Perhaps it is presumptuous to imagine having a relationship with a person who doesn't know what they are yet.
But you know how it is: spending time being close with someone, especially in silence, gives you an idea of who they are. Whether it's correct or not is hardly important: there is the impression of relationship.
And so I feel that I get along well with the little one. He bustles about in response to his papa's voice; is quieted when I sing to him; rests when we meditate.
He would weigh 2.5 pounds, and open and close his eyes, if he were on the outside. But in the realm where he now resides, there is no reference for these things.
-
For me, being pregnant seems to precipitate recurring dreams. So I have dreamed the same dull dream every night for a week, just before I wake up: something doesn't measure up; there is some mild disappointment, and I make my way home from a building in Belfast.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Baby Name
To name something you have not seen seems presumptuous. How can a name be the only thing you know? It is a false conceptual handle on an unknown phenomenon.
Even so, there is a baby--or rather, there is a heartbeat, and a shadowy ultrasound image, a growing abdomen where he allegedly lives--and there is a baby's name. It is a boy's name that came to me early on, so unmistakably as to relieve one of the need for further brainstorming.
Now the baby's movement has is becoming apparent. It is extremely subtle. But now the name begins to denote something more real. There is evidence; there is someone this name applies to. Deep inside, someone devoid of concepts--a tiny being in a dream--is called something. Is named and measured and planned-for. I suppose it has always been this way. Knowing nothing, we are born into this world of speech, symbol, and meaning. It's not more valid than the void; it's just the law of this realm.
Even so, there is a baby--or rather, there is a heartbeat, and a shadowy ultrasound image, a growing abdomen where he allegedly lives--and there is a baby's name. It is a boy's name that came to me early on, so unmistakably as to relieve one of the need for further brainstorming.
Now the baby's movement has is becoming apparent. It is extremely subtle. But now the name begins to denote something more real. There is evidence; there is someone this name applies to. Deep inside, someone devoid of concepts--a tiny being in a dream--is called something. Is named and measured and planned-for. I suppose it has always been this way. Knowing nothing, we are born into this world of speech, symbol, and meaning. It's not more valid than the void; it's just the law of this realm.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
What I See Right Now
No camera could capture this.
Snow has begun to fall in thick flakes
and the sparrows cluster and flit around the feeder
that hangs across the way
in a maple still golden with autumn leaves.
Snow has begun to fall in thick flakes
and the sparrows cluster and flit around the feeder
that hangs across the way
in a maple still golden with autumn leaves.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
New Favorite Book
In the past two days, I have read two books, which is more reading than I've accomplished in the past twelve months combined.
Paul Broks' Into the Silent Land is the new fave.
The other book, John Conroy's Belfast Diary, is perhaps too striking and too thought-provoking to be instantly liked. It would not make a good Christmas gift. It's something you read and mull over and don't necessarily foist upon your friends. How do humans manage to live in a the midst of a simmering conflict, of random sectarian violence and random official persecution? And what of the intimacy of the conflict? Your neighbors betray you; your foes are quirky, human, and deadly. It's hard to agree on a story, even, at the end of it all.
It's easier to retreat into the mind, the "silent land" of Broks' title. There's no easy answer here, either, but it's a Not Knowing with which I can easily agree.
This point of view is all too rare, both in the popular press and among neurobiologists. Describing phenomena does not mean we understand them. And nobody does a very good job of locating, or
even defining, consciousness. We are trying to define the universe from within the universe; any answer we find is a product of the system we are attempting to encircle with ideas.
Paul Broks' Into the Silent Land is the new fave.
The other book, John Conroy's Belfast Diary, is perhaps too striking and too thought-provoking to be instantly liked. It would not make a good Christmas gift. It's something you read and mull over and don't necessarily foist upon your friends. How do humans manage to live in a the midst of a simmering conflict, of random sectarian violence and random official persecution? And what of the intimacy of the conflict? Your neighbors betray you; your foes are quirky, human, and deadly. It's hard to agree on a story, even, at the end of it all.
It's easier to retreat into the mind, the "silent land" of Broks' title. There's no easy answer here, either, but it's a Not Knowing with which I can easily agree.
Wouldn't it be absurd for an airline pilot to deny knowledge of the principles of flight, or for a physician to claim ignorance of the basics of human physiology and anatomy? Yet I, a neuropsychologist, can give no satisfactory account of how the brain generates conscious awareness (p 92).
So, does conscious awareness have a physical location: mine, here and now...precisely somewhere between my ears? Self-evidently, it seems. But then, go into the skull; visit the brain's interior workings and you will see that there is nothing much to see. Not a spark of colour or whisper of sound and no signs of intelligent life. As you wander through this silent land you can describe its geography adequately enough in the third person, but, quite obviously, not in the first.
From this vantage point it seems self-evidently true that consciousness does not have a physical location. ...We are embodied, but nowhere traceable within the physical structures of the body (p 95).
This point of view is all too rare, both in the popular press and among neurobiologists. Describing phenomena does not mean we understand them. And nobody does a very good job of locating, or
even defining, consciousness. We are trying to define the universe from within the universe; any answer we find is a product of the system we are attempting to encircle with ideas.
Monday, October 29, 2007
A Little Dose of Faulty Understanding
I don’t really know what happened yesterday, but I feel better now than I have in weeks.
I was desperate. And I love Green Tara, the Tibetan goddess who became a Buddha. So I gritted my teeth and signed up for a one-day Tara retreat at the Maitripa Institute. It wasn’t cheap, but it cost far less than the ridiculous amount they charge for classes, say, or their not-very-modest gala dinners. It’s a different model, I tells myself. But I don’t need to pay big bucks to stick with something, or to value the Dharma, dammit. They don’t know what they’re losing, driving me away with their high prices. Or perhaps they do. They lose those who still have hope--and they attract those who, in a final act of desperation, are willing to pay.
I paid, and I was served lunch, and buckets of sweet milky tea, and I sat with people I did not know and did something completely new. It was lovely.
The jokhang, or hall, is floored with smooth bamboo-- the better for those full-body face-on-the-floor prostrations. Giant statues bedecked with gold and rugs and mysterious symbols are enshrined in the front, behind glass. The sitting arrangement is buckwheat zafu and modestly-sized zabuton.
To do a Tara puja you follow along in the book and chant the same thing over and over. When afternoon comes and you are still chanting the same thing, they make it more interesting by inviting you to circumambulate, or to lead the chant, or to make an offering on cue.
The cue comes from the rinpoche. He sits even during the breaks, a young coarsely-built Tibetan of sterling reputation. He gives instruction and offers bits of insight in a monotone, rocking back and forth while addressing the lectern. His smile is colossal, his humor comes easily, and he takes the proceedings seriously. We are all there because we need something, and he knows this.
What we do together brings a goddess into the room.
Near the end, he takes the Tara image off the altar and blesses us. The gold statue is heavy and reassuring on top of my head. But it is the hours of chanting to the One who dispels conflict that has an effect: I realize the inner conflict is of a piece with the outer. Feeding one gives rise to the other. And really, no one wants conflict. We want to be understood and appreciated. We want it to be OK--in our way, on our terms. That modest little impossibility, “it has to be this way,” is our undoing. Seeing the conventional world clearly, a Buddha feels compassion. Seeing the ultimate aspect clearly, she knows the wisdom of the emptiness of phenomena.
I have been undone too often these last three weeks. I have not been happy. And yet now, life is not a problem. This part of it--this part where I work hard for little money and lots of faultfinding--is both an integral result of all that has come before, and a key component of what the future must become.
When we are finished, we stand, and then the rinpoche is in front of me, holding out his hands. I take them. They are huge and fleshy, and feel as if they’re made of nothing at all. He looks in my eyes.
“Thank you,” he says. I squeeze the nonexistent flesh in reply.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SVAHA
I was desperate. And I love Green Tara, the Tibetan goddess who became a Buddha. So I gritted my teeth and signed up for a one-day Tara retreat at the Maitripa Institute. It wasn’t cheap, but it cost far less than the ridiculous amount they charge for classes, say, or their not-very-modest gala dinners. It’s a different model, I tells myself. But I don’t need to pay big bucks to stick with something, or to value the Dharma, dammit. They don’t know what they’re losing, driving me away with their high prices. Or perhaps they do. They lose those who still have hope--and they attract those who, in a final act of desperation, are willing to pay.
I paid, and I was served lunch, and buckets of sweet milky tea, and I sat with people I did not know and did something completely new. It was lovely.
The jokhang, or hall, is floored with smooth bamboo-- the better for those full-body face-on-the-floor prostrations. Giant statues bedecked with gold and rugs and mysterious symbols are enshrined in the front, behind glass. The sitting arrangement is buckwheat zafu and modestly-sized zabuton.
To do a Tara puja you follow along in the book and chant the same thing over and over. When afternoon comes and you are still chanting the same thing, they make it more interesting by inviting you to circumambulate, or to lead the chant, or to make an offering on cue.
The cue comes from the rinpoche. He sits even during the breaks, a young coarsely-built Tibetan of sterling reputation. He gives instruction and offers bits of insight in a monotone, rocking back and forth while addressing the lectern. His smile is colossal, his humor comes easily, and he takes the proceedings seriously. We are all there because we need something, and he knows this.
What we do together brings a goddess into the room.
Near the end, he takes the Tara image off the altar and blesses us. The gold statue is heavy and reassuring on top of my head. But it is the hours of chanting to the One who dispels conflict that has an effect: I realize the inner conflict is of a piece with the outer. Feeding one gives rise to the other. And really, no one wants conflict. We want to be understood and appreciated. We want it to be OK--in our way, on our terms. That modest little impossibility, “it has to be this way,” is our undoing. Seeing the conventional world clearly, a Buddha feels compassion. Seeing the ultimate aspect clearly, she knows the wisdom of the emptiness of phenomena.
I have been undone too often these last three weeks. I have not been happy. And yet now, life is not a problem. This part of it--this part where I work hard for little money and lots of faultfinding--is both an integral result of all that has come before, and a key component of what the future must become.
When we are finished, we stand, and then the rinpoche is in front of me, holding out his hands. I take them. They are huge and fleshy, and feel as if they’re made of nothing at all. He looks in my eyes.
“Thank you,” he says. I squeeze the nonexistent flesh in reply.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SVAHA
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
What a Parent Should Do
I was inspired by a talk given by PSU psychology professor Leslie B. Hammer at the Pacific NW Association of Independent Schools conference, held at Catlin Gabel School on October 12. My notes follow.
When anxiety takes hold, the cognitive field narrows, the world collapses into good and evil, and it becomes impossible to evaluate relative risk. In this state, a B- on a child’s paper evokes a similiar response to the child being attacked.
There is a correlation between kids gone awry--kids stuck in a swirl of depression, sex, drugs or delinquency--academic pressure from parents, family disengagement, and elite schools. In fact elite schools have higher rates of teen dysfunction than poor schools. (This sounds incredible, and I wonder if the studies corrected for the fact that students in poor schools often self-select themselves out of school.) But even so, the more affluent, the more pressure, the more messed up the kids are. Correlations can be tricky: they don’t say anything about causes. So it’s not that grade-obsessed parents necessarily cause teenage misbehavior. Rather, parental response focuses on the concrete readout of a life in crisis, without focusing the underlying causes, without addressing the kid’s social and emotional experience.
Family life is about enjoying one another. Period. You need unstructured time; you can’t arrange to bond. Kids and everyone need unstructured time to allow imagination and creativity to flow.
Happiness, and the Causes of Happiness, consist of: giving and receiving love; finding and using your gifts; and living a meaningful life. Period. Once basic subsistence needs have been met--not “middle class” needs, but subsistence needs--there is no longer a correlation between money and happiness. With increasing wealth, proxy variables start to stand in for satisfaction: a new car; the college sticker on the car; building your kid into a designer package that will win admittance into a selective school, rather than the best fit for that person’s needs and growth. There is a dissatisfaction that sets in with progressive material status
Studies on the introduction of the internet to homes show an increase in depression and alienation, and a decrease in family time, once a household becomes wired. Screens do not develop relationships; people do.
Relationships are not a frill. They are critical to personal health, proper development, and success in life. There is this focus on academic “basics”, but studies clearly show that emotional health is crucial to educational success at all levels: when kids feel safe at school, they learn better and do not drop out. At all developmental stages, “Secure Attachment” is a result, and a cause of, attunement and responsiveness.
There is plenty of literature on Secure Attachment in early life, but what does it look like for a teen? If your kid can offer a strong “YES” in agreement with the following five statements, that’s a tremendous predictor of future success and well-being.
This session ended up being about parenting, and what sort of relationship I want to have with the child growing inside me.
When anxiety takes hold, the cognitive field narrows, the world collapses into good and evil, and it becomes impossible to evaluate relative risk. In this state, a B- on a child’s paper evokes a similiar response to the child being attacked.
There is a correlation between kids gone awry--kids stuck in a swirl of depression, sex, drugs or delinquency--academic pressure from parents, family disengagement, and elite schools. In fact elite schools have higher rates of teen dysfunction than poor schools. (This sounds incredible, and I wonder if the studies corrected for the fact that students in poor schools often self-select themselves out of school.) But even so, the more affluent, the more pressure, the more messed up the kids are. Correlations can be tricky: they don’t say anything about causes. So it’s not that grade-obsessed parents necessarily cause teenage misbehavior. Rather, parental response focuses on the concrete readout of a life in crisis, without focusing the underlying causes, without addressing the kid’s social and emotional experience.
Family life is about enjoying one another. Period. You need unstructured time; you can’t arrange to bond. Kids and everyone need unstructured time to allow imagination and creativity to flow.
Happiness, and the Causes of Happiness, consist of: giving and receiving love; finding and using your gifts; and living a meaningful life. Period. Once basic subsistence needs have been met--not “middle class” needs, but subsistence needs--there is no longer a correlation between money and happiness. With increasing wealth, proxy variables start to stand in for satisfaction: a new car; the college sticker on the car; building your kid into a designer package that will win admittance into a selective school, rather than the best fit for that person’s needs and growth. There is a dissatisfaction that sets in with progressive material status
Studies on the introduction of the internet to homes show an increase in depression and alienation, and a decrease in family time, once a household becomes wired. Screens do not develop relationships; people do.
Relationships are not a frill. They are critical to personal health, proper development, and success in life. There is this focus on academic “basics”, but studies clearly show that emotional health is crucial to educational success at all levels: when kids feel safe at school, they learn better and do not drop out. At all developmental stages, “Secure Attachment” is a result, and a cause of, attunement and responsiveness.
There is plenty of literature on Secure Attachment in early life, but what does it look like for a teen? If your kid can offer a strong “YES” in agreement with the following five statements, that’s a tremendous predictor of future success and well-being.
- My parents accept me for who I am.
- My parents respect me.
- My parents want to know my opinion about things.
- I want to know my parents’ opinion about things.
- When I’m worried about something, my parents are there for me.
This session ended up being about parenting, and what sort of relationship I want to have with the child growing inside me.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
A Flash of Something
In the absence of a project assigned from somewhere, reflective writing is the only kind of writing I do. There has been very little reflective writing of late.
Creative energy has been going elsewhere: to a new job of daunting emotional proportions (who knew teaching science involved so much drama?); to keeping body and soul nourished somehow (too much cheese makes everything irritable, while going unfed is discouraging); to mulling the changes taking shape on the future horizon (life in six months will be beyond all imagining).
Today, a dear friend helped Bun and I move most of our possessions (which are mostly my possessions) into our new condo. We will continue to sleep this week in the old apartment, while the paint dries in the new place. The familiar space, now empty, is spartan and beautiful. Do I really need my stuff? Do I even want my stuff? Not really.
And yet I have stuff, and it has me.
We took a break from all this to go to the ballet. Our cheap seats in the first row were breathtaking. We peeked into the orchestra pit, and watched a toddler being handed over the barrier to visit his musician father while the others tuned their instruments. We could see artists waiting in the stage right wing. We saw the sweat fly as dancers whirled; we heard the thwack as their thighs slammed together. Their athleticism was literally in our faces. The absence of visual input from part of stage left was not missed. It was so much better than sitting in the center, a reasonable number of rows back.
I know these people have made incredible sacrifices to be in their position, briefly lit and costumed. They have forgone much to be so exalted and yet so captive. Bodies bear the marks of it: of discipline and intensity and submersion in a way of life. Do they have time for anything else?
I can feel my mind and my way of being shaped by teaching. I speak differently; I jot down quiz questions obsessively; I am slightly more likely to question bad behavior. My life revolves around those 6.5 hours a week where I am up against the blackboard, up against the clock, up against teenagers' expectations.
Unlike the dancers, I have no chance to rehearse or perfect my actions--nor will I, unless I happen to teach the course again. Yet, in some spark of time, something is briefly illuminated. Chalk dust flies. Minds stretch--or stagnate at the rear of the room. Whatever it is, there's one chance, and it's over.
On Monday we will talk about the Periodic Table. Why do Argon and Potassium fall into the order they do? More to the point, can I find the magic in the ordering of elements--in the art, the leaps, the impossible beauty--in a list? Perhaps not. But that's the creative endeavor these days.
Creative energy has been going elsewhere: to a new job of daunting emotional proportions (who knew teaching science involved so much drama?); to keeping body and soul nourished somehow (too much cheese makes everything irritable, while going unfed is discouraging); to mulling the changes taking shape on the future horizon (life in six months will be beyond all imagining).
Today, a dear friend helped Bun and I move most of our possessions (which are mostly my possessions) into our new condo. We will continue to sleep this week in the old apartment, while the paint dries in the new place. The familiar space, now empty, is spartan and beautiful. Do I really need my stuff? Do I even want my stuff? Not really.
And yet I have stuff, and it has me.
We took a break from all this to go to the ballet. Our cheap seats in the first row were breathtaking. We peeked into the orchestra pit, and watched a toddler being handed over the barrier to visit his musician father while the others tuned their instruments. We could see artists waiting in the stage right wing. We saw the sweat fly as dancers whirled; we heard the thwack as their thighs slammed together. Their athleticism was literally in our faces. The absence of visual input from part of stage left was not missed. It was so much better than sitting in the center, a reasonable number of rows back.
I know these people have made incredible sacrifices to be in their position, briefly lit and costumed. They have forgone much to be so exalted and yet so captive. Bodies bear the marks of it: of discipline and intensity and submersion in a way of life. Do they have time for anything else?
I can feel my mind and my way of being shaped by teaching. I speak differently; I jot down quiz questions obsessively; I am slightly more likely to question bad behavior. My life revolves around those 6.5 hours a week where I am up against the blackboard, up against the clock, up against teenagers' expectations.
Unlike the dancers, I have no chance to rehearse or perfect my actions--nor will I, unless I happen to teach the course again. Yet, in some spark of time, something is briefly illuminated. Chalk dust flies. Minds stretch--or stagnate at the rear of the room. Whatever it is, there's one chance, and it's over.
On Monday we will talk about the Periodic Table. Why do Argon and Potassium fall into the order they do? More to the point, can I find the magic in the ordering of elements--in the art, the leaps, the impossible beauty--in a list? Perhaps not. But that's the creative endeavor these days.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Happy Day
Dear Friends and Family,
As you may already know, last spring I re-met and fell in love with an old high school classmate. Although we weren’t close twenty years ago, I found in B an unusual combination of sweetness, energy, commitment, and steadiness--as well as very similar ideals and values. We fell in love immediately, and the months that have followed have confirmed the appropriateness of that initial warmth and adoration.
Accordingly, we were married at noon on August 8 in a very small ceremony at the Washington County Courthouse in Hillsboro, Oregon, in the presence of a judge and two witnesses.
The thought of hosting a large celebration with food and fanfare occurred to us--it seems to be the norm in this society. But it seems much more natural (for us) to be married quietly and to turn our energy toward life together. We hope that you will be able to join us soon for a visit, a meal, and a walk in one of Portland’s wooded parks. Know that you are invited to be a part of our life together, just as you have been a part of our lives in the past.
It should go without saying that we have no need or expectation of any gift. But if you feel so moved, we would treasure a handwritten blessing, or a piece of advice for married and family life. (If you would like our mailing address, please drop me a line at dgarigan(at)gmail.com.)
Warmly yours,
DTG
As you may already know, last spring I re-met and fell in love with an old high school classmate. Although we weren’t close twenty years ago, I found in B an unusual combination of sweetness, energy, commitment, and steadiness--as well as very similar ideals and values. We fell in love immediately, and the months that have followed have confirmed the appropriateness of that initial warmth and adoration.
Accordingly, we were married at noon on August 8 in a very small ceremony at the Washington County Courthouse in Hillsboro, Oregon, in the presence of a judge and two witnesses.
The thought of hosting a large celebration with food and fanfare occurred to us--it seems to be the norm in this society. But it seems much more natural (for us) to be married quietly and to turn our energy toward life together. We hope that you will be able to join us soon for a visit, a meal, and a walk in one of Portland’s wooded parks. Know that you are invited to be a part of our life together, just as you have been a part of our lives in the past.
It should go without saying that we have no need or expectation of any gift. But if you feel so moved, we would treasure a handwritten blessing, or a piece of advice for married and family life. (If you would like our mailing address, please drop me a line at dgarigan(at)gmail.com.)
Warmly yours,
DTG
Sunday, August 26, 2007
A Teacher Slams Back
What Teachers Make, or
Objection Overruled, or
If things don't work out, you can always go to law school
By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com
He says the problem with teachers is, "What's a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?"
He reminds the other dinner guests that it's true what they say about
teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.
I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the other dinner guests
that it's also true what they say about lawyers.
Because we're eating, after all, and this is polite company.
"I mean, you’re a teacher, Taylor," he says.
"Be honest. What do you make?"
And I wish he hadn't done that
(asked me to be honest)
because, you see, I have a policy
about honesty and ass-kicking:
if you ask for it, I have to let you have it.
You want to know what I make?
I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best.
I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why won't I let you get a drink of water?
Because you're not thirsty, you're bored, that's why.
I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
I hope I haven't called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something Billy said today.
Billy said, "Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don't you?"
And it was the noblest act of courage I have ever seen.
I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.
You want to know what I make?
I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write.
And then I make them read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely
beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math.
And hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this (brains)
then you follow this (heart) and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this (the finger).
Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
I make a goddamn difference! What about you?
Objection Overruled, or
If things don't work out, you can always go to law school
By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com
He says the problem with teachers is, "What's a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?"
He reminds the other dinner guests that it's true what they say about
teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.
I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the other dinner guests
that it's also true what they say about lawyers.
Because we're eating, after all, and this is polite company.
"I mean, you’re a teacher, Taylor," he says.
"Be honest. What do you make?"
And I wish he hadn't done that
(asked me to be honest)
because, you see, I have a policy
about honesty and ass-kicking:
if you ask for it, I have to let you have it.
You want to know what I make?
I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best.
I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why won't I let you get a drink of water?
Because you're not thirsty, you're bored, that's why.
I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
I hope I haven't called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something Billy said today.
Billy said, "Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don't you?"
And it was the noblest act of courage I have ever seen.
I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.
You want to know what I make?
I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write.
And then I make them read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely
beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math.
And hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this (brains)
then you follow this (heart) and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this (the finger).
Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
I make a goddamn difference! What about you?
Monday, August 13, 2007
They Don't Makem Like They Used To
The Economist has the best of all the obituaries I've read for Tommy Makem.
Many years ago, when my mother was pregnant with me, she inexplicably went on an Irish folk-music kick. For years, I thought her brief affair with that music explained my own love for it. More recently, I wonder if perhaps it was the other way around: the developing baby was influencing her. Whatever the cause, the songs of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem resonated in my heart all during childhood. I learned to operate a record player so I cold play their LPs; I memorized all the albums; and on nights when living seemed like too much, I would lie on my back in our darkened livingroom with my head near the speaker.
At the time, I did not know that Irish vocal music is a solitary tradition. The old men in the pub in Kingscourt would shush each other with great seriousness, so that one of their number could compose himself and warble one of the old rebel songs, or courting songs, or praise-of-place songs. The Clancys and Tommy Makem were less refined: they stood around a microphone and whaled away, and it sounded alright, or at least enthusiastic. Makem was the best singer of them all, it was clear, and no surprise that he had a healthy solo career afterward, when it was just his baritone filling the air.
I had wanted to go on one of the musical pub tours he lead of South Armagh, or the folk festival he organized there. To have such musical talent come from a region that sank into such darkness and brutality, and to have music play a part in the revival of hope in that area--it's something you'd want to be part of.
As it is, I'm sad today. I'll leave with two quotes from Tommy Makem, and an excerpt from the piece in the The Economist.
On Ireland today:
We're so obsessed with modernity we don't know what we're losing. They're making gazillions of dollars in Ireland but they're losing their culture.
When asked if he planned to retire soon:
Yes, of course, I retire every night and in the morning when I awake I realise just how lucky and privileged I am to be able to continue doing the things I love to do.He had performances booked through this fall.
IT ALL began in the kitchen of a house in Keady, County Armagh, in Northern Ireland, where Tommy Makem's mother Sarah, as she stirred a pan on the hob or filled the kettle, would sing of morning dew and magpies' nests, Barney Mavourneen and Mary of Kilmore, ships and red roses:
Red is the rose that in yonder garden grows
Fair is the lily of the valley Clear is the water that flows from the Boyne
But my love is fairer than any.
Tommy said he could sing before he could speak; and not long after he could play piccolo, fiddle, tin whistle and the five-string banjo. He would stand up in the church hall, no taller than a chair, and sing “The Little Beggarman”:
I am a little beggarman, a begging I have been
For three score years in this little isle of green.
Music and tales filled not only his home but the rolling fields and hills of South Armagh itself. The heart of Ireland seemed to beat there beneath Slieve Gullion, the mystical mountain where the hero Cuchullain had learned his warrior skills and where the hunter Finn MacCumhail, bewitched and curious, had tracked a white doe to the summit. Tommy Makem picked up those legends too and, in 1955, took them to America, together with his bagpipes and a suitcase patched up with tape.
He meant to work in a cotton mill and do a bit of acting, but one St Patrick's night he was paid $30 for singing two songs in a club: “and I thought, by God, this is the land all right. Gold growing in the streets.” By 1958 he had teamed up with his friend Liam Clancy and Liam's brothers Paddy and Tom, who had come from Tipperary to America before him, and the gold continued to accrue. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, all kitted out in Aran sweaters knitted by Mrs Clancy, triumphantly rode the wave of a folk revival that was turning Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie into stars. Adapting to the new world, they added tin whistle and banjo to the old songs and quickened the pace, because, as Tommy said, “The heartbeat of America is so much faster than the old country.” They did “The Morning Show” and “The Tonight Show”, Ed Sullivan and Carnegie Hall, landed a $100,000 contract with Columbia and ended up singing “We Want no Irish Here” in front of Jack Kennedy at the White House, while Kennedy flashed his white teeth and rocked with laughter.
Tommy Makem was always the key man, with a baritone sweet as buttermilk or sharp as salt, nipping effortlessly over his “hi the dithery idle lum, dithery oodle idle loos” and his “roo run rye, fa the diddle dye, hey the O the diddle derry Os”. And for a lifelong teetotaller no man had more feeling when he sang of hoppy beer or dark-frothing porter or devilish golden whiskey, or almost anything at all served up in a jug in a bar:
When I am in my grave and dead
And all my sorrows are past and fled
Transport me then into a fish
And let me swim in a jug of this.
The songs he wrote himself he dismissed as “garbage altogether”, never to be compared to the old words and melodies he wanted to preserve in live performance. But a few he was proud of, and none more so than “Four Green Fields”, in which “a fine old woman”—Ireland—sang of her fourth field, Ulster, that was still “in bondage/ In strangers' hands, that tried to take it from me”. In America his audiences, largely third-generation Irish of the diaspora, would weep and sing along until, according to the New York Times man, they were “ready to go out and die for Ireland”.
All told, Tommy Makem's choice of songs was fervently nationalistic: children's rhymes about “King Billy”, or rebel songs such as “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”, in which the hero's sweetheart is killed, as they caress in a glen, by a British bullet. And most stirring of all, in a voice with an edge like a knife, he would sing “The Patriot Game”:
Come all you young rebels, and list while I sing,
For the love of one's country is a terrible thing.
It banishes fear with the speed of a flame,
And it makes us all part of the patriot game.
Bob Dylan adapted this for his great anti-war song “With God on Our Side”. But Tommy Makem tried always to separate his love of country from the horrors of sectarianism. As Northern Ireland slid into the Troubles after 1969, he kept away from politics—a task made somewhat easier by staying in America, where he went on singing to the end of his days. In the dark low-ceilinged bar he bought in New York in the early 1980s, the rule of the house was tolerance and good fellowship. And the slow dawning of peace in Northern Ireland was celebrated by the founding in 2000 in South Armagh of his International Festival of Song, a deliberate declaration that singing could lead men out of darkness, just as Finn MacCumhail at the top of Slieve Gullion found the doe he was following transformed into a beautiful young woman, who smiled at him.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Shy Thoughts
I've been feeling private about my private life lately, which seems reasonable. Thus, what follows concerns sex mostly in the abstract. Even that feels like a lot.
What I have to say is that there are things we don't understand. The world is built the way it's built, regardless of our delusions around being able to master it, if only conceptually.
Now I will leave you to read it, and go to yoga.
I remember vividly the brief exchange that gave me the first clue about the power of sex.
I was six years old, and the kids at school were giving me the idea that “sex” was very important and naughty. I lived on a sheep farm where we recorded the gender of baby lambs on file cards: where it said “sex” you wrote either M for male or F for female. That was hardly worthy of fuss.
So I asked my mother what sex was. Silence fell. Her face looked a little funny.
“There are two sexes, male and female,” she said. No surprise, but I sensed I was onto something. Over the months that followed, I kept asking the question, mostly to see her squirm. Eventually, she confessed that sex had to do with animals breeding. But where was the juice in that? And why would my classmates care what our ram was up to?
Of course, other answers came in time: sex is what mommies and daddies do; sex is how babies are made; sex is something you must avoid at all costs. The anxiety became more explicit as the years passed, and the funny look remained. For years I imagined this was a kind of bashfulness, some desire to avoid sullying the innocence of a little child whose naiveté was already slipping away by slow increments.
Only recently did it strike me: Nobody has a good answer to that question. What is sex? It may be what mommies and daddies do, but do they understand what they do? Can they say why?
The experience of sexuality, of life as a sexual being, can drive our entire life. The urge to couple, to reproduce, to have someone, to just get off now, careens a stable life into chaos; it throws us off course into dark territory. Chasing the thrill of sex, the mighty are laid low; finding the thrill, the humble imagine themselves to be king or queen; hoping for love we are depleted and derailed; finding it, we feel glorious. Whatever sex is, defies simple understanding. Like thirst and hunger, its pull is something we share with insects and beasts. How does a polar bear explain sex? Or a wasp? How could our knowing be any more complete? We do not turn that wheel; we are turned by it.
Sexual desire is so close-in that we fail to recognize it. The primal is both commonplace and commodified. From our inexplicable needs, a culture based on titillation and gratification rolls forth.
So when my child asks, “Mama, what’s ‘sex’?” I’ll say, “Sex is the thing that drives adults mad, and makes them do things they never thought they’d do. Be glad that you are a child now, with a child’s hormones and a child’s concerns. Because when you start to grow up, you enter a mysterious world, and come unwittingly into a power that is beautiful and dangerous, inspiring and devastating, depending on how you use it.” I don’t expect her to understand. After all, none of the mommies and daddies do either.
What I have to say is that there are things we don't understand. The world is built the way it's built, regardless of our delusions around being able to master it, if only conceptually.
Now I will leave you to read it, and go to yoga.
I remember vividly the brief exchange that gave me the first clue about the power of sex.
I was six years old, and the kids at school were giving me the idea that “sex” was very important and naughty. I lived on a sheep farm where we recorded the gender of baby lambs on file cards: where it said “sex” you wrote either M for male or F for female. That was hardly worthy of fuss.
So I asked my mother what sex was. Silence fell. Her face looked a little funny.
“There are two sexes, male and female,” she said. No surprise, but I sensed I was onto something. Over the months that followed, I kept asking the question, mostly to see her squirm. Eventually, she confessed that sex had to do with animals breeding. But where was the juice in that? And why would my classmates care what our ram was up to?
Of course, other answers came in time: sex is what mommies and daddies do; sex is how babies are made; sex is something you must avoid at all costs. The anxiety became more explicit as the years passed, and the funny look remained. For years I imagined this was a kind of bashfulness, some desire to avoid sullying the innocence of a little child whose naiveté was already slipping away by slow increments.
Only recently did it strike me: Nobody has a good answer to that question. What is sex? It may be what mommies and daddies do, but do they understand what they do? Can they say why?
The experience of sexuality, of life as a sexual being, can drive our entire life. The urge to couple, to reproduce, to have someone, to just get off now, careens a stable life into chaos; it throws us off course into dark territory. Chasing the thrill of sex, the mighty are laid low; finding the thrill, the humble imagine themselves to be king or queen; hoping for love we are depleted and derailed; finding it, we feel glorious. Whatever sex is, defies simple understanding. Like thirst and hunger, its pull is something we share with insects and beasts. How does a polar bear explain sex? Or a wasp? How could our knowing be any more complete? We do not turn that wheel; we are turned by it.
Sexual desire is so close-in that we fail to recognize it. The primal is both commonplace and commodified. From our inexplicable needs, a culture based on titillation and gratification rolls forth.
So when my child asks, “Mama, what’s ‘sex’?” I’ll say, “Sex is the thing that drives adults mad, and makes them do things they never thought they’d do. Be glad that you are a child now, with a child’s hormones and a child’s concerns. Because when you start to grow up, you enter a mysterious world, and come unwittingly into a power that is beautiful and dangerous, inspiring and devastating, depending on how you use it.” I don’t expect her to understand. After all, none of the mommies and daddies do either.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
A Poet Writes Back
Here is a fragment of an open letter from the poet Sharon Olds to Laura Bush declining the
invitation to read and speak at the National Book Festival in Washington,
DC. It has been circulating out there on the internet since October, 2005. Alas.
invitation to read and speak at the National Book Festival in Washington,
DC. It has been circulating out there on the internet since October, 2005. Alas.
[T]he prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. I thought
of the opportunity to talk about how to start up an outreach program. I
thought of the chance to sell some books, sign some books and meet some of the
citizens of Washington, DC. I thought that I could try to find a way,
even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we
should not have invaded Iraq, and to declare my belief that the wish to
invade another culture and another country--with the resultant loss of
life and limb for our brave soldiers, and for the noncombatants in their
home terrain--did not come out of our democracy but was instead a
decision made "at the top" and forced on the people by distorted
language, and by untruths. I hoped to express the fear that we have
begun to live in the shadows of tyranny and religious chauvinism--the
opposites of the liberty, tolerance and diversity our nation aspires to.
I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear
witness -- as an American who loves her country and its principles and its
writing -- against this undeclared and devastating war.
But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if
I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning
what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.
What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food
from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that
unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of
permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries
where they will be tortured for us. So many Americans who had felt pride in our country
now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and
fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the
flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.
Sincerely,
SHARON OLDS
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