no longer an emotional armadillo

I expose my oyster of need to the winds

and find them more melodious and gentle

than biting.

and what's this? as though someone lifted the needle on my malcontent record, replacing it (gently) just far enough ahead so as to continue its journey round, so do the words once more seem to be making their merry way, seeking the air, seeking the page (or its virtual avatar, at very least).

not surprising they are joined in the chase by those already penned, and so do I find myself voracious -- reading everything in sight. there's a pile to my left on the dining room table from a recent conversation on philosophy, yet to be re-shelved as they keep begging to be tasted. I do, sneaking a page here and there in passing, like a meal I'm meant to leave for later, but can't quite wait to sample. having, currently, a taste for fiction (which appears to serve me as television serves most of the populace) -- and having exhausted at least once my own supply, having reread those that seemed to require it, upstairs are now strewn the spent, borrowed volumes from friends' shelves, most of these devoured in long, passionate sessions. complete, they lay about like afternoon lovers, lazy after giving so much of themselves in the daytime; as though considering remaining luxuriously abed til night again requires their current position. Middlesex, in particular, deserves such a rest....mrrawr.

Thus unquenched, and enjoying the quelching quelching sound of my duck boots in the late fall rain, I am a fearless navigator in search of unknown spines, new pages, awaiting the lullaby of the next lover -- only to find the most obvious of mannas:

O! Library, you contain multitudes! -- I have re-discovered a continent, and wish to stake my flag in its soils. Thank goodness for it too -- what will I do, all third trimester, as the sky continues to darken, I continue to grow, and the snows fall? Sure enough, a plan is born.

Strident strides (as boots on library floor are wont to make) take me, apologetic (sorry so squeaky!) to the plains known as Fiction, and here I begin, at A. I intend to begin alphabetically, though on second thought, the curatorial tastes informing this collection tend more towards things Patterson and show a disturbing lack of things Proust. Ah, well -- no use complaining, there are still wonders to be found, and the joy of new media means I can have "A" awaiting on my return.

And where, pray tell, shall this adventure begin?

Auster: Travels in the Scriptorium

Bellow: Mr. Sammler's Planet

Chevalier: Burning Bright (particularly timely in lieu of the Blake show at the Morgan)

Doig: The Whistling Season

Foer: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Does the fact that I'm pleased at having just finished Euginedes, thus closing the alphabeta gap, surprise? It shouldn't. Where, where to begin? My inner strictures crave the silliness of this arbitrary order, so Auster it is. On y va!

humming "Tis a Gift" this morning, with Friends on my mind, I find myself reacting to the truth in its words:

When true simplicity is gained

to bow and to bend we shall not be ashamed

and I took this to heart, fitting in as it does with the autodidactic moment of this week -- the internal, actual realization (beyond the conceptual, which happened long ago) that true freedom can not only exist but explode within structure once one commits to and truly desires this manner of dedication and discipline.

we often retain from our early lives a desire to break out from our strictures, seeking "freedom" of only the most obvious kind: lack of external control, lack of schedule, lack of abstract rules beyond the proclivities of the self, and so on.

but eventually as we grow, we see the honor and beauty in a chosen dedication: love for children, love for community, love for home, love for environment, love for spirit -- and in this love we find great joy in work, commitment, time, energy expended. we no longer grumbling count those hours given to our discipline for it is in itself freedom of our passions and our most deeply held beliefs -- we do not wait for the bell to ring, but rather more often have to be reminded that it is time to attend to the seeming minutia of our lives: eating, sleeping, social engagements.

however when we move on to this time there is no shame in the seeking of earlier years (this is why we will not have a midlife crisis, afterall) -- we should feel blessed for the journey, and the perspective that it has brought to us.

as I trimmed a plant of its dying leaves this morning, and replaced these into the soil of the same pot, a practice I've been doing for some years, I felt in my hands this very metaphor: the parts of ourselves we outgrow or leave behind do not die but rather alter state, becoming the very soil that feeds and nurtures our further growth.

I feel blessed with this little light of vision today, lucky to be where I am, and ready for the next shoots to grow towards the sun.

theres a post lingering between these which attempts inadequately to explain the linguistic manifestations of the biochemical transition where i find myself currently asea, this inadequacy best described by its persistence in that existential blogosphere limbo, "drafts."

but today i seek not to explain the lack of words, to use words to grasp their own lack, to grapple inwardly with the usefulness of words, to grapple outwardly with words to do something useful, or any such ionescoan endeavors.

only this:

thanksgiving morning, 2009:
odd sterile universe of hotel amenities
somewhere called bethesda
anywhere, USA

outside, a soup of fog laughs its creamy white laugh
hanging like a too-obvious metaphor
in the text of this day:
"you cannot see ahead of you"
yet this quiet meditation goes unappreciated,
(cursed even) as man-ants
lose their perceived foresight
on highways and byways
mistaking directional movement
as vectoral progress

whereas in fact the universe's ladel
has served up a helping of clarity
with a side of humor -- a lucid mask,
a cover of revelation:
do not mistake your eye's vision
for reality
do not mistake your mind's perceiving
as truth
do not mistake your moving
in the direction your feet point,
your eyes see,
and your mind suggests
as "ahead."

let humility in your limits fill and comfort you
for no matter how conceptually distant our sight
the days that follow are not ours to pen.
man-ant stares at rubber tree plant
with all the hopes in the world, and so we should hope
(lest we lose desire to see, move, conceive)
but let us too stand in humble gratitude
for all we possess in this moment
without reliance on possibility for the happiness
that is ours to possess at all moments of all days.

the beauty of nature
the kindness of strangers
the unlikely phenomenon of love.

from Whitman's "Song of Myself"

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

7

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and
am not contain'd between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and
fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

...

16

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff
that is fine,
One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the
largest the same,

...

A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,
A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons,
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,
Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

I resist any thing better than my own diversity,
Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,
The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)

17

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they
are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe.

...

19

...

Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the
side of a rock has.

Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering
through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?

This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

20

Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me.

I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.

Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids, conformity
goes to the fourth-remov'd,
I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.

Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel'd with
doctors and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

I know I am solid and sound,
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

I know I am deathless,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass,
I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt
stick at night.

I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by,
after all.)

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten
million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.

one from Rumi

Those who don't feel this Love

pulling them like a river,

those who don't drink dawn

like a cup of spring water

or take in sunset like supper,

those who don't want to change,

let them sleep.

This Love is beyond the study of theology,

that old trickery and hypocrisy.

If you want to improve your mind that way,

sleep on.

I've given up on my brain.

I've torn the cloth to shreds

and thrown it away.

If you're not completely naked,

wrap your beautiful robe of words

around you,

and sleep.

- Rumi, in "Essential Sufism"

And according to my Chinese Horoscope (I am an "Earth Sheep," or, a Goat)...

In China this is the month of the Rooster. Goats and Roosters are not fast friends. You Goat people are too funky and airy for their steely taste. So this month may be a bit tougher for you than the last two. Again, your temper may turn out to be your worst enemy. People who want you to conform to their way of doing things irritate you. You are often someone who isn't afraid of compromise and concession, but when it comes to your work life, you can be exceedingly stubborn. [No kidding]

The best way for you to manage your over reacting to suggestions you alter your way of approaching a project, would be to adopt a policy of nodding and telling the person or persons politely that you need time to ponder the matter. "Thank you; I will think about this" is all you have to say. [I will take this approach into consideration] Then, take the time to look inward and discover exactly what you think about it. And while you're thinking, try to figure out what transforms you from a creative, ethereal, gentle soul into a raging beast when someone makes a comment about your work. You ought really to take up meditation, see a therapist or attend anger management classes. One thing will sooth your rage this month, and that is children. Either your own or somebody else's kids will be around a lot in September. Play with them and enjoy their innocence. The company of little ones always brings out the best in Goats. [who's bringing the kids over?]

Once again, Yes! Magazine has led me to the pasture of inspiration, this time in the form of Radical Educator and Free Thinker John Taylor Gatto, who wrote an article there for the latest, Education themed issue.

His article, Take Back Your Education, begins with the byline, "More and more people across America are waking up to the mismatch between what is taught in schools and what common sense tells us we need to know," asking the reader/public, "What can you do about it?"

Well, this was a welcome poke in the side a week before school begins, as I have been struggling with reconciling my own, admittedly Gatto-esque curriculum with the new "standards" for the classes I am teaching, including such antiquated and generally counterproductive practices as grading rubrics and so forth -- the core of encouraging backwards exercises in mimicry, obedience and fear, and without doubt the largest proponent of plagiarism.

At current, the problem on my end is no longer that of how to be a radical student -- I think I've learned my lessons via and against the Academy, taking Twain's adage, "I never let my schooling get in the way of my education," to heart -- but rather on that of being a radical educator, as far as is possible within these systems.

Here he quotes ________ (will refer back), expressing the goals of public education -- it's frightening to see it in print. Gives a clear visual on what exactly I've been railing against.

1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.

3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.

4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.

5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.

6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.

When one believes Gatto's claims about the "absurd and anti-life" functions and processes of the current institution of education, (best expressed in his 1990 speech "The Psychopathic School", and published three years later in the volume, Dumbing Us Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling) how does one go about working and teaching therein? I have come largely to the conclusion that my own schooling will best be continued outside those hallowed halls, but what of teaching?

I have had many teachers in my life, some of whom have been my students, some of whom have been my family, some friends, and some people who passed through my life only briefly. Their titles are unimportant in regards to what I learned at their sides, in their words, in watching these people. The title of "teacher" is often not appropriate for the people that are at the front of the classroom, nor do they earn the title suggested by the word simply by assuming that titular role -- it's also a sad fact that many who can be found at this post have neither a desire or intent to become a true "teacher."

Unfortunately, the system is such that those who seek higher education for their own purposes -- whether research, writing, other professional ventures or so on is the goal --are relied upon as the workhorses of the college system. From the greenest of teaching assistants to full tenured professors, these persons are at the mercy of an institution that takes the education of its young as taxation of those it supports for their higher academic pursuits.

We've all experienced the student side of these classrooms -- both the one in which the class is beset by a young graduate student who clearly has no knowledge of pedagogy but overcompensates for this nervousness with cruelty and grandstanding, and the one in which we've a respected, even lauded elder who clearly has no interest in actual engagement with the students, who is content with spouting off his or her genius while waiting for the bell to ring -- both that which announces a return to the beloved library, or that announcing blessed sabbatical has come once more.

Working in the public university system can make one want to give up teaching -- something many do. It is not the most encouraging environment: one fears loss of one's livelihood for teaching in the way one feels one should, must, teach. One is paid a pittance and always on the razor's edge of receiving health benefits -- one, for instance, is taking maternity leave and is neither allotted paid time off or healthcare during this time. One is not considered a "full time employee" even with the courseload of full-time employees, so that the institution can be excused from having to treat one as a full-time employee: ie, benefits-wise, unemployment-wise, and so on. If there aren't enough classes to be taught and one finds oneself without a job, well then -- one simply finds oneself without a job, no matter how long one has been teaching there... and without unemployment benefits.

To say that it's frustrating wouldn't begin to express the bind one finds oneself in - especially when dealing with the conflict above: how to do one's lesson plan, one's syllabus, how to teach when one's job is already so in danger. Whose interest wins out, and what does it even mean to make the choice in the "interest" of the student, or the self? Can one morally engage in teaching practices one feels deeply opposed to, in the interest of sustaining the self financially or in regards to one's health? At the same time, one must "put the oxygen mask on yourself first!" so as to be in the state one must be in to help others... and where does that leave us?

Well, for now, it leaves us thus: three days before school, putting together a reading from Gatto to inspire my frosh, intending to continue to skirt the line. That is -- to both follow the rules as well as shake the dust up enough to see the limitations and laser red lines that they draw around and through our ideas and classrooms. To work into my own lesson plans lectures that inspire my students to do the same.