Abundance of groups, and La sombra del viento/The Shadow of the Wind

As William James' psychology yields AA, so my reading and writing and thinking, such as it is, has been pretty well channeled now into irrigating a plethora of social gatherings, with only the right balance between them left to be figured out. My groups:

We went to Bellwether a few times recently even when it wasn't for MathJam,

then of course there's this summer's course starting shortly at Signum,

and the local Smial of Tolkien Scholars, from whom I asked to borrow some books for it,

and whom I also invited to good old Drop in & Write at Spark,

who had me sit at a table today at Auntie's for awhile, where I found out about a group reading The Shadow of the Wind,

which led to INWG, a writing group that meets at Frankie Doodle's--apparently they have good cinnamon rolls--

but then there's another reading group meeting to read books in Spanish, which I heard about at the Spanish conversation tertulia at Lindaman's which has been going on for some 25 years,

but I only just heard about it at the potluck at church, where I've been participating in a memoir-writing class...

and this discussion group I just started as a sister seminar to the ones in Phoenix.

That's it for now, but there's Hobbit Immersion Camp to think about for summer!

--

Now, on reading The Shadow of the Wind. To be more careful--and note that spoilers follow--, this came before, from the event at Auntie's for Get Lit where authors read about a teacher they wanted to thank, and a teacher reminisced generously of his idealism and his students in the public school in the Delta, so that I thought of City Year and Anthony at KIPP. Leaving a flyer at the register about Plato in the spring, I happened to pick up a calendar of other events going on, and saw that there was a group meeting the coming week to discuss The Shadow of the Wind, a novel I happened to have at home, albeit in Spanish.

So I read it as quickly as possible, starting that weekend. I don't know where or when I picked up that copy, but in other ways my chance encounter with the book and the group fit in nicely with the story it told, about a mysterious book and its author and readers. As fast as I skimmed along, not bothering to look up all the words I did not know, I still couldn't quite finish it in time, so that I first made the others tell me what happened, how it ended, which was satisfying, and then agreeable to nitpick together. Other questions we discussed were the setting, the ways characters might represent more than themselves, and the portrayal of evil, but the most interesting thing about the book, when it was asked how each reader's perspective made it a different book for us, was how we characterized it as a historical, literary mystery which is also a love story, and a love letter to a certain kind of reading--that total entregment of oneself, losing oneself in the book, not analyzing or comparing it but being swept along by the story, and how our language about this experience does have so much in common with romantic love: how we feel it first in youth or adolescence, how it becomes more difficult to recapture, becomes more complicated with the years; but also how as a writer, it is a kind of wish-fulfillment, to represent a book, a bookstore, a writer, a reader, so devoted to the work. And for me this is even where the question of good and evil is most interesting: why would one say "there are worse prisons than words," or call a place where books are so beloved, so that visitors are enjoined to remember them, a cemetery of forgotten books, when the words are for freeing people's imaginations and their hearts from inherited violence, the books for reconnecting them to one another and opening as far as possible their secretive memories to the light of day? To me, of all the killers and egoists and beaters, that impossibly romantic writer spurning his readers and burning his books is the most evil, and, again, the most interesting, and perhaps a good deal more so before he is redeemed.

Plato in the spring, first meeting

We looked at the movement of the characters and the different conversations, and asked, What happens when you talk to Socrates? There seems to be a tension between wanting and not wanting to talk, wanting to stay and go. Then on Socrates' question as to justice, What is it? we wondered about how a definition might be dramatized in conversation and a consideration of particulars rather than explicitly pinned down in a single general formulation...and we ate cake, with fizzy fruity drinks! Steph and Paul and I were there--feel free to join!

Legos and the four friends

We had a lovely intergenerational service today at church where these two topics came up, reminding me of some notes I made awhile back and never shaped into a post.

Briefly: the four friends were walking in the forest. They came to a tall tree and stopped to look up in amazement. The elephant said, "Ah, I remember tending this tree when it was only half as tall as me, and look how tall it's grown. And that was a long time ago, maybe fifty years or more." The monkey said, "Ah, I remember tending this tree when it was only twice as tall as me, its beautiful leaves shining in sun and shadow. And that was a long time ago, maybe a hundred years or more." The rabbit said, "Ah, I remember tending this tree when it was a sapling, swaying in the breeze. And that was a long time ago, maybe two hundred years or more." The bird said, "Ah, I think I planted this tree, planted it here in the ground from a seed I carried in my beak. And that was a long time ago, maybe three hundred years or more." And as each one spoke, the others nodded thoughtfully. They were so moved by the conversation and by their fondness for the great tree, they decided to plant another tree like it nearby, to commemorate the tree, that day, and their friendship...

A young woman told this story from memory; she noted that we might have heard other versions, or would find others if we looked, as it was very widespread. She also said we might spend hours or days or years discussing it if we were studying Buddhism, but that for her it suggested how good it is to share what we know and to listen compassionately, and how diversity can contribute to creativity.

Then the pianist played "Everything is Awesome" for the offertory. The sermon was titled The Power of Legos, touching on their equal appeal for boys and girls, their teaching of cause and effect and physics, and about compromise, starting over, breaking and rebuilding, apologizing and having to work together to make it better, playing, making unexpected discoveries, and something John Green said about imagining people complexly. We could go on and on with stories about the toys and about the kids playing with them--a version of this was repeated again--but that was the main thing. Plus, they're fun!

We watched a short lego movie in lieu of a benediction, but the sound wasn't working. I can't find it now, but it was along these lines.

I'm not sure why spell check thinks legos is a misspelling. It must have something to do with marketing.

What, would you say, is the greatest story ever sold?

Basically, now that creative work is collapsing into advertisement, the story you tell about your product comes to have precedence over the product itself, but also over every other story.

There might be an analogy here between this and the stock market, except I don't know how that works: the huge fees companies pay to advertise themselves is like a futures market of insane greed and optimism, an investment in the advertiser’s ability to seduce the minds and influence the actions of statistically significant and specific portions of the global population. But could it also be a concession to the beautiful, to aesthetic delight, in some cases?

The good news: we are readers, not only consumers. There is a kind of power this gives us to influence corporations by our actual purchases, but then there is also the business structure of streaming websites which now make actual artistic content available for free thanks to the revenue from advertising--or the fact that this artistic content is itself advertising. The alternative models, paid subscriptions or targeted donations tied to a relationship with the artist or to bonus special content, seem to be really more for status or convenience, when leaks and ad-blocker are so ubiquitous as to make even what should cost money become free in no time.

Think also of the cost of producing the artistic creations of our time, films and video games, and the advertising portion of this which consists in sections of the unfinished work itself: trailers. They are their own advertisement; they collapse into one another in that way, too. It may be that the experience feels somehow less real without the honest possession by fair exchange, but this may be only a convention of thought, a metaphor of legitimacy deriving from ancient custom. Patriarchy, virgin births, matter for faith.

And as for the building that the kids did together the other week during the fundraiser, when the legos were all spread out on the floor, samples of their creations were on the tables, with little index cards bearing their names--one name on each card, as an older woman pointed out, and many of their products bearing swords or guns or lightsabers. In her time it was cowboys and indians, she said apologetically, but it's the same old story. She wondered if we'll ever get beyond it.

What is this? A couple examples of internet-enhanced reading

(What is this? Obviously a hat. No, it's a snake that ate up an elephant. No, it's an ugly dress for a ballerina. No, it's Ditto. No, they're some siblings in their blanket fort. No, it's a Manta Ray. No, it's a piece of designer furniture. No, it's something evil coming out of the wall. No, it's a roller coaster. No, it's a pizza melting. No, it's whatever you can imagine. Seventy four years of The Little Prince.)

In a general way, though they say writing by hand helps people remember what they write, isn't the whole point of writing that you don't have to remember it? and so, the more media to enhance the books, the better, I say. The book itself, after all, remains; only around and around it a richer culture of impressions and allusions, associations and memories, interconnections and interpretations is formed, and we might need strong fingers to dig down through all that dirt and sweat a bit to turn that compost--but what a joy it is to play in that garden!

And as much as reading, it becomes part of the fun to make our own contributions and appreciations, even occasionally sprinkling in a few new seeds to add to the loam. So I hope that part of the Hobbit Camp involves inviting the kids to make their own podcasts about what they've learned from reading together, their own stories they've been inspired to write, drawings they've drawn, and even some words of poems in ancient languages of their own.

Open letter to Fred Schrumpf

Dear Fred,

I'm a substitute teacher, but in the course of this year I have had two long-term assignments, first at Glover and currently at Stevens, which have brought your work to my attention, and I would really like to get a chance to talk to you sometime. My questions revolve around what substitutes can do to better engage students under the paradigm of restorative practices, and how you feel the conversations around Help For Billy have gone. I feel bad that I missed the opportunity to join in on the book study, but I did recently borrow the book and found it provocative reading.

I hope this finds you well,

Wesley

---

is what I wrote. Here is more of what I would want to discuss:

Help for Billy? Help for Mrs T! What is the consensus on this science, especially of the brain? Where is the line between behavior and trauma, and how can these be bridged? Between learning and relationship? Just detach is the final word, which is strange given the equating of love and attention throughout the book--what is the status of such conditional love? What consequences or beyond-consequences does projecting such inexhaustible attention-love and patience have on the teacher--especially when not seeing the results of the labor ultimately bear fruit? On the learning of whichever, if any, students in the class are not pre-conditioned by complex trauma? What if relationship is not so much a prerequisite for teaching as it is an inextricable element of teaching? Otherwise the pyramid dictates that instruction and intellectual practice should become a vanishingly small part of the school week, inverting the current ratio of classroom to specials time: math and literacy will be the specials, and therapy of one sort or another the bulk of the time spent in school. “A perpetual physiologic state of dysregulation” 58 and “subconscious mind will work to sabotage” 65 make this a paradigm self-defeating not only for the student, but for the teacher, too, as teacher--collapses into surrogate parent, childcare provider, foster--and especially for the substitute teacher, who has not been able to build any relationship with the students...A Christian paradigm of love? But even if I don’t yell at them, I don’t live up to it, quality of mercy is strained, and I am a hard-working hypocrite, at best!

And pyramids based on Maslow’s hierarchy, just remember, are metaphors, icebergs to remind how much is beneath the surface, not piles of blocks to bury a dead king in. A living paradigm, rather, a braid or tree, even a house might be more illustrative. Not beyond consequences, but facing the natural follow ups, logical ramifications. Looking squarely at your beliefs--asking, how has that choice gone for you? Rather than, how could you do that?--and the scales may fall--even if a great deal of fear, insecurity, anger remains to be worked through--a logical and loving question can touch, and not only a mantra of safety or validation of the negative or false or aggrandizing perceptions. And a great source of courage or determination might only come with taking responsibility for the next generation, one’s own children, to give them something better. Non-profit industrial complex--alarm bells triggered for me when a book is published by an institute rather than a university or even a publishing company honestly dedicated to its market. Critique implying I could do better? Humbly submitting that working as a sub is doing something, as well as giving time to writing about all I would do. Massive overhauls to peel away the band-aids, to make relationship and teaching rather than professional esprit de corps and bureaucratic data-collection the main job of the schoolteacher, and learning the activity of the student, rather than regulating behaving or undergoing therapy--and freeing up the resources to provide that therapy, or perhaps better, to simply give a lot of money back to people, and to redistribute it so they can spend time with their kids with less stress, if the science really is so clear on that or not--anyone can tell that time with family and friends is preferable to work and school, and that much more is learned in these interactions than from lessons anyhow. So flip the classroom off, give everyone a computer and an internet connection, and be done with it; a teacher and a therapist or counselor in every classroom.

Joe’s take: on the spectrum Relativism- Dogmatism with the phenomenological approach as the mean, understanding the culture and language with which to even begin a conversation, not labeling it all trauma and washing hands of it. Tending to be white folks at the one extreme, black folks at the other, and all genuinely caring, wanting to provide something: love, coddling or abrasive, but neither by itself can change the behavior without first going deeper to questions and coaching around the child’s own values, sense of self, goals, and trust of self, love of self, before and beyond that of anyone else, however well-intentioned. Not keep your eye on the ball, but which way was it spinning? Not ice cream sales and shark bites, but the seasons, the weather, the beach--facile interpretations of statistics, but what sorts of outcomes were there from these reading groups anyhow? What was he doing, teaching this book or interrogating? And how different from a great book, where the two are synonymous! Trauma of a kind, after all, is the goal of exercise of muscles: growing stronger.

Something like this.

But I have always preferred to begin

For whatever reason, more and more things:

A sequel to nanowrimo's Book of Annotations, being its continuation into the spring semester.

A memoir around the playing of videogames, for reading aloud as podcasts, audio for videos with pictures of chalkboards, and springboards for conversations.

A sister seminar to those in Phoenix and Seattle/Puget Sound, to start with Plato in the spring. We will be meeting in the upstairs room of the downtown Spokane library on Saturdays at 4pm.

And, of course, getting engaged to Stephanie!

...But this is going beyond that rule about finishing writing, mixing it up with something else entirely, life, which who knows if it ever finishes, or only cuts off when it's time.