I have not yet seen
your living room--and I
know it is dirty.
In my mind, you arch your back
into sunlight and dust motes.
Listening to you
explain imaginary
numbers like sweet, rich
gossip: write an equation
for my cells that call your name.
Your lower lip begs,
without pout, to be bitten.
I will grant its wish.
Quick: hand me a lamp.
I'll rub. Tonight I feel like
I could conjure you.
Your buckled elbows
relinquish your body to
gravity; you're pulled
into me, and I exhale--
at last, I am close enough.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
this house
| A kind of miracle. I may never pay it off; But as long as I can scrape to make the note, we’ll never drift: never be at someone else’s mercy. A single mom is expected to raise her kids without a yard, sharing bedrooms. Mine will not suffer for their parent’s mistakes. I promised myself that when he left. They have new clothes, a fridge that's almost always full; we go out to dinner sometimes. They take piano lessons. They'll never want for anything. I will keep this promise. The hours are long; but I can work at home. They don’t have to be alone, wear keys around their necks, wake themselves up. I can still be here when they really need me. I put band-aids on their cuts, hold them when they cry, take care of them. | A filthy cage. She works all day for the money to keep it, worries all night that it won't be enough. The filth builds. These walls will fall in on us one day. Her glassy eyes, her slack jaw. Hunched over the keyboard, she sends me outside, or to my room. I want to talk to her, So I sit on this patch of carpet Under her desk, listening to her type. Wearing cheap clothes and eating cereal with the black and white label: it's embarrassing. She wasted money on that old piano, when I just want nice clothes; I want brand name food. All she does is work. I think she suffers from being alone all the time. Mornings, she screams up the stairs, like she’s too weak to climb them. I sit under her desk. Her knees press my shoulder. I listen to the keys click overhead. Once, I cut myself on purpose so she would bend down to me. |
scary poem (i'm no killer)
August 10, 2007--A 28-year old man and a 15-year old boy have been arrested in the execution-style killings of three students and the shooting of another in Newark, a crime so shocking that it has galvanized a city long plagued by violence.
Execution-style killings:
shocking, yet common enough
to be named.
A style:
distinct, familiar.
Homestyle
Country style
Family style
Execution style.
We know these killings.
The shock is layered:
Incomprehension covers
recognition.
No foreign war,
no act of God, corrupt government
or brilliant sociopath--
a simple act
of someone made in his image.
No lesson beneath the horror,
no benefit to hindsight--
only the act.
Only an urge, unchecked.
A choice.
Today
I choose differently.
There are many days ahead.
It's a heavy weight
I lift with a story:
galvanized community,
surviving angel,
wake up call,
turning point.
I can shoulder narrative.
The act, encased in tales
of angels, morals, scholarships:
We process.
We distill knowing's burden.
How else could I face you,
knowing we share the same dark impulse?
A naked urge to destroy
comes to us
bundled with empathy,
hunger,
loneliness;
inhaled with our first breath of world.
Were they born for this act?
Or did they bend to impulse,
momentarily weak?
It could happen to anyone.
I'm not afraid of dying this way.
It's killing I dread.
"I want justice. They took three angels away from their families but one angel survived so the story could get told."
Execution-style killings:
shocking, yet common enough
to be named.
A style:
distinct, familiar.
Homestyle
Country style
Family style
Execution style.
We know these killings.
The shock is layered:
Incomprehension covers
recognition.
No foreign war,
no act of God, corrupt government
or brilliant sociopath--
a simple act
of someone made in his image.
No lesson beneath the horror,
no benefit to hindsight--
only the act.
Only an urge, unchecked.
A choice.
Today
I choose differently.
There are many days ahead.
It's a heavy weight
I lift with a story:
galvanized community,
surviving angel,
wake up call,
turning point.
I can shoulder narrative.
The act, encased in tales
of angels, morals, scholarships:
We process.
We distill knowing's burden.
How else could I face you,
knowing we share the same dark impulse?
A naked urge to destroy
comes to us
bundled with empathy,
hunger,
loneliness;
inhaled with our first breath of world.
Were they born for this act?
Or did they bend to impulse,
momentarily weak?
It could happen to anyone.
I'm not afraid of dying this way.
It's killing I dread.
"I want justice. They took three angels away from their families but one angel survived so the story could get told."
Thursday, August 2, 2007
teaching, killing words, and castrating tongues
Virigina Woolf delivered this gorgeous "Eulogy to Words" in 1937. Part of the reason that words are dead (or at least are lacking the power they once had), she claimed, was that "we refuse to allow words their liberty, we pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning...the meaning which makes us pass examinations."
Anna West describes the same problem in our age of state standards and standardized tests in a poem that speaks for itself, beginning with the title: "Battle for the Board of Ed (who thinks language arts is commas, clauses, correctness and the castration of the tongue before it ever emerges)." Oh, how I wish the Board of Ed would click on that link.
So this issue isn't new; perhaps it's one of the rare things about English that hasn't changed from Woolf's world to ours? The accents and diction and even punctuation have changed, but through it all, education remains at odds with powerful, artful language. That's pretty remarkable, really. Tests are often blamed, but we all know that the problem is more complex than that. It's a truism in anthropology that the act of observing a thing changes it. Perhaps it's become a truism in education that the teaching of language dries it up and hollows it out. It's frustrating to imagine that we've known about this problem for nearly a century but haven't made a dent in it.As a teacher, it's downright painful to think that I'm harming what I love most (students and language). Perhaps we're asking kids to write expressively and powerfully even as we're undermining their ability to do just that. No wonder so many of them are fed up, frustrated and totally resistant to school.
Not much that we've done since 1937 seems to have altered this, so what do we do next as we try to build a system that lives up to its promises? Can it be done by individual teachers in the current system (and if so, how do we enable more teachers to do it) or is it impossible without a radical overhaul? How do we educate in a way that enlivens and empowers? I don't want to kill words, and I'd like to have nothing to do with castrating tongues.
Anna West describes the same problem in our age of state standards and standardized tests in a poem that speaks for itself, beginning with the title: "Battle for the Board of Ed
So this issue isn't new; perhaps it's one of the rare things about English that hasn't changed from Woolf's world to ours? The accents and diction and even punctuation have changed, but through it all, education remains at odds with powerful, artful language. That's pretty remarkable, really. Tests are often blamed, but we all know that the problem is more complex than that. It's a truism in anthropology that the act of observing a thing changes it. Perhaps it's become a truism in education that the teaching of language dries it up and hollows it out. It's frustrating to imagine that we've known about this problem for nearly a century but haven't made a dent in it.As a teacher, it's downright painful to think that I'm harming what I love most (students and language). Perhaps we're asking kids to write expressively and powerfully even as we're undermining their ability to do just that. No wonder so many of them are fed up, frustrated and totally resistant to school.
Not much that we've done since 1937 seems to have altered this, so what do we do next as we try to build a system that lives up to its promises? Can it be done by individual teachers in the current system (and if so, how do we enable more teachers to do it) or is it impossible without a radical overhaul? How do we educate in a way that enlivens and empowers? I don't want to kill words, and I'd like to have nothing to do with castrating tongues.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
terrorist fist jab
I've always had a hell of time trying to write about teaching and kids. It's easy to slip into sentimental schmaltz, and equally possible to feel like I'm exploiting or belittling kids or portraying them unfairly or sending damaging messages about them...there are just a lot of pitfalls, I find. With that said...
The Teen Center is what I’ve talked about all summer when people ask questions that make me feel idle. I phrase it as if I had more ownership in the process than I really do—emotionally, I own it, but logistically, I’ve been an enthusiastic spectator at best. “What are you doing with all your free time?” “We’re opening a teen center—we’re going to paint it when I get back.” As if I were part of any meaningful “we” in the process. I wasn’t.
For the first three days of the painting, I stayed home. I had decent excuses—I hadn’t been formally informed of the location or the work hours, and I had left messages, I told myself. Truth is, I knew where the place was—I’d driven past it to check it out in my early enthusiasm—and it’s easy enough to drop by, wearing grubby clothes, and pick up a paintbrush. I was nervous, when it came down to it. Here’s a very close-knit group of 15 or so kids and their 2 or 3 mentors, and though I’ve been on the periphery of their work for a couple of years—in the audience at their open mics, teaching at a school that one of them attends, only that single kid, Kareem, even knew who I was. I hate being on the periphery of something so good—wondering if they see me, if they wonder who I am and why I’m so interested in what they’re doing, fearing that they’ll see me as some creepy adult who skulks about their projects. So I stayed home for the first three days, waiting to be held accountable for my promise to help by somebody other than my conscience.
On Thursday, I forced myself to go in around noon. I knew Natalie, the adult mentor who was working with them, and was relieved to have her show me around. The place looked great: they’d painted a couple of rooms and had 4 or 5 left to tackle, and they were into it: painting, dancing, laughing, looking like a postcard of student investment. It would’ve been a dream come true if I hadn’t been so self-conscious. I knew most of these kids by face—I could tell you about their poetry after a year of monthly open mics—but they clearly had no idea who I was. Most of them didn’t make eye contact at all, being too busy with the painting (or dancing), and those who did were polite in the way I’ve learned kids are when they’re casing an adult—not sure whether I was trustworthy, whether I had power over them and whether I would use it to hold them back, whether they would ever see me again. I might’ve been a supervisor, a senator’s aide, a local reporter, a safety inspector, a well-meaning but clueless small time philanthropist. I knew more than I probably should have known about their foibles and their personal dramas from their poetry and irrationally, it hurt that they were so coolly cordial and formal when I tried to break the ice. It hurt, even though it was exactly right, exactly what they should do, exactly what anybody would do.
Being socially awkward to begin with, this awkward situation would have terrified me if I hadn’t had a job to pour myself into. After a few hours of work, the adults began to crack the jokes that I’ve become accustomed to: “Shoot! Take a break, wouldya? This woman’s working like she wants a promotion” and the well-meaning but humiliating compliments: “Boy, this girl’s a hard worker. Kids, you need to take a lesson from her.” I try to make jokes with the kids, who respond by saying, “huh?” This always happens, and I can never figure out whether it’s my northern accent, my tendency to mumble when I’m being sarcastic, or the fact that my sense of humor is totally at odds with theirs (aka I'm old). I tell Erica that she should paint a pole with a candy-cane stripe and get “huh?” I tell James that his paint-spattered face is a good look for him, and he says, “huh?” There’s nothing worse than being forced to repeat a lame joke, nothing that can make a person want more to curl up and disappear. Worst-case scenario, I’ll just paint my ass off for a few days and then forget about the whole thing. But I want to know these kids. I want to be involved in this thing, I want to be a part of it, I want to help them make this happen, I believe in this, and in them, so strongly that it would make them uncomfortable if they knew.
I cracked lame jokes with Kareem, hoping he wouldn’t be embarrassed to be talked to by the weird adult in the room. Being as gracious and big-hearted as he is, that probably never occurred to him. On the second day, Sarah started asking me impertinent questions, much to my relief. Having taught hhigh school for five years, I had become really good at giving evasive answers that were always good for a laugh. At least I could show her that I wasn’t uncomfortable with her—well, I was uncomfortable, but not for the reasons I was expected to be. We talked about the color of my prom dress if I were still allowed to go to prom and she said I was crazy. I think one of the things that has me hooked on working with kids this age is the feeling of first getting a smile out of them. You have to work your butt off and be incredibly patient with most kids in order to get them to set aside their cool veneer and crack a smile, but when it finally happens, you feel a momentary triumph that’s incomparable. The beginning of the school year has always been my best time of year for that very reason: I’m on top of my game as I navigate the thin line between laying down the law and coaxing out a genuine, non-sarcastic or mocking, smile.
Before teaching, I wanted to be involved with kids somehow. I tried volunteering a couple of times, but after one awkward day of being left out on the periphery with barely any eye contact from the kids I was working with, I’d quit. I didn’t realize that it was a process that took time and effort, or that this is as it should be. I also didn’t realize that the kids that make you work hardest for it are the ones that will rock your world and make strained weeks seem like small change for such a phenomenal reward.
On the third day, Diana shows up. She’s clearly an old soul, a wise and soft spoken and immensely powerful young woman whom the other kids, whether overtly or not, look to a lot. To be cliché about it: a quiet leader. She’s incredibly polite, and very reserved, and very charismatic. She says, “Excuse me” a lot, in the place where most kids would just yell out your name to get your attention. She doesn’t call people by their name, something I can identify with—for a long time, and still with people who are older than me, it sometimes feels like I’m being overly familiar to call people by their name. More accurately, it would feel overly familiar to call them by their first name, and overly formal to call them by their last, so I resort to things like “excuse me.” She’s also the girl that seems to know exactly how much playing is okay: she’ll mess with her friends and then stop at the exact moment when an adult might think about reprimanding her. She’s the girl that hangs out towards the back of the room, and when I ask for someone to paint the bathrooms or collect paintbrushes that need to be cleaned, gives other people a chance to volunteer. After a pause long enough to determine that no one wants to do it, she steps up and quietly volunteers—I don’t know if she realizes that this will prompt the rest of the group to volunteer more willingly to do whatever I ask them to do next, but it does. They don’t do what I ask them to do—I still have to stay for an extra half an hour rinsing out paintbrushes—but they do volunteer to do it. That’s a step. Sarah decides to paint a little; this is the first time I’ve seen her do much in the way of work, and Kat points it out to me. “No way. Sarah, I love you!” pops out of my mouth, which I would normally never say for fear of making a kid feel awkward (or, being honest, embarrassing myself). “I love you too, Ms. Laura. Now get over here and help me.”
Also on the third day, Aisha, a girl who writes incredible poems, was upset. I knew very well that she didn’t want to talk to me (the weird adult) about it, but I couldn’t let her stand there without saying something. We went through the routine of me asking if she was okay and her being as polite as it’s possible to be when you’re pissed off and the wrong person is trying to comfort you, and I left it alone. I feel like the outcome of this kind of interaction could go one of two ways: either she’ll make a mental note that I care and will warm up to me later, or she’ll tell her friends that I’m trying to get in her business and that I’m creepy. Much as I dread the latter, I know that I’d never forgive an adult who knew I was upset and didn’t try to help me out when I was her age, so I have to take the risk.
Fourth day: The adult who's supposed to be in charge is MIA, again. She hasn’t come back, in fact, since leaving minutes after I showed up on my first day. I realize I’m supposed to be supervising but am totally ineffective at it. I let the kids know, sort of, what needs to be done and then let them do what they choose to do. Some work, some don't. It irritates me more each day that this happens, and that Natalie isn’t here to be the bad cop, but I know that taskmaster/teacher mode would be totally contrary to the spirit of this place, so my only tool is the occasional sarcastic cracks. Besides, the fact is that, in between long breaks to argue about whose school is best and fight over the last bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, the work is somehow getting done. Erica, in whom I’d confided on day two that I didn’t have a clue about painting, seems to be following me around. She works next to me all morning and has started laughing at my stupid jokes; she’s even countering my pointless anecdotes about my childhood with pointless anecdotes about her own. Nice. She and Trina are jokingly pole-dancing on the pole they’d painted a couple of days ago. As I walk by, genuinely embarrassed, I shield my eyes and they laugh. I let slip that I finished the Harry Potter book the day before and Trina tells me to shut up. “Oh—I’m so sorry—I didn’t meant to say that—I just meant—don’t tell me what happens!” It feels good to laugh at her; she’s embarrassed. It feels good not to be the only one who’s embarrassed. She goes on to tell me the three parts that have made her cry so far. I feel relief when I find myself wishing that she’d stop talking to me so much so we could get back to work. I hold up a paintbrush in the direction of a few kids eating chips. Sarah leaps up and says, “I got it. For you, Ms. Laura. You’re my girl. She’s my girl. I got it.”
No way.
The bus comes and takes most of the kids home at 4:30. I’m annoyed at having to wash the brushes, yet again. I’m even more annoyed when a group of five more kids emerge from their upstairs slacking-off room at 5:00, just as I’m ready to leave. Now I have to wait until they all get picked up. James is taking Diana and Sarah, but Aisha is still waiting for her mom, and I’m pissed off that she didn’t get on the bus. Instead, she’s calling her mom, her sister, her little brother, her uncle, her mom again, her sister again, trying to arrange to be picked up. I’m mad that she doesn’t get that I can’t go home after my long day until she gets off safely. “You can go,” she says.
“No, I can’t.” I counter. “Tomorrow, you need to get on the bus, got it?”
I know she just rolled her eyes. I can feel it through the back of my head.
We wait; James and the girls keep Aisha company so she won’t be left alone and awkward with an adult.
“You know, I can give you a ride, Aisha.” I say. She demures. She doesn’t want me to go out of my way. I can tell she wants to just get home and wouldn’t mind riding with me, and this emboldens me. I feel stupid that it took me half an hour to figure out that she just needed me to offer, that her mom wasn’t really “on her way.” “Come on. Call your mom and tell her you’ve got a ride. Let’s get out of here. I’m tired.”
I think—but I could be wrong—that she’s immensely relieved. We’ve solved the problem and we’re gone. As I walk out the door, Diana adjusts her bags to free up a hand. I can tell she’s going to shake my hand goodbye. She gets the wrong hand free, and after a moment of indecision, she puts her fist out to me. I tap it with mine.
The Teen Center is what I’ve talked about all summer when people ask questions that make me feel idle. I phrase it as if I had more ownership in the process than I really do—emotionally, I own it, but logistically, I’ve been an enthusiastic spectator at best. “What are you doing with all your free time?” “We’re opening a teen center—we’re going to paint it when I get back.” As if I were part of any meaningful “we” in the process. I wasn’t.
For the first three days of the painting, I stayed home. I had decent excuses—I hadn’t been formally informed of the location or the work hours, and I had left messages, I told myself. Truth is, I knew where the place was—I’d driven past it to check it out in my early enthusiasm—and it’s easy enough to drop by, wearing grubby clothes, and pick up a paintbrush. I was nervous, when it came down to it. Here’s a very close-knit group of 15 or so kids and their 2 or 3 mentors, and though I’ve been on the periphery of their work for a couple of years—in the audience at their open mics, teaching at a school that one of them attends, only that single kid, Kareem, even knew who I was. I hate being on the periphery of something so good—wondering if they see me, if they wonder who I am and why I’m so interested in what they’re doing, fearing that they’ll see me as some creepy adult who skulks about their projects. So I stayed home for the first three days, waiting to be held accountable for my promise to help by somebody other than my conscience.
On Thursday, I forced myself to go in around noon. I knew Natalie, the adult mentor who was working with them, and was relieved to have her show me around. The place looked great: they’d painted a couple of rooms and had 4 or 5 left to tackle, and they were into it: painting, dancing, laughing, looking like a postcard of student investment. It would’ve been a dream come true if I hadn’t been so self-conscious. I knew most of these kids by face—I could tell you about their poetry after a year of monthly open mics—but they clearly had no idea who I was. Most of them didn’t make eye contact at all, being too busy with the painting (or dancing), and those who did were polite in the way I’ve learned kids are when they’re casing an adult—not sure whether I was trustworthy, whether I had power over them and whether I would use it to hold them back, whether they would ever see me again. I might’ve been a supervisor, a senator’s aide, a local reporter, a safety inspector, a well-meaning but clueless small time philanthropist. I knew more than I probably should have known about their foibles and their personal dramas from their poetry and irrationally, it hurt that they were so coolly cordial and formal when I tried to break the ice. It hurt, even though it was exactly right, exactly what they should do, exactly what anybody would do.
Being socially awkward to begin with, this awkward situation would have terrified me if I hadn’t had a job to pour myself into. After a few hours of work, the adults began to crack the jokes that I’ve become accustomed to: “Shoot! Take a break, wouldya? This woman’s working like she wants a promotion” and the well-meaning but humiliating compliments: “Boy, this girl’s a hard worker. Kids, you need to take a lesson from her.” I try to make jokes with the kids, who respond by saying, “huh?” This always happens, and I can never figure out whether it’s my northern accent, my tendency to mumble when I’m being sarcastic, or the fact that my sense of humor is totally at odds with theirs (aka I'm old). I tell Erica that she should paint a pole with a candy-cane stripe and get “huh?” I tell James that his paint-spattered face is a good look for him, and he says, “huh?” There’s nothing worse than being forced to repeat a lame joke, nothing that can make a person want more to curl up and disappear. Worst-case scenario, I’ll just paint my ass off for a few days and then forget about the whole thing. But I want to know these kids. I want to be involved in this thing, I want to be a part of it, I want to help them make this happen, I believe in this, and in them, so strongly that it would make them uncomfortable if they knew.
I cracked lame jokes with Kareem, hoping he wouldn’t be embarrassed to be talked to by the weird adult in the room. Being as gracious and big-hearted as he is, that probably never occurred to him. On the second day, Sarah started asking me impertinent questions, much to my relief. Having taught hhigh school for five years, I had become really good at giving evasive answers that were always good for a laugh. At least I could show her that I wasn’t uncomfortable with her—well, I was uncomfortable, but not for the reasons I was expected to be. We talked about the color of my prom dress if I were still allowed to go to prom and she said I was crazy. I think one of the things that has me hooked on working with kids this age is the feeling of first getting a smile out of them. You have to work your butt off and be incredibly patient with most kids in order to get them to set aside their cool veneer and crack a smile, but when it finally happens, you feel a momentary triumph that’s incomparable. The beginning of the school year has always been my best time of year for that very reason: I’m on top of my game as I navigate the thin line between laying down the law and coaxing out a genuine, non-sarcastic or mocking, smile.
Before teaching, I wanted to be involved with kids somehow. I tried volunteering a couple of times, but after one awkward day of being left out on the periphery with barely any eye contact from the kids I was working with, I’d quit. I didn’t realize that it was a process that took time and effort, or that this is as it should be. I also didn’t realize that the kids that make you work hardest for it are the ones that will rock your world and make strained weeks seem like small change for such a phenomenal reward.
On the third day, Diana shows up. She’s clearly an old soul, a wise and soft spoken and immensely powerful young woman whom the other kids, whether overtly or not, look to a lot. To be cliché about it: a quiet leader. She’s incredibly polite, and very reserved, and very charismatic. She says, “Excuse me” a lot, in the place where most kids would just yell out your name to get your attention. She doesn’t call people by their name, something I can identify with—for a long time, and still with people who are older than me, it sometimes feels like I’m being overly familiar to call people by their name. More accurately, it would feel overly familiar to call them by their first name, and overly formal to call them by their last, so I resort to things like “excuse me.” She’s also the girl that seems to know exactly how much playing is okay: she’ll mess with her friends and then stop at the exact moment when an adult might think about reprimanding her. She’s the girl that hangs out towards the back of the room, and when I ask for someone to paint the bathrooms or collect paintbrushes that need to be cleaned, gives other people a chance to volunteer. After a pause long enough to determine that no one wants to do it, she steps up and quietly volunteers—I don’t know if she realizes that this will prompt the rest of the group to volunteer more willingly to do whatever I ask them to do next, but it does. They don’t do what I ask them to do—I still have to stay for an extra half an hour rinsing out paintbrushes—but they do volunteer to do it. That’s a step. Sarah decides to paint a little; this is the first time I’ve seen her do much in the way of work, and Kat points it out to me. “No way. Sarah, I love you!” pops out of my mouth, which I would normally never say for fear of making a kid feel awkward (or, being honest, embarrassing myself). “I love you too, Ms. Laura. Now get over here and help me.”
Also on the third day, Aisha, a girl who writes incredible poems, was upset. I knew very well that she didn’t want to talk to me (the weird adult) about it, but I couldn’t let her stand there without saying something. We went through the routine of me asking if she was okay and her being as polite as it’s possible to be when you’re pissed off and the wrong person is trying to comfort you, and I left it alone. I feel like the outcome of this kind of interaction could go one of two ways: either she’ll make a mental note that I care and will warm up to me later, or she’ll tell her friends that I’m trying to get in her business and that I’m creepy. Much as I dread the latter, I know that I’d never forgive an adult who knew I was upset and didn’t try to help me out when I was her age, so I have to take the risk.
Fourth day: The adult who's supposed to be in charge is MIA, again. She hasn’t come back, in fact, since leaving minutes after I showed up on my first day. I realize I’m supposed to be supervising but am totally ineffective at it. I let the kids know, sort of, what needs to be done and then let them do what they choose to do. Some work, some don't. It irritates me more each day that this happens, and that Natalie isn’t here to be the bad cop, but I know that taskmaster/teacher mode would be totally contrary to the spirit of this place, so my only tool is the occasional sarcastic cracks. Besides, the fact is that, in between long breaks to argue about whose school is best and fight over the last bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, the work is somehow getting done. Erica, in whom I’d confided on day two that I didn’t have a clue about painting, seems to be following me around. She works next to me all morning and has started laughing at my stupid jokes; she’s even countering my pointless anecdotes about my childhood with pointless anecdotes about her own. Nice. She and Trina are jokingly pole-dancing on the pole they’d painted a couple of days ago. As I walk by, genuinely embarrassed, I shield my eyes and they laugh. I let slip that I finished the Harry Potter book the day before and Trina tells me to shut up. “Oh—I’m so sorry—I didn’t meant to say that—I just meant—don’t tell me what happens!” It feels good to laugh at her; she’s embarrassed. It feels good not to be the only one who’s embarrassed. She goes on to tell me the three parts that have made her cry so far. I feel relief when I find myself wishing that she’d stop talking to me so much so we could get back to work. I hold up a paintbrush in the direction of a few kids eating chips. Sarah leaps up and says, “I got it. For you, Ms. Laura. You’re my girl. She’s my girl. I got it.”
No way.
The bus comes and takes most of the kids home at 4:30. I’m annoyed at having to wash the brushes, yet again. I’m even more annoyed when a group of five more kids emerge from their upstairs slacking-off room at 5:00, just as I’m ready to leave. Now I have to wait until they all get picked up. James is taking Diana and Sarah, but Aisha is still waiting for her mom, and I’m pissed off that she didn’t get on the bus. Instead, she’s calling her mom, her sister, her little brother, her uncle, her mom again, her sister again, trying to arrange to be picked up. I’m mad that she doesn’t get that I can’t go home after my long day until she gets off safely. “You can go,” she says.
“No, I can’t.” I counter. “Tomorrow, you need to get on the bus, got it?”
I know she just rolled her eyes. I can feel it through the back of my head.
We wait; James and the girls keep Aisha company so she won’t be left alone and awkward with an adult.
“You know, I can give you a ride, Aisha.” I say. She demures. She doesn’t want me to go out of my way. I can tell she wants to just get home and wouldn’t mind riding with me, and this emboldens me. I feel stupid that it took me half an hour to figure out that she just needed me to offer, that her mom wasn’t really “on her way.” “Come on. Call your mom and tell her you’ve got a ride. Let’s get out of here. I’m tired.”
I think—but I could be wrong—that she’s immensely relieved. We’ve solved the problem and we’re gone. As I walk out the door, Diana adjusts her bags to free up a hand. I can tell she’s going to shake my hand goodbye. She gets the wrong hand free, and after a moment of indecision, she puts her fist out to me. I tap it with mine.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
other people's kids
I don't mind waiting in long lines, because it allows me to engage in one of my favorite hobbies. Eavesdropping isn't as simple as listening in to any nearby private conversation, any more than hunting is shooting whatever organism your gun is pointed at. Applying the skills of aural voyeurism to the average conversation is the equivalent of shooting a tree. A true sportsman is more discriminating than that, setting out with a particular type of prey in mind. For my part, the conversations I relish are between a young kid and an adult who is not his or her parent. I savor the lopsidedness in which such conversations are steeped: the more comfortable one party is (say, the overbearing, booming-voiced auntie using sentences far too complex for her 5-year old companion), the more uncomfortable the other one becomes (5-year-old watching the floor in case an escape hatch opens while executing subtle but complex slow-motion dance moves).
It takes close listening and sharp deductive reasoning skills to figure out when you have such a situation in the checkout line with you. The most common clues include a woman saying something to the child about "your mother." This alone isn't a dead giveaway, as plenty of children have two mommies, and even more have crazy mommies who speak of themselves in third person.
After just moments in line at the bookstore the other day, my skills were rewarded with conclusive evidence that the adult and child behind me were not related. It seemed that mom was somewhere else in the store (self-help? fantasy?); this lady must have, seeing a gleam in her friend's eye that signalled a desperate need to be alone for a few moments, volunteered to take the little girl to pay for her picture book. The kid was happily chattering; she was clearly the comfortable one in this situation. She pointed to the lady's bracelets and said, "pretty."
"Thank you! Can you count them?"
"One...two...three..." and so on, carefully and deliberately, but flawlessly, to nine.
"That's a lot of bracelets on my wrist, huh?"
The girl pointed to a display of drinking games near the checkout: Beer-opoly, etc.
"A game! Oooh. I want that game! Please? Please?"
I don't know if the rest of the line was listening as closely as I was, or if they were, whether they, too, smiled to think of the mother's mortification upon hearing her daughter beg this lady to buy her something, much less a drinking game.
"No, honey. That's a...an adult...well, that's a beer game."
The child was squirming, maybe even hopping a little bit. "But I like beer games! I love beer games! Please!"
It was pretty funny in the moment. It made me think of how irrational we humans get in the face of strong desire; how in a moment of want, nothing matters outside of the thing that you covet. Logic, truth, and dignity fade away. I wondered whether we outgrow that urge or just refine our methods, replacing hopping up and down with more artful strategems such as pick-up lines and blackmail.
Maybe the chance to return to that childhood impulse is part of the pleasure of Mardi Gras bead-whoring: that single-minded desire for beads that causes people to shed clothing for strangers. While I've never personally uncovered any important parts of my body, I have pleaded, kissed strangers, called people "gorgeous" who weren't, and I've certainly jumped up and down and screamed until the bead-thrower couldn't ignore me any more. It's fun for a couple of hours. Still, it must get exhausting for kids to spend years that way, constantly in the grips of such a powerfully desperate longing for every shiny object onto which their gaze happens to fall.
The lady had to stifle a laugh and then backtrack, re-explain. Still failing to change the kid's mind, I watched her think up and halfheartedly articulate ten different reasons why that particular game was not an appropriate object of desire for someone too young to count nine bracelets without effort. Her logic was flailing for a foothold in this totally illogical argument, all because she was afraid, or unable, to give that firm and definite "no" that mothers have mastered. She just couldn't produce the kind of "no" that rules out any further need for explanation (some moms might add, "Because I said so;" mine usually finished with "Period. End of report"). If I were this lady, I'd be praying that there would be a sudden rush for the Beer-opoly games, frenzied customers snatching them from the shelf. That way, I'd be able to use the only phrase I'd ever used to successfully deny a child something: the inarguably terminal "all gone."
For my lack of ability to deliver that powerful "no," I've dragged a two-year old on a giant stuffed orca through her house for what seemed like hours, past the point at which my knees were buckling and my vertebrae fusing, stifling cries of agony as she didn't supress squeals of glee that seemed to mock my pain. I couldn't formulate a sound argument for "again!" despite employing every rhetorical strategy I could summon. "One more time," I gasped between back spasms. The child echoed, signalling agreement with my terms. "One more time! One more time!" Lulled into a false sense of impending relief, and wanting to make the last orca-ride a memorable one, I'd pull with extra vigor, or take a new route around the coffee table. In doing so, I sealed my fate: the gleeful cry of "again!" lacked any recognition that it was clearly in violation of our agreement.
"But...but..."
"Again! Again!"
"Okay, ONE more time?"
"One more time!"
I knew that, somehow, I had to get the orca out from under the kid and out of her sight, but the sleight of hand to pull that off was way beyond my grasp. It might come down to this: I would have to destroy the orca, all at once, rendering it unrideable before the inevitable screams of protest could stop me. Somehow, though, I had to unsheath my only rhetorical weapon. But "all gone" wouldn't work until this cursed stuffed animal was actually all gone, and it was made of quality materials: it could last for thousands of trips. It was likely to outlast my back by a long shot, and it had already left my belief in free will in its cuddly wake. Mastery of my fate? All gone.
It takes close listening and sharp deductive reasoning skills to figure out when you have such a situation in the checkout line with you. The most common clues include a woman saying something to the child about "your mother." This alone isn't a dead giveaway, as plenty of children have two mommies, and even more have crazy mommies who speak of themselves in third person.
After just moments in line at the bookstore the other day, my skills were rewarded with conclusive evidence that the adult and child behind me were not related. It seemed that mom was somewhere else in the store (self-help? fantasy?); this lady must have, seeing a gleam in her friend's eye that signalled a desperate need to be alone for a few moments, volunteered to take the little girl to pay for her picture book. The kid was happily chattering; she was clearly the comfortable one in this situation. She pointed to the lady's bracelets and said, "pretty."
"Thank you! Can you count them?"
"One...two...three..." and so on, carefully and deliberately, but flawlessly, to nine.
"That's a lot of bracelets on my wrist, huh?"
The girl pointed to a display of drinking games near the checkout: Beer-opoly, etc.
"A game! Oooh. I want that game! Please? Please?"
I don't know if the rest of the line was listening as closely as I was, or if they were, whether they, too, smiled to think of the mother's mortification upon hearing her daughter beg this lady to buy her something, much less a drinking game.
"No, honey. That's a...an adult...well, that's a beer game."
The child was squirming, maybe even hopping a little bit. "But I like beer games! I love beer games! Please!"
It was pretty funny in the moment. It made me think of how irrational we humans get in the face of strong desire; how in a moment of want, nothing matters outside of the thing that you covet. Logic, truth, and dignity fade away. I wondered whether we outgrow that urge or just refine our methods, replacing hopping up and down with more artful strategems such as pick-up lines and blackmail.
Maybe the chance to return to that childhood impulse is part of the pleasure of Mardi Gras bead-whoring: that single-minded desire for beads that causes people to shed clothing for strangers. While I've never personally uncovered any important parts of my body, I have pleaded, kissed strangers, called people "gorgeous" who weren't, and I've certainly jumped up and down and screamed until the bead-thrower couldn't ignore me any more. It's fun for a couple of hours. Still, it must get exhausting for kids to spend years that way, constantly in the grips of such a powerfully desperate longing for every shiny object onto which their gaze happens to fall.
The lady had to stifle a laugh and then backtrack, re-explain. Still failing to change the kid's mind, I watched her think up and halfheartedly articulate ten different reasons why that particular game was not an appropriate object of desire for someone too young to count nine bracelets without effort. Her logic was flailing for a foothold in this totally illogical argument, all because she was afraid, or unable, to give that firm and definite "no" that mothers have mastered. She just couldn't produce the kind of "no" that rules out any further need for explanation (some moms might add, "Because I said so;" mine usually finished with "Period. End of report"). If I were this lady, I'd be praying that there would be a sudden rush for the Beer-opoly games, frenzied customers snatching them from the shelf. That way, I'd be able to use the only phrase I'd ever used to successfully deny a child something: the inarguably terminal "all gone."
For my lack of ability to deliver that powerful "no," I've dragged a two-year old on a giant stuffed orca through her house for what seemed like hours, past the point at which my knees were buckling and my vertebrae fusing, stifling cries of agony as she didn't supress squeals of glee that seemed to mock my pain. I couldn't formulate a sound argument for "again!" despite employing every rhetorical strategy I could summon. "One more time," I gasped between back spasms. The child echoed, signalling agreement with my terms. "One more time! One more time!" Lulled into a false sense of impending relief, and wanting to make the last orca-ride a memorable one, I'd pull with extra vigor, or take a new route around the coffee table. In doing so, I sealed my fate: the gleeful cry of "again!" lacked any recognition that it was clearly in violation of our agreement.
"But...but..."
"Again! Again!"
"Okay, ONE more time?"
"One more time!"
I knew that, somehow, I had to get the orca out from under the kid and out of her sight, but the sleight of hand to pull that off was way beyond my grasp. It might come down to this: I would have to destroy the orca, all at once, rendering it unrideable before the inevitable screams of protest could stop me. Somehow, though, I had to unsheath my only rhetorical weapon. But "all gone" wouldn't work until this cursed stuffed animal was actually all gone, and it was made of quality materials: it could last for thousands of trips. It was likely to outlast my back by a long shot, and it had already left my belief in free will in its cuddly wake. Mastery of my fate? All gone.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
the adventures of a nerd in the wild west
how I discovered the life of the mind through cowboy boots
There are moments in each of our histories that are, by all appearances, unremarkable. Inexplicably, we remember them for decades with the same perfect clarity we usually reserve for births, deaths, and epiphanies. These are the stories that I start to tell at parties—they must be funny or profound; why else would I have remembered them all these years?—and realize, as my narrative approaches the gaping hole where the climax ought to be, that the stories are, in fact, pointless. I leave a confused and awkwardly pitying audience in my wake as I head to the liquor cabinet to regroup.
These memories make lousy anecdotes. Their value lies beneath the surface, deeper than a punchline. We are right to have kept stored them so carefully in our memory; they are profound. Our work is to unlock them, to excavate them. The story of my first day of school in Colorado is one of these memories. It stays with me, but in the telling, offers only an underwhelming window into a typical, if slightly pathetic, 7-year-old world. Hidden in its shallows, though, are the seeds of much of what I have since come to value. I was wearing cowboy boots on the day that the possibility of a rich inner life was revealed to me.
Coming from New England, and being seven, I envisioned Colorado as The Wild West. I felt that I would need to ride a horse and learn to walk with my feet far apart, hands at my hips. Perhaps I would get to wear a holster on weekends; probably not to school. Those details would be worked out eventually. In the meantime, I needed to make some wardrobe adjustments. The Docksiders and fair isle sweaters would need to be replaced before the move if I were to fit in among the cowpokes of Colorado. My grandmother took me to the store and I picked out plaid western shirts with mother-of-pearl snaps and big collars. I endured two weeks of blistered toes to break in my Dingo-brand cowboy boots, and I traded my Garanimals for Wranglers. Mercifully, my grandmother refused to shell out for a ten-gallon hat or—god forbid—chaps.
“Class, let’s welcome our new student, Laurie. She just moved here from Rhode Island, the smallest state.” While Mrs. Beatty pointed to Rhode Island on the map with one hand and made the universal gesture for “teeny” with the other, I stood next to her in my finest western apparel. I surveyed the sea of my new, decidedly non-wild-west-looking classmates: rugby shirts, popped collars, Velcro sneakers; not the cowpoke couture I had anticipated. My miscalculation earned me the dreaded NERD label, one which, in the unforgiving social strata of suburban education, had remarkable staying power. I was to be a Nerd, in the eyes of my classmates, for eternity.
It was painful, yes, to move from a world of birthday parties, bike rides in large posses, and daily kickball on the playground into one of social ostracism. It forced me to find entertainment, affirmation, and even conversation in solitude. This was when the books that had languished on a shelf at home suddenly seemed worth my attention. It wasn’t like I had sleepovers to gussy up for; I might as well look inside one of them. I didn’t have anyone to whisper to in class, or to write notes with, so I paid attention by default. Lacking a confidante, I embarked upon horrendous poetry and embarrassing diary entries—stumbling, in time, on the possibility of word play and purposeful writing.
By the time I did manage to scrape together a few friends to ride bikes with, I had lost my fear of solitude, and had formed new habits. I had plunged into the life of the mind and had grown used to learning, to reading, to writing—things that have dominated my life ever since. I stopped wearing the cowboy boots, though my inner life turned out to be a wilder frontier than Colorado ever was.
There are moments in each of our histories that are, by all appearances, unremarkable. Inexplicably, we remember them for decades with the same perfect clarity we usually reserve for births, deaths, and epiphanies. These are the stories that I start to tell at parties—they must be funny or profound; why else would I have remembered them all these years?—and realize, as my narrative approaches the gaping hole where the climax ought to be, that the stories are, in fact, pointless. I leave a confused and awkwardly pitying audience in my wake as I head to the liquor cabinet to regroup.
These memories make lousy anecdotes. Their value lies beneath the surface, deeper than a punchline. We are right to have kept stored them so carefully in our memory; they are profound. Our work is to unlock them, to excavate them. The story of my first day of school in Colorado is one of these memories. It stays with me, but in the telling, offers only an underwhelming window into a typical, if slightly pathetic, 7-year-old world. Hidden in its shallows, though, are the seeds of much of what I have since come to value. I was wearing cowboy boots on the day that the possibility of a rich inner life was revealed to me.
Coming from New England, and being seven, I envisioned Colorado as The Wild West. I felt that I would need to ride a horse and learn to walk with my feet far apart, hands at my hips. Perhaps I would get to wear a holster on weekends; probably not to school. Those details would be worked out eventually. In the meantime, I needed to make some wardrobe adjustments. The Docksiders and fair isle sweaters would need to be replaced before the move if I were to fit in among the cowpokes of Colorado. My grandmother took me to the store and I picked out plaid western shirts with mother-of-pearl snaps and big collars. I endured two weeks of blistered toes to break in my Dingo-brand cowboy boots, and I traded my Garanimals for Wranglers. Mercifully, my grandmother refused to shell out for a ten-gallon hat or—god forbid—chaps.
“Class, let’s welcome our new student, Laurie. She just moved here from Rhode Island, the smallest state.” While Mrs. Beatty pointed to Rhode Island on the map with one hand and made the universal gesture for “teeny” with the other, I stood next to her in my finest western apparel. I surveyed the sea of my new, decidedly non-wild-west-looking classmates: rugby shirts, popped collars, Velcro sneakers; not the cowpoke couture I had anticipated. My miscalculation earned me the dreaded NERD label, one which, in the unforgiving social strata of suburban education, had remarkable staying power. I was to be a Nerd, in the eyes of my classmates, for eternity.
It was painful, yes, to move from a world of birthday parties, bike rides in large posses, and daily kickball on the playground into one of social ostracism. It forced me to find entertainment, affirmation, and even conversation in solitude. This was when the books that had languished on a shelf at home suddenly seemed worth my attention. It wasn’t like I had sleepovers to gussy up for; I might as well look inside one of them. I didn’t have anyone to whisper to in class, or to write notes with, so I paid attention by default. Lacking a confidante, I embarked upon horrendous poetry and embarrassing diary entries—stumbling, in time, on the possibility of word play and purposeful writing.
By the time I did manage to scrape together a few friends to ride bikes with, I had lost my fear of solitude, and had formed new habits. I had plunged into the life of the mind and had grown used to learning, to reading, to writing—things that have dominated my life ever since. I stopped wearing the cowboy boots, though my inner life turned out to be a wilder frontier than Colorado ever was.
Monday, May 28, 2007
a chunk of mount olympus
in pale imitation of Charles Simics' "Stone"
Ranch-style haunt of tiny carbon gods,
Slate-roofed shelter from Hera’s wrath and sandal-slap,
Inside this jagged polygon, dense walls impose on tiny rooms.
Molecules, packed shoulder to shoulder, still wriggle.
Inside this solid I would be safe,
Locked inside a stout-walled vault,
Spartan, dim, impenetrable.
I’ll claim my corner and crouch, among huddled molecules, satisfied,
protected from the tricks of fickle earth;
walled in from tremor, from storm, from tidal wave.
Inside, I trace a path, pace to pass time,
I wander the labyrinth.
Each footfall stirs the trapped air,
grinds stone into dust.
Lonesome for the world,
With fingertips I'll trace names on the stone wall,
the shapes of trees, of wooden houses and the sun.
Worn by relentless single steps,
riven by the rub of soft flesh,
chiseled, slowly, by a trickle of exhaled air,
the stout walls erode to threadbare.
These claustrophobic molecules
break away in slow single file
as pebble, or mote, or grain of sand,
patiently dismantling this stone shelter,
dispersing my Olympus.
Time erodes what elements cannot crack;
My breath will unravel what gods can’t break apart.
Ranch-style haunt of tiny carbon gods,
Slate-roofed shelter from Hera’s wrath and sandal-slap,
Inside this jagged polygon, dense walls impose on tiny rooms.
Molecules, packed shoulder to shoulder, still wriggle.
Inside this solid I would be safe,
Locked inside a stout-walled vault,
Spartan, dim, impenetrable.
I’ll claim my corner and crouch, among huddled molecules, satisfied,
protected from the tricks of fickle earth;
walled in from tremor, from storm, from tidal wave.
Inside, I trace a path, pace to pass time,
I wander the labyrinth.
Each footfall stirs the trapped air,
grinds stone into dust.
Lonesome for the world,
With fingertips I'll trace names on the stone wall,
the shapes of trees, of wooden houses and the sun.
Worn by relentless single steps,
riven by the rub of soft flesh,
chiseled, slowly, by a trickle of exhaled air,
the stout walls erode to threadbare.
These claustrophobic molecules
break away in slow single file
as pebble, or mote, or grain of sand,
patiently dismantling this stone shelter,
dispersing my Olympus.
Time erodes what elements cannot crack;
My breath will unravel what gods can’t break apart.
Friday, May 25, 2007
migration
playing with sound and thinking about the move from Colorado to Louisiana
Eggshell and sickly salmon walls enclose enclaves of promised repose
Broken with a fifth of vodka and NoDoz;
Brass accents match
cold glowing bulbs, locked hollow doors,
Lifeless as catalogs.
Flailing to escape,
Punching holes in the drywall to prove
it can't contain you,
you escape, callow little thing:
Vaulted
past sturdy ceiling beams,
though airborne, you seem
weighted, laden, fraught.
Catapulted, launched flipless, arrow-straight,
Southbound, seeking Haunted.
These soggy grounds, musty as wet wool, absorbed you;
mists blur lines and colors bleed
through wallpaper's sediment, curling back from crumbling brick,
no promises here, you earn what rest you find.
Faded and smoke-stained,
this south lacks order, lacks tact, it is
thumped, punched, staid: true.
Eggshell and sickly salmon walls enclose enclaves of promised repose
Broken with a fifth of vodka and NoDoz;
Brass accents match
cold glowing bulbs, locked hollow doors,
Lifeless as catalogs.
Flailing to escape,
Punching holes in the drywall to prove
it can't contain you,
you escape, callow little thing:
Vaulted
past sturdy ceiling beams,
though airborne, you seem
weighted, laden, fraught.
Catapulted, launched flipless, arrow-straight,
Southbound, seeking Haunted.
These soggy grounds, musty as wet wool, absorbed you;
mists blur lines and colors bleed
through wallpaper's sediment, curling back from crumbling brick,
no promises here, you earn what rest you find.
Faded and smoke-stained,
this south lacks order, lacks tact, it is
thumped, punched, staid: true.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
hubris
an experiment with compressed rhyme inspired by a pompous hostess
Pure ego, unbowed, leaves you dumbstruck and cowed,
and I
own this crowd;
and it
is avowed
that I'm smart 'cause I'm loud.
My powers come from a rare mutation--a chronic need for your adoration
I'm the leader, you are grateful nation; I'm Toussaint and you are a Haitian;
Drape my statues with decoration: lace and laurel, cause that's your station
(and
spare me the indignation--
this is no two-way conversation,
it's a clandestine operation
where I locate your lacerations
and
drink
your
blood).
My esteem needs to propagate, I'm alive when I dominate
See, I'm trying to compensate for my cranial empty plate.
Though I binge, I can never sate;
All I see is a self-portrait.
That's why I'm garrulous.
I think I'm clever but I'm querulous.
I always talk but I don't discuss; I bang on but I don't percuss.
This self-love's so lascivious, when you speak I'm oblivious.
When I state what is obvious, you're expected to make a fuss:
Treat my words like a grand opus
Thus
Make my breathing less frivolous.
If you are envious you may call me imperious, you could point to my arrogance,
but your words are transient
and mine
go
on.
This room is my circus tent.
Main event: verbal flatulence
endless tales of my youth misspent will distract from my indolence.
I say nothing so adamant you can't see that it makes no sense.
Gentlemen call me "radiant" as I spew out contaminants--
virulent strains of ignorance,
anecdotes flow inordinate
I see weakness in reticence
and
I
pounce.
I enthrall with the gall of my words' urban sprawl
and you're caught in the squall of my rapid recall
and
fire.
Though you pall when I bawl like to crack the drywall
I still need to hold all of your rolling eyeballs
on
me.
Pure ego, unbowed, leaves you dumbstruck and cowed,
and I
own this crowd;
and it
is avowed
that I'm smart 'cause I'm loud.
My powers come from a rare mutation--a chronic need for your adoration
I'm the leader, you are grateful nation; I'm Toussaint and you are a Haitian;
Drape my statues with decoration: lace and laurel, cause that's your station
(and
spare me the indignation--
this is no two-way conversation,
it's a clandestine operation
where I locate your lacerations
and
drink
your
blood).
My esteem needs to propagate, I'm alive when I dominate
See, I'm trying to compensate for my cranial empty plate.
Though I binge, I can never sate;
All I see is a self-portrait.
That's why I'm garrulous.
I think I'm clever but I'm querulous.
I always talk but I don't discuss; I bang on but I don't percuss.
This self-love's so lascivious, when you speak I'm oblivious.
When I state what is obvious, you're expected to make a fuss:
Treat my words like a grand opus
Thus
Make my breathing less frivolous.
If you are envious you may call me imperious, you could point to my arrogance,
but your words are transient
and mine
go
on.
This room is my circus tent.
Main event: verbal flatulence
endless tales of my youth misspent will distract from my indolence.
I say nothing so adamant you can't see that it makes no sense.
Gentlemen call me "radiant" as I spew out contaminants--
virulent strains of ignorance,
anecdotes flow inordinate
I see weakness in reticence
and
I
pounce.
I enthrall with the gall of my words' urban sprawl
and you're caught in the squall of my rapid recall
and
fire.
Though you pall when I bawl like to crack the drywall
I still need to hold all of your rolling eyeballs
on
me.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
why I choose ficton
If you've read the novel The Kite Runner, you know about the beauty, tradition, and incredible danger of kite-fighting in Afghanistan. If you've read or watched American news, on the other hand, you've only heard half of it.
My friend Melissa sent me this article from the South African newspaper The Star: "'Innocent' kite festival marred by 11 deaths." See, the kite strings are often coated in glass shards, or are replaced altogether with sharp wire; victory is marked by celebratory gunshots. It turns out that the strings are sharp enough to cut throats, and randomly fired guns...well, we Americans know all about that one.
Khaled Hosseini presents kite-fighting in all of its complexity in his novel. He waxes nostalgic without denying the darker side of things. He trusts his readers enough to present one person's ambivalent experience of the event, letting us draw our own conclusions. The kite festivals are background to the relationships, here; still, as is so often true in a good novel, the background is captured with the honest realism we can no longer expect from the news. Maybe there's freedom in writing in a genre that is explicitly subjective; lord knows the objective journalists seem to have completely lost track of the truth amidst all of the confirmed facts and double-checked sources.
In painting the Taliban regime as one of pure, irrational evil, the media flaunted the kite-flying ban as exhibit A. They neglected to mention any possible reason for the ban (i.e. preventing needless deaths), leaving us imagining the innocent kites of our childhoods, snatched from our hands by insane fundamentalists. The reports came with a built-in reaction for us to voice, as if we were reading from a script:
Tends to break?
Here's a headline from The Christian Science Monitor:
My friend Melissa sent me this article from the South African newspaper The Star: "'Innocent' kite festival marred by 11 deaths." See, the kite strings are often coated in glass shards, or are replaced altogether with sharp wire; victory is marked by celebratory gunshots. It turns out that the strings are sharp enough to cut throats, and randomly fired guns...well, we Americans know all about that one.
Khaled Hosseini presents kite-fighting in all of its complexity in his novel. He waxes nostalgic without denying the darker side of things. He trusts his readers enough to present one person's ambivalent experience of the event, letting us draw our own conclusions. The kite festivals are background to the relationships, here; still, as is so often true in a good novel, the background is captured with the honest realism we can no longer expect from the news. Maybe there's freedom in writing in a genre that is explicitly subjective; lord knows the objective journalists seem to have completely lost track of the truth amidst all of the confirmed facts and double-checked sources.
In painting the Taliban regime as one of pure, irrational evil, the media flaunted the kite-flying ban as exhibit A. They neglected to mention any possible reason for the ban (i.e. preventing needless deaths), leaving us imagining the innocent kites of our childhoods, snatched from our hands by insane fundamentalists. The reports came with a built-in reaction for us to voice, as if we were reading from a script:
Nobody seemed interested of disabusing Americans of the notion that kite-flying was the most innocent of all entertainments and that the ban was pure and random meanness. Here's a great article from 2001 that studiously preserves that notion. A few choice quotes:JOURNALIST: Under this regime, the centuries old tradition of kite-flying has been banned.
AUDIENCE (murmuring animatedly): That's crazy! What else do they do? They probably kill kittens and outlaw picnics! I'm so glad we liberated those poor people!
For the five years the Taliban were in power, Boba Abdul Shukor had to sell his wares in secret. His contraband was not drugs or pornography or alcohol, but one of the oldest symbols of freedom, the modest kite. In the joyless world of the Taliban, scratching the heavens with the soaring paper fantasies was an offense to God.
...Families rushed to restore a favorite holiday pastime in which boys and young men throng a broad dusty field on the city's outskirts for 'kite fighting.' When two kite strings collide, one tends to break, bestowing victory on the contestant still flying.
Tends to break?
Here's a headline from The Christian Science Monitor:
Paper-string symbols of freedom fill Afghan skies: Kite-flying, a decades-old tradition for Afghans, makes a comeback. Like most entertainment, it was banned by the Taliban.
Thanks for doing my thinking for me, guys. Normally I like to figure out symbolism on my own. How fun would it be if Steinbeck wrote, "Petting the mouse with his thumb, Lenny crushed it, a symbol of the latent danger of his naive strength"? Fortunately, fiction writers don't treat their readers like idiots.
Diane Sawyer calls kite-fighting "poetic and artistic," "a delicate and beautiful piece of the past" practiced by "olympic-quality kite athletes." Sure, all that's probably true, but the omission is glaring. For this simpering, self-congratulatory kind of journalism to run rampant accomplishes three things that I can see: 1) it insults Americans' intelligence 2) it patronizes and infantilizes the Afghani people ("all they want to do is fly their pretty kites.") and 3) it makes me wonder what else is being conveniently omitted from the news.
If the tables were turned, which American laws could, with a pinch of omission, be spun as equally unfair and cruel restrictions on innocent fun? Cockfighting (also a 'decades-old tradition' where I live)? Drag racing? The French could easily spin our drinking age as puritanical madness (they probably have, come to think of it).
Diane Sawyer calls kite-fighting "poetic and artistic," "a delicate and beautiful piece of the past" practiced by "olympic-quality kite athletes." Sure, all that's probably true, but the omission is glaring. For this simpering, self-congratulatory kind of journalism to run rampant accomplishes three things that I can see: 1) it insults Americans' intelligence 2) it patronizes and infantilizes the Afghani people ("all they want to do is fly their pretty kites.") and 3) it makes me wonder what else is being conveniently omitted from the news.
If the tables were turned, which American laws could, with a pinch of omission, be spun as equally unfair and cruel restrictions on innocent fun? Cockfighting (also a 'decades-old tradition' where I live)? Drag racing? The French could easily spin our drinking age as puritanical madness (they probably have, come to think of it).
How about Jarts, for crying out loud? Lawn darts were among my family's favorite holiday pastimes back in the '70s, but they were banned in 1998 after four kids were killed. Where's Diane Sawyer? She could come to my grandmother's house, learn how to make opaque jello salad, and sit with me on the porch as I remember the days when we were free to play Jarts...eventually I'll segue into fond memories of cherry bombs and roman candles (also banned). Her teaser:
In the joyless world of the American West, aiming colorful projectiles at circles on the ground and illuminating the heavens with brilliant lights were an offense to the state.
She'll conveniently leave out the part about the folks killed by stray jarts and the missing fingers on the neighbor kid's left hand. That would compromise the tone of the piece.
Didn't we all, in one U.S. history course or another, study the anti-Japanese propaganda of WWII as if it were an egregious excess our country had outgrown? Didn't we feel foolish as we looked back on the public discourse regarding the color of Manuel Noriega's underpants? Maybe I just need to go back to U.S. history class and accept the fact that, as this ABC news article puts it, "Demonizing the Enemy [is] a Hallmark of War."
I guess we have evolved a bit: I should be glad that the target of negative propaganda nowadays is the country's leaders rather that its entire populace, though the intense and patronizing romanticization of the "folk" and their traditions seems no more honest, only more benign. We used to portray Germans, Japanese, and Italians as dangerous animals. Now we show Afghanis as harmless and quaint kite-flying children. Is one less insulting than the other? Is one less dehumanizing and radically simplistic?
Governments will use propaganda; fair enough. Still, this stuff isn't coming from the government. This is our free, fair, objective media talking. It strikes me as unforgivably shoddy journalism. It leaves me wondering where I can go for a picture of the world that doesn't try to reduce its complexities or shove pre-formed conclusions down my throat. Ironic (but satisfying) that once again, in search of complex truths, I turn to fiction.
Didn't we all, in one U.S. history course or another, study the anti-Japanese propaganda of WWII as if it were an egregious excess our country had outgrown? Didn't we feel foolish as we looked back on the public discourse regarding the color of Manuel Noriega's underpants? Maybe I just need to go back to U.S. history class and accept the fact that, as this ABC news article puts it, "Demonizing the Enemy [is] a Hallmark of War."
I guess we have evolved a bit: I should be glad that the target of negative propaganda nowadays is the country's leaders rather that its entire populace, though the intense and patronizing romanticization of the "folk" and their traditions seems no more honest, only more benign. We used to portray Germans, Japanese, and Italians as dangerous animals. Now we show Afghanis as harmless and quaint kite-flying children. Is one less insulting than the other? Is one less dehumanizing and radically simplistic?
Governments will use propaganda; fair enough. Still, this stuff isn't coming from the government. This is our free, fair, objective media talking. It strikes me as unforgivably shoddy journalism. It leaves me wondering where I can go for a picture of the world that doesn't try to reduce its complexities or shove pre-formed conclusions down my throat. Ironic (but satisfying) that once again, in search of complex truths, I turn to fiction.
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