She was taking notes of something I'd written on the board but she'd turned the page so the left to right lines were oriented up and down, and was writing as if in Chinese from top to bottom, yet the letters were not stacked, but side by side. When the page was turned back to normal, the words read normally left to right. Bizarre, but immediately recognizable.
As a leftie, I've always looped my hand around the top of the page and written from top down as if by window washers. Or, if I write from below, I've used a backhand that makes my letter look as if being blown over backward by a great wind from the right of the page. Writing with a pencil left the meaty side of my left hand gray with graphite. The contortions of my student were her accommodation to the fact that this is a right-hander's world. (I couldn't write as she did.) Keyboards will make leftism virtually undetectable soon.
Leaving aside the fact that a southpaw just won the world series, lefties sometimes raise eyebrows. You write like that? Why can't you use scissors? A left-handed baseball glove? It's not a disability so much as an flip-side alternative that sometimes manifests itself as an incompatibility downgraded to an inconvenience. Handedness in the form of chirality manifests through organic chemistry and in the form of helicity, throughout quantum dynamics. Geometrically, it's a symmetry that requires a third dimension for its transformations. I know someone whose internal organs are reversed left to right from the norm, but who functions perfectly normally nonetheless.
Why there are so many righties and so few lefties is mysterious, but other dualities have this bias in their distribution: matter and anti-matter, for instance, don't seem to be equally represented in our work-a-day world. Leaving aside those who through the institutional rigidity or superstition (many disapprove or are fearful of it) have been forced to become right-handed, lefties stand at about 10 percent of the world's population.
None of this has much impact on my life, but when I meet another sinister person, I feel a certain connection, as if I'm part of a tribe whose totem is the twisted hand. You, my left handed student, seem like a distant relative, or perhaps like a secularized co-religionist. We're so assimilated we're hardly aware of our distinctiveness--until the design bias of the world puts us on the spot.
We're not militant people, only sometimes exasperated. Pleased to meet you.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Thursday, October 30, 2014
From on high
Teachers are hungry folk; put food in front of them--as this evening Mexican, along with some bottles of this and that--and they gather, joke and tell stories readily.
This evening we heard from our over-structure, the concentric spheres of supervisors and directors centered on the company's owner, whom we know from the mission statement printed and signed on the wall of our school.
There was a worldwide meeting a few weeks ago of company leaders and sales people, and the upshot was: whereas we have been the product at the bottom of the sales pyramid (though highly respected), we now are at the top. The pyramid's been flipped on its head; we're in the next cantica. Well, well.
I imagined I heard the rumbling if muffled voice of one (though many-headed) that has of late been in contemplation of me and my mates, pondering our place in its plans, and has decided graciously to bestow an honor on our branch (or twig) of the greater organization so as to ensure us the dignity appropriate to our new status.
That voice tells me changes are consequent. Probably so; perhaps profitably so. The voice, however, that commands our attention is that of the conversation between teachers and students, which has its own dignity.
Certainly I listen when I encounter your voice, oh management. We have a new name, a new standing, and soon a new (but familiar) place. In the meantime, the voice of the classroom is what we have to attend most closely to, day in and day out, whatever is going on above.
This evening we heard from our over-structure, the concentric spheres of supervisors and directors centered on the company's owner, whom we know from the mission statement printed and signed on the wall of our school.
There was a worldwide meeting a few weeks ago of company leaders and sales people, and the upshot was: whereas we have been the product at the bottom of the sales pyramid (though highly respected), we now are at the top. The pyramid's been flipped on its head; we're in the next cantica. Well, well.
I imagined I heard the rumbling if muffled voice of one (though many-headed) that has of late been in contemplation of me and my mates, pondering our place in its plans, and has decided graciously to bestow an honor on our branch (or twig) of the greater organization so as to ensure us the dignity appropriate to our new status.
That voice tells me changes are consequent. Probably so; perhaps profitably so. The voice, however, that commands our attention is that of the conversation between teachers and students, which has its own dignity.
Certainly I listen when I encounter your voice, oh management. We have a new name, a new standing, and soon a new (but familiar) place. In the meantime, the voice of the classroom is what we have to attend most closely to, day in and day out, whatever is going on above.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Happy man
In the locker room, among those suiting up and disrobing, we'd struck up conversation, largely because he is a gregarious guy. We'd talked about his bike ride in from somewhere north of the river and west of Cambridge. I'd learned where he'd come from, the more open west that the reserved east; had heard about his son almost my grandson's age.
He'd told me he was a lawyer, then some weeks later, that he was giving up the law to work in software design. The last week of his notice he was crowing about his liberation. Since then he's been enjoying his new job, and wishing something of the same for his wife, also a lawyer. A tall, smiling fellow, not prudish as so many of the men there are (though not me), he chatted with all kinds of people.
Yesterday, quickly showering and dressing after my run (and actually five minutes late), I ran out of the gym and scurried across the pedestrian way, an extension of Washington St, to my office building. As I did, I looked down toward the Old State House. There in the middle of the way, I saw someone on a bike approaching quickly, though I couldn't make out who. There was nobody else left or right.
The biker, helmeted and in tight, colorful cycling togs, coming straight toward me, leaned back, took his hands from the steering wheel, and then, for a moment, lifted them up and spread them wide as if in exaltation. There, there, I thought, is a happy man. A moment later, I saw it was you as you swept by, and you called out greeting to me.
What an image fixed on my memory! A beautiful morning (as I had discovered), the triumphant end of a good, hard ride, the masterful sense of physical prowess, the prospects of good day ahead. Yes, yes. enjoy it to the full.
He'd told me he was a lawyer, then some weeks later, that he was giving up the law to work in software design. The last week of his notice he was crowing about his liberation. Since then he's been enjoying his new job, and wishing something of the same for his wife, also a lawyer. A tall, smiling fellow, not prudish as so many of the men there are (though not me), he chatted with all kinds of people.
Yesterday, quickly showering and dressing after my run (and actually five minutes late), I ran out of the gym and scurried across the pedestrian way, an extension of Washington St, to my office building. As I did, I looked down toward the Old State House. There in the middle of the way, I saw someone on a bike approaching quickly, though I couldn't make out who. There was nobody else left or right.
The biker, helmeted and in tight, colorful cycling togs, coming straight toward me, leaned back, took his hands from the steering wheel, and then, for a moment, lifted them up and spread them wide as if in exaltation. There, there, I thought, is a happy man. A moment later, I saw it was you as you swept by, and you called out greeting to me.
What an image fixed on my memory! A beautiful morning (as I had discovered), the triumphant end of a good, hard ride, the masterful sense of physical prowess, the prospects of good day ahead. Yes, yes. enjoy it to the full.
Two men
Two men, on a journey in September, in a bed in a room not much bigger than the bed, are discussing the one small window. The one in his forties calls himself 'invalid' and afraid of 'the air of the night.' He wants the window closed. The other, in his seventies, pleads for the window open--'we will be suffocated'--and promises to share his Theory of Colds if the younger hops into bed and gives ear: 'I will convince you.'
I remember the year I joined the faculty of the same school where my father-in-law had both studied and taught for many decades. At the orientation, the two of us were assigned to the same room in a dormitory: two cots in a small, airless room on the top floor of a castle-like building. We, this man--teacher and coach of many subjects and sports, methodical, conscientious, funny, mischievous, popular and humble--and I, talked into the evening, sweltering in the last summer heat, each intrigued by each other professionally, as well as personally. It was the forging of a new link in our relationship.
Moved by curiosity to to his reasons, the younger man decided to run the risk of a cold. The older man began 'a harangue on air and cold and respiration and perspiration,' while the other remembered, 'I was so much amused that I soon fell asleep and left him and his philosophy together; but I believe they were equally sound and insensible within a few minutes after me, for the last words I heard pronounced were more than half asleep.'
Later, in the darkness, I woke to hear truly stentorian snoring that filled the space. Waiting for sleep to recommence, I thought of how amazing it was that I was there, with that job, and alongside this impressive man.
The two men were traveling to make one last attempt at averting bloody war. We two were just beginning a school year, and, for me, a new career. Their negotiation lasted only a few hours; my term at the school a dozen years or so. After each, extraordinary developments: new, thrilling, scary, transformative.
G.K, were we like the great sage Benjamin Franklin and his scrappy sidekick John Adams on that bed in the New Jersey hostel in 1776? You'd be the first to laugh at the suggestion and quite rightly. But wasn't there on both occasions that special mixture of intimacy and momentousness? To that, I think you'd agree. At least, we'd talk.
I remember the year I joined the faculty of the same school where my father-in-law had both studied and taught for many decades. At the orientation, the two of us were assigned to the same room in a dormitory: two cots in a small, airless room on the top floor of a castle-like building. We, this man--teacher and coach of many subjects and sports, methodical, conscientious, funny, mischievous, popular and humble--and I, talked into the evening, sweltering in the last summer heat, each intrigued by each other professionally, as well as personally. It was the forging of a new link in our relationship.
Moved by curiosity to to his reasons, the younger man decided to run the risk of a cold. The older man began 'a harangue on air and cold and respiration and perspiration,' while the other remembered, 'I was so much amused that I soon fell asleep and left him and his philosophy together; but I believe they were equally sound and insensible within a few minutes after me, for the last words I heard pronounced were more than half asleep.'
Later, in the darkness, I woke to hear truly stentorian snoring that filled the space. Waiting for sleep to recommence, I thought of how amazing it was that I was there, with that job, and alongside this impressive man.
The two men were traveling to make one last attempt at averting bloody war. We two were just beginning a school year, and, for me, a new career. Their negotiation lasted only a few hours; my term at the school a dozen years or so. After each, extraordinary developments: new, thrilling, scary, transformative.
G.K, were we like the great sage Benjamin Franklin and his scrappy sidekick John Adams on that bed in the New Jersey hostel in 1776? You'd be the first to laugh at the suggestion and quite rightly. But wasn't there on both occasions that special mixture of intimacy and momentousness? To that, I think you'd agree. At least, we'd talk.
Monday, October 27, 2014
Knock knock
Better, much better, than the sheaves of papers I used to juggle, the smartphone app showed me which houses to call at, names, sex, ages, political affiliation (usually only Ds). If I climb the steps and ring the bell and nobody answers and I leave literature, it gives me menu to fill out; if on the other hand, there's a rustle behind the door and it swings open, there's a menu for me to use to record what I think is the likelihood of candidate support. Then, mirabile dictu, after I've visited all the designated houses in the 'turf', I just press a button and all the data is uploaded to headquarters, to the data base, where it can be used to formulate end of campaign and election day strategy.
The afternoon wind was fresh, the sun was in and out of the clouds but brilliant when unblocked. As the evening advanced, the sun lower and lower in the sky, illuminated the roofs of the big Jamaica Plain houses. I walked up one road, back on a parallel one, and so forth, zig-zagging through the neighborhood. 'Absolutely,' and 'She's got our support,' and 'You know why? Because I'm a died-in-the-wool D,' or else tight-lipped: 'We've already decided,' and 'You can keep that,' and 'I'll certainly keep that in mind.'
The nicest parts were people saying, 'Thank you for doing this,' and the worst parts were when the people who said this were way off in a some little cul-de-sac (and the Pond section of JP has lots of them) that I had walked past an hour before.
Mostly I got the sense that people are just waking up to the election coming a week from Tuesday. It's been something in the deep background which has finally come far enough forward to be worthy of remark or concern. There was no talk of policy, just a recognition of an impending moment of decision. Professionals devote hours of thought, study, discussion to figuring out just how to rouse the public to passion over politics. This cycle the task has been particularly difficult.
This is your state, our state, people. Who is elected and what is approved can have tremendous impact, obvious perhaps now, or at some unexpected time in the future. I'm listening to an audiobook on the topic of surveying and boundary marking in the early days of the Republic. History can hinge on where a line is drawn, establishing this jurisdiction here, that law there, creating the landscape of rules we all have to navigate. It's those who moves quickest, the sharpies, who see the opportunities to strategically to control the field.
Can we, the public, be as on the ball about the common good as some are about what's good for themselves and their friends? Probably not. How could we? We're too busy trying to find our way around the hills and highways already there to spend time thinking about shaping the landscape itself.
I've run farther and walked longer, but out of the wind, back in my car, I am surprisingly exhausted and my head ringing. I felt as if I'd been pushing a big stone along a road. It was not as bad as selling encyclopedias door to door which I did when a college student (a low, dishonest enterprise) but, truth be told, I don't much like canvassing now, even with these brilliant apps. Still, my fellow citizens, if it's not we who pay attention to our common concerns, it will be those who never sleep for thinking of their private ones.
See you next weekend.
The afternoon wind was fresh, the sun was in and out of the clouds but brilliant when unblocked. As the evening advanced, the sun lower and lower in the sky, illuminated the roofs of the big Jamaica Plain houses. I walked up one road, back on a parallel one, and so forth, zig-zagging through the neighborhood. 'Absolutely,' and 'She's got our support,' and 'You know why? Because I'm a died-in-the-wool D,' or else tight-lipped: 'We've already decided,' and 'You can keep that,' and 'I'll certainly keep that in mind.'
The nicest parts were people saying, 'Thank you for doing this,' and the worst parts were when the people who said this were way off in a some little cul-de-sac (and the Pond section of JP has lots of them) that I had walked past an hour before.
Mostly I got the sense that people are just waking up to the election coming a week from Tuesday. It's been something in the deep background which has finally come far enough forward to be worthy of remark or concern. There was no talk of policy, just a recognition of an impending moment of decision. Professionals devote hours of thought, study, discussion to figuring out just how to rouse the public to passion over politics. This cycle the task has been particularly difficult.
This is your state, our state, people. Who is elected and what is approved can have tremendous impact, obvious perhaps now, or at some unexpected time in the future. I'm listening to an audiobook on the topic of surveying and boundary marking in the early days of the Republic. History can hinge on where a line is drawn, establishing this jurisdiction here, that law there, creating the landscape of rules we all have to navigate. It's those who moves quickest, the sharpies, who see the opportunities to strategically to control the field.
Can we, the public, be as on the ball about the common good as some are about what's good for themselves and their friends? Probably not. How could we? We're too busy trying to find our way around the hills and highways already there to spend time thinking about shaping the landscape itself.
I've run farther and walked longer, but out of the wind, back in my car, I am surprisingly exhausted and my head ringing. I felt as if I'd been pushing a big stone along a road. It was not as bad as selling encyclopedias door to door which I did when a college student (a low, dishonest enterprise) but, truth be told, I don't much like canvassing now, even with these brilliant apps. Still, my fellow citizens, if it's not we who pay attention to our common concerns, it will be those who never sleep for thinking of their private ones.
See you next weekend.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Questions, then and now
What questions did you ask when you were young, and what questions do you ask now? This, an assignment I gave my evening class this week. They have to write something every class, and I have to come up with interesting challenges. The students, women and men, middle aged to young, from Brazil to Kazakhstan to Vietnam, take these tasks seriously, and open themselves in ways that make me a little ashamed of my reserve.
One said, in paraphrase: when I was young, I wanted to know where the stars came from; now I want to know if Liverpool will win the league title.
Another wrote: when I was young, I wondered how big the grave would have to be to bury a car that people said had died; now I ask: why am I not rich?
One remarked: I used to ask why my mother made me stop playing outside with my friends, and made me do schoolwork.
One said she had many questions when she was young, for instance, how turtles were born. Now, her compelling questions are about what foods are healthy to eat.
Where do those ingenuous questions go? Have we found satisfying answers and moved on to more serious queries? Or were we new to serious answers and taken by the kinds of questions that could elicit them? Or were we smitten by curiosity as by young love? Is there a cupid of kid's questions?
By contrast, the questions now reflect experience with the complexity of life: why are families so busy; why do I enjoy and hate living in cities; why does love hurt so much?
Is there another age of questions yet to come? I'm much older than you, my students, and I can say that I enjoy questions of innocent ignorance, as well as those of ambivalence and complicity, but also now, questions about the meaning of marvelous-ness. For that seems to be a key element in almost everything I encounter: the Scotsman who takes part in Civil War reenactments, the activist who's passionate about camellias, the half-dozen names for shades of skin-color Brazilians have invented, the magical candle-light walk through the gallery of ancient sculpture in Sorrentino's The Great Beauty, the tiny Magritte-like paintings of Fanny Brennan, the robust greenly-green of the unabashed parsley in my garden, the poem of Primo Levi of December, '45, a mere 6 months after his liberation from Auschwitz...
That these things should be, and more, and regularly, astounds me. Wonder is the question behind the question. I promise you, my students, you'll find your queries drilling deeper and deeper into the quiddity of things. Thank you for being so candid. Apart from the practice it gives you in English, it is a good exercise for life.
One said, in paraphrase: when I was young, I wanted to know where the stars came from; now I want to know if Liverpool will win the league title.
Another wrote: when I was young, I wondered how big the grave would have to be to bury a car that people said had died; now I ask: why am I not rich?
One remarked: I used to ask why my mother made me stop playing outside with my friends, and made me do schoolwork.
One said she had many questions when she was young, for instance, how turtles were born. Now, her compelling questions are about what foods are healthy to eat.
Where do those ingenuous questions go? Have we found satisfying answers and moved on to more serious queries? Or were we new to serious answers and taken by the kinds of questions that could elicit them? Or were we smitten by curiosity as by young love? Is there a cupid of kid's questions?
By contrast, the questions now reflect experience with the complexity of life: why are families so busy; why do I enjoy and hate living in cities; why does love hurt so much?
Is there another age of questions yet to come? I'm much older than you, my students, and I can say that I enjoy questions of innocent ignorance, as well as those of ambivalence and complicity, but also now, questions about the meaning of marvelous-ness. For that seems to be a key element in almost everything I encounter: the Scotsman who takes part in Civil War reenactments, the activist who's passionate about camellias, the half-dozen names for shades of skin-color Brazilians have invented, the magical candle-light walk through the gallery of ancient sculpture in Sorrentino's The Great Beauty, the tiny Magritte-like paintings of Fanny Brennan, the robust greenly-green of the unabashed parsley in my garden, the poem of Primo Levi of December, '45, a mere 6 months after his liberation from Auschwitz...
That these things should be, and more, and regularly, astounds me. Wonder is the question behind the question. I promise you, my students, you'll find your queries drilling deeper and deeper into the quiddity of things. Thank you for being so candid. Apart from the practice it gives you in English, it is a good exercise for life.
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Not even an absence
My candidate, I'd like to be enthusiastic for you, have ready stories to tell, have telling arguments to make on your behalf--but I can't. The contest is an important one--but nothing comes to mind when think about convincing others. Working for other candidates, I've been able to find something to get excited about. There's a kind of negative energy around you, a sink into which my readiness to work disappears as if into sand. If you were not my party's nominee...
Granted there's lots about you I don't know so I go to your website, to the issues. It seems like vapid verbiage.Where's vision? Where are you? Is there nothing but simple ambition for political advancement (as with the other guy?)
You're far from stupid. I've heard people say you are good to work for. I'm sure, in social situations, you are very personable. Why then do you arouse so little enthusiasm even among people who want, want to be pepped up for you? Even your partisans say you waffle, that you're ever a 'one the one hand...on the other' kind of person, and that you have poor judgment, a tin ear for what are reasonable expectations of constituents and potential voters. I'd like to refute these or offset them with something overwhelmingly positive but you haven't given me anything. You simply carry on imperturbable as if nothing were expected of you than you are giving.
We are voters deciding to whom to entrust our future. We have a right to demand: be real, be present to us, be someone.
God-in-love, sometimes you seem as elusive, as indifferent to our opinions. Fully occupied, in the midst of my richly furnished world and schedule, I need more than just a titular presence if I am to be one of your enthusiastic partisan. I want something of yours that speaks of who you are to hold onto as a talisman, representing what I know and can therefore speak about with conviction. I want something that represents your energy, your potentiality, your power to me, in me.
It need not be much--a special look, a turn of phrase, a move--something that unmistakably says, 'This is who you are.' 'That's so Peter,' someone might say about something I do, and they'd be right. 'That's so God-in-love,' is what I want to hear myself say--and sometimes, wonderfully, I actually do.
My candidate, I'll support you, even though you continually refuse to be someone to me, for the sake of the principles of the party we both belong to.
Granted there's lots about you I don't know so I go to your website, to the issues. It seems like vapid verbiage.Where's vision? Where are you? Is there nothing but simple ambition for political advancement (as with the other guy?)
You're far from stupid. I've heard people say you are good to work for. I'm sure, in social situations, you are very personable. Why then do you arouse so little enthusiasm even among people who want, want to be pepped up for you? Even your partisans say you waffle, that you're ever a 'one the one hand...on the other' kind of person, and that you have poor judgment, a tin ear for what are reasonable expectations of constituents and potential voters. I'd like to refute these or offset them with something overwhelmingly positive but you haven't given me anything. You simply carry on imperturbable as if nothing were expected of you than you are giving.
We are voters deciding to whom to entrust our future. We have a right to demand: be real, be present to us, be someone.
God-in-love, sometimes you seem as elusive, as indifferent to our opinions. Fully occupied, in the midst of my richly furnished world and schedule, I need more than just a titular presence if I am to be one of your enthusiastic partisan. I want something of yours that speaks of who you are to hold onto as a talisman, representing what I know and can therefore speak about with conviction. I want something that represents your energy, your potentiality, your power to me, in me.
It need not be much--a special look, a turn of phrase, a move--something that unmistakably says, 'This is who you are.' 'That's so Peter,' someone might say about something I do, and they'd be right. 'That's so God-in-love,' is what I want to hear myself say--and sometimes, wonderfully, I actually do.
My candidate, I'll support you, even though you continually refuse to be someone to me, for the sake of the principles of the party we both belong to.
Friday, October 24, 2014
C*n*e*s*t*o*
When I taught the present perfect tense today, as many times before, I reflected on its philosophical richness. In particular, its context of conversation, which seems to me one of the highest of our arts. From salons, to dinner parties, to coffee shops, to even classrooms, conversation--the back and forth of thoughts, the circling round ideas, the disruptions of laughter and vehemence--is our Nile flood, irrigating and refertilizing our spirits and imaginations.
After a real conversation, as opposed to just a mutual reporting, I feel loosened, relaxed, aired out, enlarged. The familiar themes that have occupied my mind are gone (leaving space for new ones) or have been transmuted through their presentation to other minds. Aspects of who I am normally under wraps have gloriously disrobed and revealed themselves. It's a jubilee in the old sense of 'the prisons shall be opened and the captives all set free.' We find ourselves interesting to ourselves and each other and the world's glamor is restored.
Last Sunday I went over to see my friend Yori for the first time since I'd gotten back from Scotland. Our purpose: simply to converse. Our themes: what I'd seen and done; what he's been up to, especially related to the upcoming election; then into more general topics: energy, gardens, the winter coming up, the pleasures of tea... How pleasant his face, our tone, the cadences of our interaction, the way his mind works and what he comes up with.
In class, within the context of teaching English, I've been privileged to participate in conversations ranging widely over history, science, politics, personal history and ambitions, literature and art, everything between heaven and earth. The teacher/student distinction recedes. and we are just peers in our humanity considering existence itself. I listen and learn.
I'm comfortable being by myself but there are many more topics I'd like to converse on. Still I'm awkward outside formal or semiformal set ups. Only seldom do I strike up conversations with strangers, and when I do, I'm afraid to be too enthusiastic or whimsical. Sometimes I'm more interested more in topics than in my interlocutors. Maybe this is why these episodes abort before they really come alive.
The book to read on this head is Theodore Zeldin's An Intimate History of Humanity. He writes early on (in a chapter entitled How men and women have slowly learned to have interesting conversations) that so many conversations are 'fruitless' because 'conversation is still in its infancy,' and proceeds to explore its potential through the rest of the book.
Once upon a time, being a conversationalist was how you paid for your dinner at some patron's table. Quick wit, adroit transitions, dramatic flourish -were all part of the repertoire of skills of the frequently-invited. The aim was to whip up a confection of talk that made the occasion memorable. Sometimes the performance aspect showed too obviously through.
Today, we're not as good as saying or making sure we get what we want if conversation is our goal. We're often not supposed to express disagreement, for instance, or expose ourselves too much. Yet, where is it that we meet each other more fully as equals and friends than in this play which is serious, this seriousness which is playful?
Conversation for the sake of conversation: this is what friends do, and what makes friends of people previously unacquainted. Zeldin is right; we've only just begun.
After a real conversation, as opposed to just a mutual reporting, I feel loosened, relaxed, aired out, enlarged. The familiar themes that have occupied my mind are gone (leaving space for new ones) or have been transmuted through their presentation to other minds. Aspects of who I am normally under wraps have gloriously disrobed and revealed themselves. It's a jubilee in the old sense of 'the prisons shall be opened and the captives all set free.' We find ourselves interesting to ourselves and each other and the world's glamor is restored.
Last Sunday I went over to see my friend Yori for the first time since I'd gotten back from Scotland. Our purpose: simply to converse. Our themes: what I'd seen and done; what he's been up to, especially related to the upcoming election; then into more general topics: energy, gardens, the winter coming up, the pleasures of tea... How pleasant his face, our tone, the cadences of our interaction, the way his mind works and what he comes up with.
In class, within the context of teaching English, I've been privileged to participate in conversations ranging widely over history, science, politics, personal history and ambitions, literature and art, everything between heaven and earth. The teacher/student distinction recedes. and we are just peers in our humanity considering existence itself. I listen and learn.
I'm comfortable being by myself but there are many more topics I'd like to converse on. Still I'm awkward outside formal or semiformal set ups. Only seldom do I strike up conversations with strangers, and when I do, I'm afraid to be too enthusiastic or whimsical. Sometimes I'm more interested more in topics than in my interlocutors. Maybe this is why these episodes abort before they really come alive.
The book to read on this head is Theodore Zeldin's An Intimate History of Humanity. He writes early on (in a chapter entitled How men and women have slowly learned to have interesting conversations) that so many conversations are 'fruitless' because 'conversation is still in its infancy,' and proceeds to explore its potential through the rest of the book.
Once upon a time, being a conversationalist was how you paid for your dinner at some patron's table. Quick wit, adroit transitions, dramatic flourish -were all part of the repertoire of skills of the frequently-invited. The aim was to whip up a confection of talk that made the occasion memorable. Sometimes the performance aspect showed too obviously through.
Today, we're not as good as saying or making sure we get what we want if conversation is our goal. We're often not supposed to express disagreement, for instance, or expose ourselves too much. Yet, where is it that we meet each other more fully as equals and friends than in this play which is serious, this seriousness which is playful?
Conversation for the sake of conversation: this is what friends do, and what makes friends of people previously unacquainted. Zeldin is right; we've only just begun.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Waiting to be known
The hardest thing to teach as a science teacher was hypothesizing. Often what we came up with were 'if we do this, that will occur' testable sentences, predicting the behavior of things under certain conditions. But what is harder, much harder, is to explain why things behave as they do, that is, to understand how something works well enough to be able to construct a explanatory model that can be tested.
Over in Scotland, I tried to make popovers for the gang. Eggs, check; milk, check; flour, okay. Muffin tin, specially purchased for the occasion, greased and ready to go. Oven? Ah, now we're in new territory. First, it's temps were in celsius degrees. So 450 degrees converts to what? Then there were the controls. Was this a convection oven? I seemed to hear a fan more or less loudly roaring at each setting. How then were the four options different?
What I saw through the oven window after a few minutes was the batter in some cups billowing up. When I looked later, everything was flat. When I pulled them out of the oven, the popovers were like pancakes in cupcake form, edible, even tasty, but not popovers. I tried twice with the same result. Very disappointing. What could I say to those who had been waiting for the treat that I'd made successfully many times before stateside? Sorry, unfamiliar oven. A standard excuse.
I have a theory about popovers, a hypothesis if you will. The initial 'inflation' is due to air mixed up in the batter expanding but getting trapped by the crust being formed and hardened by the heat. Temperature is key. Too hot and, while a crust forms, the air pressure is too high for the crust to hold; too cold and the air leaks away before the crust forms. After about twenty minutes at 450, the oven must be put down to 350 for another 20 minutes so that the batter cooks.
When I looked through the newspaper today and saw a recipe for Foolproof (love it) Tart Tatin, an apple dessert (just the thing I keep my eye out for), I quickly perused it and read: 'When ready to cook, heat oven to 375 degrees (or 350 if using convection)...' What? Perhaps I really had overheated the oven. Maybe my popovers had indeed popped. Should I try the experiment of overheating my oven, and maybe spoiling a batch? Maybe it'd be worth it.
Kitchen science is a wonderful subject. The person to read on this head is Harold McGee. I used cooking experiments in a number of my classes. The lessons have double, triple benefit: we learned to cook; we made good things to eat (usually); we found out something about chemistry and physics and hypothesis-making. As I looked through the glass into the oven, those little dabs of batter swelling and bulging were like living things. I watched them with the same interest I give to soil where I've planted seeds. 'What's going on in you?' I wonder. 'How are you developing?' There's a process going on and I try to imagine myself inside it.
When we explore, we're strangers but curious. Hypothesizing invents stories about how things work, stories we can test. It's looking under the hood; it's getting up close and personal. The whole world and everything and everyone in it is waiting to be known this way.
This year's Nobel prize winner in economics, Jean Tirole, earned the award from hypothesizing about the relationships of regulators and businesses in the context of the marketplace, and concluding that the story is about something as full of complex interactions and feedback loops as a living being. A valid story may suggest a multiplicity of good ways for things to work.
Isaac Asimov, the science and science fiction writer, wrote an essay about creativity 50 years ago but only just published in MIT Technology Review and in it he said:
"Making the cross-connection (between item 1 and item 2 which might not ordinarily seem connected) requires a certain daring. It must, for any cross-connection that does not require daring is performed at once by many and develops not as a 'new idea,' but as a 'mere corollary of an old idea.' It is only afterward that a new idea seems reasonable."
New ideas, yes, but even corollaries to old ideas: what matters is engaging with things by looking and thinking and linking, again and again.
Over in Scotland, I tried to make popovers for the gang. Eggs, check; milk, check; flour, okay. Muffin tin, specially purchased for the occasion, greased and ready to go. Oven? Ah, now we're in new territory. First, it's temps were in celsius degrees. So 450 degrees converts to what? Then there were the controls. Was this a convection oven? I seemed to hear a fan more or less loudly roaring at each setting. How then were the four options different?
What I saw through the oven window after a few minutes was the batter in some cups billowing up. When I looked later, everything was flat. When I pulled them out of the oven, the popovers were like pancakes in cupcake form, edible, even tasty, but not popovers. I tried twice with the same result. Very disappointing. What could I say to those who had been waiting for the treat that I'd made successfully many times before stateside? Sorry, unfamiliar oven. A standard excuse.
I have a theory about popovers, a hypothesis if you will. The initial 'inflation' is due to air mixed up in the batter expanding but getting trapped by the crust being formed and hardened by the heat. Temperature is key. Too hot and, while a crust forms, the air pressure is too high for the crust to hold; too cold and the air leaks away before the crust forms. After about twenty minutes at 450, the oven must be put down to 350 for another 20 minutes so that the batter cooks.
When I looked through the newspaper today and saw a recipe for Foolproof (love it) Tart Tatin, an apple dessert (just the thing I keep my eye out for), I quickly perused it and read: 'When ready to cook, heat oven to 375 degrees (or 350 if using convection)...' What? Perhaps I really had overheated the oven. Maybe my popovers had indeed popped. Should I try the experiment of overheating my oven, and maybe spoiling a batch? Maybe it'd be worth it.
Kitchen science is a wonderful subject. The person to read on this head is Harold McGee. I used cooking experiments in a number of my classes. The lessons have double, triple benefit: we learned to cook; we made good things to eat (usually); we found out something about chemistry and physics and hypothesis-making. As I looked through the glass into the oven, those little dabs of batter swelling and bulging were like living things. I watched them with the same interest I give to soil where I've planted seeds. 'What's going on in you?' I wonder. 'How are you developing?' There's a process going on and I try to imagine myself inside it.
When we explore, we're strangers but curious. Hypothesizing invents stories about how things work, stories we can test. It's looking under the hood; it's getting up close and personal. The whole world and everything and everyone in it is waiting to be known this way.
This year's Nobel prize winner in economics, Jean Tirole, earned the award from hypothesizing about the relationships of regulators and businesses in the context of the marketplace, and concluding that the story is about something as full of complex interactions and feedback loops as a living being. A valid story may suggest a multiplicity of good ways for things to work.
Isaac Asimov, the science and science fiction writer, wrote an essay about creativity 50 years ago but only just published in MIT Technology Review and in it he said:
"Making the cross-connection (between item 1 and item 2 which might not ordinarily seem connected) requires a certain daring. It must, for any cross-connection that does not require daring is performed at once by many and develops not as a 'new idea,' but as a 'mere corollary of an old idea.' It is only afterward that a new idea seems reasonable."
New ideas, yes, but even corollaries to old ideas: what matters is engaging with things by looking and thinking and linking, again and again.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Nurses
I remember being in isolation. The room was large but with only one bed. The ceiling was very high, the windows tall and narrow. It was a former Luftwaffe hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany now used by the U.S. Air Force. I spent eight weeks alone there recovering from extensive burns, leaving the room only for sitz baths and debridement of my wounds, and later skin grafts. Some friends, oh so welcome, flew over from America to see me, but otherwise, doctors' visits aside, there were only the nurses.
Nurses are all over the news these days: nurses taking care of Ebola patients, nurses coming down themselves with the dread disease, nurses on the front line of our fear.
Nurses, usually but not always women, are many of the people of my acquaintance--hard-working, generous people, people of courage. I think of those Ebola nurses who suit up in hazmat gear, double gloved, and enter the isolation room of someone with a horrifying disease, fluids exploding out of either end, profuse internal bleeding in between, terrified of death. There, for the length of their shift, they must remain: clearing up diarrhea, and vomitus, providing water, comforting as best they can.
For them, no water, no food, no breaks until they are relieved. Then, carefully, for this is the most dangerous part, removing their gloves, masks, suits so as not to touch what the fluids of the sick person may have spattered.
The patient's world is rendered habitable by these nurses. The battle for health goes on inside the patient, but those who provide and maintain the space wherein that struggle can be fought and, hopefully, won, are the nurses. They do this as a job, and often as a calling.
My recovery was without drama. Open, weeping, granular flesh needed to be dressed and redressed to prevent infection, bits of dead skin needed to be tweezed off one by one, and the mordant spirits of the patient kept up as he contemplated the patterns of foolishness that had led him to that pass, and would probably doom him thereafter. I don't remember any nurses in particular, and they were not at risk dealing with me, but in that bitter time, they gave me room to revive, they cared for and encouraged me. After all these years, whoever you were, thank you.
Day after day, you nurses present yourselves to the sick, the injured, the disabled with a message implicit in all you do: here you can rest; here you can recover. Here is stilled the clangor of the world. Here soothing; here calm. The untoward situations you find your body in, however extreme, don't exclude you from human community: we welcome you.
Of course, this isn't always true. Hospital protocols, inadequate staffing, and other factors qualify this message, but I see nursing as a work of hospitality. Some run, some turn their faces (I'm among these), some keep a professional distance and schedule. You nurses don't. In you, compassion is incarnate. Blessed are you.
Nurses are all over the news these days: nurses taking care of Ebola patients, nurses coming down themselves with the dread disease, nurses on the front line of our fear.
Nurses, usually but not always women, are many of the people of my acquaintance--hard-working, generous people, people of courage. I think of those Ebola nurses who suit up in hazmat gear, double gloved, and enter the isolation room of someone with a horrifying disease, fluids exploding out of either end, profuse internal bleeding in between, terrified of death. There, for the length of their shift, they must remain: clearing up diarrhea, and vomitus, providing water, comforting as best they can.
For them, no water, no food, no breaks until they are relieved. Then, carefully, for this is the most dangerous part, removing their gloves, masks, suits so as not to touch what the fluids of the sick person may have spattered.
The patient's world is rendered habitable by these nurses. The battle for health goes on inside the patient, but those who provide and maintain the space wherein that struggle can be fought and, hopefully, won, are the nurses. They do this as a job, and often as a calling.
My recovery was without drama. Open, weeping, granular flesh needed to be dressed and redressed to prevent infection, bits of dead skin needed to be tweezed off one by one, and the mordant spirits of the patient kept up as he contemplated the patterns of foolishness that had led him to that pass, and would probably doom him thereafter. I don't remember any nurses in particular, and they were not at risk dealing with me, but in that bitter time, they gave me room to revive, they cared for and encouraged me. After all these years, whoever you were, thank you.
Day after day, you nurses present yourselves to the sick, the injured, the disabled with a message implicit in all you do: here you can rest; here you can recover. Here is stilled the clangor of the world. Here soothing; here calm. The untoward situations you find your body in, however extreme, don't exclude you from human community: we welcome you.
Of course, this isn't always true. Hospital protocols, inadequate staffing, and other factors qualify this message, but I see nursing as a work of hospitality. Some run, some turn their faces (I'm among these), some keep a professional distance and schedule. You nurses don't. In you, compassion is incarnate. Blessed are you.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Apology
A crowded 5 o'clock train. There was an empty seat and I slid into it. Standing on front of me a group of schoolgirls who'd just been at sports practice: a couple of white girls and a couple of black girls, all talking excitedly about the goings-on that afternoon.
The train emptied out as we headed to Forest Hills. And one of the them plunked down next to me, knocking me gently on the arm. What happened next was a You moment. A girl who was still standing said to the one who had touched me: 'Well...?' 'Well, what?' 'You hit him,' and gave the other a look and a tilt of the head in my direction.
The one next to me glowered and said nothing, clearly not wanting to humiliate herself with an acknowledgement of my existence, and her fault. Then, after a pause, 'Sorry.' 'Not a problem,' was my reply. Incident over.
As I think it over, though, there were so many elements: the insistence of the standing girl who wouldn't let the issue go, the reluctance and eventual grudging apology.
The continued power of old formalities impressed me, as did the influence that people have on one another. The 'sorry' was a small thing but the right thing, for it made my space and theirs into something for all of us.
The train emptied out as we headed to Forest Hills. And one of the them plunked down next to me, knocking me gently on the arm. What happened next was a You moment. A girl who was still standing said to the one who had touched me: 'Well...?' 'Well, what?' 'You hit him,' and gave the other a look and a tilt of the head in my direction.
The one next to me glowered and said nothing, clearly not wanting to humiliate herself with an acknowledgement of my existence, and her fault. Then, after a pause, 'Sorry.' 'Not a problem,' was my reply. Incident over.
As I think it over, though, there were so many elements: the insistence of the standing girl who wouldn't let the issue go, the reluctance and eventual grudging apology.
The continued power of old formalities impressed me, as did the influence that people have on one another. The 'sorry' was a small thing but the right thing, for it made my space and theirs into something for all of us.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Serenades
This time of year we sometimes see chevrons of geese honking across the sky--not always going south. And then there are the flocks of swallows which gather over our rivers, swooping and diving. Great flocks of starlings and other birds swirl across the sky like lofted scarves. Then there are the trees we pass where a bazaar of twittering and fluttering busy among the branches. Later on, the crows will congregate and caw.
But where is bird song? I hadn't missed it until, time after time in Scotland, I heard songbirds warbling in the hedges and trees. There were calls and caws as well, but it was the songs, made by one or several invisible birds of (I think) various species, that took me. I recorded five segments of song on my phone while I was over there, and continued the habit of recording song even when I went to Walden on Friday and heard repetitive clucking and cheeping up on the hillside above the water. Those were bird sounds, yes, but not varied in pitch and cadence like those of the Scottish birds.
Listening to these recordings again as I write this, I am touched once more. These aren't purchased sound loops but fresh song flowing out from thickets as I walked by, stopped at. I remember of this one, the brightness of the sun; of that, the pre-dawn airport; of another, the view of the Clyde and Rothesay in the distance. But it's the songs that reach out to my heart. I'm no good at attributing challenge or joy or other message to these songs; I hear them simply as music produced on the spot by songbirds I never saw.
Singers, why are you not here serenading us whose ears are thirsty for relief from brutish traffic sounds, plane roars, copter wappings. It lifts my spirits just listening to you. The winter is coming; the news is bad; I'm not getting younger. Your songs may not be for us but just listening in is plenty, is abundance, in fact.
But where is bird song? I hadn't missed it until, time after time in Scotland, I heard songbirds warbling in the hedges and trees. There were calls and caws as well, but it was the songs, made by one or several invisible birds of (I think) various species, that took me. I recorded five segments of song on my phone while I was over there, and continued the habit of recording song even when I went to Walden on Friday and heard repetitive clucking and cheeping up on the hillside above the water. Those were bird sounds, yes, but not varied in pitch and cadence like those of the Scottish birds.
Listening to these recordings again as I write this, I am touched once more. These aren't purchased sound loops but fresh song flowing out from thickets as I walked by, stopped at. I remember of this one, the brightness of the sun; of that, the pre-dawn airport; of another, the view of the Clyde and Rothesay in the distance. But it's the songs that reach out to my heart. I'm no good at attributing challenge or joy or other message to these songs; I hear them simply as music produced on the spot by songbirds I never saw.
Singers, why are you not here serenading us whose ears are thirsty for relief from brutish traffic sounds, plane roars, copter wappings. It lifts my spirits just listening to you. The winter is coming; the news is bad; I'm not getting younger. Your songs may not be for us but just listening in is plenty, is abundance, in fact.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Allure
Saturday: a dry cough, a tickle in the chest, active especially in the evening, a precursor of a cold? How about a day of rest; no politicking in the square, no shopping, no visiting, no going out, no anything, so that I just get better. Just staying at home with my library (or, less pretentious, collection of books). Oh joy.
I love my library; I've assembled it book by book, each book a promise of pleasure, and the whole a promise of climactic satisfaction. The book acquirer in me anticipates with each new purchase that moment when I'll sit down and savor the volume, turn to its table of contents, start at page one, then learn and enjoy whatever is in it, whatever originated in the genius and scholarship of the author and put down on paper. This is a topic I'd like to know more about; that is a collection with an interesting premise; the other will help me get better at something I want to learn how to do, a veritable panopticon.
A random section foot long section of a bookshelf consists of 8 books of poetry (thin, Houseman,Oliver, Montague, Wilbur), 2 novels of manners by Auchincloss, Bates on the Amazon, Murakami on running, Van Doren on Dryden, an interpretation of the art of Sargent, and a dialogue between Martin Buber and a Wehrmacht chaplain. More than enough in just one portion of a portion.
Each time I pay and walk away with one (or several) books in hand, I feel rich, owner of the key to a world. Under my arms, multiple worlds. On my bookshelves, worlds of worlds. All for me, mine to choose when and where I please, mine to contemplate as live possibilities, my universe. Looking at a shelf, a wall of shelves, I imagine consuming everything all at once, an orgy of read-revelry that swallows me up, as I swallow all the books up.
Yet, on the mend as I am today, what do I do? Read a few chapters from this book, a passage from that, browse a poem or two from another. It's all good, but not the over-the-top pleasure that the presence of this library suggests I should be having--because I can only read one thing at a time. The alluring offer of overwhelming satisfaction remains beyond my grasp. I'm teased; partially pleased, but finally mocked and provoked.
There's the acquirer in me, and the reader in me. The acquirer dreams of bliss. The reader knows that bliss comes moment by moment. Both are good but the acquirer knows no limits; the reader is very aware of them.
You, book-buyer. Lay off. Or else, find your twin, Book Disposer, and put him to work. One out for each in. But Disposer only shows up in extremis. How then to manage this greedy aspect of myself, this almost Other, this weaver of intoxications, this pander.
Buying books, let's face it, is an addictive habit independent of my long-term better judgment, but complicit with my impulses. After all, there are libraries and books online and Amazon if ever I need any particular book. Do I have to have these things around me like a court, and I the king?
There are other addictions that make life unmanageable, and from crises of unmanageability come the internal confrontations and clarifications of prioirities. For now, I can let be vague and latiitudinarian, and surprise myself: did I buy that? Well, I'll find a place for it.
But when, in the late afternoon, a tricky time of day for me anyway, I encountered the splurger's omnivorous appetite incarnate in these laden bookshelves I found myself torn, desiring and frustrated by it, or wanting but not able to rise to the occasion, as if I had bitten off more than I could chew, unable to swallow, unwilling to spit out.
This isn't serious, I think, a matter of negotiation for space (oh, if I have to move!), but it is serious, and a matter of who I think I am and want to be. Do I have time to read, much less, 'mark, learn and inwardly digest' what I have. Is the Acquirer the Eternal Youth of the boundless future, and the more sober writer of these words the one increasing aware of mortality?
I don't want to give up the amplitude, the largesse, the arms-wide attitude to books and their topics and themes. I treasure the desire for the treasure. And yet...there's the reproach. Ah, forget second thoughts. Let me luxuriate.
I love my library; I've assembled it book by book, each book a promise of pleasure, and the whole a promise of climactic satisfaction. The book acquirer in me anticipates with each new purchase that moment when I'll sit down and savor the volume, turn to its table of contents, start at page one, then learn and enjoy whatever is in it, whatever originated in the genius and scholarship of the author and put down on paper. This is a topic I'd like to know more about; that is a collection with an interesting premise; the other will help me get better at something I want to learn how to do, a veritable panopticon.
A random section foot long section of a bookshelf consists of 8 books of poetry (thin, Houseman,Oliver, Montague, Wilbur), 2 novels of manners by Auchincloss, Bates on the Amazon, Murakami on running, Van Doren on Dryden, an interpretation of the art of Sargent, and a dialogue between Martin Buber and a Wehrmacht chaplain. More than enough in just one portion of a portion.
Each time I pay and walk away with one (or several) books in hand, I feel rich, owner of the key to a world. Under my arms, multiple worlds. On my bookshelves, worlds of worlds. All for me, mine to choose when and where I please, mine to contemplate as live possibilities, my universe. Looking at a shelf, a wall of shelves, I imagine consuming everything all at once, an orgy of read-revelry that swallows me up, as I swallow all the books up.
Yet, on the mend as I am today, what do I do? Read a few chapters from this book, a passage from that, browse a poem or two from another. It's all good, but not the over-the-top pleasure that the presence of this library suggests I should be having--because I can only read one thing at a time. The alluring offer of overwhelming satisfaction remains beyond my grasp. I'm teased; partially pleased, but finally mocked and provoked.
There's the acquirer in me, and the reader in me. The acquirer dreams of bliss. The reader knows that bliss comes moment by moment. Both are good but the acquirer knows no limits; the reader is very aware of them.
You, book-buyer. Lay off. Or else, find your twin, Book Disposer, and put him to work. One out for each in. But Disposer only shows up in extremis. How then to manage this greedy aspect of myself, this almost Other, this weaver of intoxications, this pander.
Buying books, let's face it, is an addictive habit independent of my long-term better judgment, but complicit with my impulses. After all, there are libraries and books online and Amazon if ever I need any particular book. Do I have to have these things around me like a court, and I the king?
There are other addictions that make life unmanageable, and from crises of unmanageability come the internal confrontations and clarifications of prioirities. For now, I can let be vague and latiitudinarian, and surprise myself: did I buy that? Well, I'll find a place for it.
But when, in the late afternoon, a tricky time of day for me anyway, I encountered the splurger's omnivorous appetite incarnate in these laden bookshelves I found myself torn, desiring and frustrated by it, or wanting but not able to rise to the occasion, as if I had bitten off more than I could chew, unable to swallow, unwilling to spit out.
This isn't serious, I think, a matter of negotiation for space (oh, if I have to move!), but it is serious, and a matter of who I think I am and want to be. Do I have time to read, much less, 'mark, learn and inwardly digest' what I have. Is the Acquirer the Eternal Youth of the boundless future, and the more sober writer of these words the one increasing aware of mortality?
I don't want to give up the amplitude, the largesse, the arms-wide attitude to books and their topics and themes. I treasure the desire for the treasure. And yet...there's the reproach. Ah, forget second thoughts. Let me luxuriate.
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Walden
Looking for trees in color, we set out for Concord: Walden Pond, where Thoreau had his cabin, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where the most famous Transcendentalist authors are buried, the North Bridge, where the colonists fired the shots that triggered the Revolution. The day brilliantly sunny, trees here and there in bridge reds or yellows, we, among many others, enjoyed the balmy day by walking, visiting, pointing out, reflecting.
There's a bronze of Thoreau in front of a replica of his cabin near Walden Pond. The characteristic beard and big nose identify the walking figure as the writer we know of, and do know somewhat, but don't really know. Is the statue life-sized? Was he really that short? At least it has him walking and his head turned as if listening, or having just thought of something.
He writes in Walden about the mirror-like quality of the pond especially this time of year, September or October. He calls it 'sky water' and saw it as a field of water that 'betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from the sky.' We saw serious distance swimmers churning up the water, strong shoulder muscles moving forward like whale backs while arms regularly rose out of and slid back into the water. It gave me a start to see one of them so close to the shore, as if the distance between us had been foreshortened, until I saw that the sandy bottom dropped away sharply where I stood.
One man we met as we circumambulated was lounging in the water, completely immersed only his head showing with which we exchanged greetings, but so close to the shore that, once more, my perspective cues were discordant.
There seems to be a whole subculture of swimmer/loungers around the shores of the pond. I saw one man emerge from the water with something like a balaclava hat of rubber with a face mask and' snorkel. The Thoreau who wrote: 'I have spent many an hour, when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats, in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake, until I was aroused by the boat touching sand, and I arose to see what short my fates had impelled me to--days when idleness was the most attractive and productive industry,' would have understood what draws these people to and into that water.
'...the latter part of October, when the severe frosts have come, ' he wrote, but we were enjoying summer temperatures. He kept such careful records over the years of the times of arrival of birds and blooming of flowers that we can observe the gradual shifts to earlier and earlier in the year that signal the warming of our climate. Would you have been shocked by yesterday's weather?
Your grave stone up on Author's Ridge, catty-corner to Hawthorne's, a few steps from Alcott's and in stone throwing distance from Emerson's is simple: Henry, it says. The Thoreau family stone next to it has all the details of your immediate family and their dates. Nothing mysterious about your origins. You were born into a Concord family, lived in this town, and finally (I think this is your second burial) ended up so close to the sunlit, mossy slope that you must have been short not to have your legs sticking out in the air.
Your wander-walking days are over, yet in Walden, as I've read it and browsed in it (along with your other writings, especially Cape Cod) still seems a peripatetic work, an on-the-go kind of account of someone who was resolved to really be where he was. 'We must learn to reawaken and to keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids (no coffee?) but by an infinite expectation the dawn...' The passage goes on, as do they all, into an overgrown thicket of ironic obscurities, but, you, Mr Thoreau (however your name was pronounced), sought to put to the test the Transcendentalist claim that each moment have infinite resonance, which we can hear if only we listen.
Your prose, indeed your persona, was gnarly but the moment caught by the lumpy statue near the cabin was of one of the many moments of encounter that, like upwellings of a spring, fed the pure Walden of your existence. It's such moments I try to recognize in this blog.
There's a bronze of Thoreau in front of a replica of his cabin near Walden Pond. The characteristic beard and big nose identify the walking figure as the writer we know of, and do know somewhat, but don't really know. Is the statue life-sized? Was he really that short? At least it has him walking and his head turned as if listening, or having just thought of something.
He writes in Walden about the mirror-like quality of the pond especially this time of year, September or October. He calls it 'sky water' and saw it as a field of water that 'betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from the sky.' We saw serious distance swimmers churning up the water, strong shoulder muscles moving forward like whale backs while arms regularly rose out of and slid back into the water. It gave me a start to see one of them so close to the shore, as if the distance between us had been foreshortened, until I saw that the sandy bottom dropped away sharply where I stood.
One man we met as we circumambulated was lounging in the water, completely immersed only his head showing with which we exchanged greetings, but so close to the shore that, once more, my perspective cues were discordant.
There seems to be a whole subculture of swimmer/loungers around the shores of the pond. I saw one man emerge from the water with something like a balaclava hat of rubber with a face mask and' snorkel. The Thoreau who wrote: 'I have spent many an hour, when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats, in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake, until I was aroused by the boat touching sand, and I arose to see what short my fates had impelled me to--days when idleness was the most attractive and productive industry,' would have understood what draws these people to and into that water.
'...the latter part of October, when the severe frosts have come, ' he wrote, but we were enjoying summer temperatures. He kept such careful records over the years of the times of arrival of birds and blooming of flowers that we can observe the gradual shifts to earlier and earlier in the year that signal the warming of our climate. Would you have been shocked by yesterday's weather?
Your grave stone up on Author's Ridge, catty-corner to Hawthorne's, a few steps from Alcott's and in stone throwing distance from Emerson's is simple: Henry, it says. The Thoreau family stone next to it has all the details of your immediate family and their dates. Nothing mysterious about your origins. You were born into a Concord family, lived in this town, and finally (I think this is your second burial) ended up so close to the sunlit, mossy slope that you must have been short not to have your legs sticking out in the air.
Your wander-walking days are over, yet in Walden, as I've read it and browsed in it (along with your other writings, especially Cape Cod) still seems a peripatetic work, an on-the-go kind of account of someone who was resolved to really be where he was. 'We must learn to reawaken and to keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids (no coffee?) but by an infinite expectation the dawn...' The passage goes on, as do they all, into an overgrown thicket of ironic obscurities, but, you, Mr Thoreau (however your name was pronounced), sought to put to the test the Transcendentalist claim that each moment have infinite resonance, which we can hear if only we listen.
Your prose, indeed your persona, was gnarly but the moment caught by the lumpy statue near the cabin was of one of the many moments of encounter that, like upwellings of a spring, fed the pure Walden of your existence. It's such moments I try to recognize in this blog.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Comparison
In my first evening class back, after we'd said how we'd missed each other, and how good the young woman had been who'd covered for me while I was away, we moved to the theme of the day: Making Comparisons. We went over comparatives, equalitives, expressions for degrees of similarity or difference, and so on, ending finally with a round robin: aspects of Boston, and the U.S. vs the same in the students' cities and countries--weather, public behavior, food... Comparison makes us nostalgic and satisfied at the same time.
It got me thinking about my recent trip to Scotland. My mother is Scottish, originally Glaswegian, and my late father English from London, but I see myself as American, and a by-adoption Bostonian. Wearing the kilt at my second cousin's wedding, was nostalgic for my mum, but only pleasant for me insofar as it proved admirable for dancing later in the evening.
Points of comparison:
The most salient, driving on the other side of the street. Less obvious, speed cameras and violation ticketing by mail. Absent, parking meters. Present but unexpected, barriers around the sidewalks at intersections with opening only at the signalled pedestrian crossing points. The trains are as quiet as slippers.
Language: not only the burr, but the vowels: 'coos' for 'cows' and a kind of ski jump intonation with a singing lilt. A special Scots vocabulary: be careful if youc all any woman 'besom.' A pleasant sounding dialect, to my ears, but hard to follow in heated conversations.
Land use: housing is tightly clustered, surrounded by large areas of open space mostly for sheep. This means that at the end of whatever narrow, tightly turning street one is on, there's a vista, not too distant, of a green or yellow hill. There's a signal absence of billboards.
Many houses compact, the stairs steep. Kitchens often tiny, and appliance similarly scaled. Bathroom fixtures modernistic, chrome, multi-functional. Radiators are thin but large and attached to the wall. Electric blankets under, not over, the sleeper. Outside, the grass is putting green short. I recorded singing birds in all sorts of places
A pound is about two dollars, but often what costs a dollar here is a pound there.
Tea: gallons and gallons of it. "Shall I just put on a pot?' Coffee is white or Americano (black), and no half-and-half. Eggs have bright orange yolks. No spices in the food, just basic provender. Haggis (oatmeal cooked in intestines) is actually one of the more flavorful concoctions. Trifles for dessert. Cellophane-wrapped cakes and candy bars for tea-time snacks.
The weather sometimes made Boston's seem as stable as Arizona's; it was overcast, bright sun, drizzle, sun, overcast, a spot more rain, and so on. Cloudscapes were spectacular.
Citizen/government relationship: 'It's here for us', and often is. Pensions, for instance, seem to be generous. Worker/company relationship: 'I work to the clock, because I have a life to lead.' Vacations: sure, the seaside or the Highlands, but regularly, Florida, Spain, and wherever else.
Politics: I was only with conservatives whose views and modes of expression were as Red State as any we have here. Independence: Glasgow voted for it, but the people I talked to thought the 'Yes' supporters were 'eejits' who hadn't the intelligence to see the harm that separation from England would inflict. Alex Salmon, leader of the independence drive (and all other politicians) were deemed corrupt and self-serving. The currency issue was often cited. Vague hopes were expressed that the vote would shake up Westminster (the center of the British government, and be good for other underrepresented sections of the island, but not a lot of interest in political specifics.
Much disdain for Eastern European immigrants, and for the E.U. generally. Doubt about climate change. Much awareness, though confessed sotto voce, of Catholic or Protestant identities-- 'So you know who you're talking to.'--this played out in the Rangers vs Celtics soccer club rivalry.
I'd thought, in the independence vote, that my mother and father were going to symbolically divorce again, but instead the complex, fraught relationship carries on.
This is New England; up the coast is Nova Scotia. We on the upper Atlantic coast are perhaps more aware of the British as ancestors and as contemporaries. So much is recognizable but so much is different. I didn't get the feeling there of 'Gotcha' in the public space as I do here. Some commercial opportunities that could have been exploited, by public policy, hadn't been. There's a distinct socialist, if not quite communalist, ethos generally accepted there that, of course, is hotly contested here.
Of course, a week with the family for a wedding is an extremely limited experience; I may well be very wrong on many points. Still, I saw many things to like in the way, you Scots, have arranged your affairs. Yours is not my style, but it's a good style with much to recommend it, and one I was happy to encounter.
At the end of our class exercise on making comparisons, a student from Haiti compared me and my stand-in, a bright young woman just graduated with her TSOL certification. After the obvious old vs young, male vs female observations, we got to the matter of style: games vs exercises, voice volume and speed, and other things that make one teacher different from another, and a variety of teachers good for students. I think the people in class are happy to have had both.
It got me thinking about my recent trip to Scotland. My mother is Scottish, originally Glaswegian, and my late father English from London, but I see myself as American, and a by-adoption Bostonian. Wearing the kilt at my second cousin's wedding, was nostalgic for my mum, but only pleasant for me insofar as it proved admirable for dancing later in the evening.
Points of comparison:
The most salient, driving on the other side of the street. Less obvious, speed cameras and violation ticketing by mail. Absent, parking meters. Present but unexpected, barriers around the sidewalks at intersections with opening only at the signalled pedestrian crossing points. The trains are as quiet as slippers.
Language: not only the burr, but the vowels: 'coos' for 'cows' and a kind of ski jump intonation with a singing lilt. A special Scots vocabulary: be careful if youc all any woman 'besom.' A pleasant sounding dialect, to my ears, but hard to follow in heated conversations.
Land use: housing is tightly clustered, surrounded by large areas of open space mostly for sheep. This means that at the end of whatever narrow, tightly turning street one is on, there's a vista, not too distant, of a green or yellow hill. There's a signal absence of billboards.
Many houses compact, the stairs steep. Kitchens often tiny, and appliance similarly scaled. Bathroom fixtures modernistic, chrome, multi-functional. Radiators are thin but large and attached to the wall. Electric blankets under, not over, the sleeper. Outside, the grass is putting green short. I recorded singing birds in all sorts of places
A pound is about two dollars, but often what costs a dollar here is a pound there.
Tea: gallons and gallons of it. "Shall I just put on a pot?' Coffee is white or Americano (black), and no half-and-half. Eggs have bright orange yolks. No spices in the food, just basic provender. Haggis (oatmeal cooked in intestines) is actually one of the more flavorful concoctions. Trifles for dessert. Cellophane-wrapped cakes and candy bars for tea-time snacks.
The weather sometimes made Boston's seem as stable as Arizona's; it was overcast, bright sun, drizzle, sun, overcast, a spot more rain, and so on. Cloudscapes were spectacular.
Citizen/government relationship: 'It's here for us', and often is. Pensions, for instance, seem to be generous. Worker/company relationship: 'I work to the clock, because I have a life to lead.' Vacations: sure, the seaside or the Highlands, but regularly, Florida, Spain, and wherever else.
Politics: I was only with conservatives whose views and modes of expression were as Red State as any we have here. Independence: Glasgow voted for it, but the people I talked to thought the 'Yes' supporters were 'eejits' who hadn't the intelligence to see the harm that separation from England would inflict. Alex Salmon, leader of the independence drive (and all other politicians) were deemed corrupt and self-serving. The currency issue was often cited. Vague hopes were expressed that the vote would shake up Westminster (the center of the British government, and be good for other underrepresented sections of the island, but not a lot of interest in political specifics.
Much disdain for Eastern European immigrants, and for the E.U. generally. Doubt about climate change. Much awareness, though confessed sotto voce, of Catholic or Protestant identities-- 'So you know who you're talking to.'--this played out in the Rangers vs Celtics soccer club rivalry.
I'd thought, in the independence vote, that my mother and father were going to symbolically divorce again, but instead the complex, fraught relationship carries on.
This is New England; up the coast is Nova Scotia. We on the upper Atlantic coast are perhaps more aware of the British as ancestors and as contemporaries. So much is recognizable but so much is different. I didn't get the feeling there of 'Gotcha' in the public space as I do here. Some commercial opportunities that could have been exploited, by public policy, hadn't been. There's a distinct socialist, if not quite communalist, ethos generally accepted there that, of course, is hotly contested here.
Of course, a week with the family for a wedding is an extremely limited experience; I may well be very wrong on many points. Still, I saw many things to like in the way, you Scots, have arranged your affairs. Yours is not my style, but it's a good style with much to recommend it, and one I was happy to encounter.
At the end of our class exercise on making comparisons, a student from Haiti compared me and my stand-in, a bright young woman just graduated with her TSOL certification. After the obvious old vs young, male vs female observations, we got to the matter of style: games vs exercises, voice volume and speed, and other things that make one teacher different from another, and a variety of teachers good for students. I think the people in class are happy to have had both.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Personalities
Diffident ever? Not you, or, okay, seldom, and never among friends, family, strangers, officials... Courteous, sure, but always self-assured. I needn't speak of your other real virtues here. It's that confidence of yours, I'm considering, based as it is on a repartee-fast wit, a feel for your audience, a flair for stories, a vivid personal style, ready opinions and critical judgments, agendas and the push needed to accomplish them, and something else--a strong sense that you know what you need to know, have what you need to have, are what you need to be. You have a strong personality.
It is admirable, even remarkable, but also sometimes daunting. By contrast, I'm one very careful not to transgress boundaries, not to usurp authority, especially when a guest. I prefer often to forgo judgment in favor of wonder or curiosity. My agendas are adaptable, often ad hoc. I'm not without some of your capabilities, but I'm no alpha.
When we're together by ourselves things are fine, but when you and other strong personalities herd, I start to feel in danger of being trampled. My improvisatory style, less decisive or sharply contoured, starts to feel wishy-washy and indecisive. I find it hard to maintain the mental life that's so important to me. Who I am feels less substantial in that context.
These are gatherings I need to either avoid, or find a strategy to cope with. Probably the key for me is to come prepared with certain requirements and plans and mention them often: this is what I need; this is what I want to do. Of course, I can imagine myself deferring, but I should not, since being something like a natural feature like a Dumbarton Rock jutting out into the Clyde is how anyone takes their place in the assembly. It's the way to be noticed, and negotiated with. So, some beforehand preparation may be what I need to do.
Still, most of my requirements and plans have that provisional, almost arbitrary, feel about them I enjoy, but which makes them vulnerable to those whose view of what they want has the cast of necessity. The least ambivalence or equivocation on my part, and...
In 2nd person encounters of this nature, one may have to lay claim to hospitality maybe already waiting and take advantage of friendship possibly already proffered. You'll always be Other to me, but I can still learn from you.
It is admirable, even remarkable, but also sometimes daunting. By contrast, I'm one very careful not to transgress boundaries, not to usurp authority, especially when a guest. I prefer often to forgo judgment in favor of wonder or curiosity. My agendas are adaptable, often ad hoc. I'm not without some of your capabilities, but I'm no alpha.
When we're together by ourselves things are fine, but when you and other strong personalities herd, I start to feel in danger of being trampled. My improvisatory style, less decisive or sharply contoured, starts to feel wishy-washy and indecisive. I find it hard to maintain the mental life that's so important to me. Who I am feels less substantial in that context.
These are gatherings I need to either avoid, or find a strategy to cope with. Probably the key for me is to come prepared with certain requirements and plans and mention them often: this is what I need; this is what I want to do. Of course, I can imagine myself deferring, but I should not, since being something like a natural feature like a Dumbarton Rock jutting out into the Clyde is how anyone takes their place in the assembly. It's the way to be noticed, and negotiated with. So, some beforehand preparation may be what I need to do.
Still, most of my requirements and plans have that provisional, almost arbitrary, feel about them I enjoy, but which makes them vulnerable to those whose view of what they want has the cast of necessity. The least ambivalence or equivocation on my part, and...
In 2nd person encounters of this nature, one may have to lay claim to hospitality maybe already waiting and take advantage of friendship possibly already proffered. You'll always be Other to me, but I can still learn from you.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
'Arran's arrogant alps'
The serrated spine of the isle of Arran was blue in the distance distance beyond Rothesay across the Clyde water from the mainland. The top of Goatfell was either wreathed in clouds like a little Olympus, or else sharply silhouetted against the tumultuous sky.
I remember as a boy visiting my grandparents on Rothesay where they'd retired, and Arran, a mountainy island further down the firth, was so alluring seen from the grounds of the castle at the top of the high hill behind the town. Beyond Arran, a Holy Isle, and beyond that, Ailsa Craig, a solitary rock. Every kind of island was right there, and for a boy, even for a young man, so full of romance.
It was the romance of Vikings and sea raiders (nearby Largs the site of a key 13 century with the Vikings, of lairds and castles, of clans and kilts, of the misty isles of the blessed far to the west, of Stevenson's Master of Ballantrae, of brave Flora McDonald rowing Bonnie Prince Charlie to safety, and more that didn't have a name, but was active in my daydreaming nonetheless.
I have visited Arran and climbed Goatfell, a steep and, if you look down, somewhat daunting scramble. Broderick, where you land, is a typical Scottish village with the pub, the greengrocer, the tea shop, and so on. Charming yes, but not romantic. Yet, when I was off-island looking back, it's aloof remoteness became glamorous again. You, Arran, held my heart.
This time something is different. Standing on my cousin's deck looking down on the Clyde and at Arran in the distance, I waited for the frisson but in vain. The grass in the fields sloping down the the water was brilliant green, the Clyde itself was deep blue, islands hemmed in the horizon, but mystic feelings, no. Is it me? Have I become disenchanted? Has my appreciation become merely aesthetic? Can I too easily imagine people living on all these islands, catching ferry boats to the mainland, hopping on trains to Glasgow? Has enchantement gone?
Yet when I'd gone walking on the moors the day before, a strong pleasure in the place had filled me. Just being out of doors in that bright, windy and lonely place. I was in the midst; it was all around me. T
Maybe for me now, it's like this: "no words, but things,,' and 'not just seen things, but encountered things.' Maybe this is my new form of experiencing presence, less narrative but more intimate.
So, Arran, I think our relationship has changed. What used to intrigue me at a distance, intrigues me up close and on foot. The mystic has maybe turned into mulch making the down-to-earth that much more worthwhile. The way up to the summit up the valley of Lamlash doesn't need the hint of 'far away, long ago' to be a rich experience. And yet. an old Irish song goes:
Arran of the many stags
The sea strikes against her shoulders,
Companies of men can feed there,
Blue spears are reddened among her boulders.
Merry hinds are on her hills,
Juicy berries are there for food,
Refreshing water in her streams,
Nuts in plenty in the wood.
For those seafarers, the island was a refuge, a resource, but for me, it's the seasmen themselves who are the stags, the berries, the fresh water of my imagination.
I remember as a boy visiting my grandparents on Rothesay where they'd retired, and Arran, a mountainy island further down the firth, was so alluring seen from the grounds of the castle at the top of the high hill behind the town. Beyond Arran, a Holy Isle, and beyond that, Ailsa Craig, a solitary rock. Every kind of island was right there, and for a boy, even for a young man, so full of romance.
It was the romance of Vikings and sea raiders (nearby Largs the site of a key 13 century with the Vikings, of lairds and castles, of clans and kilts, of the misty isles of the blessed far to the west, of Stevenson's Master of Ballantrae, of brave Flora McDonald rowing Bonnie Prince Charlie to safety, and more that didn't have a name, but was active in my daydreaming nonetheless.
I have visited Arran and climbed Goatfell, a steep and, if you look down, somewhat daunting scramble. Broderick, where you land, is a typical Scottish village with the pub, the greengrocer, the tea shop, and so on. Charming yes, but not romantic. Yet, when I was off-island looking back, it's aloof remoteness became glamorous again. You, Arran, held my heart.
This time something is different. Standing on my cousin's deck looking down on the Clyde and at Arran in the distance, I waited for the frisson but in vain. The grass in the fields sloping down the the water was brilliant green, the Clyde itself was deep blue, islands hemmed in the horizon, but mystic feelings, no. Is it me? Have I become disenchanted? Has my appreciation become merely aesthetic? Can I too easily imagine people living on all these islands, catching ferry boats to the mainland, hopping on trains to Glasgow? Has enchantement gone?
Yet when I'd gone walking on the moors the day before, a strong pleasure in the place had filled me. Just being out of doors in that bright, windy and lonely place. I was in the midst; it was all around me. T
Maybe for me now, it's like this: "no words, but things,,' and 'not just seen things, but encountered things.' Maybe this is my new form of experiencing presence, less narrative but more intimate.
So, Arran, I think our relationship has changed. What used to intrigue me at a distance, intrigues me up close and on foot. The mystic has maybe turned into mulch making the down-to-earth that much more worthwhile. The way up to the summit up the valley of Lamlash doesn't need the hint of 'far away, long ago' to be a rich experience. And yet. an old Irish song goes:
Arran of the many stags
The sea strikes against her shoulders,
Companies of men can feed there,
Blue spears are reddened among her boulders.
Merry hinds are on her hills,
Juicy berries are there for food,
Refreshing water in her streams,
Nuts in plenty in the wood.
For those seafarers, the island was a refuge, a resource, but for me, it's the seasmen themselves who are the stags, the berries, the fresh water of my imagination.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Water play
Anxious to get out and walk somewhere on the moors, l found myself today for nearly 11 miles in the company of a water aqueduct, the brainchild of water engineer Robert Thom. It was beautiful and brilliant at the same time, a kind of model of good design.
The day was bright from the beginning. One way up to the wide-open and windy spaces looking down on the Clyde was a path next to Kelly Burn, a busy stream with waterfalls and chains of pools in a glen choked with moss-covered beech trees. (They do things with beeches on Scotland that are amazing.)
Out finally from the claustrophobic Withywindle-ish (of Hobbit fame) valley, and marching up a farm track, the sea and islands behind me, the treeless bracken-covered hills on front, I came across Kelly Cut, an aqueduct (unused now), actually a lined ditch filled with stagnant water, fenced off to keep the ubiquitous sheep from tumbling in.
The beauty (and convenience) was that it followed a single contour (or almost) along the valley side so as to carry water from Kelly reservoir north to Loch Thom, created in the early nineteenth century to clean water for drinking (Thom pioneered sand-filtration) and power for industrial machinery, functions it performed reliably for years and years.
Walking the aqueduct, the Kelly Cut or, after Cornalee, the Greenock Cut, means walking out and in where the hillside shoulders out or folds in, while below the slope falls away revealing sunlit vistas below and beyond.
Once begun, the journey on the Greenock Cut, almost right around Dunrod Hill to the backside of Loch Thom, about 6 miles, can't be left; it's forward or back, but never off. Other walkers were so infrequent l was able to sometimes feel like a little sky warden god patrolling the heavens above sea and city.
In contrast to my grandiose fantasies were the fine stone-work of the water channel, the arched bridges over it, the buildings, the sluices, three cunning little water level governor, all your handiwork, Mr Thom.
When the cut opened, the city fathers in special boats went around the hillside, in and out, like an amusement park ride, yet not play.
I love to walk to the sound of running water, and this accompanied me all afternoon. Even abandoned and until recently ignored, your project continues to please, the sinuosity of the aqueduct mimicking the water in it, the majestic height alluding to the power of wheel-turning waterfalls which, place to place, gushed from it. Walking your work, Mr Thom, was a joy for me as it seemed to be for the water. Many thanks.
The day was bright from the beginning. One way up to the wide-open and windy spaces looking down on the Clyde was a path next to Kelly Burn, a busy stream with waterfalls and chains of pools in a glen choked with moss-covered beech trees. (They do things with beeches on Scotland that are amazing.)
Out finally from the claustrophobic Withywindle-ish (of Hobbit fame) valley, and marching up a farm track, the sea and islands behind me, the treeless bracken-covered hills on front, I came across Kelly Cut, an aqueduct (unused now), actually a lined ditch filled with stagnant water, fenced off to keep the ubiquitous sheep from tumbling in.
The beauty (and convenience) was that it followed a single contour (or almost) along the valley side so as to carry water from Kelly reservoir north to Loch Thom, created in the early nineteenth century to clean water for drinking (Thom pioneered sand-filtration) and power for industrial machinery, functions it performed reliably for years and years.
Walking the aqueduct, the Kelly Cut or, after Cornalee, the Greenock Cut, means walking out and in where the hillside shoulders out or folds in, while below the slope falls away revealing sunlit vistas below and beyond.
Once begun, the journey on the Greenock Cut, almost right around Dunrod Hill to the backside of Loch Thom, about 6 miles, can't be left; it's forward or back, but never off. Other walkers were so infrequent l was able to sometimes feel like a little sky warden god patrolling the heavens above sea and city.
In contrast to my grandiose fantasies were the fine stone-work of the water channel, the arched bridges over it, the buildings, the sluices, three cunning little water level governor, all your handiwork, Mr Thom.
When the cut opened, the city fathers in special boats went around the hillside, in and out, like an amusement park ride, yet not play.
I love to walk to the sound of running water, and this accompanied me all afternoon. Even abandoned and until recently ignored, your project continues to please, the sinuosity of the aqueduct mimicking the water in it, the majestic height alluding to the power of wheel-turning waterfalls which, place to place, gushed from it. Walking your work, Mr Thom, was a joy for me as it seemed to be for the water. Many thanks.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Vows
There I was, my hands on my kilted lap, listening to a young woman with a high-pitched voice and a strong burr officiate at a wedding in Scotland on the same day as our anniversary, and a signal anniversary at that.
When she spoke about marriage the institution and the formulaic '... forsaking all others, for better or for worse, in sickness and on health, so long as you both shall live?', I thought, as I and we and all wedded couples do, about our own vows.
To not have your hand to squeeze at that moment was a poignant loss; to not be with you on this day seemed like a betrayal, as if l had in fact forsaken you for another.
The history of our relationship goes back decades. It's not fragile, and we had talked about this conflict, but this afternoon celebrating another couple's nuptials, my heart was in my throat.
One thing about encounters is that sometimes events unexpectedly resonate within them, taking all parties by surprise. Nothing should be taken for granted.
Which is why, when I called you after the ceremony, and you asked me how I was, whatever I replied, what I really said was, 'I do.'
When she spoke about marriage the institution and the formulaic '... forsaking all others, for better or for worse, in sickness and on health, so long as you both shall live?', I thought, as I and we and all wedded couples do, about our own vows.
To not have your hand to squeeze at that moment was a poignant loss; to not be with you on this day seemed like a betrayal, as if l had in fact forsaken you for another.
The history of our relationship goes back decades. It's not fragile, and we had talked about this conflict, but this afternoon celebrating another couple's nuptials, my heart was in my throat.
One thing about encounters is that sometimes events unexpectedly resonate within them, taking all parties by surprise. Nothing should be taken for granted.
Which is why, when I called you after the ceremony, and you asked me how I was, whatever I replied, what I really said was, 'I do.'
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Directions
In the midst of an fleeting episode of sun, I stopped into a tourist information office on the main street of Largs in western Scotland. Are there hikes nearby? I inquired. A middle-aged woman, very friendly, showed me what she had that could help, a few brochures and a pamphlet printed by a local church.
'I'm not much of a walker myself,' she said several times as she pointed out on a map some places she'd visited herself when a girl 'on my bicycle.'
I spoke of my longing to be out under the sky tramping over the moors back from the sea.
I asked her, on another head, where I could buy muffin tins for making popovers. She'd never heard of those but she was rapturous about muffins she'd had in the states: 'So light, not stodgy.'
Between us in those few minutes we kindled a warmth that sent me away full of energy and pleasure. A simple encounter, not how thirsty I had been for it.
'I'm not much of a walker myself,' she said several times as she pointed out on a map some places she'd visited herself when a girl 'on my bicycle.'
I spoke of my longing to be out under the sky tramping over the moors back from the sea.
I asked her, on another head, where I could buy muffin tins for making popovers. She'd never heard of those but she was rapturous about muffins she'd had in the states: 'So light, not stodgy.'
Between us in those few minutes we kindled a warmth that sent me away full of energy and pleasure. A simple encounter, not how thirsty I had been for it.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Joke
Storytelling, banter, raillery: it's a we thing, a me thing, a ye (an archaic form of you) thing. I've been aware of it all day as I've talked to people in the downtown of Glasgow, and it's in full spate downstairs at my cousin's house where I'm staying as new cousins have joined the group.
The only thing more powerful in group formation the shared travail is humor, and the later is often how we survive (and remember) the former.
Everyone here has been telling me more about themselves and their lives upon our first meeting than I hear after weeks, months, years back home. It's not intimate, and not really reciprocal.
And it isn't because self-revelation seems to be part of the humor and energy of social gatherings. I like boisterous groups, but I miss the occasions when what is close to the heart is handled, when it comes out, like a holiday ornament and not like a football.
Perhaps the joke is that even the loudest laughers are not much different from me, style aside. Maybe we need some second person to find out who we are.
The only thing more powerful in group formation the shared travail is humor, and the later is often how we survive (and remember) the former.
Everyone here has been telling me more about themselves and their lives upon our first meeting than I hear after weeks, months, years back home. It's not intimate, and not really reciprocal.
And it isn't because self-revelation seems to be part of the humor and energy of social gatherings. I like boisterous groups, but I miss the occasions when what is close to the heart is handled, when it comes out, like a holiday ornament and not like a football.
Perhaps the joke is that even the loudest laughers are not much different from me, style aside. Maybe we need some second person to find out who we are.
Friday, October 10, 2014
Glasgow
A blizzard of family: not just mother, aunt, sister, sister's partners, but cousin and husband, second cousins and their spouses, and a beautiful girl child, the first grandchild, doted on by all.
My you-sensor is overloaded. Encounter after encounter, the giving and receiving of gifts, the exploration of a different country and city, the styles sightly and glaringly different, the being part of a clan gathering for a grand nuptial ceremony and celebration.
At my request, my cousin told me of a walk around the neighborhood I could take. Immediately I began asking directions of people on the street--a father standing outside a school, a trio of boys licking a soccer home, a mother with several children pushing a pram, some gaunt older guys with florid cheeks and beaky noses like my grandfather and others. Some could help and others could not, but all stopped, and but their minds to the task.
The day so beautiful (at that moment), the pedestrians so numerous, the co
so palpable, the architecture and landscape so clearly not American,
My you-sensor is overloaded. Encounter after encounter, the giving and receiving of gifts, the exploration of a different country and city, the styles sightly and glaringly different, the being part of a clan gathering for a grand nuptial ceremony and celebration.
At my request, my cousin told me of a walk around the neighborhood I could take. Immediately I began asking directions of people on the street--a father standing outside a school, a trio of boys licking a soccer home, a mother with several children pushing a pram, some gaunt older guys with florid cheeks and beaky noses like my grandfather and others. Some could help and others could not, but all stopped, and but their minds to the task.
The day so beautiful (at that moment), the pedestrians so numerous, the co
so palpable, the architecture and landscape so clearly not American,
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
An an 5
Feeling journey proud, but let's carry on.
In what ways is the encounter between you, God-in-love, and the beloved Other, that aggregate of all who respond to you, or ever have, or ever will, like the encounter between we two, my spouse and I?
This is an old simile, but one which tends to reinforce certain cultural norms: the preeminence of one partner, the deference of the other, for instance, or the initiative of one, the obedience of the other. There implications of love, even self-sacrifice, but not of parity; of an ideal of formal roles, calm order, regular address, but not of debate and even discord.
But that's what we've experienced in our encounter, my spouse and I. We've created a little world, yes, of children, a grandchild, friends, a neighborhood, and even more of shared perceptions and appreciations (nowhere near on your scale, of course, but...), and in it, there's the play of affection and passion.
But our relationship is a continual negotiation of proposals, rejections, concessions, frustrations, celebrations, and all leading somewhere neither planned. Sometimes we don't like each other, sometimes resist, sometimes betray. We misunderstand, overlook, ignore, even grow tired of each other (and all this as well as its opposite.) Does this happen between you two?
As part of the Beloved, l can report this is sometimes true of my encounter with you. Is it mutual?
Behind it all is what art of all kinds explores: the dance, the song, the image, the story, the drama. Don't we make these things which represent our lives, our perceptions, our experiences, in order to attribute them, on some way, to a context larger and lasting? And could that context be your passion which made making, and introduced doing, and constant until all possible encounters occur, if ever.
For you as well as for us: it's not easy but it's worthwhile.
but maybe, on the occasion of an anniversary, a little reflection on one can shed some light on the other.
Neither my spouse nor I has 'made making, or introduced doing', in short, we are local and
though we are 'Other, yet Lover.' Like you, we each address the Other in a 2nd person fashion.
What
There's that relationship
In what ways is the encounter between you, God-in-love, and the beloved Other, that aggregate of all who respond to you, or ever have, or ever will, like the encounter between we two, my spouse and I?
This is an old simile, but one which tends to reinforce certain cultural norms: the preeminence of one partner, the deference of the other, for instance, or the initiative of one, the obedience of the other. There implications of love, even self-sacrifice, but not of parity; of an ideal of formal roles, calm order, regular address, but not of debate and even discord.
But that's what we've experienced in our encounter, my spouse and I. We've created a little world, yes, of children, a grandchild, friends, a neighborhood, and even more of shared perceptions and appreciations (nowhere near on your scale, of course, but...), and in it, there's the play of affection and passion.
But our relationship is a continual negotiation of proposals, rejections, concessions, frustrations, celebrations, and all leading somewhere neither planned. Sometimes we don't like each other, sometimes resist, sometimes betray. We misunderstand, overlook, ignore, even grow tired of each other (and all this as well as its opposite.) Does this happen between you two?
As part of the Beloved, l can report this is sometimes true of my encounter with you. Is it mutual?
Behind it all is what art of all kinds explores: the dance, the song, the image, the story, the drama. Don't we make these things which represent our lives, our perceptions, our experiences, in order to attribute them, on some way, to a context larger and lasting? And could that context be your passion which made making, and introduced doing, and constant until all possible encounters occur, if ever.
For you as well as for us: it's not easy but it's worthwhile.
but maybe, on the occasion of an anniversary, a little reflection on one can shed some light on the other.
Neither my spouse nor I has 'made making, or introduced doing', in short, we are local and
though we are 'Other, yet Lover.' Like you, we each address the Other in a 2nd person fashion.
What
There's that relationship
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
A A 4
Not according to plan. Instead of considering potentiality, energy, and power (as I had planned), we spent our time looking into the Swift River. Lying on big rounded boulders, we gazed into the water. A submerged scarlet leaf was swept along in the middle distance between the glassy, textured surface and the tawny, mottled bottom. I admired the ruffs of frothy ripples the water whipped up when cross currents met.
I thought: an anniversary is like celebrating the nth cubic meter of river doing it incessant work of sucking on stones like hard candy or licking on slabs of granite like lollipops.
As we lay on the sofa-sized rocks and basked in the sweet sun, the coolness of the breeze exactly balanced the increase of the warmth, leaving a tingly, delicious evenness.
We could have been solemnly reviewing the state of the union, but we blew off the assignment. Time for that later.
At day's end, though, we did review what's impossible for us, or either; what's hard; what's desirable; what's longed for, trying to balance the 'That's why...' with the 'Let's make sure...'
This talk is not bad or sad but being candid and appreciative, declarative and curious, naked and presentable in a single session is like walking a tightrope, and sometimes falling, sometimes jumping.
We, I, feel blown out. I remember with pleasure, lying flaccid on the river rock, feeling the breeze shaving the down of warmth on my cheek, you reclining on your stony couch sharing the same sweet moment, the water roaring and chuckling around us. That was good; it still is.
I thought: an anniversary is like celebrating the nth cubic meter of river doing it incessant work of sucking on stones like hard candy or licking on slabs of granite like lollipops.
As we lay on the sofa-sized rocks and basked in the sweet sun, the coolness of the breeze exactly balanced the increase of the warmth, leaving a tingly, delicious evenness.
We could have been solemnly reviewing the state of the union, but we blew off the assignment. Time for that later.
At day's end, though, we did review what's impossible for us, or either; what's hard; what's desirable; what's longed for, trying to balance the 'That's why...' with the 'Let's make sure...'
This talk is not bad or sad but being candid and appreciative, declarative and curious, naked and presentable in a single session is like walking a tightrope, and sometimes falling, sometimes jumping.
We, I, feel blown out. I remember with pleasure, lying flaccid on the river rock, feeling the breeze shaving the down of warmth on my cheek, you reclining on your stony couch sharing the same sweet moment, the water roaring and chuckling around us. That was good; it still is.
Monday, October 6, 2014
Anniversary a 3
Driving to New Hampshire, l'm pushing us to think of examples of friendship, exploration and hospitality in our decades long encounter, that is, where and when we've shown generosity, constancy or curiosity.
All great in theory, but what about reality? I mean, when wallets get left behind, or someone just has to, right away, no delay, take a leak, or butter is omitted from the grocery list (blame equally divided). High principles now meet the gritted teeth occasion.
Now is the time for forbearance, patience, solution discovery, the pleasures of the rant foregone. Of there is a price, it must be borne by both.
Likewise, the meal of extremely tender asparagus et al while listening to Arnold's Guitar Concerto is to be remarked upon and savored by both.
After a while, the discussion turned to the spaces in our relationship: the positive, at times surprisingly luminous; the negative, meaning the uncomfortable, really dark; the neutral, too large and apt to expand.
This morning, climbing through slant-lit beech forest to the top of a small hill where a bed of needles supports a 'lawn' of wispy grass, I saw an apsen copse with a flock of chickadees threading through the intricate volumes within, and thought: Day come, dark come, let our spaces be as alive as these.
All great in theory, but what about reality? I mean, when wallets get left behind, or someone just has to, right away, no delay, take a leak, or butter is omitted from the grocery list (blame equally divided). High principles now meet the gritted teeth occasion.
Now is the time for forbearance, patience, solution discovery, the pleasures of the rant foregone. Of there is a price, it must be borne by both.
Likewise, the meal of extremely tender asparagus et al while listening to Arnold's Guitar Concerto is to be remarked upon and savored by both.
After a while, the discussion turned to the spaces in our relationship: the positive, at times surprisingly luminous; the negative, meaning the uncomfortable, really dark; the neutral, too large and apt to expand.
This morning, climbing through slant-lit beech forest to the top of a small hill where a bed of needles supports a 'lawn' of wispy grass, I saw an apsen copse with a flock of chickadees threading through the intricate volumes within, and thought: Day come, dark come, let our spaces be as alive as these.
Sunday, October 5, 2014
A anticipation 2
Writing together? It's not clear how that could happen. I type as we speak? Recording our conversation and transcribing it? Well, over the empty plates of our turkey and turnip supper, we took a look at our many years together and the various richnesses of our relationship and the way they have changed, or not, over time
From the canceled chamber music concert that only we two showed up for in our first days as transfer students at Brandeis, music in so many forms: the concerts we've attended, the instruments we've tried to learn, the hymns and spiritual songs we've belted out, the camp songs we've sung in the car, the scores we've tried to follow... Never 'that's our song' but music itself, classical rather than popular. This is still a wide open space in the midst of who we are.
Those memories led us, somehow, to the topic of the very different ways the past is/has been present in our lives. Certainly, it's been a lesson I've repeatedly grasped and lost: what's gone is not gone, but has influence still, at least in terms of our reactions and responses. It took me by surprise, and still does. Though I can empathize with feelings of, say, depression or nostalgia, my understanding of the past's power is intellectual, not intuitive. She knows this about me, as I know the same is true about her appreciation of certain compelling influences in my life.
Styles. Perhaps our styles have become more idiosyncratic as time has passed. I arrange things one way and, coming back, see than an Other has re-conceived the space and made it something else. There's an agency in my life which is sometimes in synch with mine, but sometimes not. I think when we were younger we accommodated more than we do today. We can afford to now, especially since our children are out of the house. Yet, each always finds something to share that the other would not have discovered or considered alone. These little enticements are like a kind of courtship.
When we argue, it's the eyes that tell. In the beginning, I make direct, blazing contact; in reconciliation, my gaze is more sidelong; she is the reverse. The You is the one who can, and might, in any contretemps, say the word too much, make a threat too far. And yet, for all these years, it's your opinion, your support, yours, that I seek and value. When for too long we're absorbed in our separate projects, we feel something wilting and deliberately and with relief take time to 'you' each other again.
Looking ahead to looming retirement as well as inevitable disability, our anticipations are mixtures of excitement and dread. We're outstripping the markers of adulthood: marriage, children, house, college, etc. We're in uncharted territory, but don't expect to come across El Dorado. Yet when we consider us as a couple, we each have ideas to offer for bridging gaps and enhancing intimacy, and these are ingenuous, if not always fully implemented.
How, after years of living in each other's presence, can we remain curious about each other? Yet, out of the depths do come surprises that require previous assessments to be revisited. For instance, just who is that person making those uninhibited selfie videos for our grandson? We're both intrigued.
We have disagreements about basic facts of situations, not to mention how to interpret them. Our priorities only overlap so much. But we've seen each other pursue what each considers right and urgent in ways that are inspiring as examples: the writing, for instance, each of us has doggedly done for years.
In my AA 1 post, I set out a straightforward plan, and your idea was a left field one: 'Let's go away for a few days; I know a place.' I hadn't thought of that, but, of course, why not? Hope there's reception for posting this blog, but whatever, let's go.
From the canceled chamber music concert that only we two showed up for in our first days as transfer students at Brandeis, music in so many forms: the concerts we've attended, the instruments we've tried to learn, the hymns and spiritual songs we've belted out, the camp songs we've sung in the car, the scores we've tried to follow... Never 'that's our song' but music itself, classical rather than popular. This is still a wide open space in the midst of who we are.
Those memories led us, somehow, to the topic of the very different ways the past is/has been present in our lives. Certainly, it's been a lesson I've repeatedly grasped and lost: what's gone is not gone, but has influence still, at least in terms of our reactions and responses. It took me by surprise, and still does. Though I can empathize with feelings of, say, depression or nostalgia, my understanding of the past's power is intellectual, not intuitive. She knows this about me, as I know the same is true about her appreciation of certain compelling influences in my life.
Styles. Perhaps our styles have become more idiosyncratic as time has passed. I arrange things one way and, coming back, see than an Other has re-conceived the space and made it something else. There's an agency in my life which is sometimes in synch with mine, but sometimes not. I think when we were younger we accommodated more than we do today. We can afford to now, especially since our children are out of the house. Yet, each always finds something to share that the other would not have discovered or considered alone. These little enticements are like a kind of courtship.
When we argue, it's the eyes that tell. In the beginning, I make direct, blazing contact; in reconciliation, my gaze is more sidelong; she is the reverse. The You is the one who can, and might, in any contretemps, say the word too much, make a threat too far. And yet, for all these years, it's your opinion, your support, yours, that I seek and value. When for too long we're absorbed in our separate projects, we feel something wilting and deliberately and with relief take time to 'you' each other again.
Looking ahead to looming retirement as well as inevitable disability, our anticipations are mixtures of excitement and dread. We're outstripping the markers of adulthood: marriage, children, house, college, etc. We're in uncharted territory, but don't expect to come across El Dorado. Yet when we consider us as a couple, we each have ideas to offer for bridging gaps and enhancing intimacy, and these are ingenuous, if not always fully implemented.
How, after years of living in each other's presence, can we remain curious about each other? Yet, out of the depths do come surprises that require previous assessments to be revisited. For instance, just who is that person making those uninhibited selfie videos for our grandson? We're both intrigued.
We have disagreements about basic facts of situations, not to mention how to interpret them. Our priorities only overlap so much. But we've seen each other pursue what each considers right and urgent in ways that are inspiring as examples: the writing, for instance, each of us has doggedly done for years.
In my AA 1 post, I set out a straightforward plan, and your idea was a left field one: 'Let's go away for a few days; I know a place.' I hadn't thought of that, but, of course, why not? Hope there's reception for posting this blog, but whatever, let's go.
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Anniversary anticipation I
For years and years and years--two thirds of our lives at this point--has this relationship endured. What, as anniversary approaches, to say? It's continued existence to the year 2014 seem not so much an achievement, as the sum of successive non-extinctions. We could celebrate the oak tree in my yard for the same reasons: 'Goodness, still here.'
Like this blog, each new post is not an achievement but an expression of a kind of still viable vitality. It carries on not to go somewhere but to keep expressing what it is.
How to assess this relationship? Outsiders may admire it and insiders may extol it but largely as an artifact or an institution. What is it on the inside where I know it; you, Spouse, know it; and we mutually know it?
Back to '74, but even further, to '68, it's been a single encounter of different phases, episodes, occasions, and not yet over. Over the years, we've responded to each other, thought about each other, addressed each other, look ahead to more of the same, except that as my perception of you and yours of me as Other, yet Lover, have evolved, so our perceptions of same and different, permanent and passing have changed too. We are richer in history but poorer in prospects. At each moment, then, past and future balance themselves out on this time, this moment, you going to a meeting, me going to hold signs, we thinking about, later on, painting the porch and going peach picking.
As we have time in the next days, I propose we take time consider our encounter from a number of different angles:
starting with the history of its richness:
how vivid the recognitions (your otherness!)
how potent the acknowledgements (the Other in my space!)
how urgent the addressings (it's nobody else but...!)
how suspenseful the anticipations (Whatever comes, we're in this together!) as well as
how intriguing (you stll are) and how impressive;
continuing with a consideration of examples of friendship, exploration and hospitality in our relationship: how were we, are we experimenting, teaching, companioning; launching, healing, visiting; investigating, hosting, celebrating; learning, feeding, feeling with; noticing, lending, grieving with....
carrying on to thinking about each other in terms of the other's potentiality, energy and power: how we have been, can be changed, generate change, influence change.
Finally, we might consider our encounter visa-a'-vis that of God-in-love and the Beloved as we see it and know it.
Of course, all of this 1. highly structured and formal, and 2. based foundationally on the framework of ideas undergirding this blog. Knowing us, I'm sure what results will be different than either would expect. That's where the life of who we will express itself. Shall we?
Like this blog, each new post is not an achievement but an expression of a kind of still viable vitality. It carries on not to go somewhere but to keep expressing what it is.
How to assess this relationship? Outsiders may admire it and insiders may extol it but largely as an artifact or an institution. What is it on the inside where I know it; you, Spouse, know it; and we mutually know it?
Back to '74, but even further, to '68, it's been a single encounter of different phases, episodes, occasions, and not yet over. Over the years, we've responded to each other, thought about each other, addressed each other, look ahead to more of the same, except that as my perception of you and yours of me as Other, yet Lover, have evolved, so our perceptions of same and different, permanent and passing have changed too. We are richer in history but poorer in prospects. At each moment, then, past and future balance themselves out on this time, this moment, you going to a meeting, me going to hold signs, we thinking about, later on, painting the porch and going peach picking.
As we have time in the next days, I propose we take time consider our encounter from a number of different angles:
starting with the history of its richness:
how vivid the recognitions (your otherness!)
how potent the acknowledgements (the Other in my space!)
how urgent the addressings (it's nobody else but...!)
how suspenseful the anticipations (Whatever comes, we're in this together!) as well as
how intriguing (you stll are) and how impressive;
continuing with a consideration of examples of friendship, exploration and hospitality in our relationship: how were we, are we experimenting, teaching, companioning; launching, healing, visiting; investigating, hosting, celebrating; learning, feeding, feeling with; noticing, lending, grieving with....
carrying on to thinking about each other in terms of the other's potentiality, energy and power: how we have been, can be changed, generate change, influence change.
Finally, we might consider our encounter visa-a'-vis that of God-in-love and the Beloved as we see it and know it.
Of course, all of this 1. highly structured and formal, and 2. based foundationally on the framework of ideas undergirding this blog. Knowing us, I'm sure what results will be different than either would expect. That's where the life of who we will express itself. Shall we?
Friday, October 3, 2014
Long-termer
We've been together, teachers and student, 15 weeks more or less. Your English has improved much in some ways, little in others. Sixteen weeks is a long time to be a student in a city far from your country and your family (your work always knows where to find you.) It's time. You've had all the lessons.You're ready to go home.
I'll be gone next week so won't see you graduate. So, today in the passage, people pushing by left and right, you said 'We have to say goodbye now', and asked 'When will you come to my country?'
Things I admire and have liked about you: your even temperament week after week; your friendliness to all your fellow students (who have cycled in and out many times during your stay); your passion for personal systems for the ordering the tasks of life; your love of the road (specifically Rte 100 in Vermont); your readiness to be enthusiastic about the Microsoft facility in Cambridge for example; your unexpected wit, never irresponsible, always intelligent; your smile which coordinates with all the other features of your face to present a clear message of 'pleased to see you'; your notebook of new vocabulary words (one of those private systems); your curiosity about others, your comic gift shown in theatrical situations, your openness to ideas.
You've spent many hours across the table from each one of us, including me. It's difficult to remain yourself, remain authentic, over such a period, especially in the countdown weeks when you want more and more to be with your wife and daughters, and entertain less and less hope of a major breakthrough, and yet you have: your presence as been consistent, and positive.
I too have hung around for a long time, seen not just students but teachers come and go, done much the same thing year after year. It's been not quite a challenge but certainly a concern that I not become stale, petty, closed, boring, as the circumstances might readily have allowed, even encouraged, me to. I mean, all this cycling of leaders, programs, students, colleagues, lessons, activities--and me not one who cultivates long-term relationships.
Still, though the cloud of could haves and should haves hangs over me, I feel somehow still on the cutting edge of my life, the prospect of what's ahead as stimulating as the contemplation of what's behind. This blog, the God-in-love framework, ideas about teaching that are still work developing, and more, not mention my family: these are what keep me, me; keep me present in the moment.
Is it the same for you, or are you as naturally yourself as an oak is an oak, and never sometimes, say, a box elder? Whatever, I respect you and like you for your consistency and your personality. There's much I don't know and much that probably contradicts (as with any of us, as with me). I'd like, for instance, to see you be yourself in your place. But as one long-termer saying goodbye to another: it's been a pleasure and an honor. Stay authentic; in the end it counts.
I'll be gone next week so won't see you graduate. So, today in the passage, people pushing by left and right, you said 'We have to say goodbye now', and asked 'When will you come to my country?'
Things I admire and have liked about you: your even temperament week after week; your friendliness to all your fellow students (who have cycled in and out many times during your stay); your passion for personal systems for the ordering the tasks of life; your love of the road (specifically Rte 100 in Vermont); your readiness to be enthusiastic about the Microsoft facility in Cambridge for example; your unexpected wit, never irresponsible, always intelligent; your smile which coordinates with all the other features of your face to present a clear message of 'pleased to see you'; your notebook of new vocabulary words (one of those private systems); your curiosity about others, your comic gift shown in theatrical situations, your openness to ideas.
You've spent many hours across the table from each one of us, including me. It's difficult to remain yourself, remain authentic, over such a period, especially in the countdown weeks when you want more and more to be with your wife and daughters, and entertain less and less hope of a major breakthrough, and yet you have: your presence as been consistent, and positive.
I too have hung around for a long time, seen not just students but teachers come and go, done much the same thing year after year. It's been not quite a challenge but certainly a concern that I not become stale, petty, closed, boring, as the circumstances might readily have allowed, even encouraged, me to. I mean, all this cycling of leaders, programs, students, colleagues, lessons, activities--and me not one who cultivates long-term relationships.
Still, though the cloud of could haves and should haves hangs over me, I feel somehow still on the cutting edge of my life, the prospect of what's ahead as stimulating as the contemplation of what's behind. This blog, the God-in-love framework, ideas about teaching that are still work developing, and more, not mention my family: these are what keep me, me; keep me present in the moment.
Is it the same for you, or are you as naturally yourself as an oak is an oak, and never sometimes, say, a box elder? Whatever, I respect you and like you for your consistency and your personality. There's much I don't know and much that probably contradicts (as with any of us, as with me). I'd like, for instance, to see you be yourself in your place. But as one long-termer saying goodbye to another: it's been a pleasure and an honor. Stay authentic; in the end it counts.
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Cones
Light cone confinement--I'm feeling it acutely. Minkowski spoke about it way back at the beginning of the twentieth century, but only now is it beginning to sink in (with me.) What disturbs is not only the feeling of entrapment (they are big these cones extending into the past and future, but I'd rather infinity), but also a linked notion I've recently read about that, while my cones and yours may overlap almost completely, my includes my frames of reference, yours includes yours, and so our physics are ultimately incommensurable: we live in different universes.
(Light cones, by the way, are causal cones that represent the maximum distances (based on the speed of light) from which influences could have come to affect our past, and the maximum distances (based on the same considerations) to which our influence can extend. Nothing can cause anything to happen faster than light can travel. )
What am I in a swivet about? I've been reading Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn, fascinating, rigorous, informative (about contemporary controversies in speculative physics and cosmology), strange (why would the author substitute references to parts of female anatomy when reviewing Galileo's cannonball/feather experiment?). Her mission: to establish that the universe is actually nothing seen from the inside, its form (illusory) consisting of the horizons created by observers. Her 2nd person partner in this: her dad who inspires his journalist daughter.
I as observer, you as observer each our individual cones, each with our individual frames of reference, are in what way linked, according to this notion? Of course, we can and do influence each other, but does my status as participant in my frame of reference mean I'm only an observer of yours? The paradox of self-knowledge (how can I know myself knowing?) is at the heart of the problem. Toggling between participating and observing, however, is something we are all familiar with; we don't need physics to tell us.
A friend recently left me (many thanks!) a passage from John Berger's Understanding a Photograph to think about. It's a discussion of the authority of stories: 'The discontinuities of the story and the tacit agreement underlying them fuse teller, listener and protagonists into an amalgm, an amalgam I would call the story's reflecting subject (his italics)...If this sounds unnecessarily complicated it is worth remembering for a moment the childhood experience of being told a story. Were not the excitement and assurance of that experience precisely the result of the mystery of such a fusion? You were listening. You were the story. You were in the words of the storyteller. You were no longer your single self; you were, thanks to the story, everyone it concerned (his italics).'
Is story then the way we burrow into each other's light cones or do our separate frames of cosmological reference prevent from really participating in each other's stories? What kind of story emerges from the stacking up of individual universes generated by individual observers?
The space I'm interested in is encounter space where two can meet and address each other as 'You.' This is certainly participatory, as well as the basis of entanglement, so does it link both? And you, everlasting lovers whose romance underwrites encounter space, have you a place in either account?
So much to think about, and as I do, a person stops in my classroom for directions to the North End, and another drops in for advice on improving her ability to express her ideas, and another passing by on her way home suggests we take the train together. Encounters drop on me like the leaves that even tonight have fallen all over my porch, yellow, curled, perfectly distributed and beautiful. They're all beautiful.
(Light cones, by the way, are causal cones that represent the maximum distances (based on the speed of light) from which influences could have come to affect our past, and the maximum distances (based on the same considerations) to which our influence can extend. Nothing can cause anything to happen faster than light can travel. )
What am I in a swivet about? I've been reading Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn, fascinating, rigorous, informative (about contemporary controversies in speculative physics and cosmology), strange (why would the author substitute references to parts of female anatomy when reviewing Galileo's cannonball/feather experiment?). Her mission: to establish that the universe is actually nothing seen from the inside, its form (illusory) consisting of the horizons created by observers. Her 2nd person partner in this: her dad who inspires his journalist daughter.
I as observer, you as observer each our individual cones, each with our individual frames of reference, are in what way linked, according to this notion? Of course, we can and do influence each other, but does my status as participant in my frame of reference mean I'm only an observer of yours? The paradox of self-knowledge (how can I know myself knowing?) is at the heart of the problem. Toggling between participating and observing, however, is something we are all familiar with; we don't need physics to tell us.
A friend recently left me (many thanks!) a passage from John Berger's Understanding a Photograph to think about. It's a discussion of the authority of stories: 'The discontinuities of the story and the tacit agreement underlying them fuse teller, listener and protagonists into an amalgm, an amalgam I would call the story's reflecting subject (his italics)...If this sounds unnecessarily complicated it is worth remembering for a moment the childhood experience of being told a story. Were not the excitement and assurance of that experience precisely the result of the mystery of such a fusion? You were listening. You were the story. You were in the words of the storyteller. You were no longer your single self; you were, thanks to the story, everyone it concerned (his italics).'
Is story then the way we burrow into each other's light cones or do our separate frames of cosmological reference prevent from really participating in each other's stories? What kind of story emerges from the stacking up of individual universes generated by individual observers?
The space I'm interested in is encounter space where two can meet and address each other as 'You.' This is certainly participatory, as well as the basis of entanglement, so does it link both? And you, everlasting lovers whose romance underwrites encounter space, have you a place in either account?
So much to think about, and as I do, a person stops in my classroom for directions to the North End, and another drops in for advice on improving her ability to express her ideas, and another passing by on her way home suggests we take the train together. Encounters drop on me like the leaves that even tonight have fallen all over my porch, yellow, curled, perfectly distributed and beautiful. They're all beautiful.
Cover
You got a spring freshet of information as I told you everything I could think of about the two nights, four classes, you're going to teach for me next week You've been trained in the field of teaching English as a foreign language, do already teach kids and professionals, have your own repertoire of lessons and moves. I needn't have quite as agitated or enthusiastic as I was going over the details of my practices and procedures.
I felt like a parent prepping a baby's first sitter, while you, attentive and professional, calmed with assurances: everything will be fine.
Enthusiasm is a conversation quencher. More than once I've let myself go on some topic on my mind, put the lights behind my eyes onto high beam, animated my face and my hands, turned up the tempo of my ever more vehement, ever more figurative speech, and see my interlocutors wilt and withdraw under the blast.They've no questions; hardly respond at all and move on as soon as possible. I, upon cooling down, feel exposed and awkward.
Curb your enthusiasm is the unspoken working principle of most social gatherings. It works like the picadores in bullfights do to keep the bull's head down. It keeps parties fluid and light but unmemorable but sometimes I want to roar, and toss my head around.
Enthusiasm was there, in spades, in our colleague saying goodbye before shoving off for painting career in Barcelona. In retropect, perhaps, it was there, under control of course, in you and maybe I've misread the enounter. Your questions were pointed; you started to relate what I want to what you do; you began to formulate your own plans.
All I want is for these classes to maintain whatever momentum I will have given them by that point, and I can see that you'll do that. Your thoughts or feelings haven't been as voluble as mine but the disciplined ambition of the good workman is clearly in you. My classes are in good hands. After all my heat, you'll coolly go ahead. Good for me.
I felt like a parent prepping a baby's first sitter, while you, attentive and professional, calmed with assurances: everything will be fine.
Enthusiasm is a conversation quencher. More than once I've let myself go on some topic on my mind, put the lights behind my eyes onto high beam, animated my face and my hands, turned up the tempo of my ever more vehement, ever more figurative speech, and see my interlocutors wilt and withdraw under the blast.They've no questions; hardly respond at all and move on as soon as possible. I, upon cooling down, feel exposed and awkward.
Curb your enthusiasm is the unspoken working principle of most social gatherings. It works like the picadores in bullfights do to keep the bull's head down. It keeps parties fluid and light but unmemorable but sometimes I want to roar, and toss my head around.
Enthusiasm was there, in spades, in our colleague saying goodbye before shoving off for painting career in Barcelona. In retropect, perhaps, it was there, under control of course, in you and maybe I've misread the enounter. Your questions were pointed; you started to relate what I want to what you do; you began to formulate your own plans.
All I want is for these classes to maintain whatever momentum I will have given them by that point, and I can see that you'll do that. Your thoughts or feelings haven't been as voluble as mine but the disciplined ambition of the good workman is clearly in you. My classes are in good hands. After all my heat, you'll coolly go ahead. Good for me.
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