And now Ben’s posted Eliot’s Dante-Shakespeare-there is no third: what was that decree that divided the world between Spain and Portugal? Having just skimmed through Bloom’s How to Read and Why, I’m inclined more than ever, though it’s pointless, to protest, Montaigne! The essay is not touched upon there, though it’s a kind of essay in serial he’s writing, and the genius of the latter of Eliot’s duumvirate expands beyond all comprehensibility.
In our talk about Ambedkar, Michael mentioned a remark about the Gita being deeper than Dante, but then he called the Commedia Bible fan-fiction, which I don’t suppose the clerkly TS would countenance.
Walking in the park with the fallen leaves of yellow with their stems like pink coral, thinking of how long I will get to walk around in the rain thinking and looking at the leaves until I finally noticed the rain had let up and I should put away my umbrella, and I was already almost home, long before coming to any conclusions about the merits of not knowing the duration of a life or what Shakespeare might have been doing in those last three years.
I got up early a couple mornings and managed to write or type something of this long last entry in the series about reading-response, but this next month is November, as good an excuse as any to buckle down and write for an hour every day before school, then as much again after it as may be. That morning writing hasn’t happened yet, instead only nighttime writing on the Annotated Book with that darker tone in the palette now, too.
The one kid at the high school where I volunteer once a week keeps showing up, working at gleaning links from wikipedia about the great video game crash of 1983, which is what passes for a research project in US history. And good for him! He doesn’t think he’s smart in reading and writing, but his entire grade is based on things he hasn’t been taught, 10-point reading quizzes on a couple of pages of textbook condensity. Much better off not reading at all than reading like this, surely.
Or what about a book like The Arrival? There is more Australian history in that than I’d ever learned, and not a single word. The hieroglyphic writing spells Shaun’s name at least once or twice, but the storytelling and art style are much more legible signatures. Four years he spent working on this book?! It reminds me of reading those mysterious picture books by the strange genius Van Allsbruck or however it was spelled. We had to write a story from one of the pictures--I think I picked the flying nuns--classic ekphrasis, and later we got to do one in English where the lighthouse postcard let me bring in the wise seagulls and rowdy pirates.
Another strange reading lately was the illustrious Dream of the Rood, laboriously translating it word for word with all its hypermetrics and prosopopeias up until the heavenly feast, where I ran out of time. A very old picture book, since some of the lines adorn a stone cross with natural patterns, an ancient Vi Hard doodle with a message of heroic suffering interwoven. A very important lesson is buried in there, about memorization, realization of the oral tradition and the ability to represent it in whatever form, recitation or pictorial art--that telling a story, finding the right words, is almost the opposite of sinning, or of being broken down by Socratic questioning, and that confidence, too, is very important, perhaps primary for so many who initially lack it; before they are forced to rethink, perhaps they could think in full sunlight and get to know what that feels like. For many kids it is the performative action not of the stage but of the playing field, and little wonder that is what they like to do. But they do read it and write it, too, in a manner of speaking, if they can be brought to notice it on their own. Having the right words, the retort, the inside joke, is universally prized. All this is something of the message of that victorious tree and its hero-sufferer.
What else? Steph’s sister was in town, and then the other sister and company for trick-or-treating madness, but not maybe as bad since the weather probably kept some kids at home. We’d gone up to the Green Bluffs barn brewery-pumpkin patch and Steph had her heart set on getting some farmland there, setting up shop, whether beer or produce or grilled cheese off a food-truck, it didn’t seem to matter. Her Pa would build the enclosures, her sisters would all pitch in, and I could keep subbing and writing, as long as we got to all be together--a nice goal, I think, in need of much capital, good fortune. We could have field-trips and retreats out there, campers, air-bnb or woofers. But she did have an interview with the home-schools co-op north of here. There might be something to look into there, how they get away with it, chiefly.
Meanwhile, all this language around here of sparking, igniting creativity, as a way for people who like these sorts of things to find work and out of a genuine desire, no doubt, to help others, but also smacking of that crux, that tyranny of love, which is to say, what do you mean by helping? Is it to make yourself feel good, or really to get down to roots and brass tacks? I had this shoved in my face last week at Spark, when I wanted to banish the little Minecrafters after they had a tussle, and then I was rightly made to eat humble pie for it. And this phrase the tyranny of love actually comes up also in the context of Gandhi’s followers mobbing him wherever he goes, so there is a bottom-up as well as a top-down form of it. Is it really in the power of anyone, however well-intentioned, to generate, to spark in any systematic way the learning, much less the creativity of others, or is this only possible in that realm of terrible mystery, falling in love? A radically improper thing for a teacher to do, even an Abelard, unless a messiah; or even a Gandhi, unless balanced by his Ambedkar, and recalled as such; a Jesus only with the whole tradition, and not only Paul, borne in mind? But it certainly says something about us that we wish so badly to believe it can be so, and not only for all these world-historical figures, but for classroom teachers and shoestring non-profits.
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