Apr 22, 2013 Original Poetry, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning
Daily-ness and Disaster
©By Vijaya Sundaram
April 22nd, 2013
How banal, how mundane
How silly, how pointless
Our lives seem!
Sitting in class, pencils in hand
Trying to be good, while
The teacher gazes on.
Stern she looks, and somber
Trying to be vigilant
Wasting time on gum-chewers
And time-wasters.
When elsewhere, lives end
Abruptly, pointlessly.
Grief and loss bloom
Like a mushroom cloud
Over a teeming populace
Wiped out by violence,
Riven by famine and flood.
And children torn from the arms of love,
Watch as parents are afloat on a sea
Of uncertainty.
Where food comes from
Hardly matters, when
They worry about whether
It comes, at all.
Whether school is up and running
Seems to matter so little, and yet
Someone is shot at brutally,
Risking her all, to reach school.
Elsewhere, in the city, last week
A child of eight died, in mid-cheer
Abruptly, pointlessly, painfully.
A shining being, ready for greatness.
And here, in the humming peace
The strumming quiet
The numbing apathy of daily life
We sit, pretending what we do matters.
It may all seem pointless now,
In the aftermath of recent tragedy.
And I might be right.
But I’d like to be hopeful
I’d like to say it matters
I’d like to say, “Everything,
But everything matters.”
Writing matters, reading matters,
Being hopeful matters, being good
Matters a whole lot.
And I would be right.
~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Hope, #Learning, #NaPoWriMo, #Teaching, Boston Marathon Bombing, classroom, famines, floods, global disasters, Goodness, Malala, reading, Students, wars
Apr 9, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Original Poetry, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o8jL1BXMdk]
Response to “Pigeon” by Anthony Green
©Vijaya Sundaram
April 9th, 2013
[The above YouTube video shows the film “Pigeon” by Anthony Green. This was the prompt I put up today on my “smartboard” in class (we have been studying books set in the Nazi-Holocaust period for the past few weeks). Students watched this 11-minute film and then we had a discussion about the significance of the different acts of kindness or unkindness in the film. We also discussed the symbolism in all the visuals (I don’t want to go all school-teacherish on you here), as well as the arresting imagery, acting and directing.
This was followed by a writing assignment. Students had to write a poem-response to this film, telling the story itself, or using the larger symbolism to zoom in on what moved them. They were deeply affected by the film, and the poems they came up with were beautiful.
I told them that I, too, would write while they wrote. So, I managed to write in four out of five of my class periods today.] Here is the first of the four poems I wrote (unedited, sorry, no time to tweak things. Will do that later):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shema Yisrael
Response poem to the film “Pigeon”
©Vijaya Sundaram
April 9th, 2013
Shema Yisrael
Stranded on the island
I await my deliverance
Shema Yisrael
Pigeon at my feet
Crumbs for its survival
Shema Yisrael
I have lost all, lost all
My papers, my self, my life.
Shema Yisrael
I try and sidestep my fate
Waiting is my wasteland
Shema Yisrael
Here are guards, inexorable as death
I die by degrees, in a sweat of fear
Shema Yisrael
Angel in human form sees
My loss, transforms into demoness
Shema Yisrael
I had a wife, and now a new one,
Who beats me about the shoulders.
Shema Yisrael
Guards aim death at her, “Papers!”
She mocks me, her “husband.”
Shema Yisrael
They laugh at us, mock me; they see she
“Wears the pants,” and then they leave.
Shema Yisrael
Bless this angel of mercy, this wife
Who delivered me from death, from hell
Shema Yisrael
May her act not go unnoticed
May she find a place among the angels.
Shema Yisrael
May the pigeons and doves among us
Find their saviors, may they fly in peace.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Eḥad
(Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One)
Disclaimer: I am not a Jewish person, nor a believer of any sort. However, I believe deeply in the power of prayer to steady ourselves, when we’re cast afloat, rudderless, on an open sea. It’s a centering mechanism. It’s good. It can only calm us, not hurt us.
Tags: #humanity, #kindness, #NaPoWriMo, #Resistance, #Teaching, Deliverance, Goodness, Mercy, poem-response to film "Pigeon" by Anthony Green, Shema
Mar 31, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Reading, Writing, Thinking
A Dinner-break non-Post
©By Vijaya Sundaram
March 31st, 2013
Write about your strongest memory of heart-pounding belly-twisting nervousness: what caused the adrenaline? Was it justified? How did you respond?This was the prompt I got just now when idly clicking on “inspire me” after idly clicking on the “New Post” button seconds earlier.
I had just read other people’s blogs, while chowing down my two Amy’s Pizza slices. This is my dinner break in between grading papers, so I don’t feel too guilty about blogging! (Yes, it has become my guilty pleasure, and that is terrible! It’s interfering with everything. I am truly addicted). Or perhaps, I just want to write, because the dam has broken, and every day is a day wherein I need to write something down, be it poetry, stories, reflections or commentary on something.
So, what is my strongest memory of heart-pounding belly-twisting nervousness?
Being on stage at the Museum Theatre in Madras (now Chennai) India, at age 16, singing Vincent by Don McLean (click the song-title to hear Don McLean) to a crowd of five hundred school-and-college-age kids — so, as far as heart-pounding, belly-twisting nervousness goes, that took the prize.
As did I, that night. We won the Best Vocalist AND Best Band award (with my mostly all-girl band — our drummer was a boy we imported from our “brother” school). We blew them away. I had been ready to faint at the beginning of it all, but settled into an almost surreal state of calmness after I began, and the wild crowd became still. At the end of that song, wild applause rang in the hot, stage-lit air. I couldn’t see anyone. I was alone in a ring of light, and it felt good.
(I could write more about this, but that will have to wait for another time. This is a quick post.)
My most recent feeling of heart-pounding belly-twisting nervousness?
Right now! I’ve got to go! My heart is pounding madly. I’ve got to finish grading mountains of paper! An all-nighter looms. And I broke my word to my FB friends. I wrote this blog! But what the hell, it’s my dinner break. Right? And it’s not really a blog post. I mean, it’s only four hundred and forty-four words (according to that little word-count gremlin crouching below this box), and that’s a mere sigh in the raging winds!
Justifications, justifications! I want to write! That’s all I want to do!
See you when I emerge, gasping for air and sustenance, mid-week. If you don’t hear from me, I’ve probably died from drowning in paper (it’s a veritable sea around me here, and the water-levels are rising).
Quick, someone hand me a pair of flippers and a snorkel! This tsunami will not bear me away.
Bye, folks!
Love,
Dreamer of Dreams.
Alas, I have no picture of me performing on stage in Madras (Chennai) at age 16, but here’s me at age 21 onstage (far left, in black pants, black&white shirt, and electric guitar in hand) at Fergusson College, Pune, India, at the InSynch ’85 Inter-Collegiate Festival.
Tags: Addiction to blogging, Blog-Post, dinner break, Grading Papers, heart-pounding moment in time
Mar 29, 2013 Awake in Dream Time - Journal Entries about the almost real, the surreal and the unreal, Reading, Writing, Thinking
Death, and all that Dark Stuff …
©By Vijaya Sundaram
March 29th, 2013
The dead are never really far from us.
I imagine them around me every day.
When I shut my eyes at night, and sink, awake, into the blackness under my eyelids, I feel a momentary sense of terror, as if I’m floating away, unanchored, into space. Then follows a quiet exhilaration. I know sleep will follow, and that’s a lovely, glowing, cushiony thought.
I wonder whether the dead feel this way upon dying. Do they float around in inky blackness, wondering when they’ll awake, but knowing they never will, and so, they burrow under our subconscious and visit us in our dreams, just to feel at home, if only for a night?
Or, do the dead just drift away?
Can we accept the word of those who’ve “come back” just because they came back? How do they know what happens after? They’ve come back, haven’t they? So, they didn’t venture that far.
If only one could write after death. I would love that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~That’s all, folks!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mar 29, 2013 Awake in Dream Time - Journal Entries about the almost real, the surreal and the unreal, Essays: On Books, Art, Literary Appreciation and so on, Reading, Writing, Thinking
On Neil Gaiman and Fearlessness
©By Vijaya Sundaram
March 29th, 2013
Ever since the day I first encountered The Sandman series, I have loved and admired that possessed writer-and-venturer into perilous territory — Neil Gaiman.
He takes his books, his themes and characters far afield, into terrible, sometimes disgusting, sometimes amazing territory, but somehow, he tends to bring our favorite people safely home, and as in Coleridge’s poem, his characters and his readers often wake up, “sadder and wiser” on the “morrow morn.”
I love how he shares his work, his advice and his ideas so generously. Like all true writers, he seems to sense that we draw from the same deep well of stories that have moved, nourished or startled our spirits since time began.
I recognized Neil as a fellow-dreamer when I first read The Sandman series. I, too, had strange dreams. I, too, imagined the Lord of Dreams, because I had steeped myself in Greek mythology since I was a young girl. I wrote stories and songs about these well before I had read his work. Then, I read him, and he blew my mind with his tender blend of love and terror. His imagination is completely unfettered, and his intellect is a joy to behold.
And he always goes farther into scarier territory than many writers (and I don’t mean in the realms of horror, per se, just imagination), farther than I have dared in any of my stories — and his books, The Sandman series, American Gods, Neverwhere, Coraline and The Graveyard Book have pushed the edges of the story-telling universe.
And he inspires me to find my own way into those places — and again, I don’t mean horror, just daring, the kind of daring that makes a person take one step back, and then take a flying leap into the abyss, with absolute certainty that he will land on his feet.
Thank you, Mr. Gaiman!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: Creativity, Fearlessness, Neil Gaiman, Writing
Mar 29, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Reading, Writing, Thinking
Passion or Calmness?
©A Pondering by Vijaya Sundaram
March 29th, 2013
I am equally moved by both.
If there is too much passion, though, I get suspicious. It’s easy enough to weep and rant, easy enough to be outraged and enraged, easy enough to wave one’s hands about and gesticulate fiercely when making a point, if one feels deeply about something. And that’s important, because we need deep feeling and deep engagement with our own, and others’ emotions.
Go on for too long, though, and it becomes too much — one needs a check to correct the flood, re-channel it, perhaps, to irrigate fields, rather than inundating them.
Calmness and reasoned thinking matter. Logic matters. True logic can be married to true emotion. The two can go hand-in-hand. One has to step back from personal response as the sole arbiter of one’s philosophy of life. One needs to truly see. Beware of false traps and circular logic, self-serving interests disguised as dispassionate interest, logic that seeks to destroy rather than build up a good, reasoned, calm, thoughtful approach to a problem, any problem that exists in one’s own life, or in the collective lives of humanity.
I cannot help but remember Yeats: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.
My definition of Balance: The merging of the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
So, what do we do when there’s a flood?
Build irrigation ditches, and grow food. Feed the hungry, and nourish the spirit. Then, dance, sing and get drunk.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
P.S. I do not advocate drinking (although I think the occasional wine is fine). I like metaphors!
Tags: Apollo, Dionysus, ego, Finding balance, Logic, Passion
Mar 23, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning
A Thirst for Human Knowledge
©By Vijaya Sundaram
March 23rd, 2013
When I was very young, it was very hard to imagine a past without me in it.
As I grew a little older, I got it, and loved reading history books. The past was an amazing panorama of stories blending into each other, misted with mythology and moistened with tears for some of the great ones. All around me, growing up, were the ghosts of India’s past, swirling up through the books and prowling around my consciousness.
I wept over Asoka (Ashoka) the Great, Harsha Vardhana, Shivaji the Great, Akbar, Shah Jahan, Gautama, who became the Buddha, Mahavira. I struggled over the names of the Chera, Chola and Pandya kings. I wondered where the women of those times were, and how they endured all this. I was pleased with the story of Rani of Jhansi, although I hated, absolutely hated the practice of Sati, which reduced the power of women to ashes. I was put off by the great battles, the greed and small-mindedness of some of the Emperors and Kings, enshrined in their own mythologies.
And then, there was “world history.” How I loved it all! I pored over my history books, soaking up stories and facts about Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, China, and all of the ancient kingdoms. The middle ages did nothing for me, and I found stories about the people’s dirt, dumb superstitions and squalor to be VERY upsetting, but not more so than the rank avarice and shameless exploitation of the masters who ruled the people. Similar kinds of movements (feudalism, etc.) were cropping up everywhere in the world. (One has to wonder about how all historical movements around the world paralleled each other — the rise of hunter-gatherers, agriculturists, kingdoms, tyrannies, feudalism, the rise of organized religion, the movements in art, literature, science, as well as the constant wars, dictatorships, democracy, all cycling each other.)
The Medieval period might have been stinking, superstitious and stuffy, but there were some bright spots. As a forerunner of the Renaissance, Dante’s vision of the Inferno and Il Paradiso bloomed in people’s minds, forcing new metaphors into their conceptions of heaven and hell . While I disliked Dante’s sadistic visions, he made hell sound much more interesting than dull old Heaven. And I am forced to consider that, while Dante over-indulged in his descriptions of the horrors of the nine circles of Hell, and all of the different types of damnation, there was some sense of the metaphorical aspects of all this, and that people’s minds were evolving.
Hieronymus Bosch, medieval-surrealist supreme, the artistic forefather of Salvador Dali (in my mind), exemplified similar ideas in his paintings. Carl Gustav Jung (one of my favorite psychologists, whose book, “Memories, Dreams and Recollections I would re-read with an unquenchable thirst during my teen years) called Bosch, “The Master of the Monstrous, the Discoverer of the Unconscious.” So, the Medieval Period wasn’t a total loss. There were artists dealing with the monsters thrown up by humanity’s unconscious mind. There were writers and theologians, and scientists who tried to separate the strands, but they were all creatures of their time, as are we all.
Along came the Renaissance, and that thrilled me. Dante gave way to Petrarch, and Boccaccio commented on everything. Humanism seemed to be on the rise. Over and over again, I read about the Italians, their art, architecture, science, and religion. Leonardo Da Vinci fascinated me, as did Michelangelo. The Renaissance must have seemed like a kaleidoscopic time after the stinking stuffiness of the previous age.
Then, the Age of Reason, of Enlightenment bloomed, but it was incomplete. The earlier ideas of Ptolemy had given way to Copernicus, then to Galileo, then Newton (I’m sure I shall be corrected, but this is all just memory surfacing), then all of the great scientists of the modern age.
Now, we’re in the age of Doubt and Skepticism. If there weren’t so much ignorance, superstition, blood and gore, we’d be in a good place. Alas, there are those in power who seem not to have learned the lessons that history offers, or if they did, they learned the wrong things from those lessons. And so, we have the terrible wars of the 20th and 21st Century. Our rulers play by different rules than the ones they want other rulers to follow. Such rank and absurdly frightening hypocrisy. How can people NOT see this? How do we tolerate this? In order to seize enough power to influence the masses to one’s (correct!) way of thinking, one has to want power. And the danger, as we know, is that, as Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
All this, I guess, is a separate set of ruminations about the ruination of us all. I don’t feel like meditating on that yet.
Alas, the details of all that I’ve learned are fading away. I shall have to start re-reading history, because, as we all know, “Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it,” and I do not want to replay all those scenes of ignorance, superstition, blood and gore, even metaphorically, in my mind or my life.
The decades have rolled by, and I’m in my middle years, and comfortably ensconced in my life. Soon, perhaps, Enlightenment and the Age of Reason will come. Then, the end will come. I sort of get it.
What I will miss is reading about it.
I see this thirst for history in my daughter as well. When she was younger, she’d ask us about life before she began. She still does, but with less urgency, just intense curiosity. Now, she loves history, and wants to know more about it. I hope that I shall do justice to her thirst for this knowledge. I hope we can discuss those difficult matters without losing our way, or being heartbroken, or nauseated to such an extent that we stop studying.
Somehow, I think that we will continue to study, and can do so without losing our way.
Thanks for reading!
~ Vijaya Sundaram
(I will insert pictures soon, but don’t have time right now!)
Tags: Carl Gustav Jung, Dante, European History, Hieronymus Bosch, History, Indian History, Love of History, the Renaissance
Mar 7, 2013 Essays: On Books, Art, Literary Appreciation and so on, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning
OR: A Day in the Life of this Eighth Grade English Teacher
©By Vijaya Sundaram March 7th, 2013Today was a day of non-academic messiness.
We had finished John Steinbeck’s book The Pearl almost two weeks ago, but were working rather late on the projects, because the materials I’d ordered would take that long to arrive. So, after their essay on the book, we moved on to our Holocaust unit, but revisited The Pearl in an oblique manner, in order to work on our “Personal Pearl” project.
In the book by Steinbeck (a terribly, terribly sad book, with almost no joy in it, except at the start), the protagonist, Kino, an indigenous pearl fisherman near the Sea of Cortez on the Pacific side of Mexico, finds a pearl, which they call “the Pearl of the World.” The pearl seems, to Kino, to be a sort of crystal ball in which he can see his future — he’s very poor, and his idea of wealth consists of seeing himself, his wife, Juana, and their son Coyotito, all clad in beautiful new clothes. He envisions himself getting properly married in a church, and getting their son baptised. He sees his son getting an education, and reading from “a great book.” He imagines a harpoon to replace the one he’d lost, and finally, he visualizes a rifle. He shares his dreams with his neighbors, and this last one makes all of them hold their breath in amazement. Ultimately, through some terrible events (which I cannot divulge), all that he finds himself with at the end of the book is the rifle. All his other dreams vanish, and when he looks into the pearl, all he sees is the recent dead past, along with the scenes of suffering he’s had to undergo in his need to keep his pearl in order to sell it in the big city (as opposed to the greedy and underhanded pearl dealers in town, who had offered him a pittance for it). Thus, the pearl becomes an extension of Kino’s past, present and future, an outward screen onto which all his dreams and hopes get projected. It has always been and will always be only a pearl, but to Kino, it’s a symbol of all the misfortune and calamities he’s suffered. The only recourse he has, at the end, is to part with it, and the way he does it, is as inevitable as the ending of a book of this nature can be.
It’s far from pleasant in parts, but the rhythm of Steinbeck’s prose is akin to hearing poetry spoken aloud by a singer. The cadence of his language, the choice of words, the sentence structures, the metaphors — these make my imagination swoon.
But because the book is so sad, and our essay on it is so serious in tone, I try to offset that by having students work on personal pearls of their own (which is accompanied by a lighter, more personal essay). These, however, are pearls which they create, and which reflect some aspect of themselves (unlike Kino, who found his pearl, and it became his soul). These pearls symbolize the work they do. I ask them to imagine that we humans are all busily creating pearls out of the travails or struggles of our lives, much like an oyster would create a pearl to deal with the irritation caused by sand in its bivalves.
Thus, today, my students were going to make a “personal pearl” with small spheres I’d bought for the purpose. On this “pearl” they were supposed to glue colorful pieces of tissue paper, and add details about some of their past achievements, or things they were proud to have accomplished — as public as winning a trophy, learning to sky-dive, learning to do several back-flips, or land an A in Spanish or French, and also as private as conquering fears or bad habits, becoming better at staying focused, speaking up in public, or gaining new confidence in themselves.
So, you can imagine the scene:
~A total of one hundred and seven students working on this project, arriving in groups of twenty or twenty-two, every forty-seven minutes (I teach five class periods), full of energy, full of the potential for deep mischief, full of enthusiasm at doing something different in an English class (Really? We get to glue things, and mess around?), and ready to tackle anything.
~Controlled chaos erupting in the back of the classroom, with PILES of beautiful tissue paper, shiny mylar paper, plus big containers of the smelliest, nastiest, stickiest but really fast-drying, and easily washable glue that leaves glued-on surfaces shiny and smooth: The charmingly named Mod-Podge.
~Chatter and cooperation, some occasional foolishness, which was quickly quelled by someone’s coevals and group pressure to do a nice job.
~And LOTS of paper strewn about everywhere — on desks, falling in slow-motion to the floor, lying in rainbow heaps on computer counters, decorating an occasional crazy student, or an object that’s not meant to be decorated.
This was our day, and it was good.
I like chaos, actually. I don’t mind it at all. People, when they know they’re going to make a nice, happy mess, change in behavior around each other. They feel and act freer, somehow. There’s lots of kidding, plenty of good-natured teasing, lobbed back-and-forth sallies between teacher and students, and license for me to say things like, “What on earth is THAT?! Surely, you’re not thinking of handing that in! It’s terrible! It’s so awful I’m going to faint. Save me!”
I can be terribly sexist (against boys — sorry!). “Look at the girls, boys! Check out how nicely they’re doing it. Learn from them. How come boys have NO clue how to be neat? Huh?” At this point, some boy will then hold up his beautifully worked-on “pearl” and I’ll pretend to reel my words back in, and eat them. Sorry! Sometimes, we can be wrong, you know!
So, the day unfolded. I collected late homework assignments, had parent conferences during our mid-day Team Meeting time (saw FOUR parents within forty-five minutes, and all of the meetings were positive ones — yay!).
I opened a window, and the wind blew in promptly making little eddies of colored paper swirl up in the air, before I wrestled them into submission, while flakes of snow whirled around outside in the little courtyard below. I wiped down the tables three times today, and swept my floor with my nifty little broom three times as well. Otherwise, the scene that would have met the custodian’s eyes this evening would have made him faint right away. And if he didn’t revive, it would have been on my head.
And I wouldn’t like that.
Besides, no one would like to walk into my classroom tomorrow morning, and find a passed-out, or worse, deceased custodian on the floor. That’s a no-no! (I mean, how would we concentrate on our studies?)
Such are the kinds of things we teachers have to worry about in order to keep our jobs!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Learning, #Teaching, A Day in the Life of an English Teacher, John Steinbeck, mild attempts at humor, Personal Pearl, Silliness, Snark, The Pearl
Mar 3, 2013 Essays on Music and Musicians, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning
Saturday is My Day of Rest
©By Vijaya Sundaram
March 2nd 2013
It’s Saturday, March 2nd, and I am in a foggy, unspecified place in my body and mind.
Having (as usual) slept only a few hours every day of this week, while beaming out energy and enthusiasm at school in a tightly focused way every single day of this past whole week, which had come hot on the heels of a semi-lazy, semi-busy vacation week, I am now a hollow shell.
I dealt with curriculum.
Gave a test.
Assigned a complicated and (I think) interesting project based on John Steinbeck’s book The Pearl, facilitated class discussion, finished up that book (begun well before vacation week), then taught verbs, participles and perfect verb tenses, and began to teach the Holocaust unit. Assigned and began teaching Friedrich by Hans Peter Richter.
Teaching the Holocaust Unit is the hardest thing I do every year. I use the Facing History and Ourselves curriculum and ideas as some of my resources. I have read an enormous amount on this subject and immersed myself in it for over fifteen years. Yet, I cannot bring myself to remember every single detail. I have to re-read some of it. It’s too much for me. I know all the numbers, and have read the books of several of the famous writers. I know all about the different concentration camps, the infamous Nazis who conducted their horrible experiments, the leaders of the Third Reich, the euphemisms adopted by the Nazis for their terrible practices. I know all about the Nuremberg Trials, the huge disaster that was WWII and the burden of collective guilt, not only in Germany, but several other European nations. And I know about the brave souls who individually (Schindler, Irena Sendler, the Bielski brothers, Miep Gies, others) and collectively saved several thousand Jews (the village of Le Chambon in France, and an entire country — Denmark). It’s all too much to comprehend or internalize. So, I map out the unit into perpetrators, bystanders, victims, resisters, rescuers and survivors. Because we read about it, and discuss it all from this perspective, it helps me and my students deal with the enormity and mindless nature of a whole era as revealed in Friedrich and Night. I show clips of interviews with survivors and rescuers/resisters. I show non R-rated movies and several scenes from the less-horrifying but eye-opening parts from R-rated movies. We read moving excerpts from Primo Levi’s books. We read poems. We discuss weighty matters of morality and philosophy as well. We inquire into the nature of evil. We look into Hannah Arendt’s statement about “the banality of evil.”
And each teenager in my class comes away from this experience a “sadder and wiser” person, arising the “morrow morn.”
But all that hasn’t happened for the classes yet. The students are still at the beginning of the unit.
So, where was I? Ah yes, I was still dwelling on this past week of work which assailed my senses and my soul.
I facilitated a meeting with Green Team members at my school on Monday, and with the Executive Director of a local organic farm, as well as with the Recycling Co-ordinator for the town in which I teach. We discussed how we would begin composting wasted cafeteria food in our school (and transport it to the local farm for the soil and chickens). It was a good meeting, despite all the difficulties we were sure to experience when we did begin to follow through on this idea.
After the meeting, the kids, the other teacher and I did our usual, mad, panting, breathless, crazy-whirly recycling for the whole school — dragging the huge, blue recycle bins down the hallways of all five floors to the South Parking Lot, where the giant Casella recycling dumpster stood, and emptying out all those bins, for the Casella people to deal with on Wednesday.
Note: We are all of us girls (well, two women teachers and the rest of them were girls. Our one boy was absent)!
Where are the schoolboys in any worthwhile effort, like saving the planet? The girls informed me that some of the boys laugh at the school’s recycling efforts (although our bins are full!).
Makes one despair.
Mothers and Fathers: Please teach your sons (and daughters) that the planet is not for pillaging and plundering, despoiling and tossing away. There’s only one planet.
I guess it’s time for me to give another rousing speech at lunchtime over the mike. Every time I did that in the fall, I got a few more volunteers, some of them boys, but then they faded away.
What else?
Went to a Baby Shower for a friend/colleague at school on Thursday, and that was beautiful — such events are always moving, especially for those who are already mothers, but for everyone else too, because one sees a different side of all these harassed and harried school-teachers, who take the time to be together. Everyone brings something good to eat. There are all these lovely platters of (mostly) healthy, nutritious food, veggie platters, the healthier variety of chips and yummy dips, fruit, and of course the obligatory dreadfully frosted carb-heavy cakes and cookies. There are piled-up presents, streamers and pretty tassels. We clear up a space in the school library, set out the food on pretty table-cloths, put up streamers, and shower the star of the afternoon, the new mother-to-be with love. And she is always tender, radiant and full of hope and beauty. I wrote a poem, after being urged to do so by some of the teachers there. And I posted it on this blog-site on Thursday, which eased my sense of guilt with not writing something the previous day (at least, I think I didn’t write something. Perhaps I did).
On Friday, after the regular, exhausting, unending round of classes which I taught (I teach one hundred and seven students a DAY, and that’s nothing! It was one hundred and twenty-five a day last year, which nearly killed me and the other English teachers on the other two teams — math, science and history teachers don’t have it so bad, although everyone reported being exhausted last year!), I ran my Poetry Club, put out food for the kids, made hot chocolate for them, and we wrote. Well, they wrote. I usually do, but yesterday, I was busy facilitating. I didn’t have time. So, that was a wasted chance.
Then, dinner at The Punjab in Arlington with my family. That’s always very nice, and we three are VERY goofy and silly together. Then, there was music at night with daughter and husband, after which, I fell, exhausted, into a species of sleep.
All of today was spent in a strange, cocooned state. Tired beyond imagining, feeling the weight of the ages press down upon my shoulder-blades, and with feet that alternately felt numb and tingling with tiredness, I did nothing at all, not even fun things.
I didn’t write anything yesterday, and nothing much today. At least I wrote a poem on Thursday, I console myself. Yes, it made me happy, but it doesn’t satisfy me. I want the high that comes with writing stories every day, writing poems every day, having interesting and inspired thoughts.
I’ve been reading Alexander McCall Smith books. When mindlessness strikes, I turn to mental comfort food, and McCall Smith’s books and P.G. Wodehouse’s books are for good vibes and good prose. Dick Francis books, and occasionally the less grisly Robert Parker, Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky books are for a sense of life lived in danger (compared to my tame and happy existence). Of course, there are the usual J.K. Rowling books, some grab-me sci-fi for sheer pleasure, or an Oliver Sacks book at hand for sheer pleasure or familiar, but in-depth, moving humanistic science . Mind you, I’m not talking about my other literary loves. This is the daily fare for someone who can read unfamiliar or weightier books only during school breaks, and during the summer.
Watched a TED video showcasing Amanda Fucking Palmer, which was very moving in a strange way, especially because I don’t actually like her music or her face, although it is extremely compelling. I am able to separate my personal likes and dislikes from my respect for artists (musical artists or artists who do performance art) who do what they are compelled to do. I like John Cage, for example, but am not moved in the least by his music (or lack thereof). I LOVE Yoko Ono, but her actual art does nothing for me. We need such artists. They challenge our preconceived notions and push us to think beyond our “comfort zone.”
And of course, I love, love, love Neil Gaiman (and have done so well before his rise to fame and fortune, since the early 90s, when his Sandman books came out), so if he loves Amanda Palmer, I am prepared to love her too.
So, this was my past week.
Right now, while I type all this, my husband is making fritters. I hear my daughter singing upstairs, and I need to help her with her guitar practice.
On that note, I bid you all adieu.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Recycling, Alexander McCall Smith, Amanda Fucking Palmer, Baby Showers, Elie Wiesel, English Teachers, Facing History and Ourselves, Green initiatives in school, John Steinbeck, Neil Gaiman, P.G. Wodehouse, Poetry Club, Primo Levi, Teaching the Holocaust, Yoko Ono
Feb 11, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning
Words create an alternate reality.
This is how we re-create our passing seconds, minutes, hours, years. Forever sloughing off our past selves, we clutch at a memory of what we thought we were, and re-build it lovingly, hoping to freeze-frame it. How much of it is Platonically real?
I like it, though.
My worded reality offers more nuance, or a more ordered, less chaotic, more neatly arranged nuance to the setting of my days.
We all know this secret — life truly has no meaning. Life’s meaning is always sculpted by us, its artisans.
So, today went by. There was some work, some food, some musing, some sledding with daughter, some lazing, some blogging, and now, in a few minutes, more work. Soon, there will be some music together, some hugs and kisses, daughter’s bedtime, and more work before we retire for the night.
So, it will go. And I will have not much to show for it, except memories which will be overlaid with more memories, and this, the sum of my day today.
It was fun while it lasted.
If I didn’t want to have a Hindu death ceremony at the end of my life (many decades from now, don’t worry!) I would opt, instead, for a grave, on which would be inscribed this epitaph: Yes, it was fun while it lasted.
Tags: alternate reality, Epitaph, reality, the meaning of life