Well, the time has come, my friends...  I'm moving too

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Crash

Today I was sitting in my classroom grading before my first students arrived to first period (20 minutes late or so, albeit it changed from zero period to first period about a week and a half ago and apparently it can't go from nothing to something in the students minds quite that quickly).  I saw out of the corner of my eye a hand truck go by in the hallway loaded with file cabinets and other furniture and a few of our schools friendly custodians pushing it to its destination, probably via the elevator that is just down the hall from me.

A few seconds later I heard a crash.  It was loud, but I was focused on my grading.  It didn't sound like an emergency.  But I could hear the custodians arguing.  One started to yell, "I told you to keep a hand on the hand truck, stupid."  "I was holding on, it was fine," came the retort.  Variations on that theme built up to:  "You didn't listen.  Stupid n*gger, I can't believe I have to work with you."

I don't think I've done the situation justice, but I think that was the first time I've ever heard someone use that word with genuine hatred.  I mean, my students use it all the time, but they're friends, kids.  They call each other all kinds of outrageous things.  But I couldn't believe my ears.  And there were clearly students in the hallways at the time.

++++++

Later in the day another odd thing happened.  The principal and our school's AP for instruction came in.  My class was working on using reading strategies to decode an article from a free daily newspaper in Spanish called Hoy.  They were actually working really well and we were about to transition into the lesson when someone in the hall called out "Mr. Walsh!" and a particularly "active" young man in my class ran to the door.  "Mr. Walsh is in the hallway"  "He's probably not," I said.  "No, really, there he is."  "I need to talk to Mr. Walsh."  "Finish your article."  "No, I really need to talk to him."  "Look, it can wait, he's busy."  "He's coming!"

Mr. Walsh did come in and for about thirty minutes gave a very interesting pep talk to the class.  It's a smart class, but they're lazy and they often come to class 5-15 minutes late, then they're very hard to settle down because as soon as you're done describing the assignment another five students walk in and demand that they have a right to do nothing because they don't know what they're supposed to do (even though its written clearly on the board in the same exact place every day).

The pep talk was actually very interesting.  He cited research that claims that the upcoming generation of 12-19 year olds is going to be the first generation in American history that has it worse off than their parents did economically.  Apparently, the research claims it is because children today are raised with a sense of entitlement, that they deserve whatever they want, and NOW!, which has already led to great debt and consumerism in our country.  Now I'm not sure how I feel about that article, but Mr. Walsh was very eloquent as he talked about the importance of getting a job that has a pension and saving for retirement and investing money in wise places, very important things.

As the period was coming to a close he started to answer questions from students.  They had all been very quiet and apparently very attentive during this whole time.  One student asked a fairly good question related to the topic.  Then a girl raised her hand. The principal called on her in between his own sentences, still clearly focused on the topic.  "Can I use your microwave?" she asked.

What was she thinking?  The principal got very angry, yelled, and left the room.  I mean, I suppose that there are a lot of innocent reasons she might have said that, but did she not hear a word of his thirty minutes of donated time?  Maybe its all true after all.

Having just finished reading an article by the esteemed Stanley Fish

(Article here and not necessary, but perhaps useful, for understanding the essay below.  Sorry it is so lengthy.  I suppose you might call it a blog modeled off the NYTimes.com bloggers, though I am no Fish or Warner, instead of... well, other kinds of blogs, like microblogs for example.  Enjoy!)

When I tell the story of how I came to be a Spanish teacher in the semi-sadistic NYCTF program, I often say, “Well, I was an English and Spanish major and who was going to pay me to do what I really wanted to do, to read and write poetry?  So I became a teacher.”  Now, the principal of my high school always said that he would never hire a teacher who did not say that his or her discipline was the most important.  Part of my misery as a Spanish teacher has been thus inflicted.  I feel like a fraud.  In this, my third year teaching, I often take to daydreaming about what other discipline I would rather be teaching—a more marketable one like math?  I’ve always liked math.  Or English.  English has always been my first love.  Or has it?

Choosing a career has been particularly difficult for me.  Partly because I would rather be doing almost nothing.  I never understood the allure of being independently wealthy until I started a regular, full-time job.  I have thought many times about becoming a professor.  I love teaching in it’s purest form.  But something about Mr. Fish’s article struck me.  For him, being a scholar was less parsing the meaning of texts to help a group of students understand a truth more deeply, it was instead a sort of scientific pleasure of understanding what makes beautiful language beautiful and artists different than the average Joe.  His University is apparently not so much about educating others as sitting around and discussing things.  More of an All Souls than an undergraduate college.  And this realization only reinforces to me that I could never be an academic.  No wonder I spent so many hours searching every university under the sun’s website for a program that would fit me.  There is none.  I don’t know if that means that there never could be one.  But there is no program for me now in postdeconstruction acadamia.

You see, I don’t want to sit around and parse texts.  I’ve always done alright with the text parsing questions in school, which resulted in an English degree.  But, the only reason I did alright on those questions was that my real ability is submitting myself to texts, immersing myself in them and intuitively acquiring their unique dialects, losing myself in them.  I could be the subject of a Borgesian short story:  the professional actress whose only stage is in her own mind, and whose only script is the book she reads, her only career to become a better and more subtle portrayer of black words on white pages.  In some ways it seems a very passive process.  In it I turn myself over to someone else and the author plays me like an instrument through his or her writing.  In some ways the books I have read feel more real to me than my own experiences.  They mingle with my dreams and my waking life to create what I know as my memories.  Maybe I should try to sell my work to editing companies?  I can read their books and prophesy whether or not they are “good.”  Or I should become a critic?

But this is the other sticking point in my mind.  For Mr. Fish, “the Humanities”—literature and history and philosophy—do not seem to be a metaphysical search for the good, the true, and the beautiful.  And in my heart of hearts that is the only way I can see them.  Books are only good when they tell a story that brings me a little closer to understanding what is real.  Maybe that is why I find them so hard to differentiate from my physical experiences.  It is as though I have had a very personal contact with each of the authors I’ve read.  As though they’ve leaned over and said something very important into my ear.  I imagine what it might have been like when story was only available “live” as we might say.  What would it have been to hear Milton recite Paradise Lost?  Or to hear the Odyssey from Homer’s lips?  Amazingly, it is still the same story, but there would be a power of presence that may be dulled by the coldness of black words on white paper.  Or maybe it is enlivened by the space for the mind-actress to move.

But the question remains, what should I be then?  Am I an author?  I have always believed myself to be one, but there is this catch in my heart, this pernicious doubt.  I know I am a reader, an actress on the stage of my own mind, there is no doubt about that.  But writing seems to be so much more of an assertion of the self.  It is not a passive, private endeavor.  Writing is an action, a declaration, a bold and brash creation.  Or is it?  Or is this what Madeline L’Engle means when she says in Walking on Water that the artist is someone who is obedient to his or her work?  Is this what C. S. Lewis was trying to explain when he said that the Chronicles of Narnia all started with a picture that came into his head of a faun with an umbrella and his arms full of packages standing by a lamppost.  Maybe by reading I have been flexing my story muscles.  Maybe the action of writing is not so different than the action of reading and they both have a passive core—submission to a story.  Because for all the international copyright laws dealing with intellectual property, stories don’t really belong to anyone.  They exist somewhere beyond the world where we articulate them.  Maybe an author is not so much a creator god as a TV, antenna, and VCR recorder.  A prophet.  An oracle.  No amount of my work can will a story, a real story into being.  Of course I must make choices.  Some pieces of information are negligible or secondary to the story itself, those I can choose.  But the story in its most secret places comes on its own terms.

And this is a whole spiritual realm where businessmen and doctors and nurses and so many more “practical” professions fear to tread.  And I still haven’t solved the problem of getting them to pay me so I can eat.  But somehow that doesn’t seem quite so important anymore.

You know what I want to do for Christmas?  I want to make christmas cookies for all my students.  I wonder if they've ever had christmas cookies as good as my aunts.

In honor of the Advent season, a happy anti-consumerist thought

MANIFESTO: THE MAD FARMER LIBERATION FRONT

"Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay.  Want more
of everything ready-made.  Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
and you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more.  Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you.  When they want you
to die for profit, they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute.  Love the Lord.
Love the world.  Work for nothing.
take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag.  Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give you approval to all you cannot
understand.  Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered, he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium.  Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit.  Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion--put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world.  Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable.  Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself:  will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade.  Rest your head
in her lap.  Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
as soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it.  Leave it as a sign
to mark a false trail, the way
you didn't go.  Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection."

I mean, how beautiful is that?!

We who prayed and wept (by Wendell Berry)

We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.

Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.

(see also: "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" which is a better poem, but longer.)

Currently Reading The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry By Wendell Berry see related