Feeling Twainish

I finished (re)reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn last night, so I thought I'd share a few choice quotes before putting it back on the shelf. [The emboldening is mine, the italics are Twain's.]


" 'You've put on considerable many frills since I been away. I'll take you down a peg before I get done with you. You're educated, too, they say; can read and write. You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't? I'll take it out of you. Who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey? --who told you you could?

'...looky here -- you drop that school, you hear? I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better'n what he is. You lemme catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? Your mother couldn't read, and she couldn't write, nuther, before she died. None of the family couldn't, before they died. I can't; and here you're a-swelling yourself up like this. I ain't the man to stand it--you hear? Say--lemme hear you read.' "

***
"'Is a cat a man, Huck?'
'No.'
'Well, den dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man. Is a cow a man? --er is a cow a cat?'
'No, she ain't either of them.'
'Well, den, she ain' got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of 'em. Is a Frenchman a man?'
'Yes.'
'Well, den! Dad blame it, why doan' he talk like a man? You answer me dat!' "
***

"I ain't opposed to spending money on circuses, when there ain't no other way, but there ain't no use in wasting it on them."

New Change

I got a job offer this morning at a school I'd like to work at doing something I'd like to do! Lucky me. I'm waiting on the contract, but it seems highly likely that I've got my plans in place for fall.

It feels great not to have to think about it any more and to be able to look forward to a new setting, new duties, new colleagues, a new organization and a new mission. There's nothing quite so heady as change, especially when you're feeling fed-up and dissatisfied with what you're currently doing.

More details at a later date!

Another bit of writing I've just started working on

Children's stories are full of late bloomers:

the ugly duckling, cinderella, sleeping beauty,

snow white, and various enchanted beasts & frogs

& bears who turn out to be handsome princes.

The message is clear:

don't despair, you may feel

out of place, ugly, unappreciated, thwarted by enemies

and jealous old people, but at just the right time

something magical will happen

and you will get what you deserve:

your rightful beauty, a place in the palace,

perfect love.

You go on about your life,

holding in the back of your mind the idea

that you will be a late bloomer,

And then you realize that the time for blooming

is past.

You show no hints of latent buds

curled tight and waiting for just enough

light and heat to unfurl and dazzle the world

with opulent petals and heavenly scent; no,

no signs of that.

But you're not dead or even dying,

no symptoms of underwatering or overwatering,

not weak or struggling for survival.

Rather, you are sturdy and strong, robust,

with the light green foliage of new growth

apparent at the tip of every limb.

You wonder, "Is my blossoming still

so far off? How many more branches and leaves

do I need before I burst

into bloom?"

It occurs to you that perhaps you are not

a flowering species at all,

but maybe an evergreen oak or pine.

What you offer the world is not

beauty or sweetness, but respite from the heat,

shelter from the storm, a haven for small creatures.

And then you're inspired by the image,

turning it into a thing of beauty: the lone pine,

silhouetted on the hill, a beacon, a signpost, a symbol

of continuity and endurance and wisdom.

Or maybe you are the one oak left downtown amidst the sky-

scrapers, near the corner of Broadway and Grand,

in front of Louisiana Chicken, which itself is looking a little

like an ugly duckling these days, dwarfed and outclassed

by the mighty glass and steel structures

that are going to (finally) revitalize downtown.

Yes, maybe that's you—

small and unnoticed, but holding your roots firm, reminding passersby

that this land once belonged to you, a reminder to others, too, of their own

true wild nature, a breath of green in the urban gray.

But, no, you're not that tree either. You know it.

You're too idiosyncratic to be symbolic.

An awful little thought skitters like a mouse across the floor

of your mind: "What if I was, in fact, an early bloomer?

What if my heyday is behind me? What if I've already

made all the impact I'm going to make?" You think of the poinsettia

put outside after Christmas.

You chase this notion out of sight behind the futon in your mind.

You're drawn back to the flowering plants.

What are you really waiting for?

The desire to bloom, the hope of being a late bloomer, is the wish

to confirm that you are not alone, that your life impinges upon others,

that it intersects, connects, affects, interrupts. You want to know

that you are not merely a drop of water sliding off other people's slickers.

You want to touch skin. You want to bloom

profusely & abundantly, or rarely and with great fanfare, like the titan arum lily

or the kurinji plant. You want to make an impression, to touch hearts.

You want to know that you'll be remembered, not so much

after you die, as after you leave the room, because there is that nagging

question of whether you really exist

in other people's minds.

Comment on new format

One of the reasons I changed my layout was to be able to try out a new feature, the blogroll you see on the right. I like how it shows a bit of each blog's latest entry and tells you when it was last updated. However, since the feature is still in testing mode, it is not working as it's supposed to yet. Specifically, it's not updating when new entries are posted. I checked the blogger help site and many others are experiencing the same issue. Hopefully, it will be resolved soon.

Public Poem Drafting

In an effort to shame myself into writing more, I'm going to post--gasp--incomplete work. Here is a poem I began last year but still can't quite figure out what I want it to be, or what it needs to be. There's a cracked green hose that needs in, I think. Perhaps in the posting of it, or in your comments, I will find the poem's true shape.

My Neighbor

Behind the chainlink fence

brown camellia blossoms lie scattered

on the ancient Sparkl-Wite gravel.

One flower, still pink, has fallen

in a stainless steel water dish

abandoned by a long-gone dog.

I imagine another version:

crisp bleached linen, silver antique bowl, floating flowers

A few camellias, both pink and brown, cling to their positions

among the green leaves of the bush.

In the driveway, behind the locked chainlink gate,

a Jaguar, gleaming.

The curtains at the window never move.

What do you think

of this new look? Do you prefer the old template? Is anyone reading this any more?

Close to Fine

Today was one of those days when everyone's beautiful. As I rode my bike up to campus, all the people I passed seemed translucent: their fragility and strength, their hopes and fears all visibly shimmering and quivering inside them, announcing their individual humanity.

[This is where the chorus breaks into a round of "We are stardust, we are golden, and we have got to get ourselves back to the garden."]

Sometimes when I ride through Berkeley, I look at the lovely houses with their perfect xeriscaped yards on tree-lined streets and I feel sad and a little confused: why didn't my life lead me here? why don't I live in a house like this, on a street like this? why am I not spending my weekends futzing in the garden and refinishing antiques? Other times I just shake my head and wonder how such comfort and excess can exist in such close proximity to the squalor and hopelessness that are the hallmarks of neighborhoods less than 5 miles away. I think about Octavia Butler's vision of the decline of the middle class enclave depicted in her book Parable of the Sower, and wonder how much longer until the poor rise up?

But today I had no such thoughts. I was able to admire the houses without coveting them or disdaining them. I saw ceanothus in bloom. I saw wisteria in bloom. I saw orange poppies in green grass. I saw the people with their imperfections and their longing. I smiled at them and some of them smiled back. Even people in cars smiled at me, and today none of them tried to kill me through their usual inattentiveness and thoughtlessness.

A lively discussion in my seminar reminded me of how much I like a lively discussion and that school really is a place I feel comfortable and free to be myself. The next question is whether I can get that same feeling any place else or in any way besides being a student. Imagine how the world would be different if everyone got to do whatever it is that makes them feel alive and valuable and stimulated every day. A world full of happy, curious, engaged people.

[Now for a chorus of "Shiny happy people holding hands/Shiny happy people laughing" with the understanding that it is not to be heard ironically, no matter the intentions of r.e.m., or maybe what we want here is "It's the end of the world (as we know it) and I feel fine"? Hmmm. I think the soundtrack needs tweaking.]

I am feeling hopeful and grateful, so all my chemicals and hormones must be flowing in the optimal amounts, or maybe the stars are aligned correctly. I'm looking forward to going to Australia this summer and to starting a new job in the fall (though I don't know what it will be), but right now I'm going to concentrate on right now.

[chorus: "The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine"]

Pseudo-ethnography

I was just having a chuckle at Stuff White People Like. If you haven't seen that blog yet, you can start here with a list of topics. The comments are worth a perusal, too. Enjoy!

Review in Pictures

My friend J took my mom and me to the snow for some snowshoeing in February. It was beautiful!

It's too bad there's no picture of my feet since I was wearing "old school" snowshoes--the kind that look a little like tennis rackets.

We recently had a visitor from Chicago staying with us. She was amused when I told her that until I moved to NY State, I had thought of snow as a place one visited (as in, "We went up to the snow last weekend"), not so much as something that happens (since we never "went to the snow" if the weather wasn't expected to be great). I expected snow to be sparkling white, the skies to be perfectly blue and there to be no wind. I didn't know about the dirty gray snow that's a couple weeks old, biting wind blowing freezing rain, and low gray clouds that seem to last for months. The first year we lived in Ithaca the first snow fell in early November and the last fell during the second weekend in May! While I was enchanted the first time I saw it actually falling, I soon decided that I prefer snow as a destination rather than as an obstacle to getting to the grocery store.

In early March, for my brother's birthday, he & C and I went for a hike in the park where they'll be getting married in August.

Unabashed Political Cheerleading

Please go to this website (NPR) where you can listen to Barack Obama's speech on race and read the transcript at the same time if you want to. Give yourself time to really listen/read; it isn't sound bites--it is thoughtful and far-ranging and addresses race in the most honest, open and un-spun way I've ever heard, from a politician or not.

I have never before felt even a little inspired to campaign for a candidate. Well, I was pretty impressed by Ralph Nader the first time I heard him, mainly because he was clearly so smart. Barack Obama is smart and thoughtful. Wise. I really hope people take the time to listen to this speech, and talk about it, and reflect, and act. I think that with this speech, Obama is already helping this nation to face ourselves, begin to heal, and move forward together.

If he isn't elected president, maybe he can make a movie, and go on the lecture circuit like Al Gore!

Of Language and Learning

I'm currently reading for the first time Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham. Much to my embarrassment, I found myself surprised at how great it is, how much I'm enjoying it. Why am I constantly surprised to find that the classics are engaging, speak to universals of the human condition, and have modern relevance?! Duh! That's why they're considered classics, but I keep forgetting that. I pick up a book thinking, "This is probably pretty good--it's certainly famous; I should read it," and then am completely delighted. Most recently that happened with Don Quijote, which did take me a long time to read, but I absolutely loved it.

So, one of the sub-themes in OHB is that of learning--both formal education and informal. Since I'm currently taking a class on language (what does it mean to know a language? What does it mean to know or learn or acquire another language as an adult? What are the implications for language teaching?), I've particularly noticed comments about language learning/teaching. So below are a smattering of quotes. The book was published in 1915 and the bits here take place around the beginning of the twentieth century in England.

The orphan Philip begins his education with his guardians:

"He was taught Latin and mathematics by his uncle who knew neither, and French and the piano by his aunt. Of French she was ignorant, but she knew the piano well enough to accompany the old-fashioned songs she had sung for thirty years."

Later, he is sent to a school:

"The masters had no patience with modern ideas of education.... Neither German nor chemistry was taught, and French only by the [regular teachers]; they could keep order better than a foreigner, and, since they knew the grammar as well as any Frenchman, it seemed unimportant that none of them could have got a cup of coffee in the restaurant at Boulogne unless the waiter had known a little English."

As a very young man, Philip takes himself to Germany to learn German, among other things. He boards with the family of a teacher:

"The Frau Professor insisted that nothing but German should be spoken [at the table], so that Philip, even if his bashfulness had permitted him to be talkative, was forced to hold his tongue."

What have your language learning experiences been?

Moving right along

Thanks, everyone, for all the nice words of support! I went up to campus today and met with the professor of the class I'm auditing this semester. He was very encouraging and agreed that I seem like a great candidate for graduate school. He also offered to write me a letter when I reapply next year, and suggested someone in the ed department that I might want to talk to. His confidence in me made me feel especially good because he's a professor and not a flaky one, he's someone who has high standards and is really engaged in both teaching and research.

I wish I had a job lined up for next year, but I am feeling more hopeful about reapplying. My professor also suggested I apply at Stanford because they have a really good program. I like how their program looks, but I just don't know about the commute. Maybe I will apply, though, just so I'm not putting all my eggs in one basket again.

The wisteria on the back porch is just about blooming again. I picked some peas from the plants I put in my containers oh so long ago. They've struggled against their shady conditions, produced some pretty purple flowers and now some peas. Not the sweetest peas I've ever tasted, but not bad.

I'm starting a new term with my English learners tomorrow and they're pretty much always fun, even if the class is unfortunately scheduled (1 class/week for 4 hours--not ideal for language instruction). We're going to look at multiple intelligences, learning styles, memory, and other mind/brain topics, culminating in a visit to the Exploratorium mind exhibit in April.

If anybody has actually taught students about multiple intelligences before (as opposed to just using your knowledge of the diff types to plan lessons), I'd be curious to hear about it.

I've got to say that I'm appreciating daylights savings and the light evenings. Makes a much bigger difference to me than having light in the morning!

Expected Rejection, Unexpected Dejection

I didn't get into graduate school. I already suspected that I wasn't accepted and thought that I was fine with it, so I was surprised to find myself feeling quite bad about it. Before receiving the letter, I had already decided that I need to figure out what I'm doing next year in case I don't get into grad school so I was prepared to have a different plan, but I think what I wasn't prepared for was the realization that "not getting into grad school" means being rejected.

It's funny what a powerful effect rejection has on some of us. In a long-ago conversation about risk-taking, I realized that we do not all evaluate risks the same. Certain types of risks I am not willing to take—while other choices I make do not seem at all risky to me but would to others. The risk of being rejected is one I avoid as much as possible, and as a result I am slow to truly make friends and always anguish over job applications. I knew from the beginning that applying to grad school involved the risk of rejection, but I think I had forgotten what it feels like.

Applying to grad school was a horrendous process for me. I wrote and re-wrote my application essays many times, and I'm not talking about merely revising them—I scrapped essays on their third or fourth draft to begin completely again from scratch more than once. I hated writing those essays because I hated knowing that I was going to be judged by them. It is different even from writing something which you hope to have published because in that case it is the writing rather than the writer that is really being rejected. Of course, it is difficult not to take that kind of rejection to heart as well, since the writing does have an intimate connection to the writer (one of the reasons I rarely submit anything for consideration for publication), but in this case it truly is me that has been rejected!

It's a terrible little letter that begins with the dreaded "I regret to inform you..." and ends with "I am sorry that we do not have a place for you and hope that you will be able to make other arrangements to achieve your academic goals." There is something really awful about that last bit: to make other arrangements to achieve your academic goals. I'm not even sure why I hate it so much, but there's something about "making arrangements" that seems really inappropriate. One makes arrangements to meet someone or to have one's carpets cleaned. One also makes funeral arrangements, flower arrangements, and seating arrangements. Making arrangements makes it sound like something I merely need to make some decisions about, but apparently I don't get to arrange to study education at Berkeley! (Yes, I know I sound bitter. I am feeling bitter, why shouldn't I sound how I feel?)

So now, rather than feeling a weight off my shoulders (well, no more wondering, at least I know for sure), I feel more hesitant about the alternative-to-grad-school plans I was beginning to make, feel once again the burden of the question "What am I doing with my life?" and am thrown right back into existential despair.

And, as if in direct defiance of my mood, completely ignoring the lump in my throat and the tear in my eye, it is lovely lovely lovely lovely springtime outside. The oxalis, the bane of bay area gardeners, is cheekily busting out all over, its bunches of yellow flowers pushing through chainlink fences, covering vacant lots and making great in-roads in many lawns. The fruit trees are scattering their flower petals all over the ground like confetti, and the tiny little birds with the black hoods have returned to the trees outside our windows.

More or less as planned?

The new year is a natural time to think about aging and who we are as compared to who we imagined we would be. A friend of mine had a droll observation about this process, writing in a recent email, "as I get older, I realize I'm much more shallow than I originally planned to be."

I think that makes a nice sentence frame:
As I get older, I realize I'm much more (or less) ___ than I planned to be (when I was ____ years old).

I invite you to fill in the blanks anonymously in the comments.

Love and Change

A friend just wrote to me of a "happy yet challenging" relationship she's in. I asked about the challenges and her response was really evocative, so I would like to include a bit of it here:

But right from the start when we first met and talked,
he turned my world upside down, and I am still busy
trying to figure out what "my world" actually is!
- after he turned it upside down... It's like I had my
little world, my views and experiences and everything,
in a little box, nice and orderly, I knew where I could
find my stuff. And he took it, literally turned it
upside down, and now I am figuring out what of the
old stuff I want to keep, what I'd better get rid of,
and what needs modifying.

Isn't this lovely? I think I am taken by it because it is such a vivid image of the confusion and excitement of being alive and being in love, the realization that we are not static or solid, but beings of light and motion--a realization that brings both pain and relief. Hurray for love! Hurray for change!

Maybe the secret to staying in love is in the box too. You can't continually turn someone's box upside down, because that's just annoying, but you can give it a little jostle sometimes or trade items from your boxes--I'll give you this view for that one of yours--and after a while you have so many shared experiences, you can each randomly reach into each other's boxes and pull out familiar but forgotten goodies.

To put it another way, we stay in love because love and change encourage each other.

Happy 2008!

Today, I made a schedule for my weekdays. Since so much of what I am trying to have time for doesn't have a specific time associated with it, I very often get much less done than I want or could. Setting up schedules has helped me in the past, so I decided to do it again (schedules also have the potential of pissing me off and making me rebel, or of shaming me and making me give up, so it's a fine line I gotta walk here).

My new schedule allocates time for my 3 paid jobs, plus taking a class at Cal next semester, and five other activities that I want time for. It also leaves me with most of my weekends unscheduled, which I am hoping will prevent any insurrection perpetrated by (and upon) myself.

Of course, it doesn't really start until next week, when school reopens, but I'll start implementing parts of it tomorrow to give it the oomph of new year's day!

Unrelated side comment: Our downstairs neighbors returned from their holidays this morning with a real piano, a piano which is perfectly audible through the floor. Luckily, I do like piano music. Here's to hoping they learn a variety of pieces!

Although many of my friends are jaded about the marking of the new year, I like it. I like the idea of recognizing and welcoming change. I like the idea of fresh starts and new beginnings, and also the reflection on the past year. Making resolutions is a way of embracing hope and intentionality. It's a stand against fatalism, which has its place and usefulness the rest of the year, but which should be made to sit quietly in the corner sometimes while optimism and can-doism take the floor for an ecstatic dance.

May your new year be full of happy surprises, opportunities to learn and grow, and many moments of pure joy.

group hug

Game + Vocab + Helping People

If you pride yourself on your large vocabulary, have a little free time, and like a challenge, go check out Free Rice. It's a multiple choice vocab test with words at every level of English knowledge. You find out immediately what the correct answer is and then get a new question. If you get three questions in a row correct, then you move up to the next level. You can also move down by getting too many wrong (I'm not sure if just one wrong moves you down; I was too busy answering questions to figure it out).

If you're not already sold, how's this? For every word you get correct, a donation of rice is made to feed the hungry through the UN. How can this be, you ask? Well, there are ads on the site. The ad revenue goes to the UN food program. The site is actually operated without profit. It is a sister site to poverty.com, for eradication of world poverty. I think it is a clever idea well instantiated. Go there.

(Thanks, Langguj Gel, for the referral!)

Why ask if you know the answer?

"Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company." --Rachel Remen [my bolding]

Does she really mean that we shouldn't pursue answers at all, or simply that we should pursue answers without any expectation of finding them? That we should not be afraid of the unanswerable questions?

I can't give up looking for answers entirely, but I think trying to find The Answer to any question is misguided. Without some answers, even lowercase, we wallow in inaction and indecision, places that are all too familiar, but rarely satisfying. I believe in intentional change, both of ourselves and our environment (which we change unintentionally merely by existing). Intentional change must be directed by something like answers, however temporary they may be.

I agree wholeheartedly with Remen that life's journey should be taken in good company!

Olden Goldies

“Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.” I remember questioning this song when I was a child, not liking the generalization that old friends would be more valuable than new ones (the whole thing further confused by the fact that I liked silver, as a metal, better than gold, but knew their symbolic place in relation to each other). I’ve been re-exploring this issue lately, though, with a new appreciation of the old song.

Last summer we visited the northwest and had the opportunity to hang out with various old friends. Some we have never been out of touch with, so they are not just old friends but current friends. Others we hadn’t seen in years. We spent a weekend with a couple and their lovely children of 7 and 5 who were not yet born when we’d last seen the parents. It was completely relaxed and comfortable, which really amazed us all. Another friend was one from elementary school, whom I’d seen once or twice in high school but not since. Although I was under the cloud of a head cold at the time, it was remarkable how well we felt we knew each other, despite having lived more than half our lives since we’d last really hung out. Does this mean that who we are is already completely established by our teens? In some ways it seems it is; however, I would hate to think that the intervening years of experience haven’t affected me (and I know they have).

What is it about an old friend that is so exciting and yet comfortable? Less than a week ago I had a lovely visit from a friend from high school and our early twenties. We were joined by my best high school girlfriend, whom I have been seeing more and more of since I’ve been back in California. Hanging out with these old friends left me feeling light-hearted and joyful, almost giddy. And I’m not just talking about the wine or the fact that are both really smart clever funny people who make me laugh. There was something that lingered.

The next day, I sought, as I had done several times unsuccessfully in the past, to find some of the other people who were in our writing group “back in the day” (as kids now refer to anything more than a minute ago). Whether through my superior search skills or just better net saturation, I found two fellow students and our creative writing teacher. What a bonanza! A small flurry of emails ensued and promises of a reunion in the new year.

The pleasure of reconnecting with these old friends is perhaps enhanced by the fact that they are all writers or creators of some type, all with a deep love of reading and appreciation for language. While teaching students all of last year who, in the majority, did not like to read, and then spending my writing energy on the very unsatisfying task of graduate school essays, I have become more distant from fellow language-lovers. With these new-old connections, I feel revitalized and renewed, like I will be able to walk again after a long convalescence.

All of that writery hooey aside, I think there is something generally comforting about old friends. I don’t know who I really was eighteen years ago; I know that I feel in some ways like a completely different person—wiser, more patient, more flexible, less bossy, more certain about some things, less certain about others—but I’m also the same person. I've come to realize since my childhood dislike of gold, that it's not considered more valuable than silver or bronze just because it's shiny but because of its other important qualities. Maybe what we seek in an old friend is the flexibility to accommodate our changes and the strength to maintain the bond: like gold, old friendships are pliable yet strong. [Okay, metaphor, please retire now, I've used you beyond respectability.]