D, All of the Above

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate.

~ Flannery O'Connor, from Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

When I was a kid, I loved standardized tests. Twice a year, we took the California Achievement Test, and I relished the chance to fill in those bubbles, to have the answer to a question simplified to one of four answers. (In the Montessori classroom, answers were never multiple-choice; tests never required us to color in tiny circles using #2 pencils). I did pretty well on these tests, too, scoring in the top 5% of my age group.

The exception? Reading comprehension. I never scored nearly as well in reading comprehension as I did in math or language. The question read, "What is the author's purpose?" and the answer was supposed to be "to entertain," "to persuade," or "to inform." It had to be one of them. How was I to know the author's purpose? Couldn't he have more than one aim? What if I were both entertained and informed by her passage? I felt like I was missing some kind of trick.

The same thing happened when I tried to identify the theme of a story or fiction excerpt. How could I sum up the meaning of a story in one phrase, apart from the elements of that story? Give me three-hundred words, I'll tell you what we can take from a story, how you can pull meaning from it, but don't boil it down to one of four choices, none of which are adequate.

So imagine my excitement when I discovered Flannery O'Connor in college. Her characters, her settings, her plots are so ripe with meaning. For her to acknowledge that theme and story are inseparable validates my suspicion: standardized tests are bunk!

Common Ground

Last week, a friend responded to what I thought was a rather innocuous statement about wanting the country to "go a little faster" with what I thought was a reactionary, alarmist, tea bagger/Ayn Randian diatribe. This was a shock, to say the least, and judging by how much I've thought about it and replayed it, the whole exchange has me troubled.

My friend wept for me because I sound like I advocate revolution. I don't want an individualistic democracy where citizens pull themselves up by their bootstraps - I want socialism, she said. After all, progressives are really socialists. I want a dictator and loss of freedom. She asked me to explain myself. She wrote, I see the danger you don't see.

Normally I would have discounted such a reply. I would play it off to ignorance and fear. But me and her, we've known each other since our freshman years of high school, I've vacationed with her and her family, and I know she's smart and reasonable. I couldn't discard the reply.

I told her that I'm not calling for revolution. There's an on-going debate over the role the government plays in our lives, and it's the push and pull between the two sides that allows our country to change, adapt, and correct itself. I may not always like the direction it's going, but this is why we have elections. I thought this was a reasonable and even simplistic remark, but even this came off as radical.

This was not just a political debate between friends; rather, it illustrates one of the biggest problems our country seems to have--despite so much common ground and common goals between us, two distinct world views divide us. And because of the corrupting influences of money and power, our leaders are unwilling or impotent to bridge that gap.

Express Yourself

In his autobiography, Malcolm X describes how he received a "homemade education" while in prison. He had always considered himself an "articulate hustler," but the language he used on the street--"Look, daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat"--were insufficient within the prison walls. With only an eighth-grade education, he was unable to engage in meaningful conversations and correspondence. With access to little else, Malcolm X began to copy the dictionary. Starting with "aardvark," he wrote each word and its definition:

In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks.

I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I’d written on the tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.

I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words—immensely proud to realize that not only had I written so much at one time, but I’d written words that I never knew were in the world.... It went a lot faster after so much practice helped me to pick up handwriting speed. Between what I wrote in my tablet, and writing letters, during the rest of my time in prison I would guess I wrote a million words.

To listen to his speeches, to read his words, makes his "homemade education" all the more impressive. He felt unable to express himself, and he rectified it. He describes himself as never having felt "so truly free" in his life as when he was incarcerated, his eyes and mind and possibilities opened to the huge world contained in books. Language is power. Controversial as he was, Malcolm X was undeniably a man of ideas. His ability to communicate those ideas made him a leader.

I watched the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company perform his complete works (abridged). There were jokes scattered about crazy right-wingers, tea parties, and BP. At one point, one of the three actors--they performed hilarious versions of everything from Othello to Hamlet--said, "That's the craziest thing I've heard, at least since, 'Change you can believe in'... What, too soon?" There were audience members laughing and clapping. But I didn't get it. I still don't. I want to say, "Grow up! Obama is trying to govern!" I don't understand what more people want him to do. He needs support, he needs political capital to effect change, and by ridiculing him from the left, people are instead removing an important voice from the debate. Keep up the pressure, but let him lead.

We have so many opportunities today. Libraries, the internet, education: these should be equalizers! Good-natured people, myself included, worry about the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots. But is anyone talking about the gulf between the "knows" and the "know-nots"? Am I just projecting here? The more television I watch, the more I read, the more I think about (what I perceive to be) rampant anti-intellectualism. Politicians, the media, appealing to our basest instincts, worrying about the 24/7 news cycle instead of truth and progress. Where are the intellectual leaders? Who has big ideas today, based on fact and reason, that has enough celebrity to garner attention? Will corporate media allow any other voices? And when will we be smart enough to demand better?

Communities

Sometimes life throws us things that make us question the justice of the world.

I'm not religious; I'm not even spiritual. But I tend to believe that there's an order to the universe, that things even out. Despite so much evidence to the contrary, I tend to think good things ultimately happen to good people.

When a lovely, positive, vibrant 27-year old is losing her battle with cancer, I'm reminded that this world can be cruel and random. That horrible things can happen to the best people and the best families.

We were part of a rather counter-cultural Catholic church in the 80s and 90s. I knew nothing of the orthodoxy and intolerance that continue to plague more traditional Catholic churches, because ours was accepting of differences, more concerned with issues of peace and justice than what people did behind closed doors. The church's first members were young, in their late teens and early twenties. They got married, had kids (I was one of those kids), and thus a generation was born into this caring and intimate environment. We all lived in the same neighborhood as the church. We walked there and to each other's houses for sleepovers and pool parties. Many of us went to the same schools and rode the same buses.

By the early-to-mid-90s, many of the members who'd married had divorced (my parents included), and many had moved away from the neighborhood. Many of us stopped going to the church (the priest who'd helped to start it had long since moved out West) and found somewhere (or nowhere) else to go. Now, members of that first generation of kids are in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Many of the parents are remarried, graying. And we're all tolerant, open, and concerned with peace. Justice.

We met today at Spring Grove Cemetery - that large and lovely place I grew up across the street from, celebrated my First Communion in, and learned how to drive a stick in - to honor Jenna. About one hundred of us gathered near the entrance, slowly recognizing each other and sharing hugs and tears. For the next hour and a half, we walked quietly through the cemetery, umbrellas open, thinking, reflecting, crying, and praying. Spring Grove has always represented peace, beauty, and community much more than death. It was a gray, rainy day that seemed appropriate for the circumstances.

I have trouble holding grudges nowadays. I reserve my anger for deceit, injustice, and intolerance, and only towards those I don't know personally. For everyone else, especially, today, Jenna and her family, I have only love and hope that somehow, somewhere, the world restores order.

Still going to a land down under...

I give one more exam tomorrow, and then I'm done until the next quarter begins (at the end of October). This quarter, like the one before it, has shaken me a bit. I find myself asking, What the hell am I doing, teaching. Who the hell am I to think that I can stand up there, imparting my "knowledge."

My confidence has always come from within, more than without. Compliments mean nothing until I have internalized it. What I need to do is figure out some way to measure gains. To have something I can look at and think about and analyze. My syllabus includes a list of outcomes. How to quantify those?

And yes, I'm being hard on myself. I speak with my mom, a teacher; her husband, a college professor: they deal with the same problems I do. A few weeks ago I wrote about a student who challenged me in class. We talked afterwards, and a few times since then, and on the last day she thanked me for a great quarter. "I learned a lot," she said. Maybe I just need to let that sink in some more, as well as other similar statements from other students.

Haha - it suddenly strikes me that I'm looking for excuses to move forward with my MFA plans. Whine, whine, whine. I'll see what I say later.

Shallow thoughts...

For some people, it's their eyes. For others, it's their smile.

The only visible evidence of my accident today is a right eye that blinks a little less frequently than the left and that doesn't open quite as wide when I'm tired. And I certainly could have benefited from braces back in junior high.

No, for me, my best physical trait is my smallness. My thinness. When I realized that, or at least gave voice to that thought in my head, I shrunk a little more: my best physical trait is the lack of something; the absence of something.

Critical Thinking

Half my life ago, I was in the hospital recovering from brain injuries. After coming out of a coma, I found myself unable to walk, talk, or put together logical strings of thought. The doctors anticipated that I would be in the hospital for another three months and, even then, with limited capacity (to walk, to talk, or to put together thoughts).

"How horrible!" people say, now. "That must have been scary."

Yes and no: Yes in that I wouldn't wish an extended stay in the hospital on anyone; no in that there are benefits to confinement, to a reduction in choices. Lift your leg. Bend your elbow. Hold my hand. TV on or off? I could handle these kinds of commands and decisions. I did what I was told, and I did what I had to do to get better without overthinking or overanalyzing. Never once did I ask myself, "Yes, ok, but what does this mean? What is the signficance of the balance beam and my inability to walk across it right now?"

That lack of self-awareness allowed me to give up control for a bit. I was able to put myself and my fate in the hands of people I trust.

The question now is, could I do that again without being knocked unconscious first?

Whose Woods These Are

It's strange how it sneaks up on you: feelings, emotions, bubble up to the surface. Obviously they were right there, hiding, waiting for provocation, but you had no idea. And while it's somewhat cathartic, releasing them, you're unsure of what to do with them now. Put them on a shelf? Tuck them away somewhere?  Find someone to talk to? Or should you do what I do, and write about them?

My dad is getting ready to come home. As he ties up loose ends in Kenya, he reflects on what he's learned these past three years that he's been living in both places:

One thing I learned is that there are degrees of poverty. When you feel you’ve met some truly poor people, there are those who are poorer. I thought initially that the children with AIDS in the Children’s Home in Karen were the poorest of the poor, Then I went to the Village in Kitui and thought these children who were brought from nothing were worse off. I spent time in Kibera and saw the mud and muck and wondered how people could live like this. Then I met the Masai in Athi, with their houses made of cow dung, their hygiene deplorable and water undrinkable, Then I traveled to the north – to Turkana, where people are naked and starving silently and no one knows or seems to care. There are places I have never seen in Kenya, places in other countries like Sudan and Somalia where there is no doubt more sickness, and more violence and paralyzing fear.

This idea is almost too big: that even when searching for the poorest of the poor, you'll always find someone poorer; that whatever your problems, there's always going to be someone with bigger ones.  He concludes by saying that "even in these places of pain and fear, there is somehow life and there is love.... [L]ife is about the relationships."

Today has been altogether surreal.  The California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, and I feel like we're on the wrong side of history with this decision. For so many of us, the idea that a marriage between two men or two women would be treated any differently than a marriage between a man and a woman seems absurd: It makes no sense, and it's as backward as segregation and bans on interracial marriage.

So these bubbling emotions: they come from recognizing myself in my father; they come from acknowledging my own pettiness and selfishness; they come from admitting all the choices available to me and the choices not pursued; and they come from my grandma, able to see through me for who I am and who I am not.

Anyway, so this is me, trying to put names and reasons to my sudden crying fit. It's passed now, and I'm ready to move on to whatever's next. And tonight, that would be sleep.

Site feed weirdness

I spent a couple hours yesterday going through my posts and adding Labels ("e.g. scooters, vacation, fall"). This caused me to edit each post, adding my "nana" and "vent" tags, and then hitting "Publish Post." I was experimenting with site feeds, maybe adding it to twitter (more accountability for me=less silliness, in theory) but since I did those edits, the site feed is not in chronological order. For everything, it's "March 28." Hmm.