Fictional Characters Rarely Make Good Dates

I remember one of my professors in college trying to explain to a student why we should read about characters we don’t like. It was the main character in Dostoyevski’s  “Notes from the Underground”, or was it one of Saul Bellow’s, in either case, a thoroughly pathetic and mostly unpleasant character. The exchange went like this:
“Well, why do we have to read about this loser anyway. I don’t understand?”
” I don’t want you to date him. I just want you to try to understand him a little.”
Some of the best stories I have read are about people I wouldn’t want to date, but were written well enough that I could understand them a little and see something human in them. I think that is what good literature does; it gives us glimpses of humanity and chances to understand pieces of what it is to be human as well as engaging and entertaining us. Most of the characters in Dostoyevsky novels are like this. Maybe I wouldn’t have liked people who lived in Russia around 1860, but thanks to Dostoyevsky, I can see connections between these people and myself as well as everyone else I meet and talk with every day. In the last few years, I have been reading a lot of a Japanese author, Haruki Murakami. It is fascinating to see the inside of another culture presented so clearly. It is like being an internal tourist. He describes the feeling of being Japanese in the late twentieth century so well through the thoughts and interactions of his characters. I feel like I understand what it is to be Japanese at least from the authors point of view. Or consider what Ursula LeGuin does with totally fabricated cultures.
I am off to work  with some real characters. They are little and young and filled with ideas. I wonder what we will be doing today. I have my vague plans, but I am sure theirs will be better.

Why I Write Poetry/Getting Inside Another Cocoon

“I am mainly preoccupied with the world as I experience it, and at times when I would rather be dead the thought that I could never write another poem has so far stopped me. I think this is an ignoble attitude. I would rather die for love, but I haven’t.

“I don’t think of fame or posterity (as Keats so grandly and genuinely did), nor do I care about clarifying experiences for anyone or bettering (other than accidentally) anyone’s state or social relation, nor am I for any particular technical development in the American language simply because I find it necessary. What is happening to me, allowing for lies and exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems. I don’t think my experiences are clarified or made beautiful for myself or anyone else, they are just there in whatever form I can find them. What is clear to me in my work is probably obscure to others, and vice versa. My formal ‘stance’ is found at the crossroads where what I know and can’t get meets what is left of that I know and can bear without hatred. I dislike a great deal of contemporary poetry—all of the past you read is usually quite great—but it is a useful thorn to have in one’s side.

“It may be that poetry makes life’s nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time.” —Frank O’Hara

I found this here, and thought it was pretty close to the way I feel about poetry, only I am not as driven to it as Frank O’Hara, and I find more good in contemporary poetry (Though much of it alludes me) and the past is alright some of it inspirational, but much of it a little too dramatic and not enough momentary for my taste.

I feel like poetry should represent a way of feeling and perceiving in a moment as we all live life moment to moment each in our own little cocoon of senses and thoughts. Poems are an attempt to reach out like a little tube that can slide into other cocoons and communicate on more intimate level. Anyway parts of  O’Hara’s reasons for writing and the reasons he disavows line up with my reasoning pretty well. I am not out to make a grand statement or be famous, and I think that any poet who is is really searching too hard for disappointment. There are many easier and quicker ways to fame and glory. Poetry to me is one moment explained well from my point of view in a way that might connect to someone else enough to continue a real conversation. When I read poetry I find that much of it does not speak to me, but when I find a poet that speaks to me, it is like that person is speaking to the inside of me, breaking into my cocoon and whispering to my deepest self.

Summer Teaching and a Great Book

Summer Teaching

I have started full time at my summer job of keeping my little friends busy and safe. All I have to do is pay attention and go with their flow, and all is well. No paper work just being there for children and providing what they need. They have decided that Dr. Suess is great and have me reading the story of the pale green pants with no one inside them every day. We also have a great box project going, where each has their own special box and I provide materials for them to decorate it. There is one that has his moments, but I am definitely reaching him already after just one week so I feel pretty solid. So many calm moments of children just being and doing what is natural to them — learning about their world. Why do teachers think we have to interfere so much in children’s lives? Curriculum, I don’t need no stinking curriculum. I just need to pay attention and have a few ideas and some interesting materials. The children do the rest.

Short and Vague Review: 2666 by Roberto Bolano

I just finished a facinating novel by Roberto Bolano translated from Spanish, called “2666.” It is about so much that I could not tell you what it is about. It is written in the form of 5 novelas with vague connections to each other, some stronger than others. In the end I got the feeling that somewhere out in the future it all makes more sense, or maybe not. It is not very important. Like any good novel, for me, it was living a life in another skin, or experiencing the world from a slightly shifted dimension. I come back a little changed with a fuller understanding of life as a human being. Also I feel a little disoriented, like I only got some of what he was saying and maybe some of what he said by accident. I think the really good writers are not able to know all the levels contained in their work. There are shadows and reflections that are cast that they are not able to see. There are so many combinations of characters and symbols that interact with the reader that they cannot know what chimeras will hatch. I always come out of novels like this as if I have gone to a foreign country and my mind has not yet assimilated all of the strangeness and time of a different land. That is how I know it was a well written piece. It shifts my perspective and I see more of the human experience. The scope of what I have read has to linger because I am unable to process the whole experience on a conscious level. I am sure that bits of this novel will resurface in poems and dreams for a long while to come.

A Poem on a Magazine Headline And 2 Preschool Classroom Notes

Hot Vampires in Love

The TV Guide shouted

above the conveyor

carrying my groceries

to the supermarket checker.

Suddenly I missed

Warren Zevon.

Only he could write this song.

Note #1:  On Teasing

I had a large group of very active boys for the last two years. There has been a lot of teasing and a lot of lost tempers. The thing I finally hit upon with them was to talk with the 5 boys who were doing most of the teasing (They also were the ones most sensitive to it of course). Together we came to a pretty good definition of teasing and a signal I or other children could do to alert the teaser to his behavior. We decided on simply saying the word “Teasing” with our “no thank you” sign which is sign language for “no”. Within 3 weeks the worst offenders had reduced their behavior by 3/4 and we had very few temper outburst. I did most of the alerting, and I did it very matter-of-factly with no judgment, or as little as I could manage. One boy who was the worst offender almost completely stopped teasing behavior within 2 weeks of the start of our experiment.It so important to give children immediate feedback (especially with children under 5) without interrupting their flow or making them feel badly.

Note #2: On Exploring Emotions and Feelings

Emotion coaching is one of the only effective tools that a preschool teacher has to use when teaching children how to successfully integrate into a group and learn social skills. I think that teachers should be thoroughly trained to be sensitive, and use this in mostly one on one situations. Why would we as educators talk about water, sand, or kangaroos and not about feelings? We should explore feelings as freely as we explore butterflies or mud puddles. That way they may be less scary and more easy to manage.
Now if a child starts to disclose abuse or shows signs of emotional distress, of course you cut the activity short and check on the child as well as talking with the parent to report what happened and see if you can give more support to the child around whatever issues came up. In my experience parents often are relieved to have a sensitive teacher who is willing to give extra support to a child who is experiencing a crisis as long as you support the parent as well.

Three Tomatoes in a Sunny Window