Yeats apparently heard voices in his head saying "Hammer your thoughts into unity." A hammer, sometimes, I think, will not suffice. At every turn (and I even recognize it in my own rhetoric), there is a this and a that, option A and option B, nature and nurture, war and peace, Hillary and Barack, to be or not to be. No union there.
Today, for example, I see an inside and an outside, an internet connection and a candle, a jellybean and a Vitamic C drop.
It was Earth Day. Like most, I hope, I can still experience spring as I did when I was sixteen: with a giddiness, a freshness, a gravity that draws me to the soil, to humanity, without weighing me down. Ah, but for the unmanageable allergies and other practicalities. So I stay inside. I read and read and write and write and this becomes as unmanageable and impractical.
Yeats' dialogic poems explore just such a back and forth. This, too, is two-dimensional. The most fundamental "conversation" is a two-party one, a call and response, a first term and a second term taking turns like a see-saw, cause and effect, response and reaction. It is endless, but never linear because it can never be complete. It does not stretch "into" infinity; it simply is infinity. You choose which parts deserve response and the rest is lost forever. The words just fall away. Perhaps they melt and half-freeze again, forming a soft snow-like cushion for the chosen words, resigned to being the throw-aways, the have-nots, second-rate to the meaning-makers. They are often invisible even in text messages and myspace comments. There are smiley faces, though: a symbol of a symbol, signifying in (not into!) infinity. What, then, is signified?
In my first post, I referenced my arrested development. And is this hammering into unity childishness? Often times the philosophizing makes me feel foolish, impotent. And other times it makes me feel whole and proud and innocent and untainted. No, no--not the innocence. Wordsworth writes of the "perpetual benediction" he feels toward "the thought of our past years," but not for our childish innocence, "but for those obstinate questionings / Of sense and outward things." Perhaps my questions veer toward petulant, but I hope not to grow "out of" obstinacy.
"The Black Cat": one example of an uncomfortable crossing of worlds: the incompatible images of the self. There is me, relaxed as I attempt to be, professioning (I'm Timothy Leary, folks, passing out knowledge and crying Tune in!) in front of students nearly as old as me, some perhaps as smart, and it still feels a bit like show-and-tell. These things I "learned" in graduate school jump out of my skin like chronic eczema and I want so badly to pentrate our authoritarian-subordinate barrier and share. It is ok for them to know some things (I dig the new Raceonteurs) but not others (I didn't grade your papers yet because I was drunk on Tom Collins). Some things (I think Robert Penn Warren sucks), not others (if you quote your pastor in class one more time it's an automatic F).
So this barrier was crossed the day we read Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat." I mentioned one of the some things (I have a black cat) and it led to not-others ("What's his name?"). What is your cat's name. The question paralyzed me--perhaps my defenses were not as strong that day as they usually are--so i blushed. I was mentally transported to my messy apartment where I live pathetically alone and there are things I don't want them to see--a bra lying on the floor, a half-eaten bagel, post-its sticking out of books with My Private Reactions! (and other things I cannot even bring myself to write in a virtually anonymous blog). I am in a bright classroom in Cherry Hall but I am afraid they can see my dark apartment and my black cat -- Benito Burrito Mussolini -- hissing for them to leave. Get out!
Well, which is it then: in or out?
2 comments:
I absolutely agree--a couple of months ago I entered class in a great mood, a little earlier than usual, and decided to make a little small talk with the students (which,as I'm sure you know, works better sometimes than others). This time, I for some reason asked if anyone knew if a regular calling card worked the same for international calls as for regular ones, and when a student answered with her experiences with them, I thought, "Cool; I've just made small talk about something inconsequential and non-writing related." Until someone else asked: "Where are you calling?" I cautiously answered, "Scotland." They went on: "Who are you calling there?" Inside I froze--'oh no, how do I answer this without giving WAY too much away??' I answered, "A friend..." "Is it a romantic-type friend?" they pressed. Arrgg!! Now they have breached my defenses. They have asked the unaskable. And I am left, quivering inside and eyes wide, to say, "Uhhh... it's just.... uh.... someone that lived here and moved back home..." Wow. Talk about some excellent communication, there. I'm telling you, it's murder to let them in. But kind of sad not to, at the same time.
I feel like letting the students in should be like a lockable doggy door; small enough to let bits and pieces and scraps of life in and out, but lockable, so that they don't know too much. I think that barrier is harder to control the younger you are...or your students are. My older students keep more to themselves, whereas the younger students want us to be like their high school teachers; rambling non-stop about the kids (and if you don't have any, "When are you going to?!?!"), the spouse (I don't know what's worse, being married and being stalked about the spouse or not being married and being asked "When are you going to?!?!"), the animals, the house, who wore what at Wal-Mart, cars, tanning beds, diets, allergies, doctors, etc. Argh. Sometimes I want to open up, but a lot of times I just don't want to get that close. Besides, there is a sick joy in assigning an F. And that is harder if you have an affinity for the student, I think. Or if they know too much.
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