Today I Am Stealing...

but at least I'm going to cite my sources.  I am posting the introduction to Naomi Shihab Nye's book A Maze Me: Poems for Girls.  I have often given this crowbar for my students to pry open their own souls and take a look at  the little scraps they don't want to slip through their lives' sieves.  To go along with some of my recent posts about mining for memories and focusing on detail, I offer an expert's insights, since my opinion doesn't hold much sway.

At twelve, I worried about a skinny road between two precipices.  Every day my mother drove on such a road, or so I imagined, to her job teaching school.  I feared her car would slide off one side, into a ditch, or off the other edge, into a murky gray river.  But I never told her what I was scared of.  I worried day after day without mentioning my fear to anyone, till there was a fist in my stomach, punching me back again and again to check the clock.  Wasn’t she late?  I was a nervous wreck in secret. 

I did not want to be thirteen, which cast me as something of an oddity among my friends, who were practicing with lipstick and the ratting hair comb deep into the belly of the night.  Mary couldn’t wait to be thirteen.  She stuffed her bra, packed away her dolls.  Susie had been pretending she was thirteen for two years already.  Kelly said thirteen was a lot more fun than anything that preceded it.

But I did not feel finished with childhood.  I was hanging on like a desperado, traveling my own skinny road.  The world of adults seemed grim to me.  Chores and complicated relationships, checkbooks that needed balancing, oppressive daily schedules, and the worrisome car that always needed to have its oil or its tires changed (“bald tires” sounded so ominous)… Couldn’t I stay where I was a bit longer?

 I stared at tiny children with envy and a sense of loss.  They still had cozy, comfortable days ahead of them.  I was plummeting into the dark void of adulthood against my will.  I stared into the faces of all fretful, workaholic parents, thinking condescendingly, You have traveled too far from the source.  Can’t you remember what it felt like to be fresh, waking up to the world, discovering new surprises every day?  Adulthood is cluttered and pathetic.  I will never forget. 

I scribbled details in small notebooks-crumbs to help me find my way back, like Gretel in the darkening forest.  Squirrels, silly friends, snoozing cats, violins, blue bicycles with wire baskets, pint boxes of blackberries, and random thoughts I had while weaving 199 multicolored potholders on a little read loom.  I sold the potholders door to door for twenty-five cents each, stomping around the neighborhood, feeling absolutely and stubbornly as if I owned it.  No one else had ever loved that neighborhood as much as I did. 

If I wrote things down, I had a better chance of saving them.

Recently a friend sent me an exquisite wreath in the mail.  A tag was attached to it: A SMALL AMOUNT OF DEBRIS IS TO BE EXPECTED FROM THE VIBRATION OF SHIPPING. 

Well, of course.

But who tells us this when we are twelve?  Who mentions that he passage from on era into another can make us feel as if we are being shaken up, as if our contents are shifting and sifting into new alignments?

Earliest childhood: skillets and a fat soup pot and two cake pans and a funny double boiler with lots of little holes in one pan,  lids and a muffin tin and two blue enamel spoons and an aluminum sifter with a small wooden knob on its handle, all living together in the low cupboard next to the stove.

A trove of wonders!  Daily I was amazed and happy to take them out, stack them on the floor, bang them together a little, make a loud noise.  Then I could put them back.  There were ways they fit and ways they didn’t.  The door to the cabinet never shut perfectly.  I can close my eyes even today and feel its crooked wood, its metal latch, and the lovely mystery of the implements living in silence inside.

My mother worked at the sink nearby, peeling potatoes, running water over their smooth, naked bodies.  I felt safe.  My whole job was looking around.

It strikes me as odd: I cannot remember the name of a single junior high school teacher.  I cannot remember any of their faces either.  Yet I recall all my elementary and most of my high school teachers very clearly.  What happened in between?

In junior high, I stood proudly in the percussion section in the school band, smooth wooden drumsticks in my hands.  I clearly recall he snappy beats we played to warm up.  I still feel my cheeks flaming when I was forced to sit down, runner-up in the spelling bee, because they gave me a military word.  I remember the smooth shiny hair on the back of the head of the girl in front of me in Spanish class better than the subjunctive tense in Spanish.  Some things stayed, during those rough years of transition, but not the things I might have dreamed. 

What do you want to be? People always ask.  They don’t ask who or how do you want to be?

I might have said, amazed forever.  I wanted to be curious, interested, interesting, hopeful-and a little bit odd was okay too.  I did not know if I wanted to run a bakery, be a postal worker, play a violin or the timpani drum in an orchestra.  That part was unknown.

Thankfully, after turning seventeen I started feeling as if my soul fit my age again, or my body had grown to fit my brain.  But things felt a little rugged in between.

In college I met Nelle Lucas, who wore billowing bright cotton skirts and lavish turquoise-and-silver Native American jewelry.  She taught ceramics (favoring hand-building techniques-coiling rolling, smoothing) and showed us how to prepare our own basic hand-mixed glazes.  I think I took her class three times.

Nelle and her husband had built some modest, rounded Navajo-style hogans out in the Texas hills, and on weekends, they shepherded little flocks of art students to the country.  We dug a big hole in the ground to fire our pots and sang songs while the pots baked under the earth.  Sometimes the pots disappointed us-blowing up, or cracking.  One person’s pot might compromise someone else’s-after exploding, fragments stuck to your own precious glaze.  Or someone’s glaze would drip strange configurations onto your perfect iron oxide surface.  It was a tricky operation.  Nelle sneaked wisdoms into every line of art instruction.  She wasn’t terribly impressed with anyone’s pots, but she loved the process and she loved us all.  Also, she made us laugh.  She experimented.  We slept in a circle, head to toe.  We patted whole-wheat chapatis, cooking them over an open fire for our breakfast.  Nelle loved freshly mixed granola, wild deer, and patience.  She urged us to slow down and pay better attention to everything.  She was radiant, enthusiastic, unpredictable.  And she was older than all our parents.

Somehow, knowing Nelle when I was in college gave me all the faith about “growing up” I needed.  At every age, a person could still be whimsical, eccentric.  A person could do and think whatever she wanted.  She could be as spontaneous at seventy as at seven.  I felt incredibly relieved.

Midway between Brady and Mason, Texas-two wonderful hill-country towns-there’s a mysterious general store called Camp Air.  A small red stagecoach sits out front, and a little sign says the store is closed on Fridays and Saturdays, but I have never seen it open.  Some cows with very short legs are penned up nearby, next to a “watermelon shed.”  There’s a larger sign: HEY IF YOU NEVER STOP YOU’LL NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU MISSED.  I always stop.  And I still don’t know.  But I like it.  I like it a lot.  “Camp Air” has a good ring to it.  That’s where I want to live, every day, inside my timeless brain.

If you have a voice, and aren’t afraid to spend it...

               

If you have many voices and let them speak to one another in a friendly fashion…

If you’re not too proud to talk to yourself out loud…

               

If you will ask the questions pressing against your forehead from the inside…

you’ll be okay.

If you write three lines down in a notebook every day (they don’t have to be great or important, they don’t have to relate to one another, you don’t have to show them to anyone)…

you will find out what you notice.  Uncanny connections will be made visible to you.  That’s what I started learning when I was twelve, and I never stopped learning it.

Every year unfolds like a petal inside all the years that preceded it.  You will feel your thinking springing up and layering inside your huge mind a little differently.  Your thinking will befriend you.  Words will befriend you.  You will be given more than you could ever dream.

-Naomi Shihab Nye

San Antonio, Texas, 2004

Cherry Blossoms

I'm taking a break from supervising 7th graders in the computer lab, writing a research proposal, and watching Butler finish off Bucknell to write a few lines (literally) about cherry blossoms.  My friend and colleague Rillene posted an open invitation from NPR to submit a haiku about cherry blossoms.

I recall from when I lived in Japan the second time (December of '85 through December of '88), one of the main roads of the eastern side of the base was lined on both sides with cherry trees.  When you faced west, the pale pink springtime blossoms framed Mt. Fuji--just like a postcard.  I have written about these soft blossoms before...mostly in haiku...so I felt like I should crank out another...just for fun.  It's not my best work, but I needed a diversion for a few moments.

pink flurries bring hope

despite Winter’s frigid reign

of gray oppression

Whatever your experience with cherry blossoms, or any other promise of spring, I challenge you to write a short haiku and post it in the comments below.  Share your snapshot with the rest of cyberspace.  Maybe you should also post on the NPR Facebook page, too.  They accept submissions until the 22nd.

Some Musing Advice

My wonderful wife pointed out an article in the Winter 2013 Humanities at BYU magazine that she thought I would be interested in.  She was write, I mean, right.  "Coaxing the Muse: Thoughts on the Creative Process" intrigued me so much that I had my 9th graders read it, annotate it, write personal reflections about Larsen's advice, their own creative processes, and how they, as students and writers and human beings are developing.  Lance E. Larsen, BYU English Professor and Poet Laureate of Utah, adapted this article from a speech he gave during a university devotional talk he gave in May of 2007.  I wish could have heard it in person.  However, I just happened to be in my classroom.  But after reading it and digesting his written version, I found the next best thing: a link to the actual speech.  Listen to it.  It's good.  However, if you don't have the time, here is the penultimate paragraph from the article:

In finishing up I want to make clear that I have merely scratched the surface of today's topic.  Creativity remains a messy, recalcitrant, but invigorating process that resists--thank goodness--my attempts to explain it.  Still, the principles we've talked about can easily be applied to our various circumstances.  First, reading widely and deeply will allow you to immerse yourself in a given field and gain expertise.  Second, establishing a daily habit of writing or similar engagement will take you into the heart of nearly any discipline.  Third, letting the writing lead you, or having faith in the mysterious process of creation, will let you tap sources beyond your own limitations.  Fourth, revising, regardless of the field, gives you the chance to revisit and improve upon early efforts, and in the process take full advantage of the perspectives of others.  Fifth, falling in love with the world and taking notes can help cultivate powers of observation otherwise left dormant.  And finally, sixth, gathering insights from other disciplines will help you see more clearly through your own lens.

I like that.  Now I just need to put it into practice more effectively.

So Many River Metaphors...but I Refuse to Use One in the Title

The first half of last week I was chillin’ up in Spokane, Washington, with two of my friends/colleagues from the Central Utah WritingProject (CUWP) to present at the Northwest Inland Writing Project (NIWP) spring conference.  Sarah and Janae presented on revision strategies—a topic I have dabbled in, and I revamped my shtick about wordplay in the classroom.  And although it wasn’t everything I expected, or hoped for, since I had a few technology glitches, it was a great venture for my first out-of-state presentation.

Jeff Wilhelm did an amazing job discussing the new common core and some strategies for implementing it in a language arts classroom.  It wasn’t anything new, but it validated what we, as a team at SFJHS, have been striving toward.  However, I didn’t receive my biggest a-ha moment until after the conference had finished and the three of us were killing time, passing time until our flight (full of Zag fans, by the way) departed.

The morning started out gray and a bit drizzly, not much in the way of vacation weather, but by the time we had breakfasted, the rain stopped and the sun played peek-a-boo haphazardly through gray patchy clouds.  We strolled through Riverside Park between our hotel and the conference center, crossing bridges, inhaling clean air and inspiring landscapes.  The ladies would pause and take pictures, but I didn’t have my camera; I had to capture the picturesque downtown area in my mind.

At one of our final panoramic bridge photo ops, I glanced across the water at a handful of tourists sneaking down a bank to get a better view of the lower falls.  That’s when it hit me.  I had been here before.  When I was seven, Dad was stationed at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas.  That summer we took a family vacation: a few days in Yosemite—awesome, but it did nothing to assuage my acrophobia—then across the Golden Gate Bridge and up the Pacific Cost Highway.  Once we hit the Columbia River, we crisscrossed the states of Oregon and Washington until we hit Spokane.  For some reason, my dad thought he would retire up there, so he decided to buy a few acres close to Mount Spokane.

I remember a few scattered details about the Spokane part of the trip.  My dad had a new Betamax video camera.  Marc or David, I don’t recall which, busted his flip-flop traipsing through the underbrush of those ten acres of pine trees.  We stopped at a gas station on the return and I had a pineapple Crush soda.  (Never had one since.)

But standing on the bridge last Thursday, the raging of the falls came back, the red brick buildings, the dilapidated wood and chain-link fences.  I knew these sights…and not from postcards or distant stories.  Even though the I-Max theater was new, I had been on Canada Island before.  I had crossed the bridges as a boy, walked the trails, chased the squirrels, thrown rocks and sticks into the rapids.  The familiarity, which had been absent the previous three days, was rekindled in a small spark of memory.  And that familiarity brought contentment.  The power of memory and connection across 29 years made the entire trip worth it.

I’ve addressed the importance of mining for memories and the power that it holds in earlier posts, and I’m sticking to that claim.  Stories have power, and working to uncover what was once hidden in our lives, be they pleasant or horrific, is a process well worth the blood, sweat, and embarrassment of yesteryear.

I move that the human population would do well to set aside time, every so often, to reflect, to remember, and to contemplate the past and present so as to create a fuller, more meaningful future.  Writing, or journaling, or blogging, or sketching, or anything (really) physical and mechanical helps to solidify our life’s experiences and assists in the meaning-making we all seek in life.  Actually organizing our thoughts on paper helps shape the marble, shade the coloration, or dry the cement.  And at times, we can completely reconstruct our experiences from a new perspective—one that only years and seasoning can give birth to.  It’s all in the details and how we relish them, how we revel in them, and how we retain them.

As a teacher, I suggest that we provide students with opportunities to explore different moment sin their own lives.  Depending on the age of the students, they may not have very many eye-openers that they can recall.  However, and this is where I want to drive my point home, it is up to us to help them realize how special each minute detail may be.  Teach them to capture a snapshot of life; sagas are not necessary (really, they aren’t).  Nobody truthfully cares about what happened every minute of the day that led up to the food fight at lunch.  They just want to feel the past-prime peas pelted against their pock-marked faces.  They want to hear the squelching of mashed potatoes sloshed across someone’s unsuspecting mug.  They want to witness the spray of the chocolate milk carton exploding against the brick wall.

Teach them pacing.  Teach them to slow down those special EPSN highlight moments that they have had.  I will always marvel at how a close play at the plate, a single blocked shot, or a tackle in the backfield gets stretched into a three-minute segment.  Teach them to explode a scene, to take a 30-second thrill and stretch it over two or three pages that will hold the memory captive behind paper and ink (or digital) bars forever.

What’s that you say?  They still struggle to find ideas, to discover instances of significance in their short lives?  First, remind them that they don’t have to be world travelers to have an exciting life.  Sometimes thoughtful moments come in that landfill of a bedroom while blaring the latest trendy flash-in-the-pan performing artist.  Other times we need to slow down those sad and depressing episodes of our lives in order to analyze or make sense of this crazy, mixed-up world.

Sometimes, we all need a kick in the pants to get us going.  Students seem to need this more often, so one thing I like to do is to provide some kind of inspiration.   At times, it’s a picture—an illustration, meme, or work of art that will hopefully get them thinking.  Every now and again I give them a hypothetical situation or a question to ponder.  My favorite way to get students into a moment, though, is through a text.  I love to use short stories, poems, quotes, picture books—something text-based, to fire up those gerbil wheels and keep them spinning.  Check out my post about Writing Prompts Based on Readings.  It might help you get an example of what I’m talking about.  For those who need a framework, a prompt provides safety.  For those who are ready to explore the recesses of their mental abysses, they are free to wander…as long as they haul proper spelunking attire and accouterments.  See some of my personal rambles (look at the tags on the side bar over on the right) to see how it works for me.

Now, after I’ve babbled, I guess it’s time for me to shut up.  I may not have conveyed my thoughts perfectly here, but just sitting at my computer and physically typing the words has given me an outlet, an opportunity to try and make sense of the flotsam swimming through the clumps of gray matter inside my skull.  This is just a rough draft.  If it’s important enough to me, I’ll revise…yes, even after publication.

Your assignment: revisit the Spokane River.  Find those moments that have meaning.  Make connections between past and present.  Solidify them.  Even if you need some prompting, just do it.  Try one of my prompts. Discover something on your own.  Whatever you do, just write (even if your inner muse is on hiatus), reflect (even when it’s worse than rubbing hand sanitizer over an unidentified paper cut), and enjoy your life (or else).