Elevator Greetings

As many of you know, I was born in Japan. We live off-base for a while, but when I was not quite a year old we moved into a tower apartment on Yokota AFB. We lived on the sixth floor. I have no real recollection of this, but my mom likes to tell a story about me when we lived in the tower when I was not quite two.

Apparently I was not a shy toddler. Any time we ascended or descended in the elevator, no matter how many floors we traveled between stops, I would greet the other riders. However, I differentiated depending on who rode with us. Any American that rode with us got a “hi, there” or a hearty “hello.” However, if a person of Japanese descent got on the lift, I would bow deeply and say “konnichiwa.”

As part of a writing assignment I am doing along with my 9th graders, I asked my mom to share a story that I had no recollection of. This was it. In the past I've pushed memory and mining for them. Sometimes there is nothing you can do but ask for help.

Opening My Virtual Pocket

Stephen King said something along these lines: the act of encountering a well-placed simile has the same effect on a reader as meeting an old friend. I submit that encountering a good poem is similar, even if we have never heard it before. This year, I rediscovered a poet, whom I had unfortunately forgotten until a student used this poem (found on a random poem hunt) for his entry in our class poetry slam last week. And even though Rilke isn't actually an old personal acquaintance of mine--I've only read a few of his works--I have been writing and thinking about reflection and memory in the recent past, and I found this poem fitting.

"Fire's Reflection" by Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. A. Poulin)

Perhaps it's no more than the fire's reflection
on some piece of gleaming furniture
that the child remembers so much later
like a revelation.

And if in his later life, one day
wounds him like so many others,
it's because he mistook some risk
or other for a promise.

Let's not forget the music, either,
that soon had hauled him
toward absence complicated
by an overflowing heart....


Be sure to share with me your poem, either electronically or in person

...The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth

"Recollection, I have found, is usually about half invention, and right now I realize that there is much about (insert whatever or whomever you want here) that I either invented or got secondhand" (61). Wallace Stegner spoke these words to me as I meandered through his Crossing to Safety last night. There is beauty in its language (at least so far), but it is definitely not a plot-driven book, and so it gives me time to ponder while the characters interact and spout truths at each other.

And there is truth in this line.

)from http://eprahaar.in/exploding-gas-cylinders-spark-massive-fire-none-hurt/)

When I read Stegner's passage, my mind was immediately drawn to the story about the Fourth of July I alluded to in yesterday's blog scribble. That incident happened when I lived in Las Vegas--I don't remember which summer. Our family had gone somewhere on Nellis AFB to watch the annual firework show. I usually tell the story that a few smaller rockets went off--a traditional warm-up for a military-grade show. Then a larger rocket streaked low across the sky but fell back earthward, out of sight before exploding in the back of the truck where all the fireworks were stored. A massive flame erupted, destroying the truck, lighting up the sky, and ruining the rest of the night. It's a great story.

However, no one else in my family remembers that night like I do, or at least the way I think I remember it. They were there, but the details aren't quite the same. And when I'm honest with myself, and dig into the shafts of my mind before detonating the charges, I can visualize another not-quite-so-spectacular version of that night's events. The tale starts the same, but after the dud rocket comes back down, nothing happens. And then even more nothing. And then there are just a bunch of disappointed people packing up unused sparklers, ratty lawn chairs, and coolers full of Shasta. I recall hearing at school (later in the fall) that a truck blew up.

So which of the stories is accurate? Which one is the truth? I'm not sure. I know which one makes a better story, though. But does it even matter? I begin to doubt myself. I have touched on the subject of excavating memories to produce writing on more than one occasion, using terms like embellishment and ESPN highlight reels to describe our finished products. And any good storyteller knows that the more you tell a story, the better it gets (usually). Right? Even if some fictional elements weasel their way in. Right? I've been contemplating this for close to 18 hours now, and I am not any closer to a conclusion. Call me non-committal, or chalk it up to working too much with argument writing, but I haven't been convinced one way or another yet. I would love to get your thoughts and feedback.

So let me rephrase: Does it matter which version of the truth you guard in your memories? And then, if you care to elaborate more, how does that affect what we pass on, be it oral or written?

Just promise me you'll tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Also check out Nothing But the Truth by Avi.

And Here's More Evidence

Yesterday I wrote, or rather, rambled for a while regarding learning how to write one skill at a time, and how I am really a conglomeration of all the lessons I've learned before. Not two minutes after I had posted and reposted 27 times because the formatting was off (I'm still not happy about it), I picked up my newly-acquired Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins and read "Memorizing 'The Sun Rising' by John Donne."

“Memorizing ‘The Sun Rising’ by John Donne” by Billy Collins

Every reader loves the way he tells off

the sun, shouting buy old fool

into the English skies even though they

were likely cloudy on that seventeenth-century morning.

And it’s a pleasure to spend this sunny day

pacing the carpet and repeating the words,

feeling the syllables lock into rows

until I can stand and declare,

the book held close by my side,

that hours days, and months are but the rags of time.

But after a few steps into stanza number two,

wherein the sun is blinded by his mistress’s eyes,

I can feel the first one begin to fade

like sky-written letters on a windy day.

And by the time I have taken in the third,

the second is likewise gone, a blown-out candle now,

a wavering line of acrid smoke.

So it’s not until I leave the house

and walk three times around this hidden lake

that the poem begins to show

any interest in walking by my side.

Then, after my circling,

better than the courteous dominion

of her being all states and him all princes,

better than love’s power to shrink

the wide world to the size of a bedchamber,

and better even than the compression

of all that into the rooms of these three stanzas

is how, after hours stepping up down the poem,

testing the plank of every line,

it goes with me now, contracted into a little spot within.

Instant validation.

I think now about how horrible I am about memorizing bits and pieces, especially extended texts, and how usually once I have something down, another chunk of knowledge gives my mind the slip.

Most of the time, memorizing facts or formulas or French verb conjugations is like a Boy Scout learning his knots. He repeat over and over again, "drilling and killing," but despite his best efforts, the information still does not hold fast. The synapses fire long enough to pass off the requirement or the quiz, but then the skill disappears, forever into the dark void between his ears, or so it appears. Hope is not lost, my friends; not for you, not for the scout. At least, not yet. If you internalize the knowledge, be it stanza or sheepshank, grammar rule or game design, and actually use it, that tidbit of knowledge becomes a part of you, ready to creep to the surface in a contemplative stroll across the field, or it may pop out when you desperately have to secure your tent during a downpour. Eventually, it has the potential to become wisdom through experience.

It's not automatic, of course; you must work at retrieval of stored knowledge. It takes practice listening to that inner self. And you must practice! introspect.

You never know how or when the miscellanea lodged in your gray matter will be of use (or distraction). How often do song lyrics come to the forefront of your thoughts when you are alone, or psyching yourself up for the interview, or whatever? What do you do with them? Dance? Ponder life, the universe, and everything? Ignore that buzzing sound in your skull and grunt like a Neanderthal? Recognize it as a part of who you are?

So, I guess what I'm saying is that we, as human beings, need to cram as much learning into our brains as we can. And then we need to wedge in some more, even if it seems like we might lose other dear memories and ideas. They're still there; you just have to mine for them sometimes.

Again, let me assuage your fears, those who fear attracting zombies with those overstuffed brains. Don't worry. You have nothing to fear. In the moment, something that you supposedly learned back in Boy Scouts will help you survive.

The Price of Words

Since I have a stack of 7th grade personal essays staring at me, I thought I should probably finish the one I started as a model for them.

                I sat alone on the steps outside Lakenheath High School in the gathering dusk, waiting for the late bus to pick me up.  It would amble along for more than an hour before depositing me across the street from my house in Newmarket.  Spring hadn’t made up its mind if it was going to stick around yet or not, and I was glad I had a sweatshirt.  Normally the stop was crowded with kids who hung out after school for drama or sports or detention or whatever.  I had stayed behind for other sentimental reasons: sophomore year was coming to a close and within a few days I would be leaving England forever.  Dad had been reassigned stateside after three and a half years, and although I was anxious to leave, part of me didn’t want to let go of what had become an integral part of who I was.  I wanted to soak it all in before I left.

                The voice came from nowhere.  “Do you still think I’m conceited?”

                Startled, from my reverie, I stammered.  “What?”  And then I looked up.  Carrie Williams stood over me.  “What did you say?”

                “I said,” she said, switching books from one hip to the other, “do you still think I’m conceited?”

                Where was this coming from?  Of course she wasn’t conceited; Carrie was one of the most compassionate, selfless souls in our small sophomore class.  We weren’t exactly friends, but we ran in some of the same circles.  I had known Carrie since midway through seventh grade when I moved from Japan and found myself in class with her and several others for most of the day.  The only classes I didn’t have with her that year were band, gym, and science.

My mind raced back over the few interactions I had had with Carrie over the past few weeks.  Had I really said something that insensitive?

                “You remember, don’t you?” she asked.  “Back in eighth grade?”

                And then, as she stood there, tapping her foot impatiently, a scene rushed to my recollection.

                Eighth grade.  Mr. Haworth’s algebra class had just bombed another test—me included.  Most likely, I was shuffling along with Rob, Will, or John, all comrades in our miserable algebra experience.  And then we stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

                Carrie, surrounded by a group of her friends, stood in our way, bangs flipped and sprayed to perfect hardness, smacking her pseudo-fruity neon gum.  And then the interrogation began.  She turned to each one of us individually, her finger pointed, asking one question: “Do you think I’m conceited?  So-and-so said I was conceited.  Do you think I’m conceited?”

                We stood facing each other like rocks in the middle of a stream.  Between the math and science buildings, countless seventh and eighth graders flowed around us, concerned about reaching second period on time.  A small trickle of students merged from the rivulet coming from the library to the north, broadening the width of the middle school river.

                My friends looked like terrified hedgehogs caught on the back roads of a British fen between the headlights of an oncoming three-wheeler.  Each shook his head and stammered.  “Nope.”

                I was confused.  I didn’t know what that meant.  The closest thing I could retrieve from the recesses of my vocabulary was “conceded.”   But that didn’t make any sense.  I stood clueless, with no idea about she was saying.  Scrambling for an appropriate answer, my mind raced over recent blacktop gossip.  It was rumored that Carrie and my buddy Neil had French kissed outside in the library entrance earlier, despite all the protestations that she didn’t like him more than a friend.

                That sounded like she conceded something, right?  Internal conclusion reached, I nodded my head.

                “What?” she shrieked.  “You think I’m conceited?”

                “I-I guess,” I replied.

                Laughter erupted.  The crowd began jostling and shouting.

                Carrie stood there, her jaw hanging like a broken trap door, her blue eyes hidden behind clumps of mascara.

                Then the bell rang and the swarm of students fled to their classrooms like rats to their holes as the cat-like assistant principal Mr. Allan emerged from the office building to chase away the stragglers.

                I hadn’t given that incident a second thought until those same blue eyes, shining in the dying light, behind not as much make-up, looked straight into mine.  I hadn’t had too much interaction with Carrie over the past few years—few words, if any passed between us apart from meaningless pleasantries when other friends were around, but it seemed like she really wanted to talk now, like there was something she needed to get out.  Her eyes flickered, not with anger, but with a little aching, it seemed.

                “You remember, don’t you?” she repeated.  “Back in eighth grade?”

                I swallowed hard and nodded, embarrassed like a kindergartner caught eating paste.

                She continued.  “Why did you think I was conceited?”

                I looked down at my feet.  Shuffled.  Tried to think of something to say to mask my embarrassment.

                “Hmm?” she prodded.  She wasn’t upset, but honestly curious.

                I looked up, her eyes catching mine, and I knew I couldn’t lie.

                “Well,” I began, “I don’t think you are conceited.  I never did.”

                “Then why did you say that?”  Her voice quavered a little.

                Realization sucker punched me.  Sheepishly, shaking my head, I answered: “Back then…”

                “Yeah…?”

                “I didn’t know what ‘conceited’ meant.  Sorry.”

                Carrie Williams stood with her jaw hanging open for a few more seconds, and the eighth-grade flashback returned for a moment, just the way I left her standing on the blacktop a few years prior.  Then she shut her mouth and breathed slowly through her nose, pausing as if searching for what to say next.

Only the rush of traffic interrupted the silence.  And then, unexpectedly, she started to giggle quietly.  “Did you know I’ve been carrying that grudge around for two years?”

Her confession startled me.

“I decided that I didn’t want to like you because of that day,” she continued.  “That was dumb.”

I reflected on the truth of her comment.  If I looked back at the interactions I had with her, they were strained: student council assignments had indeed been awkward when the two of us were together.  Class assignments didn’t go so well when we were in the same group.  Realization of what my vocabulary ignorance had done between Carrie and me crept up behind me, just as the bus did.

I grabbed my backpack and trumpet case, mumbling another lame apology.

“You know,” she said as I started to climb aboard, “we could have had a lot of fun.”  A semi-flirtatious smile grew on her lips.  “Too bad you’re leaving.”

“Yep,” I conceded, “Too bad.”

She waved as the bus pulled away.

Sunday Afternoon Wrestling

This was written (with my students) after reading Eoin Colfer’s “Artemis Begins” from Guys Read: Funny Business.

Unlike most brothers, we didn’t beat the crap out of each other out of anger.  No, the abuse was voluntary and most of the time encouraged by the recipients.  I don’t think I did too much damage without their consent—just an occasional dead-arm punch.

Back when there were just the three of us boys, we established a weekly tradition when we lived in Japan.  For some reason Sunday afternoons were sacredly observed as Mom’s nap time.  We’d come home from church, have a large dinner—usually chicken and rice, lasagna, or something else loaded with carbs, and then Mom would disappear for a few hours.  Sometimes, when Dad was home, we’d wrestle with him, and then settle down for a movie.

Every once in a while, Dad would have an extra meeting, or would be gone on a TDY for the Air Force, and we’d have to entertain ourselves while Mom slumbered.  Of course, it was only natural to carry on our tradition of Sunday afternoon wrestling.  However, without Dad to supervise, it would get out of control and heads would get busted, eyes poked, feelings hurt; but we kept fighting for the fun of it.  And without fail, we’d wake up Mom, and that would be the end—the rest of Sunday spent in our rooms, apart from each other.

One Saturday we watched WrestleMania III where Hulk Hogan defeated Andre the Giant.  By the next day Marc had perfected his impersonation of Randy “Macho Man” Savage, and was in rare (annoying) form.  I decided to try a new move on my brothers.  I was getting tired of using the same techniques that kept them at bay; I needed to inflict a new type of pain.  You see, as I was the oldest, they usually tag-teamed against me when Dad wasn't there to keep things even.  Sometimes, they would attack at once and try to pin me.  They never could.  Ever.  Still can’t.

A few months before, my parents purchased new blue-gray couches for the living room.  They were tired of the ugly basic brown base furniture the military supplied.  The back stood about three or four feet off the ground: the perfect height, or so I thought, to be the “top rope” of our wrestling ring.

After I had knocked both Marc and David to the floor, I climbed to the top rope, and jumped at them with my arms stretched out for a double clothesline as they staggered to their feet.  It worked a little too well.

Unfortunately, I fell faster than I had anticipated, and when I caught both of them, sending them thudding back to the floor, their resistance didn’t slow me down at all.  My head smacked into the thinly carpeted floor.  All three of us lay there for what seemed like forever.  No one cried.  No one tattled.  But our wrestling careers seriously calmed down after that.  When we half-heartedly started back up, David tried the same aerial tactic multiple times, but I would just catch him mid-air and set him on the couch.  Somehow, wrestling my brothers lost its luster for me.  It was never the same again.  I would never lose.

Just a few summers ago, Marc, David, Nicole, and Dad all ganged up on me to try and throw me in the inflatable kiddie pool set up for the grandkids.  Guess who the only one who didn't get wet was?

From the Mouths of Poets

The first time I remember seeing a poet read her work I was an undergrad student at BYU.  My wife and I went with our professor Sirpa Grierson and another student (I don’t remember her name) up to Copper Hills High School to hear Jorie Graham read and present to the high school students.

We got a little lost on the way up; arriving late, we had to find a seat in the back of the school’s library, which was fairly large for a high school, if I remember, and it was packed.  A group of students were selected to read their works.  We came in during this time.  Most of the poems were full of imageless angst, awkward swearing, and pretend pent-up anger. It was like I was back in the Lancer Lot writing group back at Belleville East; too many kids trying to have horrible lives to write about, when most of them were pampered snobs—“phonies,” as Holden Caulfield identifies them.  Few were genuine.  And the same was happening in the semi-open mic session at CHHS.

Lunch was a zoo, and it took a while to reconvene for the keynote.  When Jorie got up she dropped the F-bomb on everyone.  One.  Single.  Word.  There was an audible gasp; most of the crowd swallowed themselves.  It was silent full a full five alligators, and then the room began to buzz.  Loudly.  Jorie stepped back from the microphone then patiently stood and watched.  After a moment she cleared her throat and taught a powerful lesson.  She said that if you were offended hearing the words, then you shouldn't use them in your poetry.  Don’t use words that are not your own.  The most important thing to be in poetry is real.  You can’t pretend to be something you are not.

Back in 10th grade I wrote a poem for Mr. Albert’s Honors English class about the death of a girlfriend.  It was rushed—written on the bus on the way to school after someone asked if I had written anything.  During first period I shared it with a few girls to see if it made any sense.  After class they returned my folded sheet of loose leaf covered in blue ink with tears in their eyes.  They repeatedly asked if I was okay…if I was over it…if I wanted to talk about it.  Huh?

Confused, I wasn't sure what they were talking about.  Oh, yeah.  My poem.  It wasn't real, but I wasn't going to them that…yet.  I believe I was in a Poe phase—having read and studied “Annabel Lee” recently.  I had been imitating style and content.  Needless to say, I had drawn instant sympathy…instant status…every sophomore’s dream, right?  That is until Mr. Albert saw through the phoniness as they were read in aloud in class.  He saw in an instant that I had no idea what I was talking about and had me confess in front of the class.  Crash and burn.  Status revoked.  I didn't try it again.  (Side note: Don’t ask.  I don’t have a copy of it.  And I don’t really remember it either.) 

I don’t remember any of the poetry Ms. Graham read and performed that day, or much else of what was said in that library—just a little explication of W.C.W’s red wheelbarrow poem—something to do with the American Revolution or whatnot.  Actually, I have only read one or two of her poems since that experience—simply out of neglect not spite or self-righteousness.  The experience (until today) had been buried under layers of other poets and preachers and presenters.  This is how I remember the occasion.  My wife Amy, Dr. Grierson, or any others who attended that session might remember it differently.  And I may or may not have presented things as black-and-white accurately as they happened.  But in my head this is truth.  It happened.  I was there.  I learned from it.

So I guess this is a little plug for the adage to write what you know (even if what you know is created in your imagination, as I've heard some sci-fi/fantasy authors say).  Sometimes my version of reality is a little skewed, but then again, so is everyone else’s.

And as I rehearsed to my 9th graders this morning, keep working at what you know.  I do it all the time. Each memory I excavate and develop becomes another narrative that I have learned from or someone else can learn from—lessons about writing, about girls, about when not to fart, and other important facets of life.  I challenge you to do the same.

Guilt That Never Disappears Completely (or Drawing Mustaches)

Again, this comes from deep-brain salvaging--memories unearthed after following a prompt.  It’s not perfect, but here’s what happened this time.  Written after reading Jack Gantos’s “The Follower” to a group of 7^th graders:

With the exception of the interactions among my brothers, I believe that for most of my childhood I was a follower.  I sneaked out of my house…only when I was a friend's house.  I vandalized tents and sidewalks and other types of property, but only when someone else was the ringleader.  One particularly weak me-as-follower incident came when I was eleven years old.  In church, some of the leaders decided they wanted to spotlight a different child each week.  A poster was placed in a prominent part of the hallway with a large photograph and some frivolous facts about the child:  a favorite color, favorite food, favorite scripture story, and two or three other trivial tidbits.  Each poster would remain hanging for a month and rotated out as additional children were “spotlighted.”

For some time, several of my male peers had been drawing mustaches on everything—cartoons, handouts, whatever.  When I expressed to them that I thought the idea of the spotlight was ridiculous, they dared me to draw a mustache on one.  When the first picture up happened to be G_____, a girl I sort of had a crush on, they razzed me even more—poking, prodding, daring me to draw facial hair on this dimpled, dirty-blonde who set my stomach silly.  I volunteered to deface one of the others, but for the guys, in order for me to accomplish the task, the mustache had to be hers.

A couple weeks passed.  I couldn’t do it.  I knew it was wrong—wrong to betray my twitterpated feelings for her; it would be defacing property…in the church, even!  What made it worse was that my mom was one of the women in charge of this hair-brained public display thingy, and there was no way I wanted to disappoint her.  For days my shoulder angel and shoulder devil had a full-on sumo match without a decisive winner.  However, in the end I wanted to win the approval of my peers, and right before the church building was locked up for the week, with a black licorice-scented marker, I drew a bushy, curly mustache nigh unto Rollie Fingers.  A little crooked, since I was trying to covertly complete the operation, it sat unnoticed for a week.

When we came back the following Sunday, the photo had been removed.  My buddies never saw the picture, but they assumed I had fulfilled my fraternal obligation when we all got chewed out by our leaders that afternoon—something about respecting property.  Afterward, without adult supervision, I hardly noticed the high fives and slaps on the back.  I simply swallowed guiltballs the size of grapefruits each time I looked over at the blank spot on the wall.  From then on I couldn’t even look G_____ in the eyes to muster the gumption to talk to her.  Oh, well, right?  To this day, I still don’t know if anyone found out exactly who did it, but when I think on it, I can feel the burning in my stomach that no amount of Rolaids or Tums could help.  Lesson learned.

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

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).