Category: contemplative life (Page 1 of 4)

Caesar’s Triumph

We started watching Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar today in my AP Lang class.

I didn’t feel like teaching. Thinking about the play, the class, being around other people, all of it made me sick. I wanted to crawl into my Bandcamp app and listen to midwestern alternative rock for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to teach. Not today. Not today of all days, and definitely not this play with all that it is.

But as the opening scene started–Act 1, Scene 1– and “Oh Caesar, Caesar! Caesar, Caesar, Caesar!” and the drumbeat and the triumph of the plebes started, I was struck in a way I did not expect.

I always knew art could be a balm. It could be an escape.

But this was different. It was clarity. A startling truth, and with that truth some measure of consolation.

We are in a cycle. This pattern–the pattern of human behavior, of politics, of leadership, of self-interest, of anxiety, of helplessness, of being seen, of needing to be seen, of finding champions who will mirror your desires back to you, of allegiances that shift like quicksilver, of worry, of glories long-past, of the need for some cash, of the need for some scapegoats–all of it is a wheel, turning and turning, each spoke of the circle destined to repeat.

I cannot hate the plebes (of which I am one and not one all at once), as I cannot condone the condescension of the patricians, even if my head agrees. Once we get to Caesar’s triumph into Rome, it’s too late. Brutus never had a choice. Conspire, don’t conspire. None of it mattered. Rome was going to fall to Caesarism no matter what.

The play is incredibly dark, but not untrue. Watching that opening, as the tribunes chastise the plebes, as the plebes want nothing so much as a holiday, as we await the ominous fate of Flavius and Marullus (“they are put to silence”), we know where the train is headed and that it can’t be stopped. Once the triumph starts, the play is on its way. It can only end with Octavian’s raised fist and “this happy day.”

I don’t know why, but watching it unfold on the screen–a dramatization of the pattern we simply cannot escape–was strangely comforting. There are artists, writers, poets who have seen what we have seen and they have responded to it–not with despair, but with creation. Not much can be done, in the immediate, but art can be done, and it can last, and generations hence shall act this lofty scene “in states unborn and accents yet unknown!” and that’s more than a comfort.

It’s a call, a voice out of time, a reminder that poetry still stirs the heart. That theater and performance and art and imagination are not dead. They are part of the cycle too, and they are destined to keep turning.

“Rule 2: General Duties of a Student: Pull Everything Out of Your Teacher: Pull Everything Out of Your Fellow Students”

Who are my teachers? Who are my fellow students?

Finding teachers (recognizing them, really) wasn’t too hard, but this Rule also mentions fellow students and that was a much harder find. Who exactly are my fellow students? Without being enrolled in a school or class, I’m kinda just on my own. My teachers are the successful authors and artists and thinkers whose books I can study, but who then are my study-buddies?

Perhaps the real answer is one I’ve been avoiding for over a decade now.

My fellow students are my fellow writers who are at or slightly above where I’m at right now in my craft and career.

The trouble is that I am resistant to joining writers’ groups. I always have been. I’m not sure why either, other than I’m not naturally a joiner and I am painfully shy and awkward when it comes to meeting people and making friends.

The other problem is that I’m not exactly sure where to look for fellow students who are at my same level. I can find beginning writers easily enough. But I’m not sure how helpful that would ultimately be for my own growth.

And I can identify writers who are further along than me, but they won’t want me in their groups for the same reason I’m resistant to joining a group of beginners: too much gap between their skills and mine.

Finding fellow students is probably a good project for me to undertake, but for now, for this week-to-week experiment in following Sr. Corita’s Rules, I’m fudging it a bit and defining fellow students as those writers and artists whose newsletters I subscribe to. They are also, in a lot of ways, my teachers. Teacher/student is a fluid designation, then. Those who can teach us are also themselves students.

I am both teacher and student too. In some ways, Rule 2 and Rule 3 are leading to the same destination: pulling everything out of everyone. Who the teacher is and who the student is may change and shift at times, but our “General Duties” remain the same.

But how to do that pulling? How does it work to “pull everything out” of one’s teachers, one’s fellow students?

What I did this week was read and listen and watch more deliberately. I took more notes on what I was reading. I spent time with pieces of advice and examples and words of wisdom from my various teachers, reflecting on these small lessons in my notebooks, mulling them over and trying to make connections. I spent more time copying quotes and ideas down, letting them sit for awhile before moving on to the next chapter or the next video.

Essentially, being more attentive and more thoughtful.

Also this week, I just started reading In Praise of Slowness, and I think its thesis fits with my idea that “pulling everything out” requires thoughtfulness and deliberate study. It requires a slowing of the pace so that ideas can sink in and take root. Carl Honore’s book is also proving to be one of my teachers at the moment, so I need to make sure I pull everything out of his book that I can.

I’ll admit that following Rule 2 this week was harder than last week’s Rule 1. Rule 2 requires a lot more slowness, more time for inquiry. It’s not just about being in a place but about relationship between people (even if those people are only coming to me through the pages of a book). Relationship, study, learning: these things take time. If things are too haphazard, the “pulling out” of everything turns into a half-hearted scurrying for crumbs.

I tried hard to do more than scrape up crumbs this week, but I’m not sure how successful I was. Got some good lessons and ideas from my teachers (namely, Derek Sivers, James Scott Bell, Ursula Le Guin, Mervyn Peake, and Rebecca Roanhorse). But reflecting back on the week, I don’t think I’ve quite achieved EVERYTHING.

Maybe the lesson is that this Rule requires persistence. Pulling everything out of one’s teachers and fellow students requires patience, diligence, and humility. It can’t be achieved in a week. Not even a semester or a year. We often only have limited time with our flesh and blood teachers and students, and so trying to pull everything out of them in the school term can feel like an impossible race against time.

But what if we continue to pull things out of our teachers even after the last bell has rung and summer vacation beckons? What if we hold onto their wisdom, their advice, and keep it rolling around our brains, peppering our journal entries with their ideas, mulling things over well past the semester’s end?

I often think back to things I learned in classes gone by, of wise words from my teachers, of projects and lessons done in a classroom or workshop. I continue to pull new things (and old things renewed) out of those experiences. The general duties continue even as the classes have ended. Even decades after.

Just as I am continuing to trust my place in the downstairs room, I have to continue to pull things out of my teachers, my students, and myself. Attentiveness and trust. Thoughtfulness and patience. Slowing down and sitting with things for awhile. Openness and humility.

Rule 2 is a general duty. It’s always there for us to follow. We must never stop the work of drawing forth the good and the true from one another. We are all us teacher/student. Not just for a week, but always.

Finally Feels Like Spring

Today, it finally felt like a real spring.

We had a false spring — a false summer, really — in the middle of April, when the temperatures got up into the 80s, but after that it was cold, colder than normal, and snowy too, a few days.

Now, it’s finally warm enough to go out with only a sweater or light jacket, warm enough to feel the breeze against your cheek and it feels good, not biting or cruel.

I went for a walk, my usual route down the main road near our house, and the smell of freshly cut grass and wet earth and lots of running stream water was everywhere. And I listened to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and got ideas for a couple of stories, one a new idea, the other a wrinkle to add to an idea from last week.

Spring is the best walking weather (maybe autumn is tied with it too) because it’s usually never too hot, and the coolness is bearable with the right jacket and accessories. And everything is coming alive, so for me, story ideas seem to come alive too. I just hope we get a few more weeks of real spring before summer’s heat descends and makes afternoon walks too scorching.

A Little Patch of Trees

It was just a little patch of jack pine and maybe some white pine too, a few brambles and sumac, the last remnants of a slightly larger bit of woods, the bulk of which was cut down a while ago to make way for two subdivisions of McMansion-style houses. But the little patch that was left after that initial devastation — the little patch on the corner of the road — was still something. Something to enjoy as we took our family walks down to the gyro restaurant. Something to enjoy as I took my twice-daily walking breaks while working from home. Something worth savoring, even if it was a meager smattering of trees.

Now, it’s being cut down.

I’m embarrassed, on some level, to confess that it bothers me this much to see these trees cut down. Why should a few pine trees matter? It wasn’t like some beautiful, ancient forest was being plowed to make a strip mall. These were just skinny, scrawny jack pines, not the Forest of Dean. To say this is a “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot” moment would be total overkill. They already destroyed much of the little woods several years ago. This was just a tiny remnant.

But I can’t help it, overkill or no. I enjoyed those trees. I imbibed those trees, from the wet piney smell on damp days to the way they shaded the ground beneath them on sweltering summer afternoons. Those trees hid squirrels and birds and so many dragonflies and butterflies, and they made the walks we took down the sidewalk just a little more pleasant, a little more wild.

I would often walk alone past the trees and the wildflowers that grew up around them, and the sumac and milkweed, and stare into the denseness of the undergrowth, and think and dream, projecting strange images into the shadows and brambles that populated that little patch of wilderness. It was a respite from the zooming cars on the other side of the road, the noise and the speed. The patch of trees absorbed all that and quieted things, and looked especially beautiful as the sun set behind it on wintery Saturday evenings, the pale pink and orange glow of the sky enveloping the thin browns and greens of pine needles and bare branches.

Now, all that’s gone.

A few more houses will be built, I’m sure. And I guess I don’t begrudge someone wanting to buy a house. I live in suburbia, so what should I expect, right?

But that doesn’t mean my heart can’t break a little. That doesn’t mean I can’t feel a lump in my throat when I look at all those trees, cut down to thin logs and stacked into neat little piles, and now the sky is too glaring and huge, with nothing to soften it, and the houses that’ll be built there will be built without any trees in the yard, so that the skyline will be nothing but triangle roofs and too-big houses on too-small lots.

I’m not against all development, but if we’re going to build new housing, why can’t we concentrate it in downtown districts? Why can’t we build multi-unit housing? Why can’t we leave these patches of trees alone?

I’m a hypocrite, of course, because I live in a single-family house and not in the downtown district. I’m a NIMBY, and I’m ashamed of it. Maybe my husband and I made a mistake in not trying to find housing in a more walkable neighborhood, in an apartment or townhouse or duplex or whatever. I think about that a lot and do sometimes regret our housing choice.

But the little bit of wilderness we once had by our house is now nearly gone. That little patch of trees was the last bit. And while the stream and wetlands that are also near that corner probably can’t be developed for environmental reasons (thank goodness!), they are a mere fragment of what was formerly there.

It’s not like we didn’t see this coming. We knew that land would be developed someday. And when it was — when that first bulldozing of the woods happened — we were sad. But a little patch of trees remained, and I’d sort of gotten used to it, thinking that at least that little patch would stick around for us to enjoy.

But I should’ve known better. If there’s land to develop, it will someday be developed, even something as meager as that smattering of pine trees. I’m sure whoever owns the lands, and whoever buys the houses, will be much happier with the trees gone, and what say do I have in it anyway? It’s not my land. It never was. Those were never my trees. But even if I never owned them, I knew them, and seeing them gone is like seeing a friend move away forever.

Just a little patch of trees. But they mattered, at least to me.

Killing Silverfish

There’s one on the wall of my office right now. I hate trying to kill these gross insects because they’re so flipping fast when they move, and then when you do kill them, they basically disintegrate into a weird silvery smudge.

It’s gliding along the wall, going back and forth, trying to shimmy its way up the wooden molding, but I think it’s unable to do it for whatever reason. Maybe it’s legs aren’t strong enough.

I just looked them up, and it turns out silverfish eat paper, which means they can destroy books, and I have several piles of books on the floor of my office (taken from my old classroom), and I wonder: Do I need to worry about them? Can the silverfish really destroy my books? How many silverfish are gliding their way through my basement at this very moment?

It almost made it up the molding just now. I thought it was going to fall off the wall, its little body sort of dangling as it tried to clutch the molding and pull itself up. But it gave up and scooted back down onto the drywall.

That’s when I squashed it. With a book catalog that came in the mail today. It left a streak of silver on the back page, smudging a few words: the advertising copy for a new book.

I don’t feel bad about killing the silverfish, but I do feel bad that it never made it up the molding.

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