEo8HlSCodcC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=kenneth+burke+cooperation+war&source=bl&ots=5cobbZ31xC&sig=R-uCaHP7Dgpts0zqOP-uRrZ3OAc&hl=en&ei=kuEnSpOwM5rKMpWJ8YgF&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2">Kenneth Burke</a> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">talks about this irony in the context of war). <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">So I'm up at the powerlines that day, stone cold sober but not bitter. Looking at the city I see a lot of desperation. I told a friend once that driving into Cortland (also in central New York) and seeing the thick opaque plastic over the house windows gives me a feeling like I just took a big hit off a cigarette. The depressing rush. The wave in the pit of the stomach. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">So we tend in teaching to be too territorial. We are so busy building careers and speciality knowledge that it's hard to think big, to solve real-world problems. This is hardly a new complaint, but it's newly acute for me. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">The discipline of rhetoric, though, is a pretty strong solvent, and hard to keep walled up in the academy. It was never meant to be an academic discipline, anyway--it kept failing to meet the standards of rigor and rarity that astronomy or geometry might. Rhetoric is cross-disciplinary, as is a student’s experience. We don’t have enough models for using rhetoric is high school or across disciplines, though I was thrilled to read </span></span><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:nonecolor:#0011ED;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Air-Steven-Johnson/dp/1594488525/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244129002&sr=1-1">Steven Johnson's new book</a> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">and hear him discuss <b>ecology</b> as a cross-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary science, using insights from physics to farming, a practical and somewhat transgressive move discussed also by Jim Zebroski ("Rewriting Composition as a Postmodern Discipline: Transforming the Research/Teaching Dichotomy." Ronald and Roskelly. 168-182). What are the problems that we face, and how can students pull from their education to address the problems of their lives? I'm the first to say that in some ways we adults know more than kids do about what might be a valuable resource, so I'd argue that Shakespeare, as "useless" as it seems, is in fact useful for solving problems of understanding character and developing a sense of the beautiful and eloquent--ditto physics. But we each have a responsibility (literally response-ability) to find our own topics and audiences. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">To look down from the powerlines and see, with "</span></span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Drive/dp/B00137GALM/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1279291046&sr=8-7"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">open eyes and open hands</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">" the city one lives in can be terrifying. I'd rather get hit in the face (twice!) than flirt with the idea. But kids know what hurts and deserve a sense of interconnection and promise. They deserve a chance to tell their stories. Schools can give this to them much better than they do. I'd like to see schools provide kids with a chance to ask the hard questions about the difference between what is and what should be, and not lavish too much respect on the tidy divisions between disciplines ("content areas"). I'd like to see schools as places where kids and adults work together to make shared sense of shared problems--which automatically implies a rhetorical, </span></span><a href="http://www.thinkingtogether.org/rcream/archive/old/F2004/Comp/freire.pdf"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">problem-posing</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">, and community oriented learning. It implies a different way to think about the center or coherence of a school in its </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">practice. </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">One of the models we can use for this is both ecological studies and composition studies. Why not invite (and support!) teachers--who tend to be disposed to interdisciplinary study already--in the practice and inquire into these questions? Here is a really radical question: why not have them work together across levels, districts, and subject areas? Now that would be <a href="http://nwp.org">powerful</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">--David<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'courier new';">revised 7/16/10</span></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-49890655236333701942010-01-27T18:23:00.001-05:002010-12-31T09:41:00.941-05:0050th birthdayTomorrow I turn 50, a milestone. Or fifty of them, stretching back to when Eisenhower was president and the Beatles were unknown. Penicillin was rare and the birth control pill was approved by the FDA. The interstates were just being built. Hawaii had been a state for only five months. John F. Kennedy was just elected and took the reins. The US sent the first troops to Vietnam. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8m0n-j9aTSBflCmSBZ4I9ch3KBucAQYcSsdv9KSM6qlKTWJMS5pAPACFLYcHTpU9QBR1Dr5lHc323Rw2RuPvXU3EjghtmHidTReJ6wT9j-4eMToz90ntjXmaXKHuc21q-bkIovQ/s1600-h/Screen+shot+2010-01-27+at+7.14.51+PM.png"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8m0n-j9aTSBflCmSBZ4I9ch3KBucAQYcSsdv9KSM6qlKTWJMS5pAPACFLYcHTpU9QBR1Dr5lHc323Rw2RuPvXU3EjghtmHidTReJ6wT9j-4eMToz90ntjXmaXKHuc21q-bkIovQ/s200/Screen+shot+2010-01-27+at+7.14.51+PM.png" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 164px;" /></a><br />
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One of my first memories was looking at the far away mountains in Texas from the steps of graduate student housing. My parents would tell me elaborate stories about how lovely it was there and the bridge and road that took you there. I remember watching TV when JFK was assassinated. My dad got work in Iowa. I remember the many space shots and the moon landing. I lived through Vietnam, Woodstock, Kent State, and the drug culture. I started driving (usually with my parents) when I was 13 and on my own all the time in a 1967 VW Beetle by the time I was 16 (12-volt engine finally, but still the funky tubular bumpers and no head restraints). "Women's Lib" was a big deal. I remember The Whole Earth Catalogue I poured over at the house of a neighbor in Iowa, a bearded man who lived with two women. I worked "walking beans" for weeds, detasseling corn and wandering through the fields, exploring. I was always exploring. I hated school, wore a headband to class in the early '70s at my deeply rusticated school, and felt strangely out of place. I read all the time, was sick a lot, was very interested in science (I cut my teeth on bio textbooks), read more, loved waterbirds, and beat up on my brother mercilessly. There weren't a lot of people around. We didn't have a color TV until I was maybe 14 or so. My dad would come home with stacks of punched cards that he used for his dissertation research; there were no personal computers. The first new car he bought was a 1967 Dodge Dart, no carpets, no radio, bench seats. I wonder if it had seatbelts. <br />
<br />
We moved to Tennessee in the 1970s, and I felt a little out of place. Worked in a bar there, had a pretty girlfriend, never studied. Took root in English studies, though, esp. poetry and literary theory. Got into grad school in Syracuse, got married, had two wonderful boys, got my Ph.D. at S.U., and found work at nearby Cortland. Took over my dad's finances as he got older and my sister and I found him a place to live in Little Rock. Got divorced, bought a house, met my soulmate, met a son that a high-school girlfriend had by me and gave up for adoption. Trying to sell my house in Syracuse and am looking to buy with here here in Tully. [footnote: found a house as discussed in other posts].<br />
<br />
Nathan is 29. Joe is 15. Eli is 13. My girlfriend's kids are Drew (14) and Jackson (9). I'm blessed in every way: I have a job, enough money, an apartment, a car; my parents are alive and they love me. So do my friends and family. I even have a dog who loves me. I know how to write, I'm in a 12-step program that has changed my life and will do so for the rest of it, and I'm healthy as a horse. A fifty-year-old horse, maybe, but I can still gallop, rear and buck.<br />
<br />
That's it. Some of the best things have been the kids and Jacqueline. Good friends. A good education. Music. I'm 49 tonight and I want to learn how not to take things personally, to let things go, to let other people take up more of the load, to be in the moment. All work I have to do, good work. I don't want for anything material, and I'm not bitter or resentful, frightened or obsessed. It's been a good ride. Though "sometimes all the light's on me / Other times, I can barely see," I'm grateful. Not Dead. So far, this has been one of the most interesting periods of history, both lacking in some fundamental securities and oversewn with too many insulations against danger. The environmental exploitation I see discourages me sometimes. But it's always on the edge. I've been lucky.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-64538127618734221252010-01-19T14:56:00.000-05:002011-12-18T23:50:08.574-05:00The Notebooks<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So forgive the set up: a summer evening with distant thunder, cool wet breeze sloshing in the windows, trees filing up the sky like a tattered scrim, and me at my computer. Almost too romantic to be endured. If there were a few fireflies (or better, a moon or the tracers of distant fireworks) the metaphor of my passion would be stapled to the genre FOREVER.<br />
<br />
But that’s what I’ve got to work with. And in the little garret of my head the writer there has six worn notebooks open, each lit by the flickering light of one single, solitary, solemnizing candle. Around him the yellow pages glow dim as various phases of the moon, and at his back stained-glass windows are squared out and high up in the castle:<br />
<br />
The notebook for “business.” In it is a description of the young hairy woman and a scratch-and-sniff spot with $1800 in new bills. Along the side are lists of objects found for cheap by the side of the road.<br />
<br />
The notebook devoted to “sex and women.” In it he has a long digression on the admixture of excitement and loss that he feels when he wakes before his lover does. It is parsed out in the style of John Donne.<br />
<br />
The notebook in which he writes about his children, how impatient his has been and how he drove his motorcycle (horse-powered, of course, to keep with our pre-post-modern writer-in-the-garret metaphor) over to his sons’ house and left there on the stoop two cans of their favorite soda because he felt like there was nothing else he could do (and the mourning dove cooed a haunting cry, cry, cry!)<br />
<br />
The notebook where he writes about writing, teaching, and learning. He writes in this one with his left hand because suffering makes you honest (or so he says in the notebook, though it’s pretty much illegible and might just be talking about his desires).<br />
<br />
The notebook where he writes the themes of his reading: how his joke about “printing a test page” made him think how academics spend time perfecting the printing of their ideas, not living them; how Dave Hickey makes him very uncomfortable because he admires and covets that mind and stance; how Benjamin Franklin has been worming his way into many conversations in the months; how his newly purchased book talks about how the humanities change when they go digital, an idea he never considered before;<br />
<br />
The notebook where he talks about the English department his colleagues. This notebook is torn and mud-scuffed, and he throws it against the wall repeatedly before picking it up to scribble a line or two;<br />
<br />
Then a wind comes up and snuffs out the candle with its long, invisible fingers. The man sits there for a moment, watching the lightning, then strikes a match and lights<br />
<br />
The notebooks.<br />
<br />
David</span> </span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-69572309186734738482009-12-14T22:38:00.000-05:002011-12-18T23:50:39.329-05:00Burning ItYou say “It’s not what we pictured”<br />
(autumn hills in lugubrious flame)<br />
So I say steal all the pictures,<br />
I say smash their cheap glass<br />
break frames & cheap flowers,<br />
the graceful cheap bamboo fronds,<br />
the cheap birds winging over cheap forests,<br />
the soundtrack paintings, all the filler fields of wheat,<br />
the fungible bulk colors signed by machine,<br />
pre-recorded guitar solos over drum machines<br />
clicking with the intelligence of a roach,<br />
the stiff, formal hug of our personal ambitions.<br />
<br />
Take them to the parking lot of that cheap hotel,<br />
the one where we made love with an eclipse<br />
outside our window then froze all night.<br />
Make a pile of our garbage can plans,<br />
pour turpentine into them, diesel and alcohol<br />
until it soaks deep. Climb up on the dump.<br />
See how the cold air trembles with excitement?<br />
Scratch the last match fast against the sandpaper.<br />
I love you. <span style="font-style: italic;">Now drop it.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-21646882476288062532009-12-14T22:35:00.000-05:002010-01-09T10:10:54.378-05:00<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;"></span>DIY<br /><br />He’s looking in <i>The Family Handyman</i><br />for the device, the perfect jig <br />to hang a week, letting it dry and twist, curl up and air out. <br />The hanger must be clever and strong, <br />an ingenious clevis, toggle bolt or cotter pin<br /><br /> to handle days loose as layers of cardboard tied<br />with silk scarf, as an aquarium of marbles, <br />as scalloped waves fastened with irridium glue and salt, <br />a week composed of Plato’s <i>Phaedrus</i>, an iffy power steering pump, <br />the smell of distant burning and a new MAC OS, shorn cornfields, <br />crumpled student sentences and junk mail.<br /><br />The miracle hanger is not in the table<br />of contents, the index, nothing online,<br />nothing under the cushions, no tips<br />in the junk drawer. It was here, though. <br />The apartment is studded with bent nails. <br />A dizzy auger left holes in the bed and walls <br />before it sucked blood from the dog<br />and left in your new car. <br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-7762803848548111182009-12-14T21:29:00.000-05:002010-07-16T11:12:35.995-04:00The Hat: A Christmas Story<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Warning: it's not pretty, there's obscenity, and what I'm shooting for is not to sneer at the holidays, but to play with some realistic fiction. You were warned.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><|> |<|>|<|></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">The Hat</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Though it rained all night and melted most of the snow, grey-white ice lay in the shadows between houses. Detritus of the winter emerged: a blue-and-white child’s glove, flattened cigarette packs, bits of black plastic. The couple was walking their dog now that the rain had stopped. Christmas lights burned in the windows. The woman wore a long blue wool coat and immaculate hiking boots. She walked with her arms crossed and her bare hands tucked under the woolen arms of her coat. She held the blue leash in her right hand and their new dog darted back and forth on the bare sidewalk. Her husband walked beside her. They didn’t speak. He wore a large furry Russian hat and smoked a cigar. The smoke billowed up behind them as they walked, grew thin and disappeared. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">“Fucking dog,” the husband growled when the animal lunged in front of his feet. When it squatted in someone’s yard a moment later, the sudden stop jerked the woman’s leash arm open, making her twist stiffly. She made mewling sounds to coax the dog to hurry while they waited. It strained and trembled, then bounded onto the sidewalk. “Goddamn fucking dog” the husband said. The woman jerked hard at the leash but the dog pulled away at the end of his collar anyway, choking and scrabbling.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">A man had come out on his upstairs porch to smoke a cigarette now that the rain had stopped. His house had a giant candy cane cutout hammered into the front lawn. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted down to the couple. “You want me to clean that up?” he said. The dog started barking at the man. The couple kept walking without speaking. “Hey!” the man said. He was barefoot and leaned on the banister with both hands. “You gonna leave that shit there for me to clean up?” The tiny dog lunged into the collar and in so doing its blue leash tangled around the legs of the husband, forcing him to stumble. The dog yelped and ran from him, forcing the woman to spin on one heel. Blue smoke from the cigar filled the air.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">The husband grabbed the collar and neatly flipped the dog over. He held it to the ground by the throat with his left hand and made a fist with the right. His gloved hand hit the dog in the belly, the chest, the face. He stood over the animal and twisted his body to put all his weight into it. The dog yelped and struggled and the skin on its face was cut against its teeth. The husband’s fluffy hat fell to the wet sidewalk and rolled against his wife’s boots. Blood spattered on the husband’s coat and when he stopped, the knuckles of his glove had been cut open. “What are you doing?” cried the man on the porch. He stood up, cigarette still between his fingers. “What the hell are you doing?” he said. “It’s not the fucking dog’s fault, you asshole,” he said, his voice thin and trembling. “It’s not the fucking dog’s fault” he repeated. The husband and the wife stood still for a moment. The dog huddled at the extreme end of his leash, mouth open, panting. The woman bent to pick up the husband’s beautiful hat.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">“Where do you get off being so vulgar?” said the woman to the man on the porch. “Just who do you think you are?”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-89366884017280395532009-10-24T22:16:00.000-04:002009-10-24T22:52:11.533-04:00Haiku October '09<b>Writing in Coffeehouses</b><div>A room with a view</div><div>Music no one listens to</div><div>Words I do not share.<br /><div><br /></div><div><b>The Teacher</b></div><div>Jacqueline's small hands</div><div>explain a huge story</div><div>to her computer.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Nulla Dies Sine Linea</b></div><div>Today's frantic grab</div><div>for the rip cord, miss, miss:</div><div>such a lovely fall.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Finding Eli's Favorite Hat</b></div><div>Between the buxom</div><div>hay bales, E's hat, lost in play:</div><div>when did he grow up?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>After Rain</b></div><div>Parking lot puddles</div><div>plain, flat, cold limestone, simple</div><div>reflect tree, cloud, mind.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-29820495283208830992009-09-02T19:18:00.000-04:002010-07-25T19:59:38.008-04:00Moving to Tully, NY<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqBSPvMzEJbTpkGls8qseAGGQBTcEX1oJxO8chuQLU1g-lzu8Fr4Nnc7a3lAJN9I2dmrSSqzNFJTif3ygYsyoLRXXfjl29hi0OagsJdWXhJ_z_SqQnJrGOXJ9gTaGLxK53N8_Xbw/s1600-h/Tully.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqBSPvMzEJbTpkGls8qseAGGQBTcEX1oJxO8chuQLU1g-lzu8Fr4Nnc7a3lAJN9I2dmrSSqzNFJTif3ygYsyoLRXXfjl29hi0OagsJdWXhJ_z_SqQnJrGOXJ9gTaGLxK53N8_Xbw/s320/Tully.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5381526293450479906" /></a><br /><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-;font-size:12.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">August 29, 2009</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hi, </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Writing you from this cheapo chair, bought from a Goodwill store in rural New York and still smelling like a clean, dry grandmother’s house, is a pleasure.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The chair is in our living room, a large, old boiler-heated room in beige.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">You can’t tell from </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">inside</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> the room whether we’re in Syracuse or Binghamton or Cortland, but when I look out the window it’s pretty obvious we’re in Tully, NY.</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=10770946#_ftn1" name="_ftnref" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">[1]</span></span></span></a><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This town has about </span><a href="http://www.city-data.com/city/Tully-New-York.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">867</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> people, but we’re not even inside the city limits.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We live in a cornfield.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The house looks like it was set down here somewhat accidentally, as if an outtake from the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Wizard of Oz.</span></i><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">You can see Jacqueline’s kids’ school from the upstairs windows (Drew’s 13 and will be going to the middle school; at 9, Jackson will be going to Tully Elementary).</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There is a large flat grocery distribution plant a few cornfields over, several crucifixes from the churches emerging like periscopes from the corn—and lots and lots of green.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" spt="75" preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"> </v:formulas> <v:path extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" connecttype="rect"> <o:lock ext="edit" aspectratio="t"> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="_x0000_s1026" type="#_x0000_t75" style="'position:absolute;" wrapcoords="135 256 67 20148 271 20660 543 20916 21260 20916 21192 853 20784 256 135 256"> <v:imagedata src="file://localhost/Users/dtfranke/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_image001.png" title=""> <w:wrap type="tight"> </v:shape><![endif]--><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The fields are striated, now that we’re in the last inch of August; the farmers have peeled back alternating swaths of alfalfa.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The combines are coming for the corn, and the whole scene reminds me of that sort of magical painting style of rural scenes by that Iowan painter Grant Wood.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We’re in a valley about five miles wide with hills on either side that rise away to the east and west.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Everything slips north and south between these ridges: the river, the railroad, the interstate, the minor highways.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Cut east and west, though, and it gets weird. And interesting. You go through several geographical anomalies caused by the glaciers.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This region is where they stopped, dropped their gravel, dug deep plunge pools, and created a series of hills that look exactly like ships turned upside down, their keels exactly the same arc.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We’re already started to explore these places.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">My Joe and Eli will be down here from Syracuse for as often as I can get them (they are not moving), and every other weekend; Drew and Jackson Deal are 24/7.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The six of us have vague plans to travel to Tinker Falls with the dog (always the dog), go hang-gliding off the Morgan Hills cliff, ski at the several local downhill slopes, and canoe down the Tioughnioga River.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Some of these seem more likely than others, but they are all possible.</span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br />Everything is possible.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Getting your hair cut here, going to the doctor or dentist, eating at a family-owned diner, going to the bank, the library, the used bookstore.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">You can’t go to the local bars—</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">there</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">are none</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There is a good meeting on Wednesday nights, however.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">At school I have a gym and a pool, and work is now only 15 minutes away—for the first time in ten years, my commute is shorter.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Jacqueline has </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">uncomplainingly </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">stretched her commute out to 50 miles each way.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In fact, there has been very little complaining in this whole venture.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Leaving schools, families, neighbors, close friends, houses and all that has been a difficult.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">GF (GirlFriend) and I grew up in our respective towns and have ligatures there.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I’ve been in Syracuse since 1983—and now that seems long ago.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">They play music from that era on the oldies stations now!</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It’s not fair!</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">So this is a season of exhilaration and extremes. The mental soundtrack is tearing a worn sheet into dishrags.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">That making-by-ripping—that’s what it feels like lately.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Not bad, just bit changes, lots of bits.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Even making a new life is possible.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Buying a house in Tully is possible.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Getting married is possible.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Fall is possible.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Writing is possible. The line between what’s possible and what’s inevitable is blurry.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We are going to practice steering by bright rural stars.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Oh, and I didn’t mention the train, which runs next to the house and scares the hell out of me daily.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It’s only mournful and soothing from a distance, through the rain, when you’re holding a steel guitar.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Up close it is very much like God’s own two-note soundtrack for the Apocalypse.</span></span></p><div style="mso-element:footnote-list"> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%"> <div style="mso-element:footnote" id="ftn"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=10770946#_ftnref" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> David Franke and Jacqueline Deal.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> Formerly of </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">361 Rt. 11 South, Apartment 1.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Tully, NY, but now in our new house at 793 Tully Farms Road, a very cool place if I say so myself! </span></span></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW8E6qQmxZk8EIvgWjncvldFPUh0iSD1cMPh9LsYm46XbTanhEKo_NdPHpCq6Jv-u__4ZwLNyZuwoUkJXt33rQff3a0DqYHn1Y3L2P2UQuqhP9xbjmn-i9jpkT-INphr2BgQuZxA/s1600/Photo050.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW8E6qQmxZk8EIvgWjncvldFPUh0iSD1cMPh9LsYm46XbTanhEKo_NdPHpCq6Jv-u__4ZwLNyZuwoUkJXt33rQff3a0DqYHn1Y3L2P2UQuqhP9xbjmn-i9jpkT-INphr2BgQuZxA/s200/Photo050.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5497997225819917650" /></a></div><div style="mso-element:footnote" id="ftn"> </div> </div> <!--EndFragment--> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-43236218703021146412009-07-18T13:07:00.001-04:002009-12-05T20:26:38.295-05:00Fashion Blues<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHsJGHeFpkN_HqUbREgCi65sGZ9nlBCaXQrMiAEmZG1GN6TjTKBYKQiaHN9-CGgVUUbl9RpWQRwhUwLlxVipejr2POFP890pVDfJy8r4emDguNOuPXcJhrvE726VSCzUYvGj_YKQ/s1600-h/photo.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 218px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHsJGHeFpkN_HqUbREgCi65sGZ9nlBCaXQrMiAEmZG1GN6TjTKBYKQiaHN9-CGgVUUbl9RpWQRwhUwLlxVipejr2POFP890pVDfJy8r4emDguNOuPXcJhrvE726VSCzUYvGj_YKQ/s320/photo.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359958436313281522" /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">I’ve always had trouble getting dressed.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">I no longer scream when they pull a shirt over my head like I did when I was little.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">I don’t generally struggle any longer to tie my shoes.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">But I still face problems, serious challenges, every day when standing in front of my closet.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Where others might see a field of sartorial possibilities, I see nothing but a matrix of subtle rules and conventions at work, vague and implicit lines in the sand of fashion, brightly colored invitations to cause some sort of stylistic misdemeanor.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Negotiating these tripwires takes a sensitivity and determination I have trouble mustering before breakfast.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">I try to get the upper hand by enforcing upon my clothing a strict hierarchy in order to control the chaos. That’s why, except for those on the floor, all my shirts face the same direction.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">It lends a sense of order and helps me in my private moments, those long minutes when I peer into the dark closet at a thousand errors waiting to happen.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">I feel every day so much like I did when I used to try to write essays in college.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">So many mistakes just waiting to happen. So many hidden rules. The malicious grammar of clothing rustling in my closet, waiting for me to pick something <i>wrong.</i> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Often, I find myself exhausted by the time I sit down to my humble bowl of cereal, wearing only underwear at the breakfast table, utterly defeated.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Like writing, dressing is generally a private business.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Nobody wants to see you in the midst of the process: the agonizing, the trying on, the tearing up and throwing away.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> The tears. The recriminations. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Nobody wants to see you trying to balance on one foot, metaphorically or actually.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">They just want to see the product, and don’t want to be shocked by it.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">The recondite flowchart that steers us from error is of course quite secret, as I’ve mentioned. </span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">I have yet to find anyone who is brave enough to tell me about it.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">They’ll even deny that there are any rules, defaulting to the tired line that “It’s just all about how you </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">feel</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">.”</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">But this is plainly not the case.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">There are, for example, a whole set of tacit and unspoken guidelines about matching things up and the way they go together.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Some are plainly not recommended any more than mixing chlorine bleach and ammonia, or oil and water, or </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">my</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> brother and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">your</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> new car.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Imagine attempting to wear an innocent checked blue and green shirt with blue and green pants.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Nothing good will happen there, but you must admit that, at the level of theory, there is nothing wrong.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Blue and blue, of any shade, are sanctioned.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">They have the same </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">name</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">, even.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">It has to be safe.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Green with green is an approved combination.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Blue and green are both good friends, the colors of the water, of the ocean, even of pirates. Put them all together, and you may think you have found a combination that will make the pretty ladies give you their hungry glances – but </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">no</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">I have had women move to the far side of the hall when I strut by dressed in this checkered celebration, this profusion of plaid.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Why?</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Because I violated a rule that everyone knows but no one will admit to: one must wear only identical checked clothing. Don't ask why. Just accept this as fact. Thinking will only exhaust you. </span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Likewise, you cannot wear perfectly identical colors lest you be accused of wearing a pantsuit.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">I do not know what a pantsuit is, but when I bought a pack of RIT dye and dyed several shirts and jeans all the same color, I was not celebrated for my inventiveness.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Ditto with khaki shirts + khaki pants. No one smiles in a good way when you wear five shades of brown (shirt, tie, pants, shoes, hair). What is wrong with brown?</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">We have established that identical colors are somehow bad, and that there are certain toxic combinations.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Green and orange, for instance, are anathema for reasons no one wants to talk about, though I swear I have often seen lovely red-haired Irish women wear green and orange at the same time and no one laughed at them.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">In fact, people wanted to talk to them all the time!</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> Another hole is torn in the rules for fashion. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Red and green are apparently forbidden also — my best guess is that together they are redolent of Christmas.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Though countless flags combine red and green -- South Africa and Italy and even Lithuania Minor come to mind -- does anyone </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">ever</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> think of South Africa as “The Christmas Country”?</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">They do not! Perhaps someone can explain why, then, it is nearly illegal to wear red and green into the secular American classroom.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">There are more rules.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Pink and blue are bad (perhaps inducing gender confusion?), black and white are bad (waiter?), blue and black are bad (makes you look like a giant bruise?), yet the same fashion liberals will aver that “black goes with everything.” </span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">It plainly does not.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">There’s more.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Dark colors must go on the bottom of an outfit because they are heavy; if you wear, say, white pants and a black top, you are not only imitating a waiter in reverse, but you also seem imply to passersby that you might suddenly and uncontrollably capsize.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Fear of witnessing me flip up in an extraordinary fashion misadventure is, I assume, what has driven my colleagues and students to avert their eyes when we ride up on the elevator together.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Yet I was never warned of this danger, not once.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">But I’m trying to tell you something important here.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">There are many people who know these rules and are either unable, unwilling, or afraid to talk about them.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Think with me for a moment about frequency, the issue of frequency.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">You can wear new clothes for the first time only after you have thoroughly washed them. The theory at work here seems to assume that rodents or pests crawl through new clothes, and that not until being run through the spin cycle should we risk putting them on (a theory that conveniently ignores the fact that we try on clothes in stores and don’t feel we need to bathe afterwards).</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">There is clearly a bit of duplicity at work here.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">What baffles me is why we hide the rules with a straight face.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">I know a woman who would slather her nude self in oil-based house paint before she’d wear the same outfit for a second day.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">So there is to be variety.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">One is expected to dress a bit differently M-F, but not too predictably.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">For instance, if you dress Italian one day and Mexican the next, you are likely to be ostracized; in contrast, if one plans to eat spaghetti on Monday, and tacos on Tuesday, people assume you reflect good middle class household organization skills.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Furthermore, it is tacitly forbidden to assign a certain outfit to each day of the week.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Though in my experience it will take some months for people to catch on, when they do figure out that you have sequenced outfits by workday, you will be eating your lunch at the only empty table in the cafeteria for the rest of the school year.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">And nobody will help you revise your essays for English class.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">I know of which I speak.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-25111801770267408722009-06-06T11:51:00.005-04:002011-06-16T22:23:22.233-04:00Summertime/working vicariouslyRichard Hugo writes somewhere about the compressed academic year, how the years and even the hours are abbreviated, and how time moves so quickly through them. I'm at the point where I've waved goodbye to enough semesters to already be imagining the first day of the next one, much as a cool day in spring mirrors its cousin in the other equinox. <br />
<div><br />
</div><div>The irony of the calendar is that what I teach and what I do are almost exactly inverted. From August to May I do a lot of writing, but all of it is rushed and fragmented. Memos, emails, reports, applications, reviews, syllabi, comments on papers, minutes, recommendations, presentations, and more email. None of it develops any narrative line or builds to shared or linked visible product. It's these days (aggravated by lots of unfinished business in other departments of my daily life) that make me wonder if I'm really a <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">writer</span> at all. There is no scholarship, or very little; there is no blogging, letter-writing, memoir writing, writing of poetry, essays, or arguments. It's as if the frontal cortex were entirely given over to striated and anxious detail management. There's no narrative, and definitely no lyric. I get worried when the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">heart</span> of what I am paid to do starts to feel like the work I used to do in a fast-food restaurant. When "customers per hour" is the criterion we measure ourselves by, then I might as well be the manager of a Wendy's. The fact that I'd probably get paid better for that sort of work is unnerving--but it just goes to show that work in higher education is expected to compensate us with other, less tangible rewards, such as the ability to wrestle with ideas and watch kids learn. So when that part is taken out, as it seems increasingly to be, then Wendy's starts looking like a smart option.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I love my job, but the center of it isn't coherent. The things I try to engender in my students--a sense of play, of curiosity, of competence through practice, revision, wonder, doubt and all the rest of the thinking asanas--are the very things I check at the door when the semester begins (well, by the time the first papers come in). I end up teaching "about" things I'm not myself actually experiencing. My lectures on rhetoric and writing during the semester become--at least to me--somewhat abstract, something I recall for my students, not something I embody. Of course I have my students reflect on their own writing. They practice reading closely. They take risks. But I only understand this vicariously. I feel that I'm being paid for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">having</span> a degree, for managing the status quo, not for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">being</span> a writer or scholar. Thus this tends to encourage posturing. It encourages asserting one's authority, though authentic authority comes more from modeling and immediate action than knowing stuff.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I'm hardly the first to notice this incoherence, and if I were to blame my college (or all academic institutions), I again wouldn't be the first. That's not needed, though. Those hoarse diatribes of how "the college is being run like a business!" really leaves me cold. The college IS a business. I want it to be solvent--hell, I want it to be rolling in money so that we can do all sort of good and interesting things. </div><div><br />
</div><div>That is not going to happen in SUNY Cortland, however. We are a small rural state school that survives on the margins. If the Ivy Leagues were Manhattan, we wouldn't be even in the suburbs. We'd be in rural Nebraska. We tend not to plan for the future because we're so preoccupied with surviving, and the latest budget issues have made it worse. Now there really ain't nothing to get by on. Our "funding stream" is taxes. College is a state business built on a certain imaginary destination my state students will pay handsomely to achieve: "success." In my way of seeing it, "success" means often a) getting married, ideally to a person who looks good enough to be on TV b) getting a good job (read: a job that makes me more money than I know what to do with) c) buying a house and starting a family with my money and hot spouse. Life of the mind, a sense of history, good work (not just well-paid work, but meaningful work done well) -- those things are not the values that organize my students or the campus. When I feel their tug I feel anachronistic at best and stupid at worst.</div><div><br />
</div><div>What's assumed in all of this, of course, is that a, b, and c will cause happiness. That's a stretch (I assume most of our students don't look at their parents as models for happiness, for their parents, from what I hear, are often not such happy people). My sense is that "success" means not being one of "them," the poor, the have nots. "Success" is defined by an invisible and unspoken absent term, the lower class. No one is sure what that is or where those people are, but they sure seem to be a scary lot. One of their few identifying characteristics is assumed to be poor grammar, which is why we worry about grammar at all in college. But that is the subject of another post.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I am often a middle-level bureaucrat and my best energies go to supporting some very abstract entities called "the department" or "the college" or at its most grandiose, "higher education in the United States." I do not often <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">feel</span> as if I am participating in supporting, influencing, or developing these entities. Mostly, I feel like an "administrative assistant." I have an advanced degree, but spend more of my time collating than reading; more time deleting email than preparing lectures, more time in meetings than I spend with students. <br />
<div><br />
</div><div>This is ironic. Not evil, not oppressive, but ironic. I got into this business because I was fascinated with the ways you could say things and the way that ideas fit together and the way people make ideas over time. The best way to be immersed in these things this is to teach writing (and to write). I'm happy as a clam in the classroom, though I find it exhausting. I love to write and read for the same reasons. <br />
<br />
How does this change? I try to change it 1) by doing less in my college, less administration. I put my energies into the classroom. 2) I try to create places with my colleagues to talk about our values (we recently (2010) had a great discussion of <i>The Shallows</i> by Nicolas Carr, and many said it was the FIRST TIME in their stint at Cortland that they had had an intellectual discussion on campus with their peers and 3) I try to do a good job and say not control things out of my control and 4) I keep myself sane by writing.<br />
<br />
Or, better said, I try to stay sane when I'm not writing.</div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10770946.post-73809702183035061062009-06-03T14:28:00.000-04:002009-06-03T14:29:42.752-04:00Two Boys at a Kitchen Table in the Mojave Desert (Found Photo)<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" align="right" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 15px; ">Before he wrote his regrets</span><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">On the back, apologies for not seeing them grow up,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">Their father must have crouched down<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">In the cold December desert sand<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">To frame his two grown sons, their four boots up <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">On a table they trucked down from town,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">Two chairs, too, and a half-gallon of rum<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">In the half dark, both waiting for something magic, <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">Maybe some Mexican waitress, to bring them another drink.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">In their background wires thick as a man’s fist pulse<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">With juice bound for Las Vegas.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">The boys watch their father’s failing smile,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">His spirit slipping down like chair legs into sand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">He regretting his lost chance, his boys’ loss, the wonders<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">Of the young & etc., and the boy on the left<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">Is already looking beyond the camera<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">At the truck he bought and paid for.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">It’s gray and the flawed paint is peeling and behind it<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">The vast valley yawns like the jaw of a prehistoric ocean, <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">Which it was, crocodilian and omnipotent.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">A distant sun rises over the hills’ knuckles<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">To the southeast, pouring light down the hill behind him<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">in a great wave, curling at the lip:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">He holds his breath while he waits for it:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">The picture is snapped up and the days of his future begin<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri">Passing over him like water.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Calibri"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16372942019738279191noreply@blogger.com0