Saturday, March 31, 2018

What I Want the Book to Do


I want to establish that the men in the workshops are part of "us," not some separate "other" that is "distinct" from free society and therefore not worthy of concern and rights. I want to represent incarcerated men as complex characters that fall outside the stereotypes that haunt prisoners/inmates. I want to illustrate the role that creative, expressive discussion and writing can play in finding one's "story," as well as cultivate and imagine a new "future," by putting that into words. Reading, too, can broaden horizons of what is possible by rendering to the imagination different worlds. I want to demonstrate how a community that supports honest expression, and the courage it takes to do that, can transcend the racial boundaries of prison culture. I also want to show that literacy, by itself, is no panacea, and that political, social, and economic change has to be part of prison reform. All of this happens through story. When we hear stories from worlds different from our own, we can lower the walls of limitation and imagine a world that we have never really known. It is then that we can create possibilities of change. Narrative and creative possibility form the linguistic foundations that can then support doing things better than we currently do them. They must lead to critical thinking and action. We have to act, even if that action is symbolic.

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Thursday, March 29, 2018

If I Could Only See


The steering wheel shimmies under my hands as I join the pre-dawn stream of traffic heading down the Swan Road toward the city. I have to pull off as a luxury SUV nearly rams me from behind. I get a flying bird for being a responsible driver who realizes he has a tire rapidly going flat. I get out to examine the situation on the traffic side of the vehicle. Cars whiz by, fifteen, twenty miles over the speed limit. I see a bolt jammed into the tire and hear the hiss of air escaping. I am not going to be able to drive anywhere on this and will have to change my plans for the morning. Email students, call for a tire appointment, re-schedule conferences. Check. Check. The day is painfully lovely, cool, and young. Anything is possible, I believe. But what I see is postponement, extra work, cramped make-up and hair-pulling, hurried catch-up. Breathe. Breathe. It's OK, I say. Even this moment, the one that falls far short of what I had hoped for, is a chance, an opportunity to delight in early morning, a morning that hangs there waiting, un-made, ready for what it is I will imagine of it. It sits there like a present wrapped in sunlight. I touch it and look for a way to open it, open to it. I have the tools I need and spin the crank that lowers the spare, the one that has been there for years, waiting.


Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Render Unto Caesar


The meetings sprout like mushrooms after a heavy rain. The lecturer promotion committee, the alternative textbook committee, the teaching awards committee and others all take up the limited space in your planner, little malignant blots. You know you have to fulfill your responsibilities. You have a contract to do so. That contract doesn't care that your brain is mush and your energy a flickering flame about to go out. You drag yourself to the table to grade your papers, plan the lessons, but there is more. The house has to be rented, cleaned, and loose ends need to be tied up so that the next chapter can begin. Suck it up, brother. You're about the be launched into the big blue right after you drop your last dime into the pot that Caesar has passed into your hands for you to render unto him what feels like your last breath.

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Reprieve


She held the results of the tests in front of her and summarized the findings. "There is something going on, but it's not what we thought," she said. "There is some hope," she said. "You can get better," she said. All of this came as something of a shock. I had been living in the shadow of a steep decline leading to a dark, and close, end. The weight of that had been crushing the light out of me and would not leave me alone. "You've got some work to do," she said. "You have to address the impairments, the decline in function. All of that is real." As she spoke, I did not know how to feel. Elation? Guilt that I was going to carry on? Responsibility? Whatever it was, she was delivering the news that I would have to serve a sentence and that sentence was life. I was sentenced to live again. Nothing had changed. Everything had changed. 

Monday, March 26, 2018

Real Life


It is those who are dying who have the most to teach about living. They know that days are numbered, that "here and now" is all we really have and that this life is about to end, leading to.... what? That proximity to mystery forces questions of priority, of what really matters. They are the ones I listen to now. All that ephemeral blather about climbing and fighting and winning I see now for what it is: shrill and frenetic distraction. The utter absence of heart and forgiveness leaves me hungry for something substantial. What is substantial is paying attention, which is a form of love, to everything that I get to enjoy -- a frosty beer, a sunset, wind in my face on a bike ride, writing this blog post. When I see something as possibly the last thing, the curtain pulls back and the real world of it's-all-a-one-off  comes into view. It is a feast my friends, a banquet that I didn't see before. And there is a song carried by wind and light, running through everything that is, a song that permeates even the thickest of skulls. But I have to listen, get quiet enough to discern the melody, the one that teaches the truth of how things are, which is, by the way, an ongoing gift, a wave, an infusion of welcome home to the me that is also you.

Saturday, March 24, 2018

To the Trolls, Haters, Creeps, and Angry White Men


Your unhappiness is not the fault of others who have much less than you and now want to taste a larger life. Your error is directing your pent up rage at the ones who remind you of your shame. The real enemy is the one inside of you. It is the shadows of you exiled deep within that push you to build walls, take up arms. It has made you grotesque, ugly, mean; it has mired you in the land of "us and them," of separation. That is not who you really are. Those others are fathers, mothers, children -- born with the same inalienable right to live and find peace that you were given. Your fear has made you obese, tight, proud, armored and angry. That is the enemy you will have to confront if you will ever know fulfillment or happiness. There is room for all if you carve from your wound a piece of generosity of spirit, make peace with what will never be, forgive yourself. You can learn, if you listen, to see in the other the same desires that make you bow in humility, light a candle for what was good in the loves you lost.

Thursday, March 22, 2018

The Day I Knew My Days Left Teaching Were Fewer Than the Fingers On My Hands


It's inside me, growing. A parasite, a black hole, it sucks light from my cells, hope from my heart. It is heavy. Heavier than lead, than iron, and it pins me to the bed or chair or wherever my body has settled to rest for a minute. Today, it told me that the door I thought would not yet close, was closing, and I knew. I knew I could not go to the meetings that make my head spin. I would teach. For that I am strong enough to fight still. The students are so beautiful and they look to me, sometimes bored and irritated, but other times for what it is an older person who loves language might offer them. I want to tell them about the closing in, the weight pressing down, but I never will. The mass of it is too much for their young shoulders. Another day, I say to it. Another day. It has not yet grown so big that it can take that away. I will never again meet students on the second day of spring, the day it grew warm while the sun made lovers think of blue water.

The Troll Is Lurking


His hatred has drawn him out of his hole, pushed him over the line, the line he watches carefully, because, above all, he wants to be safe. He has let the bile within him take over, and it drives him to make an offensive move, a move that will also open him up to possible reprisal, and he knows it, but the potential to harm the other is worth the risk. So he writes the letter and submits it as a court document. The letter claims that she is a child abuser, even though he knows that to be untrue. In some twisted universe, one without any consequences for lying about another, he might get away with it, might win. He must always win, even if he has to cheat and leave bodies battered and bloodied in his wake. She defied him once. He said "I will destroy you!" and has lived two-and-a-half decades with that as a purpose that keeps him moving. He is patient and waits for his chance. Here it comes. Parry. Thrust! Hit the mark. But now he must run. He cannot be caught out in his lie. That would ruin him. But a shadow finds his tracks, is on his trail, his cowardly retreat. 

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

The Hearing


Down there in the tangle of one-ways, dead-ends, lane-changers, construction pylons, and slow stoplights is the court house. A buzzing snarl of traffic flows in front of it. Metal detectors guard the doors. You can't find a spot to lock your bike. You hope it is still there when you return to it after the hearing. You have hopes for the hearing, hope that truth, fairness, understanding, and some modicum of justice will out. You know that likely won't happen because it doesn't always happen here at the courthouse. The ideal of how you'd like things to be rarely wins in this the land of twisted truth, greedy lawyers, justice for the entitled rich, white, powerful, and good-looking. You see her there, the one who has brought you here and you see contempt in her eyes, maybe a bit of fear too. She and her minions want to crush you and you don't quite know why. You hope it will turn out well, but you know better. And then it does. The judge says there is "no statutory basis" for her capricious restraining order against one you love. The judge also says "you all need to learn to get along." The order is shown to be the petty, mean, punitive -- maybe misogynistic -- act that you think it is. Praise be.

Monday, March 19, 2018

Under the Radar (Fiction. Totally. Really.)


"Any drugs, weapons, ammunition, cell phones, or cash more than forty dollars?" she asks with clipped monotone honed from years of repetition. "Nope," you say. "None of that," you say. "Just writing stuff," as she shoves the tub along the stainless steel table and motions you through the metal detector, her eyes already on the next person in line for the sally port. You meet the trusty, and heavy, tub on the other side and replace the top, put back on your watch, pocket your car keys, and hang your ID badge back around your neck. The lanyard has some religious logo on it. You don't know what it is and don't ask, but it gives you a little bit of cover. The tub is your portable classroom. You are the itinerant teacher/workshop guy. You are going to a maximum security "four yard." You worry that the men in the workshop will be the victims or perpetrators of gang violence. This is a serious place, and you are a smuggler in it. You smuggle books, writing pads, dictionaries, Writer's Markets, pens, literary magazines, and other paraphernalia of writing into the prison, where you distribute it. You also carry out inmate writing, type it up, make copies, bring it back, talk about it, collect the revisions, and then submit them to a prison writing magazine. You then take copies of the magazine back in after it's published. You mail copies to family members, libraries, writing programs,  Men benefit from this work, in big, if subtle, ways. It's illegal to do this, but you have made peace with it and you accept the consequences of your actions. Many of the staff know this. You get the wink and the nod or just a shrug and "whatever." You believe they know what is good for the men in the workshops, and they look the other way. If you end up in an orange jump suit on the other side of the wires, that is the price you pay. A guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do.

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Old School, Or, It's All Meta Now


At this late stage in life, you do what you can. And what you can do is what you know, or believe, works. You do, which in this case, is write. That's not what you are supposed to do, though. Now it's about "outcomes," and those outcomes are the abstractions of doing. Students are supposed to learn to read and write "rhetorically," or to focus on audience, purpose, genre, and the big "situation." All that is fine, but how do they learn genres or how to reach an audience if they don't practice writing something, the "doing?" You are supposed to emphasize the "about" rather than the "do." You don't even really know what that means. No inspiration, no enthusiasm, no engagement, no reason, no craft -- and forget the notion of even considering mastery -- just "about." Teaching writing in the abstract is like trying to live on air for food, or studying music without ever touching an instrument. You want a bit more grounding, "doing" something. Are you supposed to spend your class time ruminating on the "about," the "idea" of writing? You guess so. That's the way now. All the awards, committees, and bosses say so. So what do you do? Where do you go? The door, my friend, the door. That and the world waiting outside, beyond. You leave knowing only that you know you don't know.

Things That Go Crunch In the Night


There he was, drifting in and out of old girlfriends, running waters, and other machinations of the dreaming psyche when he heard the cat door clomp. She triggered the motion-sensing night light as she padded toward the bed. A muffled mmmrrroooww told him that he was in for another treat. The muffled part of her announcement was a pack rat, the poor thing drooping helplessly in her jaws. Lights on. Get off the bed. But I don't want to. I brought it for you (for me really, but I wanted you to see it) her eyes said. Off! Okaaaay... sheesh. What a grouchy ingrate biped.... Lights back out. He tries to sleep. He hears scurrying, starts and stops, squeaks, then quiet. The first crunch rattles off the walls, echoes down the hallways. Then bones, tendons, and viscera send out their signature pop and crackle as they are torn into bite sized morsels. The symphony goes on for minutes, hours, days, years. Then she is on the bed, happy, purring, out cold. As she snores, he decides not to fill her food bowl when the sky lights the day waiting for him, the place he will mop up now that it his turn to find food, do the dirty work.


Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Toggle


The brain seized up again. Morning dropped me into a big, fat blank. I did not know where I was, what I had to do, what this body was about. I had to jump start the thing, do brain CPR, rub the extremities, massage, pull, and stretch it to get some blood flow. Still it stayed there on the other side of consciousness, dreaming away about some distant, sun-drenched river. The water was warm, clear, and I was about to strip down and go upstream in my brightly colored boat, naked, to a green pool, where I might find what I have been waiting for this long life. That state of mind was not going to get me through this day, though. Today I have papers to grade, classes to teach, meetings to attend. I have to throw the switch, shock the system, and get moving. Dreams of running water and tangerine colored boats will have to wait for the end of day, the darkness that hides what my heart knows it might never attain.

Monday, March 12, 2018

If Anybody Asks


Tell them I took a walk into the dangerous land of ideas. I did not mean to get lost, to never return, but that is the way it goes sometimes. I tried to send messages back, but the pigeons got mauled by hawks and the dolphins were caught in illegal drift nets. At night, I concentrated and tried to send word telepathically, thinking that love would somehow cut the distance between us. The ideas, though, they shimmered and danced. While not flesh and blood, we did love each other. They tried to feed me what I needed, and that worked, in part. My body gradually atrophied and dried up, leaving my little brain a glowing orb. My heart still beat for you, and I kept a direct line between it and all those thoughts. I tried to fuse them together, the ideas and love, but the connections kept snapping. I was left with a pile of rough drafts. They are worthless to others, of course. But, now, at this point of departure, they are all I have to leave you, paltry legacy that they are.

How He Became a Man


He is at home with himself, having done twenty years already, with only months to go. He refuses a folder to carry his work in -- precious contraband -- when I offer. "Give it to one of the younger guys," he says. He is calm, lean, clear, a regular in the prison workshop, and he writes with authority. Today he reads a long piece about being raped by an older woman, his first sexual experience. The woman taunted him with "Only fags don't have sex with women. Are you a fag?" She shamed him, pulled him into a closet while the other kids were playing hide and seek. He has since been seeking answers to how to be a man in the world of love. Some of his characters in his story advise "Don't give away too much," while others recommend "You can't give enough; the giving is the point." An undercurrent of taking what you want, even when the answer is no, haunts the telling. A woman he loves tells him the nice men are not the ones she wants. While he reads, the men in the circle are silent, spell-bound, transported; or at least I am transported. His account of moving through the mine field of Eros is told through the words of women he loves but can't have, women he can have but doesn't love, and the pitfalls of giving one's self away to another who will take it all and give nothing back. He listens to the wisdom of a man lost in love. They sit together at the beach. "There is nothing wrong with giving," the man says, "even if you lose it all." The waves crash and then he is done reading. The work offers no clear path, no easy answers. The characters have spoken, and the master drops the strings that animate his drama. It is the first serious piece he has written. "What do you think?" he asks.

Sand and Salt Spray


Is it a waste of time, all this tinkering, arranging, and hopeful word wrangling? Some say redemption from it is possible. Others say the way is wordless, beyond these tiny, self-generating miracles of thought and sound. Others say they are more reality than reality, whatever that is. You can't know a thing without them they say. Power they say. The raw material of self they say. We are made of water and words and sand and wind-borne salt spray. They are a bridge across the roiling seas of chaos they say, the story that takes you to the other side. I say they are both particle and wave, ephemeral, all that remains when the body is long gone. They are what we leave for those who follow, folly though they might be.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Once a Week


You put life on hold, in a box, up in storage on a shelf. You label it so you remember where you might pick up where you left off before you stepped out and through the perimeter marked by spools or razor wire. You have to travel there with only your wits and words. Everything else gets left at the gate. You are just a visitor, but even visitors feel stripped for a time. The place puts you inside yourself, makes you ask what you are doing, why you do it, and teases you with what you might do when you get out. That's the big question, one that makes survival possible. A human might starve here, slowly. The death comes on like concrete curing. You might turn to stone if you don't force blood into the extremities, the ones capable of remembering life outside the wire, what it might be if only you were there.

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Kickin' It Before the Door Closes


The days are getting warmer and the university let us all go for a week of chill before the final push to the semester tape. The gift of time meant I could catch up on some long-neglected house projects, or rather one big project: re-build the shambles of an overhang in the back yard. Only this time I had to do it right. Cue up the anxiety about not knowing exactly what to do. How to hang a ledger board where the wall was crumbling adobe, a tangle of conduits, vents, drains, supplies, and rotten wood, along with the water heater exhaust and things underground like rocks, water lines, and monsters all took over my nights and kept me tossing, turning, wound up in knots. Oh well. Suck it bro, I said, on my way to Home Depot, Ace Hardware, and advice from YouTube. Pedal to the metal and keep moving, Buckwheat, I said. Days on a ladder are numbered and I get one more chance to breathe while my little world comes crashing down. I find comfort in the help of family and friends. With them, the little structure has taken form and might actually keep water from destroying all the tools I keep underneath. I know I can't do this work by myself. The trust fall has begun.


Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Drastic Measures


You dance your heart out, squeezing the last nugget of gift out of the sincerest part of you. You offer it up with no strings attached. And what happens? Nothing. They take what you give and close the doors, the windows, and turn their backs on you. Such a life you think, standing there utterly alone with nothing left to sustain you. Now what? Well you take drastic measures, that's what. Shave your head and get some piercings, some tattoos, and a tilt toward hipness. If you can't beat 'em. Or not. Some of us just play our music to no applause. Dumb innocence earns nothing. Only the cynic will talk to you now. 

Monday, March 5, 2018

Anger Issues


He sat there, snug as a bug, bottled-up, bulging with sedentary calories. I think he's got anger issues he said with a small flourish of his hand, a kind of touche in this meeting to decide another man's fate. His eyes were buried in his cheeks and looked like they were about to explode. He is not one of us his eyes said. Us and them. Anger issues he said again in case we hadn't heard him. At least he expresses his feelings I thought to myself. You are a bomb waiting to go off I thought, a white-man-in-a-suit IED. It's all about control with you I thought. You spot it you got it I thought. You see yourself as protecting us from feelings I thought. You keep a lid on it, run a wall through it, never showing your light while punishing others for showing theirs.

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Over Here. Over There.


Over here we drive in climate-controlled comfort, have so much food we throw away about half of it, leave our estates to cats. Over there they hide in basements to avoid barrel bombs, pray for water if the chlorine gas drifts in, and are lucky to have bread. There are no pets. Over here we live for entertainment and worship our gods of the screen. Over there they hope children get to live one more day. Over here it's money. Over there heat for cooking. Over here we worry about wrinkly skin and get massages when we feel anxious. Over there they operate without anesthesia or electric lights. We struggle to decide which outfit to wear over here. They want a bullet-proof vest and helmet so they can better remove rubble covering trapped innocents. The sound of a jet means travel here. There rockets, explosions. Over here we want the best and most beautiful. Over there surviving is a dream. Over here, over there. Just location, location. That, and luck, or lack thereof. If you were over there, what would you like to say to someone over here? 

Saturday, March 3, 2018

What Is It That Keeps You Awake In the Silence?


What is it that steals your peace in the deepest dark of night? What is it that leaves you there staring at the ceiling fan, a skein of snakes in your heart and mind? Is it all that is leaving you, that you want to hang onto, to hold like a dragon sitting on gold in his stony lair? Is it the weakness taking over, the one you know when you climb stairs or lift a board that you wish you could nail in place? Is it the loss of balance? Now, you catch yourself, or even fall when caught by surprise. Is it the word that you can't quite recall, the one that is perfect for what you want to say right now? Is it all that you will never achieve because the means have left you? Is it your aching gratitude for all you have been given? Or is it everything -- the dark nights, the days brimming with joy, the peace of rolling, the taste of raspberries, of salt, drops running down a frosted tumbler of dark beer, the tears of rage at the unfairness? All of it is what you must surrender as the light of you grows dim. Is that it?