Wednesday, February 28, 2018

When the Going Gets Weird


You are tempted to look back to see where it all went wrong. Some value there, for sure, but you can't linger in the coulda-shoulda-mighta world of maybe and regret. Sorry, friend, but you won't find the path by looking back or to the side, where you see the others all pulling ahead and you fall into a funk of compare. Your lesson lies in front, out there in the great big you-have-no-idea. Though you may not believe it, your path is the way into the land of even weirder. You have begun the twist of weird and have tasted a tad of that. There is more, though, much more. You have no idea of the depth, where the bottom is, because there is no bottom, only your willingness to go forward. Listen and learn, beloved. It's right there in the space between, the perfect note you are longing to play. Feel the pull and pull back the curtain. Weirder things have happened, have yet to happen. Your turn.

Winter Blue


Snow has fallen on the mountains. The snow line lies below the bank of clouds that obscures the high peaks. Morning dawns wet, cold, gray. It's a long work day, so he is scraping the windshield in the half light before sunrise. This is a rare gift, this taste of sopping cold front, a chill that cuts through the thin desert jacket. He wants coffee, needs it. The familiar acid burn has become part of a morning ritual, tonic, medicine. It is a comfort in these hard times, the ones where sleep is the only peace.There wasn't much of that last night, he thinks as the frost flies from the glass onto his ungloved hand. No, not much sleep means the day will come at him through a lens of cracked prism, a sharp, distorted set of demands. It's a gauntlet, this, he thinks. How much longer can I carry on, he thinks. The cold beauty of the snow taunts him, winking. Not much longer, friend. Not much.

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Justice


There will come a day when you are seen for what you did that was right, who you were in the eyes of those who needed your help. The ones who blocked your path, who, out of fear, flung petty insults and ganged up to cast a shadow over your light, will face the cost of their meanness. That is not your concern. Your having taken the hard path will earn you peace. Your broken heart will beat again. What was hard to see will shine, and yes, you will drink from the pool of integrity. The earthly limits will loosen and fall away as you rise. But not yet, dear one. Not yet. There is still work to do, and you must remember. Remember that you are on this place but not fully of this place. You will learn to love the earth so deeply that you will not want to leave, to let it go. It is only then that you will be ready, worthy. 

Teachers Caught In a Tightening Vise


When people ask me what I do I tell them I am a teacher. I don't say writer or professor or supervisor, though all of those are true. I say teacher because I feel that is the most important undertaking of my days. It is as a teacher that I feel the crunch of decreased money and the misguided pressures of assessment and security. Specifically, more and more of my time is taken up with "outcomes-based" teaching. Outcomes are not bad in theory, but the real stuff of education (exploration of big ideas, mulling over ways to express one's self, finding a path into a future that grows out of one's enthusiasm and sense of purpose) is difficult to measure and gets lost in outcomes that are discreet enough to "measure," to be captured as "data." We don't measure creative problem solving or learning work together to imagine a future more humane than the present we live in. The other pressure is the heavy weight of security. Schools have to be safe in order for learning to happen, so we have a greater presence of armed police. Yes, security is important, but it is the culture addicted to guns that exacerbates the likelihood of shootings. Both of these pressures make some people a lot of money, money that comes out of budgets for teaching and goes into administrators and enforcement, squeezing an already tight profession even further. Time for push-back and re-evaluation of what's worth the limited money we have to spend on students. 

Saturday, February 24, 2018

You Did What You Had to Do


You have put it out there, done the best you know how. And it is good. You do know that. But no one has noticed. So you pour more of yourself into the song that you are sure is the one you are supposed to sing. Nothing. Silence. You dig deeper, pull up from your guts that last nugget of what might possibly sustain you if you don't get some help. You polish it, unwrap it from the silk you have woven from your dreams, before sending it out into the ocean where it might be lost and forgotten. You see it there,, afloat in the oblivion of emptiness, with no hope of finding home. So, it didn't work out, but you did what you had to do. Small comfort that, to your ego anyway. You see that it goes that way sometimes. Yours was the path of the scribe, the one who remained obscure, the one no one will remember when you are gone. Tough luck, that, you think as you turn the page, limit the losses.

The book that never took off...

Friday, February 23, 2018

Five Speed Manual: A Grouch's Case For Analog


I like being close to how things work. When the distance between me and them gets too wide for me touch them, I get anxious or wonky, or go to sleep, as in jet travel (piloting a jet is not an option open to me). The best-case scenario is knowing how things work because I have taken them apart and put them back together. I don't know how AI or wifi controls work and I don't yet know how to run algorithms. That's why all this self-driving this or household automatic that have me a bit on edge. I don't like the idea of a car driving me somewhere. I want to do that, to hear the sound of the engine run through its power band up to an optimal RPM and then to change gears. I feel more connected. My concerns about turning things over to digital control and AI comes from more that just wanting to do it myself; it comes from the vulnerability digital systems have to power outages, malfunctions, and hacking. Bright, young, computer whizzes love to figure things out and then to mess with them. As an old fart, I don't much appreciate that or want them messing with my shifter. So, I'll take mine analog, thank you. I'll roll up my own windows, lock my own doors, and decide how high I want to rev my own motor.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Treasure


You think that this is all there is: this scrambling, climbing, dominating, acquiring, comparing. You believe the error that you are distinct, that your brothers and sisters don't matter enough to care for. You think that if you only feather your own little nest and fight for your tribe that you will be happy and safe. Well, there is something to that, but you know there is something more. You know that your borders are imagined, that you are part of and connected to the air you breathe, the water you drink, the smallest despair on the other side of the wall you have built. You know that your time and your treasure are best given away in love. That's what you get to keep when you board the train home. 

The Zone


You dial it back a bit, feathering the throttle as you approach this dicey section. No need to go in too hot, not yet anyway. You know how that goes. Finesse is more important now than raw speed. The old days were different. Then it was wide open or nothing. Drama. Drama. Drama. So you hold something back, all that fear that you so cling to, and take a moment to abandon who you think you are and to ride the wave. That's what it's about now, riding the ongoing wave. You can only do that if you surrender your need to stay so solid. You see that the way is to attend, to wait, and then jump when the opportunity has gotten so close it barely has time for surprise as you grab onto its passing and elusive alchemy. You see it now, the sublimation, as you dissolve into light. No going back. No one would believe you anyway.

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Too Old for This


They are perennially young. Every semester they appear fresh from high school or a tad jaded from a few years of college, but bursting with the vigor and elan of youth. You pile on the years and they show in your tired eyes, gray hair growing out of your ears. They anticipate a future full of possibility: work, love, property. You have been through the fire and are a bit worse for wear, having seen your dreams tarnished by a reality that did not mesh with your talents and interests. Yes, you are grateful. They are hungry. You watch as your faculties fade away, like the parts off an old and dying car. The lights go dim and then burn out, the chrome mirror loosens and then falls off. They want what you have taken years to learn. You want to be left alone to brood on your losses. It's no longer a good match, not quite a symbiotic exchange any more. You have begun to reside in another place as the shoehorn of decline sidles up to you and begins to pry you free whether you like it or not. 

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Hunger


You can't help but try, even when the odds tell you it's impossible, millions to one. You put it out there, hoping that your number will come up, which it doesn't. But that doesn't deter you from rolling the dice again. It would make more sense to hatch a plan, to take the serious route, and cover your bases for a rainy day. But then the urge to risk it all gooses you again and you put it all on the line, chips in,  fingers crossed. Hey somebody's gotta win. Yes, it would be better to have loved and won, but love is worth it even in loss, isn't it?

Monday, February 19, 2018

Used To


I used to be able to do things. I once walked on my hands down the entire men's hallway of our co-ed dorm, around the corner by the bathrooms, and down the hall of the women's side to knock on the door of a woman in my botany class with my feet. Now I can't walk on my hands (though I can sit on them) or do flips on the grass, or catch the wandering eye of a jogging woman as I run past with my shirt off. I can't eat or drink or pee like I used to. I need to take naps. I have too many bikes, kayaks, too much camping gear, too much of everything that I thought I would have the time, energy, and desire to use and use up. Looks like I only need one bike, if that. Missed the twenty-four hour race, the time trial, El Tour, and the boat that I think I was supposed to catch -- you know, that one on which everyone stays young and the party never ends.

February Storm


A low ceiling of dark clouds hid the mountains that rose up in front of us. Their hard edge told us that we would find snow as we climbed into the fog. Ground was soaked from two days of steady rain, and the canyons ran fast with chocolate runoff. Crossings would be dangerous with the current and the debris rushing against our legs. Most everyone else was home in front of a fireplace watching the Olympics with a cat on their laps. This was elective discomfort, and earned us nothing other than the camaraderie of shared suffering. Roll on he said. Roll on. Try not to slip and fall onto the ubiquitous rocks.

Friday, February 16, 2018

When the Time Comes


He knew he had to leave. How that would happen or what the steps were that he had to take were not clear to him. It was just the end game, the lure of something down the road, that called. It was a rainy November night when he finally loaded up his hundred-dollar pick-up truck and hit highway 151 toward Dubuque that it hit him: he was one of those who would wander. The risks inherent in that fact were lost on him that first night on the road. He drove through the night, west, through Iowa and Nebraska. The cold of the stretch of interstate along the Platte River rushed in through the rusted gaps in the floorboards. The truck was under siege by the frozen air. He turned up the heat, put on his warmest gloves, and tried to stay awake. As the sun rose behind him, he saw the first light on the peaks of mountains as they rose above the horizon. He had left comfort for a different kind of home, the home of those who know the truth of cold and sun and having to carry your own load.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Going Public


I carry them with me now as I make my way across campus to a modest afterthought of a structure called the Transitional Office Building. It is so plain and dumpy that no one knows where it is until something like a conference is scheduled there. My conference is on the prison writing workshops, and I am due to present in a little over an hour. My steps are deliberate, and I have to avoid puddles on this rainy Thursday. The men I carry with me are depending on me to bear witness to the magic of the writing workshops. I feel the weight and ask them for help in carrying the load. They say stay true to the course. Don't lapse or hide or take an easy path. Tell it like it is. Bring our words with you. This is it, the moment, the one you have been waiting for. Deliver the word. Stand in the truth of what you have seen, the urgency to offer that to a listening body. Trust that the words will find a way, they say.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

I Didn't Sign Up For This


Coming into this life, I just wanted friendly community and a modest living: people and work I liked, connections and livelihood that paid well-enough, work that I was good at, more or less, friends that tolerated my jokes and desire to sing to them. That seemed fair to me. I'd show up, do my job, have a simple, peaceful life with some love, and space to be and grow. I did not think that elected policy makers would work at undermining affordable, quality education, make healthcare unobtainable, make my wages stagnant for decades on end, take my tax dollars to inflate an already bloated defense budget that will dig a deficit hole so deep we might become insolvent as a nation, and on and on. As a student of language and communication, I have witnessed the death of dialogue, the rise of fanaticism, and seen the face of my fellow Americans twist in grotesque rage at immigrants, or any change that requires an open mind to embrace. I have seen beauty replaced by ugliness. I see a growing isolation as people build a bubble of belief that fosters a dangerous solipsism. As I slide into the final chapters of my life, I hoped I would find peace and time to write. Instead I find discord and the need to act and respond to the poisons of fear, greed, and possible violence. I am disturbed by what I see, unsure how to respond. The work aint over yet.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Make It Better


Running has been your MO. You thought new places would make it all better, soften the blow, assuage the gnawing truth that the only way out was to turn around and face the dragon that was hot on your heels. That was the truth of it, but the truth of is always the hardest thing to face. Medicating was easier. Moving, altered states, people -- all of it just pain-killer. It wasn't until you stopped and dug in, made your stand, that you began to feel the energy flow, the time too short to get it right. No matter. Even one drop into an ocean is better than hiding out, knowing that all you love is being devoured by the fear you let tie your hands, bind your feet, silence your voice.

Monday, February 12, 2018

So Much Blather


"You can find anything on the internet," she said -- chirpy, happy, full of internet optimism, confident that her take on digital paradise was true.

"Well, actually, you can't," I replied.

Might as well have spit in her espresso for how well that helped the conversation.

But I stand by my reply.

The internet is mostly blather that greases the wheels of the corporate state, keeps money changing hands, keeps people distracted from the real work of trying the wrest wealth, power, and the health of the planet from the greedy few who seem only to want more and more of what they already have. It sells an illusion that life can be consumed from the safety of your seat overlooking a 3-D fabrication designed to seduce and arrest your attention.

Reality is that a growing number of people are lonely, complacent, frustrated, disengaged (mostly), addicted even. The internet tries to fix that with five point plans to get better organized or form a chat room about your favorite TV show. You can't de-tox by taking more poison.

(I'm not going to touch how the internet answers the need for love and contact... You know that already.)

So, no. You can't find some things on the internet.

You're going to have to stand up, push away your screen, go out into what Morpheus of The Matrix called "the desert of the real" and take up some kind of actual challenge, that may or may not go according to some tidy, safe, digitally-mastered plan, in order to find that part of yourself that is waiting for you, to not only locate it, but bring it into the light of real, tangible, scary, maybe even dangerous action to achieve what you know to be right.

Part of growing up is taking a cold, sober, clear, hard look at what is, even when that is not such a pretty picture, and then doing something about it.

Now that is a real find.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

Reflections on the Genre Analysis "Bicycling Magazine's Appeal to the Peak Experience"





Bicycling Magazine's Appeal to the Peak Experience 

The title points to the author/source of the text, or, in this case, genre that is the subject of the analysis: Bicycling Magazine. It also names the feature that will be discussed, the “appeal” to a “peak experience.” The purpose of the analysis is to explain how I see this sample of genres functioning in the larger context of reader interests and desires.  I don’t yet reveal what my take is on this appeal, what my critique of its limitations is. I will get into that later.

Once in a long while a moment surprises us with all the ingredients of perfection: weather, motion, health, happiness, and meaning. This is rare, and sometimes laden with insight; the usual chaos of day-to-day living gives way to clarity, a sense of "this is IT."

This opening casts a large net over the “big idea” I see at work in these artifacts. Specifically, the experience of an “epiphany,” or moment of clarity, of reckoning, or change, become the “hook” that the series uses to lure in readers. This subject speaks to a kind of universal human experience and pairs cycling with a much larger overall significance. I felt the need to address that before moving on into the analysis of these specific texts.

Poets and artists call these fleeting seconds epiphanies. Others might call them bliss or magic or ecstasy (though that term now has other connotations). Bicycling Magazine, which is read by over 2 million readers, and claims to be the premier cycling publication, calls them "The One Thing," as in "The One Thing That Changed It All."

In this paragraph, I connect the “big idea” of epiphany to both the magazine and the specific series that runs through multiple issues. I also begin to situate the magazine in a larger context with a nod to numbers of readers.

That is the title of an ongoing series of features in which readers of the magazine share a personal experience with cycling that gave them a reason to go on, a way to approach life, or a strategy to ride better, with more passion. The specifics vary, but the shared message is one of change, realization, or awakening. You might think of the Buddha under the bodhi tree or other great spiritual teachers, but on a bike: picture Jesus in lycra racing up to the Sermon on the Mount.

Here, I identify what I see as the major “message” of the series, and connect that to similar messages that come from sources other than these examples. I confess to a kind of sarcasm in my pairing of a special interest magazine like Bicycling with sacred texts and spiritual teachers, but this will help make my point(s) about the mixed purposes later in the essay. If it is not yet clear, I am trying to say that the claim to “the one thing that changed it all” is an overstatement that borders on crass, snake-oil salesman manipulation of readers.

The first impression viewers get of these testimonials to the redemptive power cycling is one of perfection, of achieving the ideal in terms of setting (always in nature), comfort (lovely weather), health (fit, young, beautiful), prosperous (great clothes and bikes), and moving (uniformly portrayed in as action pose).

This is the first real “body paragraph” in that I initiate my analysis by breaking down the images of the genre. I am looking for patterns such as “nature,” “comfort,” and shared traits of the models in the images. This is a bit of description, but also some slicing and dicing into what I see as significant features. I could combine commentary here, but save that for the next graf.

In one a road twists like a serpent off toward the horizon. In another, the trail, covered with fallen leaves, looks like Robert Frost's "Road Not Taken" and its "yellow wood." Viewers see no traffic, no strip malls, no industrial smokestacks. No one seems worried about work, about juggling family responsibilities, paying health insurance premiums, income inequities, or having to put food on the table.


Evidence from the individual images forms the basis for commentary and inferential thinking about the image does what I say it does: presents as idealized mix of traits in order to pair cycling with spiritual and psychological happiness and attainment. My tone gets a bit snarky too as I bring in what is NOT in the images. “Real life” does not sell bikes or magazines so much and the editors and designers of the magazine know this, I think.

In terms of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, these models have climbed to the top and have transcended the lower, base needs most humans have to meet. Judging from the images, they have the basics of food, shelter, clothing, community, and security. All they need to achieve is self-actualization. This impression fits with Bicycling's description of its readers. According to its mission statement, "Bicycling is the world's leading cycling magazine and connects with millions of active, affluent professionals for whom cycling is the centerpiece of a vibrant, experiential lifestyle." Some of the key terms here are "affluent," and "professionals." The magazine invokes in readers success and career, two traits that make it possible to concentrate on personal fulfillment through recreation. It's not surprising then that what is consistent across this genre is elite social status, and the freedom that status allows, to train, compete, and sculpt a lean, fit, and stylized look. 

This is a complicated paragraph in that it grounds psychological frameworks with nitty-gritty marketing of the magazine. This works to establish context – audience, “speaker,” situation, and message. This is looking at the very rhetorical elements of this text and how it works. I am having to stand pretty far back to see this and to risk alienating some who might not want to hear me scrutinize a magazine that is read for fun and product gossip.

While there are consistencies across the samples, Bicycling has strived to portray some diversity. The subjects in the photos vary in terms of race and gender. We see young women and men, but men outnumber women 3 to one, both in these four samples and the survey of two years of issues. One is black. They are well groomed, affluent, in their 20s or 30s, looking into the lens of the camera, or off toward some distant vista, with faces lit with confidence and ease with the world. These people have it together. The light is slanted, gauzy even, and their lean, muscular gams pop with definition. Three out of the four are standing, and the backdrop ranges from mountain ridges to heavily wooded forests. They look resolute, focused on what is coming, charging ahead, and happy. They look like people one would want to meet at a party, hang out with, travel to Colorado for a camping trip with. Viewers might want to know them, want to be them. They are the best of what an industrialized economy can provide, namely leisure, toys, and beautiful, unspoiled places to play.  
This is what I would call a concession paragraph. I want readers to recognize that I see various ways of approaching these artifacts, this genre. I want them to see that I am reading more into this than a casual reader might do, and I want to give credit to Bicycling for choosing a diverse group of models.

And they ride great bikes. The exact brands and models are not revealed, but a close look with an experienced eye ascertains right away that these are no ordinary machines. They are high-end rockets designed for competition. These are all tools for pro-level riders. They are all newish, made of carbon fiber, decked out with the best components, perfectly fitted. Some are road bikes, others, mountain bikes, still others are cyclo-cross bikes. Notably, bikes used for utility or transit are conspicuously absent. These machines serve purposes of recreation and competition. Likely, their owners drive or fly to the beautiful sites where they ride. Within that constraint, the message is clear: epiphanies are not limited to any specific discipline as long as the riding is for fun. The whole elite tribe, under the big tent, can find their deepest desires on bikes meant to fulfill recreation on and off road.

This is where I connect another feature of the images, the bikes, to my view that these images present an elite and idealized view of their subjects. Again, there is diversity, but it’s an elite camp of bikes, the most expensive, the best of the best, a promotion of high-level consumption and clever marketing.

A closer look reveals a short, dreamy, narrative account to accompany the visual richness. The text depicts a specific moment, tells a brief story of that place and event, and then finds the meaning in it. One rider crashes and finds the courage to get back on the bike. Another finds inspiration in a professional rider's aggressive attacks during the Tour de France, attacks that would never result in winning the overall race but that yielded individual stage victories.

These next paragraphs all break down the text of the images. Each graf presents evidence from the texts and begins my commentary. I quote, use summary, and paraphrase.

The language is casual, conversational, full to the brim with familiar motivational slogans. One states "I learned to go for the win, not to be content with just sitting on a wheel." ( "Sitting on a wheel" is an expression specific to cycling-speak, and stops just short of the much more pejorative expression "wheel sucking," which has obvious parasitical connotations.) This rider is now in the wind, risking everything, living life large, and if he gets "dropped" because he takes a risk, he claims "so be it."

Others broke a leg or did an iconic climb in France. Because of this experience cycling, they recovered, "discovered a passion," or realized "it's all mental." The thread of inspirational testimonials runs through the series as a bright and predictable tonic for readers looking for more reasons to ride their bikes. Like pleasant Hallmark cards, the realizations come to readers in an easy to digest generality that borders on the banal. These are more slogans or appetizers than real, hard-won life-changers. But that's what works, what doesn't require much work from readers. Complexity, ambivalence, nuance, or doubt, are conspicuously absent here. The larger meanings derived from these high points are lightweight bon-bons that we can all agree on and feel good about.

My commentary here enters the domain of ethical critique of these texts. I take a little umbrage at the mixing of spiritual claims with marketing. I see the magazine and these artifacts as playing with reader desires for meaning using the vehicle (pun intended) of bikes and cycling.

The magazine wants readers to trust their fellow riders' new-found direction and to identify with their stories. The narratives come across as helpful, friendly, intimate even. These testimonials open the door to a spiritual communion with bikes. One could say that the magazine is offering a kind of religion, a church of the bicycle.

This paragraph assumes full authority for my take on the artifacts and how I see them functioning. The discussion here points to what I see as the real purpose of the series. Right or wrong, this is my take on what the magazine is doing with these texts. Notice that I don’t use the “I” here, but rather make my assertions on behalf of most if not all readers.

I can't deny that I enjoy the articles and find myself opening to the personal, and vulnerable stories of fellow cyclists. There is no argument that exercise is an inescapable element of a healthy life, that cycling offers benefits like stress reduction, community connections, and emission-free transportation. I like the idea that cycling, or any physical activity done mindfully, can heal, and I want to believe in the church, the shared significance. I even confide such experiences with my cycling brethren and sisteren. We sometimes warm our hands at the fire of a shared lifestyle and bond as a tribe of velo geeks. But I can't quite call the sport, or industry, if you want to be blunt, a source of spiritual direction. They are just bikes, luxury toys, and bikes are a product that corporations want us to buy. There is a reason why many cyclists deride the magazine as "Buy-Cycling." They know that advertisers and the editors of magazines will do just about anything to promote and sell us their products.

While I have been speaking in general, I also felt the need to “come clean” with my own perspective here. I am, after all, one of “the tribe,” even if I don’t fully buy what the magazine is selling here. I don’t like mixing personal epiphanies with marketing and business. In fact, I am a bit cynical about what businesses will do to push their products, and I side with readers in terms of having a privacy that is distinct from buying and selling. That, I admit, is a bias that I wanted readers of my analysis to know. I also feel this helps my ethos, or credibility as a speaker and writer. Self-awareness counts big for me and, I think for many readers.

So these testimonials are crafted and shaped to offer up simple fun, good stories, a heightened sense of meaning, and their purposes mix honest experience of readers with a subtle urge to upgrade, to buy, to travel, to be young and free enough to live the cycling ideal. They appeal to a dream-scape in which cycling can solve problems, provide direction, put viewers on a path to answers.

As the essay comes to a close, I feel the need to back off a bit. The series is just a part of a magazine. Readers know that when they buy it or engage with it.

They are fun to enjoy, but only up to a point. The dream is a good one, its allure all but irresistible, an invitation to another life, its message "if only I had that, there, with that significance, then I would be happy."
One more time, I make the distinction between real “happiness” and  epiphanies from those connected to a fallacy that things and places and mythological ideals will, by themselves, make readers deeply content. That’s a much bigger project.

If only changing it all were that simple...

My parting shot here points to my experience that psychological and spiritual attainment is much more that being a good cyclist or having the right gear or going to the right places. I want to locate these texts where I see they belong: light enjoyment rather than true life change.


Flesh On the Bone


The cold morning wind finds its way under my jacket. It floods in between the teeth of the zipper, the open end of the cuff. I shiver but like the touch of morning. She is not always kind. But always honest. She is having her way with my reluctance to face the hard facts of the day. She tells me to wake up, to taste possibility on the brisk air. Such a small imagination she says. You have no idea what you have she says. I know I say. It's just that... What? she says. Just what? Excuses. That's what you bring into this fresh, open, treasure of time? I don't know why I waste my time she says. You are right I say. I'm working at getting over bad habits I say. It's not about what you want anymore she says. It's about what is needed she says. You thought it would be easy. That was your other mistake. This is where the measure is taken she says. When you have no more to give but give anyway she says. That's the way you build what lasts. You have what you need to build a body of joy. When you move beyond what you thought possible you will begin to understand.

Exit


In your final act, the one only you know is final, the stage is brightly lit. Characters have all taken their places, and the blocking is perfect, just as it should be. Your role, the one you might have played, has been written into the script, but it's time to improvise. You should have spoken up a while ago. No matter. You do what you have to do, stand, bow to your fellow performers, and exit stage left. There is a figure there in the wings. You don't yet know who he is, but he will take your place, do some of the job you have been doing. It's okay you say to yourself as the tears come down. They come down in a flood that washes away all you have left undone, unsaid; they carry gratitude for all you have been given, the small parts, the supporting role. It was lovely, you whisper. The play goes on, with only a slight pause, without you.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

The Movie Version


If I were to live the movie version of my life, I would walk up to the lectern to tell the truth of the prison writing workshops. That truth would be unvarnished and would lift and terrify those who listen. They would enter the world of the dimly lit rooms where men consider the stories of their lives, where walls rise and fall, where opportunity to capture that elusive word comes dancing into the room only to vanish before she is caught. I would weave a spell of language so compelling that listeners would weep with the beautiful cruelty of it. Yes, that is what I would do if I could live the movie version of my life.

But it's hard to live the movie version of your life when the messy real world knocks you upside your head sending the reasons you were born scattering along the floor like lost marbles. You forget and scratch your head wondering what it was you were thinking, what that dream was right before you woke up.

Then there are the classes to teach, the papers to grade, the taxes to prepare,the room to rent out, the car to fix, the doctor's and vet appointments for you, the kids, and the cat.

The movie version forgets that you are limited in time, energy, and talent.

So you just stumble along, visited by clips of the life that might be, the one where you tell the story you were born to tell.

The Secret Life of Chains


HandPoet
Psycho
Champ
Stilo
The names they go by
The dictionary of prison

I always doubted the veracity of Malcolm X
when he claimed
to have memorized
the dictionary
until I passed through the wire

Just visiting
changes you
Yes, it does
You get stuck in time
with no help out
except becoming an animal
or torquing your brain with impossible problems
Ones that will take you
a sustained year or
two or
ten

People don't know

You have to lash yourself to the mast
while the sirens sing
and all you want to do is throw yourself
onto the rocks for the relief of it

But you can't
so you scream
and keep the words coming
squeezing them out
of the stone
that is the lock-box
of your secrets.  

Words on Fire


Data grabbers think they have gotten a handle on the language of depression by analyzing the work of Kurt Cobain, Sylvia Plath, and lots of patient journals. They have analyzed myriad data points in the writing of chronic depressives and identified a few features. Overuse of the pronoun "I," for one, and use of absolutes like "never" and "always," for another. Of course, emotionally charged words words like "sad" and "blue" too. I think they missed it though. The language of depression grows out of pain and proximity to mortality. Often it's barely audible because of the crushing weight of despair. The world looks awful from down here, under the weight of a board being loaded with rock after rock, wondering which one will be one that cracks your ribs, stops your heart.

Sunday, February 4, 2018

Social Justice and Writing


Poverty is a form of violence; it traumatizes. The lack of opportunity, increased violence, food and housing insecurities, drugs, and other stresses lead to trauma responses like fight or flight. Children either withdraw or act out in school, and that doesn't go so well. The dropout rates and lack of engagement with education are high. The roots of injustice run deep in the soil of poverty. At the end of the logical progression of a life of closed doors is prison. The men in the writing workshop, overwhelmingly, come from the streets, from gangs, drug addiction, and the despair that goes along with a lack of opportunity. So, what role can writing play here at the end of the road? Simply put, writing, because it is based in language, and language forms the webs of narrative that become a worldview, is the primary tool for creating a new possibility, a wider definition of humanity, a vision for action that addresses the underlying structures of inequity, both socially and personally. Words are the tools for imagining a reality that deviates from the one that landed men in prison. Writing is also a means to understand the past, along with the political and social forces at work, the barriers of race, class, gender, and opportunity. A man or woman has to learn to read to see his or her place in the big system, to rise above the morass of self-absorption and into kind of detachment that allows the story of a life to emerge, to be revised. Of course, education and literacy by themselves cannot solve the ills that lead to America being the leader in rates of mass incarceration. That requires much more: political vision, courage, action, and caring. The work is overwhelming and massive, but one can start with a word, or two, that begins to shine light on a better path.

Saturday, February 3, 2018

Price to Pay


It was the driest year, another in a long line of dry years. Warm too. Way too warm. Even the prickly pear pads in the front yard had shriveled down to spiny, burnt looking taco chips. No rain for months and none coming. This is what I get for taking the fat, safe, and short-sighted path -- big SUVs, carbon belching greed and grandiosity. I sat there running the air conditioning, munching on my super-sized burger, the one that had come from the slash and burn rain forest ranchers. It felt good to be so full, but the excess fat around my middle told the real story, the one with consequences for behaviors, for laziness and apathy. I knew. I knew. I should have seen it coming, done something different. I see now that it was my chance, my only chance, not to get all melodramatic or anything. But that was it. I could have gone after the one shot I had at giving a chance to the next generation. If only I could have seen up ahead, into the future, to how it would have turned out, I might have found the guts to throw it all on the line, to bet the farm, trade caution for clarity and passion, for a lean life of shared purpose to bring the planet back from the brink. If there were any justice, and I mean real justice, I and my generation would be tried as criminals who stole from our children. Instead, the days pass now dry as dust, too long, and give me no rest, only time to mull over how it might have been, to turn guilt into action, even if  it's too late. The price of redemption is giving it all away.