Month: March 2012

Adrienne Rich and “The Trees”

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The poet Adrienne Rich died at age 82 yesterday, March 28.  The New York Times in its obituary describes her as “among the most influential writers of the feminist movement.” This is true. Let’s also acknowledge her as one of the great writers, period, of the 20th century. Her body of work is still fresh and relevant.

The most recent issue of Granta included a new poem, “Endpapers,” which prompted me to re-read the anthology Facts of a Doorframe (new edition, 2002) and essays Arts of the Possible (2002). I first read her work deeply in a graduate class taught by Renée Bergland at Simmons College, which I attended from the age of 35 to 38. This is perhaps late to come to Adrienne Rich, seeing that she had been around as an influential writer since the 1960s, but it was the right time for me. Awakenings, after all, tend to happen once a person has some adulthood under her belt. A favorite poem from Doorframe is “The Trees.” If you know me or are a reader of this blog, this won’t surprise you. What’s surprising about the poem, however, is how unromantic it is for a nature poem: trees in a greenhouse break out as though patients from an asylum.

See below the jump for an excerpt of the poem by Rich and an excerpt of a paper comparing Rich’s “The Trees” to Frost’s “Birches” (another poem loved by me) I wrote in April 2003 for Renée’s excellent women’s poetry course. I have some new thoughts on the poem, too. Continue reading →

Writing to confront the human heart in conflict

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At last, another writer has excavated an issue about writing that has been worrying me. Does the desire to write and publish spring from some creative well (that is the hope) or does it spring from neurosis (that is the worry)?

In Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Steve Almond, story writer and essayist, argues convincingly that the rise of writing workshops parallels a decline in talk therapy. He claims that what brings many individuals to writing, and to MFA programs, is less an interest in craft than a location for their “loneliness and sorrow.” About himself as a young writer, he says

I figured I had gone into the literary racket because I had urgent and profound things to say about the world and because I was a deeply creative person. But looking back, I can see that the instigating impulse for me, for all of us really, was therapeutic. We were writing to confront what Faulkner called “the human heart in conflict with itself.” And not just any heart. Our hearts.

Gulp.

copyright: Pina (2011), by Wim Wenders

A few weeks ago, Jimmy and I went out for a quick dinner at Mantra (definitely on the down curve) before seeing Pina in 3D nearby. This you should see. Determined not to talk about the children or money, we discussed our side projects: he’s working on a novel about a discontented middle-aged man trying to reconcile himself to his life with antics both professional and personal, and I am working on a YA novel about a family of three children who have been abandoned by their parents and are trying to make it on their own, without revealing their situation to concerned adults around them. The more we described the characters and events to each other, the more concerned I became.

“Um,” I finally said, “Don’t you think this is really, really messed up?”

“What’s messed up?” Jimmy asked, perhaps having more fun with this conversation than I was.

“That maybe what we’re writing aren’t really novels, but just projections of our own subconscious conflicts and desires? Like maybe we should quit writing and straighten ourselves out?”

copyright: Pina (2011), by Wim Wenders

Jimmy responded with a writer’s answer: “In my writing, I’m trying to go to the places I fear to go.” Apparently, in his novel, the protagonist’s wife is killed, and this is upsetting to Jimmy, and so he’s writing into the terror. Armchair psychologist that I am, I speculated to myself that he also secretly and occasionally fantasizes about the disappearance of his own wife. (That’s okay, as long as I can remain alive in another dimension.)

And, hey, my subconscious is besmirched too. My protagonist may be a 13 year old girl and not a middle-aged married woman, but the mother of this girl — and the father — end up abandoning their kids in a series of events both planned and unplanned. What does that say about me? Continue reading →

Scratching an itch

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Recent travels in the neighborhood, either on foot or in car, have taken me past Allandale Farm, still closed for the winter. Curiously, there are two bulls regularly lounging in the shade near the algae-filled pond. I say curiously because this is a new sight at the farm, and I have no idea why they are there.

Driving past, I point them out to Grace. She has the same question as mine. “Why?”

“My guess is that the farm has rented them to sire the cows,” I say.

Then I recall that there are no cows there.

“Another thought,” I add, “is that the farm owns them, and they are renting out the bulls to impregnate cows on other farms.”

“I don’t really get it,” says Grace. For once, I decide not to explain everything. Beyond mentioning that cows are female and bulls male, I avoid the topic of animal husbandry.

But the desire to get up close and inspect the bulls remained. Today I walked over to the farm, cutting through the cemetery — yeah, I know, growth and death, circle of life — and made my way over to the pond. There is a shed and pen for the bulls, and as I approached, one of the bulls stuck his massive head over the wire fence. I was kind of flattered, as though the bull had pegged me as a friendly person who might give an apple or a pat. I was also intimidated: the bull was bigger than a VW Beetle, his head alone bigger than a 30 pound supermarket turkey.

Turns out, he didn’t want me, an apple, or a pat. He wanted to scratch. First he rhythmically scratched behind his right ear by rubbing it on the chain link fence post. His eyes rolled back in the sockets. Next he rhythmically scratched behind his left ear after deliberately adjusting the position of his head. This I videoed.

He was smart enough to get what he needed from his environment.

I walked home in the other direction, through a neighborhood of once-starter homes that have been lived in for ages. I noticed that, in most of the yards, a number of idiosyncratic gardening purchases and decisions have mostly led to clutter, either actual or visual. I made a mental note to go through my own yard carrying a big plastic garbage bag and to throw out the old plastic pots I’ve left here and there as well as the ugly or surplus ornaments. The season for gardening is beginning.

My last stop before home was the local Starbucks for iced coffee. Some itches are easy to scratch. I might as well this one, I thought.
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UPDATE (June 1, 2012): I was at Allandale today buying some mulch and a few dahlias. A young woman who worked for the farm loaded the mulch into the car. I asked her about the bulls: “Are you folks going to breed them?” She answered that the original intention was to farm them for meat, but that the longer they hang around, the more attached the farmers and the patrons are becoming to them. (And they are steer, not bulls, which I was politely told are castrated bulls.)

I also learned that they are a friendly species, Scottish Highland, “which are used in rehabilitative setting,” this young farmer explained. “They’re good with people.”

“So, like, they’re therapy bulls, er, steer?” I asked.

“Yes, like that,” she answered.

Not a runner, here I am running

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On Sunday March 18, Lydia and I ran our first 5K, the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Road Race. The distance is modest in number, but it feels monumental as an accomplishment, and I wrote about it for my other blog on A Sweet Life: link. See Jane run! See others, like this fellow with his dog, run too.

Man with dog crosses finish line, South Boston, March 18

Beyond finding out that I can run for 3.1 miles, hills included, I experienced something else worth knowing that can help me with other things in my life I want to do (like writing and skating): habits are motivated by a goal.  Lydia and I spent several weeks plodding along with regularity, but our interest in and commitment to running really picked up when we registered for the race. Our habits suddenly had purpose.

The day after the race we ran again, and Lydia took us on a new route. She increased our distance by ten percent. Neither of us really felt like running — didn’t we deserve a rest? a treat? — but we did. In four weeks, on April 15, we have another 5K in Boston.

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Image credit: Jimmy Guterman

Ebb and flow, everyone. Ebb and flow.

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“Let go your thoughts.” Portia, the yoga teacher, gently suggests this a few times in the first half hour.

I try of course, even though it is ironic that it takes effort — and it really does — to let go. A thought is like a rubber raft on water, and I nudge its pliable edge. The thought floats away, yet it floats back.

About one time out of 10, I experience the state of gone thoughts. Once, my thoughts were so gone I even felt my inner state exert an almost hand-like effort, reaching for and coaxing them back. But thoughts kept floating away, slipping and shapeless.

Nine times out of 10, the most I can do is let go of my emotional attachment to what may be on my mind. This happens mostly when I’m on my back with my eyes closed. “Oh, so I’m thinking that,” I think, and I watch it like a movie without a plot. But I watch.

I have persistently wondered if I’m just not a yoga person in the mental way. Most of the time in everyday life it’s hard to look at my thoughts dispassionately.

We end yoga in sitting position, and we face the teacher. We hold our hands pressed together in front of our hearts, and our fingers point up. Portia says, “Namaste,” to each of us. In turn, we say, “Namaste,” to her.

Then it’s over.

She tidies the room for the next group as we collect our shoes and bags. Today as she wandered about, Portia said in her low and unhurried voice, “Ebb and flow, everyone. Ebb and flow.”  (Before class, she had mentioned a problem with her cell phone, and I felt relief that she was of this world.)

I grinned and said, “I like ‘Ebb and flow’ so much better than ‘Be here now.'”

Uncharacteristically, she gently huffed and said more sotto voce, “Oh. We could have a long conversation about that one.” She paused; her lips pressed together. “Yeah,” she said with finality.

This felt like a connection. And maybe I am a yoga person.

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Image of water plants from a February 2009 trip to the Wellesley College Greenhouses. My spring break is coming up. Time for a return visit.

Banana tattoo

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Eli was home from college for a week. Even when he was quiet he made his presence felt by the traces he left here and there: a skateboard in the mudroom, canvas shoes near the door, and water glasses near the couch and his bed.

This morning I grabbed the last banana to caramelize for the waffles, and I saw that Eli may have picked up my tendency (and taken it to the next level) to see writeable surfaces in every scrap.

How do I know he wrote “Banana…” on the banana? That’s his handwriting and his sense of humor.

I am instantly in love with this project

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This notice from The New Yorker caught my eye and rang the wonder bell.

Patrick Shea, an elementary-school teacher and musician who lives in Brooklyn, has spent the past three years setting “Moby-Dick” to music, writing one song per chapter. He’s performing them with his band, Call Me Ishmael, during a weekly residence at Pianos, a club on the Lower East Side.

I found Patrick Shea’s blog and song list. I found the song for possibly my favorite chapter, 89: Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish. My one-word review: peppy.

Not sure these songs will climb any charts, but no doubt Melville would have related to this display of obsessiveness.

It’s always good to leave a note

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We’re having friends over for dinner tonight. Because I’m working until 5pm today, I cooked the main dish (the filling for Korean beef tacos) overnight in the crockpot. This morning I shredded the meat, strained the broth, and packed the meat and liquid into the refrigerator. Eli is home from school for a week, and I can imagine him rummaging through the fridge in my absence, finding cooked shredded beef, and sampling. And there would go dinner.

He’s still asleep. Soon I’m off for the day, so I’m left him a communiqué, taped to the Pyrex measure containing the broth to be boiled down later.

About me Lydia once said to Jimmy, “It’s so cute how mom leaves these little scrap notes everywhere.”  Any paper bag, junk mail envelope, promotional note pad, newspaper or magazine page margin, notice from school, a stray and linty post-it note, or an old greeting or business card: these are writable surfaces and a good place for me to leave a list, note to self, or note to you.

On teaching: some lessons via David Byrne

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In February 2009, we went to see David Byrne and his band at Radio City Music Hall. The tour marked the occasion of Byrne’s new album, Everything That Happens Happens Today, with Brian Eno.

When the curtain opened, the audience saw the full band and dancers dressed in white and poised to play and Byrne himself also dressed in white but with his back to the audience. We could see his guitar strapped to him, although it was partly blocked from our view by his back.

We don’t expect this as audience: our first encounter with the performer ignoring us. He’s there for us, right?


In my seventh row seat, however, the teacher in me — immediately and without much reflection — got it. Facing an audience takes so much out of a person, even if he is accustomed to that encounter, that Byrne was delaying that moment. He was on stage and yet easing his way into it.

This memory and its interpretation is clearly my projection of an inner state on Byrne’s; I actually have no idea for this back-to-the-audience stance. (Indeed, when I mentioned this to Jimmy, who has a different memory of the show, he said, “Maybe Byrne was talking to the drummer and the curtain suddenly went up, and he was caught there.”) This interpretation is about me and my relationship to my audience, i.e. students, much in the way my dream about Beck was about me.

Unless you are a raging extrovert and love the limelight, it takes some psychic sturdiness and a little push to get one’s self, as a teacher, to stand up in front of those students every day and really be the teacher.

Today, writing in the New York Times about his experiences as high school teacher of students with learning disabilities (please read his great essay!), William Johnson describes one dimension of the job that requires special fortitude:

Like most teachers I know, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I have to be. Dozens and dozens of teenagers scrutinize my language, clothing and posture all day long, all week long. If I’m off my game, the students tell me. They comment on my taste in neckties, my facial hair, the quality of my lessons. All of us teachers are evaluated all day long, already. It’s one of the most exhausting aspects of our job.

[…] If our students are not learning, the let us know. They put their heads down or they pass notes. They raise their hands and ask for clarification. Sometimes, they just stare at us like zombies.

And if they are college students, sometimes they just fall asleep. Continue reading →