Do you ever think about the music that would be on a soundtrack of your life? Do you ever catch yourself in a moment that's so ripe with emotion, aesthetics, or meaning that you can almost hear some song you like rising in volume in the background? Maybe what's more common is to find yourself innocently going about your life when a certain song comes on the radio—in the car, in a store, at a cafe—and you're in a certain mood or situation that makes it resonate; and for a minute or two, it's like you've become the movie star, and the scene unfolding around you has been constructed—crafted—to so perfectly carry the mood that's overtaken you.
Today I was driving at that hour of day a poet would call the gloaming—that time just before dark when the air gets a little blue before it loses the light altogether. At that time of day, leaves still reveal themselves in silhouettes pressed against the sky; but stars and planets also sparkle; headlights flash on; street lights begin to glow. In the car I sat quietly—alone except for the radio, which was emitting old-timey jazz; old-timey jazz tunes that dance with a playful joy. This time the movie I was in wasn't set right then and there; rather, the scene was taking place in the future—in what feels like a distant future. I was marrying. Not walking down the aisle or anything so romantic; no, just sitting in a room filled with people, buzzing with chatter and the movements of those I love most dearly, and this old-timey jazz was playing. Like in a dream, I could almost see myself leaning back and watching it all as something inside me danced with that same playful joy and contentment that the music hastened in.
Why did the music take me, I wondered, to some place so distant for me now? It could be something to do with wistfulness, but I think it isn't; I think it was just something clicking in my head, responding to something else that happened a few weeks ago. I had been in class; the professor had handed each student a card with an emotion written on it, and we'd done a free association with that emotion and a set of words. We worked in groups and shared our responses, trying to get others to identify the emotion we held in our hand with the vivid associations of feel, taste, sound, food, and memory that we had made. My word had been rage, another person's happiness. The burning of hot peppers on my tongue, the melting of chocolate chips as cookies baked—my group members had quickly deduced the first few words. Last to share was our professor, and his list of associations was beautiful; we told him his word must be peacefulness or inner calm or something along this track. But he shook his head no. Perplexed, we demanded the answer. "Falling in love," he said, and a classmate promptly informed him he was wrong. "That's not falling in love," she assured him, "that's being in love." No—he tried to protest; but he stopped himself, smiling, and said maybe he would have described it differently 30 years ago. "You would have," she insisted, because Merlot and Beethoven, she was sure, were the signs of a tie that's been shared and adored for a long time. I loved her assurance about it; and I loved that what I associated with inner calm she associated with being in love.
But his words hadn't fit with in love for me at the time, so they had lingered. He had conjured a scene in a living room, with Merlot and classical music and rain falling beyond the window, and I had imagined socked feet on a table, reclining, and faint smiling; I had imagined inner peace and contentment—the kind one gets all on one's own. The kind one needs to have before the falling or the being in love fit in. Only once that quiet steady calm blissful place has been created can the playful joyful dancing be more than fleeting, be sustainable by every breath to be taken for the rest of time. This way it has something sturdy to fall back on in those inevitable if often infinitesimal moments between musical movements, when we all take a breath and a pause. The trumpeter inhales deeply before exhaling the old-timey jazzy tune. I inhale deeply thinking about the emotion the song conjured inside me, knowing I have a sturdy place ready to set it whenever the real-life version comes along.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
(let the process bring you alive)
I like going to or from campus best at the start and end of the day. Some mornings, when I bike to school, I get to cruise under the hanging arms of a row of palm trees, whose finger-like leaves glint in the slant of the early-day sun. As I pass by them, a Spanish-roofed building comes into view; beyond its gates, the ornate painted details of a church begin to show; and then I can see the golden hills beyond, and, above them, the blue sky, which here is almost always clear. On days when I walk, I take different routes, getting to know the architecture of this block and the flora of that one. A certain path leads me past a palm tree here while at the same time an old redwood there; another way tugs me through the arching stems of calla lilies as I admire roses stretching unfathomably upward across the street; others reveal the magenta of bougainvillea, the purple of a copper birch, and the deep blood red of a maple in such rapid succession it’s hard to remember that elsewhere the seasons don’t all happen at once. Elsewhere the golden leaves of a jacaranda won’t crunch beneath my feet as I traipse past a flowering magnolia, but they do here. In the evening, palm leaves imprint their silhouette on the graying sky as I head back home. The sky saturates with navy at its pinnacle, with yellow, orange, or pink along the westward horizon, and palm leaves imprint themselves on my brain as a chill sets in. The joys of fall and spring are rolled into one here; they feel magical in a new way here.
That I am living in an enchanting place is not new to me. The last time I commuted on foot was also when I was a student; then, too, I cherished the peaceful way I got from home to school, from relaxation to mental stimulation and back again. When I walk home at night here, my brain fills with visual memories of the paths I took through Cambridge in the evening. Most often I am walking through lightly falling snow; most often I am walking on a quiet city street, the brick sidewalks jostled and worn from hundreds of years of passing feet trodding upon them, the solemn museums and looming design school resting darkly and quietly at the close of day. I am walking past neighborhood houses; I am walking into the heart of the Square and toward my home; away from a street with a name like a metaphor—Divinity Ave, it’s called, and it’s where I spent much of my time in college. It’s a short block, housing a handful of buildings that hold within them a magnificent array of studies—East Asian studies; Russian studies; botany, with its massive herbarium; geology, paleontology, and archaeology, the latter with a warehouse full of artifacts from all over the world; the department of religion, with its walls embroidered with elephants, its yard bejeweled with large stone rhinos. I sometimes sat near those creatures just to enjoy the absurdity of them; and sometimes I wandered beyond them, the other side of that building offering a one-block-by-one-block stand of trees that I could walk amidst and almost fool myself into thinking was a forest, if I tuned out the sound of traffic, the glow of street lights, the smell of chimney fires at its edges.
It is important to me to live in places I love. There is something about the character of certain places that enlivens me. The satisfaction these places give me feels like the satisfaction of true love. You may think that sort of love is one-sided, but it isn’t; there is a vital dynamism to it. As I study the details of my surroundings and fall for them, there is a stirring of something inside me—an ignition of my internal fire. Love, it tells me, love what is around you; breathe deeply, discover, and savor; let the process bring you alive.
That I am living in an enchanting place is not new to me. The last time I commuted on foot was also when I was a student; then, too, I cherished the peaceful way I got from home to school, from relaxation to mental stimulation and back again. When I walk home at night here, my brain fills with visual memories of the paths I took through Cambridge in the evening. Most often I am walking through lightly falling snow; most often I am walking on a quiet city street, the brick sidewalks jostled and worn from hundreds of years of passing feet trodding upon them, the solemn museums and looming design school resting darkly and quietly at the close of day. I am walking past neighborhood houses; I am walking into the heart of the Square and toward my home; away from a street with a name like a metaphor—Divinity Ave, it’s called, and it’s where I spent much of my time in college. It’s a short block, housing a handful of buildings that hold within them a magnificent array of studies—East Asian studies; Russian studies; botany, with its massive herbarium; geology, paleontology, and archaeology, the latter with a warehouse full of artifacts from all over the world; the department of religion, with its walls embroidered with elephants, its yard bejeweled with large stone rhinos. I sometimes sat near those creatures just to enjoy the absurdity of them; and sometimes I wandered beyond them, the other side of that building offering a one-block-by-one-block stand of trees that I could walk amidst and almost fool myself into thinking was a forest, if I tuned out the sound of traffic, the glow of street lights, the smell of chimney fires at its edges.
It is important to me to live in places I love. There is something about the character of certain places that enlivens me. The satisfaction these places give me feels like the satisfaction of true love. You may think that sort of love is one-sided, but it isn’t; there is a vital dynamism to it. As I study the details of my surroundings and fall for them, there is a stirring of something inside me—an ignition of my internal fire. Love, it tells me, love what is around you; breathe deeply, discover, and savor; let the process bring you alive.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
the trials of a single girl in her 30s
When I first told my mother I was going to graduate school, she was delighted. She has for years been telling me how much she regrets not getting a higher degree (she was one year into a PhD in biology when my dad got a tenured job and they moved 1,000 miles away so he could take it; she never got back to that degree she'd wanted and has felt hindered by not having it throughout her career). But pretty quickly, she realized there was another cause for rejoicing. She is an avid reader of the New York Times wedding page, and just as she has observed in its listings that many people are now getting married in their late 20s and 30s (hope for me yet, she says, though really she doesn't want me to have a husband so much as give her grandbabies who live in this country), so too has she noted that most of them meet in school. At Stanford, she decided, I would find my husband.
As it turns out, I am in a master's program that is 6/7 female, in a department with about the same percentage, so I'm not finding too many opportunities to meet my future hubby. When I do meet men who seem attractive, smart, and available, they tend to have one major deficiency: a significant number fewer years of life than me. Now given the treatise I once wrote on why younger men shouldn't write off older women, you probably know I'm open to dating younger men. My brother, after all, is four years the junior of his wife, and they have a terrific relationship—just the kind I'd like to find. So I'm as open as open can be. But how much younger is too young?
The first two guys I met on campus who seemed to take an interest proved to be, each, about 22. In both cases, they looked it, so I had to finally step away from the conversation because, really, what is the point? Last week I met one who seemed plenty mature and plenty appealing—but he proved to be just 24. Is seven years too much younger for dating? I couldn't tell he was that much younger—he didn't look it, and he didn't seem it. Does that make it OK? The question is rhetorical, really, because I doubt he would want to date someone so much older—for the self-same reason I identified in the PSA mentioned above. But given that my pickings seem to be mainly in the realm of those younger than me, I'm trying to figure out where to draw the line—or if I have to. It feels wrong, somehow, to be attracted to someone seven or ten years younger than me, but if I am, I am, right? Perhaps I've reached an age at which age matters less. What do you vote for, my dear readers—shall I become the next Mrs. Robinson??
As it turns out, I am in a master's program that is 6/7 female, in a department with about the same percentage, so I'm not finding too many opportunities to meet my future hubby. When I do meet men who seem attractive, smart, and available, they tend to have one major deficiency: a significant number fewer years of life than me. Now given the treatise I once wrote on why younger men shouldn't write off older women, you probably know I'm open to dating younger men. My brother, after all, is four years the junior of his wife, and they have a terrific relationship—just the kind I'd like to find. So I'm as open as open can be. But how much younger is too young?
The first two guys I met on campus who seemed to take an interest proved to be, each, about 22. In both cases, they looked it, so I had to finally step away from the conversation because, really, what is the point? Last week I met one who seemed plenty mature and plenty appealing—but he proved to be just 24. Is seven years too much younger for dating? I couldn't tell he was that much younger—he didn't look it, and he didn't seem it. Does that make it OK? The question is rhetorical, really, because I doubt he would want to date someone so much older—for the self-same reason I identified in the PSA mentioned above. But given that my pickings seem to be mainly in the realm of those younger than me, I'm trying to figure out where to draw the line—or if I have to. It feels wrong, somehow, to be attracted to someone seven or ten years younger than me, but if I am, I am, right? Perhaps I've reached an age at which age matters less. What do you vote for, my dear readers—shall I become the next Mrs. Robinson??
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
(when something stirs in the dark)
Being back on a college campus these days and having a few seniors in my classes, my brain keeps drifting back to my own senior year. When I think about this exact time ten years ago, I can't remember exactly which classes I was taking or what job I had then, but I know what I was doing with a lot of my free time: I was quite surely falling in love. The story is long and its ending sad, with my love becoming unrequited; but I didn't know at the start (or even in the middle) that that's what I was heading toward; I didn't know anything but that there was this guy I was getting to know and with each inch we moved closer to each other, such a bond was forming that it would take years for me to be able to let go.
The first time I ever saw him, I had my faced stuffed into a lilac bush; I was smiling and breathing in the magnificent odor of the petals and he was passing through the courtyard around which it turned out we both lived. When he saw me, he grinned with a look like appreciation, and I remembered that when, a month or two later, we crossed paths again. This time it was in the stairwell; he was heading out and I was going to watch a movie with a friend who turned out to be his roommate, though I didn't find that out until halfway through the film. At that point he snuck through the dark room to the shower after a workout at the gym. As he finished in the bathroom, he must've heard a scene he liked in the movie, because he came out to watch in his towel, and no one who was there will ever let me forget that my mouth truly did drop open at the sight of his obscenely cut and dripping wet torso. That night I finally thought to ask his name.
A few months later, I had my first conversation with him, sitting in his bedroom and talking for what later seemed like an appalling amount of time for a guy who could happily be silent for days on end. I can't tell you what we talked about, but I remember something that went loudly through my head as I walked back home. I could fall in love with this guy, I had said to myself, and very soon I did.
It's hard, sometimes, to remember how perfectly our friendship unfolded. How it started with him coming over to hang seven or eight strands of Christmas lights around my common room and staying late into the night; how it continued with little things like him asking me to read poetry to him as he lay in bed and tried to get to sleep. He knew I liked poetry, so he had me sit on the edge of his bed and read—one, maybe two poems at a time. Sometimes before leaving I would kiss him on the forehead, just like at times he would lean down and do to me when we were standing somewhere saying goodbye. But that was early on, and everything was still unspoken, so sometimes I just read to him and said good night. On those nights it probably took a long time to reach sleep myself. There was a poem I so wanted to read to him, but I couldn't; things were still unspoken, and I couldn't even let a Rilke poem say to him what I had on my mind:
I would like to sing someone to sleep,
to sit beside someone and be there.
I would like to rock you and sing softly
and go with you to and from sleep.
I would like to be the one in the house
who knew: The night was cold.
And I would like to listen in and listen out
into you, into the world, into the woods.
The clocks shout to one another striking,
and one sees to the bottom of time.
And down below one last, strange man walks by
and rouses a strange dog.
And after that comes silence.
I have laid my eyes upon you wide;
and they hold you gently and let you go
when something stirs in the dark.
One night he took me walking, aimlessly, I thought; but it got dark out, and we had gone quite a ways, so I finally asked where we were headed. We were by the river when he told me; there were tall grasses beside us, and I knew we were almost to the next town. On a walking tour of my childhood, he told me as we reached his favorite basketball court, and then he described how all the boys he grew up with first tasted alcohol sitting out on the court. He laughed as he thought back on that; he smiled as he sat me in the hammock behind his parents' house and swung me; he grew quiet as we lay down on the grass of the golf course beyond their home and stared at the sky. We lay there a long time before he told me that I was stretched out on his favorite patch of grass on this earth, that I was taking in his favorite view of the stars in the sky.
A long time after I let him go, I told myself it was OK to hold on to one or two of the best memories, it was OK to hold on at least to that memory—because it's not so often in life that someone fully lays himself open to you and asks you to walk on in. I don't think back on it often anymore; I kicked him out of my life five years ago, almost exactly five years after we started growing so close without putting the right words to things before it was too late. He wasn't available, emotionally, when I met him; and by the time he finally was, I had gotten over him. We had a bond like family by then, but he hadn't been able to go where I wanted us to go and so I'd gotten over him. But we held on to each other like family; we spent time together like family. Eventually it was just too much; we were too bonded for people who weren't in a relationship; my heart was still tied up in him and it hindered me from dating, and his eventual girlfriend seemed to think the same thing for him.
One weekend after five years of all this, we went to stay at his parents' ski condo and had a great time. I skied my intermediate slopes and he hit the big ones; afterward we sat in his favorite cafe and I drank hot cocoa and read poetry while he did his homework for an engineering class he was in. Sometime in the middle of that quiet afternoon by a snow-filled window, I told him my dream of owning a bookstore with a cafe in it—a cafe just like this one. The other memory I may never let go of is the way he looked at me in that moment; me, sitting in this place that he had loved since childhood; me, sharing a dream with him; me, there, with him after all those years; and he told me that he could build it for me, the bookstore with the cafe in it just like this one; once he (started and) finished architecture school, he could build it. In the meantime, a few weeks later, he gave me as a birthday present a book about the business of opening a cafe, and he told me he thought I really should do it; he really wanted me to do it.
In that moment between my dream and his affirmation of it, I knew that I was still in love with him. It took six more months for me to tell him so—for me to tell him so and ask him to step out of my life in the very same breath. But I knew it in that moment, that I loved him and he loved me but it was never going to be in the way that I hoped. He had a girlfriend then, when he looked at me and told me he could build my dream into reality, and perhaps that's what made it possible for me to finally see that whatever he and I were just was not right.
That all comes into my mind when I'm on campus and thinking back on college, but it's really at the forefront because of something that happened a month ago when I was back in Cambridge, where all this unfolded. I was there just two days, going to a wedding, and as I got on the red line to leave town, I thought I saw him. If it had been him, he'd be an architect now, fully licensed and practicing. If it had been him, he'd be a husband and a father; he might have had his baby in his arms. When the man's face rose I knew it wasn't who I'd thought it was, but in those few seconds afterward, I considered what I would have done if he had been there, just a few people down from me on the train. Five years had passed since I'd seen him; I would have smiled with all my heart. Five years had passed; I would have smiled and stepped off the train.
The first time I ever saw him, I had my faced stuffed into a lilac bush; I was smiling and breathing in the magnificent odor of the petals and he was passing through the courtyard around which it turned out we both lived. When he saw me, he grinned with a look like appreciation, and I remembered that when, a month or two later, we crossed paths again. This time it was in the stairwell; he was heading out and I was going to watch a movie with a friend who turned out to be his roommate, though I didn't find that out until halfway through the film. At that point he snuck through the dark room to the shower after a workout at the gym. As he finished in the bathroom, he must've heard a scene he liked in the movie, because he came out to watch in his towel, and no one who was there will ever let me forget that my mouth truly did drop open at the sight of his obscenely cut and dripping wet torso. That night I finally thought to ask his name.
A few months later, I had my first conversation with him, sitting in his bedroom and talking for what later seemed like an appalling amount of time for a guy who could happily be silent for days on end. I can't tell you what we talked about, but I remember something that went loudly through my head as I walked back home. I could fall in love with this guy, I had said to myself, and very soon I did.
It's hard, sometimes, to remember how perfectly our friendship unfolded. How it started with him coming over to hang seven or eight strands of Christmas lights around my common room and staying late into the night; how it continued with little things like him asking me to read poetry to him as he lay in bed and tried to get to sleep. He knew I liked poetry, so he had me sit on the edge of his bed and read—one, maybe two poems at a time. Sometimes before leaving I would kiss him on the forehead, just like at times he would lean down and do to me when we were standing somewhere saying goodbye. But that was early on, and everything was still unspoken, so sometimes I just read to him and said good night. On those nights it probably took a long time to reach sleep myself. There was a poem I so wanted to read to him, but I couldn't; things were still unspoken, and I couldn't even let a Rilke poem say to him what I had on my mind:
I would like to sing someone to sleep,
to sit beside someone and be there.
I would like to rock you and sing softly
and go with you to and from sleep.
I would like to be the one in the house
who knew: The night was cold.
And I would like to listen in and listen out
into you, into the world, into the woods.
The clocks shout to one another striking,
and one sees to the bottom of time.
And down below one last, strange man walks by
and rouses a strange dog.
And after that comes silence.
I have laid my eyes upon you wide;
and they hold you gently and let you go
when something stirs in the dark.
One night he took me walking, aimlessly, I thought; but it got dark out, and we had gone quite a ways, so I finally asked where we were headed. We were by the river when he told me; there were tall grasses beside us, and I knew we were almost to the next town. On a walking tour of my childhood, he told me as we reached his favorite basketball court, and then he described how all the boys he grew up with first tasted alcohol sitting out on the court. He laughed as he thought back on that; he smiled as he sat me in the hammock behind his parents' house and swung me; he grew quiet as we lay down on the grass of the golf course beyond their home and stared at the sky. We lay there a long time before he told me that I was stretched out on his favorite patch of grass on this earth, that I was taking in his favorite view of the stars in the sky.
A long time after I let him go, I told myself it was OK to hold on to one or two of the best memories, it was OK to hold on at least to that memory—because it's not so often in life that someone fully lays himself open to you and asks you to walk on in. I don't think back on it often anymore; I kicked him out of my life five years ago, almost exactly five years after we started growing so close without putting the right words to things before it was too late. He wasn't available, emotionally, when I met him; and by the time he finally was, I had gotten over him. We had a bond like family by then, but he hadn't been able to go where I wanted us to go and so I'd gotten over him. But we held on to each other like family; we spent time together like family. Eventually it was just too much; we were too bonded for people who weren't in a relationship; my heart was still tied up in him and it hindered me from dating, and his eventual girlfriend seemed to think the same thing for him.
One weekend after five years of all this, we went to stay at his parents' ski condo and had a great time. I skied my intermediate slopes and he hit the big ones; afterward we sat in his favorite cafe and I drank hot cocoa and read poetry while he did his homework for an engineering class he was in. Sometime in the middle of that quiet afternoon by a snow-filled window, I told him my dream of owning a bookstore with a cafe in it—a cafe just like this one. The other memory I may never let go of is the way he looked at me in that moment; me, sitting in this place that he had loved since childhood; me, sharing a dream with him; me, there, with him after all those years; and he told me that he could build it for me, the bookstore with the cafe in it just like this one; once he (started and) finished architecture school, he could build it. In the meantime, a few weeks later, he gave me as a birthday present a book about the business of opening a cafe, and he told me he thought I really should do it; he really wanted me to do it.
In that moment between my dream and his affirmation of it, I knew that I was still in love with him. It took six more months for me to tell him so—for me to tell him so and ask him to step out of my life in the very same breath. But I knew it in that moment, that I loved him and he loved me but it was never going to be in the way that I hoped. He had a girlfriend then, when he looked at me and told me he could build my dream into reality, and perhaps that's what made it possible for me to finally see that whatever he and I were just was not right.
That all comes into my mind when I'm on campus and thinking back on college, but it's really at the forefront because of something that happened a month ago when I was back in Cambridge, where all this unfolded. I was there just two days, going to a wedding, and as I got on the red line to leave town, I thought I saw him. If it had been him, he'd be an architect now, fully licensed and practicing. If it had been him, he'd be a husband and a father; he might have had his baby in his arms. When the man's face rose I knew it wasn't who I'd thought it was, but in those few seconds afterward, I considered what I would have done if he had been there, just a few people down from me on the train. Five years had passed since I'd seen him; I would have smiled with all my heart. Five years had passed; I would have smiled and stepped off the train.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
(for a beloved friend on this day of great loss)
from Theodore Roethke's "The Far Field"
All finite things reveal infinitude:
The mountain with its singular bright shade
Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,
The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;
Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,
A scent beloved of bees;
Silence of water above a sunken tree:
The pure serene of memory in one man,—
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
metablognition
In class, I recently learned about metacognition—the monitoring of your own understanding and mastery of something. It put in my mind the concept of metablognition. Until yesterday, it had been so long since I'd written a blog post that I felt almost paralyzed when I'd try to think one up. I started this blog, after all, as writing exercise; but when you let your muscles go, when you fail to pick up your feet and move, your body reaches a point of inertia; and so it goes with the blogging part of my brain. I'm self-concious about it, feeling ill-equipped to say anything of interest, so I avoid being here. But I miss it, this place where my thoughts get to run around like little people climbing jungle gyms and feeling great satisfaction when they reach the top. I miss it, because I love it, so I've been telling myself to get my act together and get back here.
The post I wrote yesterday seemed very academic; even to me it seemed boring. But I made myself share it; I told myself (metablognitioning away) that I had to just put some words on the blank screen, not worrying whether they rang eloquent or not; just get the fingers typing; get some kind of thoughts flowing. The meaning and the artistry, I told myself, they'll come back.
It's like sex, I told myself; like when you haven't had sex in so long, and when you think you might again, you get nervous, wondering if you've lost your mojo. Metablognition has had me questioning my mojo; but I sat down and wrote something yesterday, and I posted it; and I'm sitting here writing now, and I'm gonna post it. So I know. Eventually, I know, I'll post something metablogmindblowing. In the meantime, god help us, I'll try not to bore you too much. :)
The post I wrote yesterday seemed very academic; even to me it seemed boring. But I made myself share it; I told myself (metablognitioning away) that I had to just put some words on the blank screen, not worrying whether they rang eloquent or not; just get the fingers typing; get some kind of thoughts flowing. The meaning and the artistry, I told myself, they'll come back.
It's like sex, I told myself; like when you haven't had sex in so long, and when you think you might again, you get nervous, wondering if you've lost your mojo. Metablognition has had me questioning my mojo; but I sat down and wrote something yesterday, and I posted it; and I'm sitting here writing now, and I'm gonna post it. So I know. Eventually, I know, I'll post something metablogmindblowing. In the meantime, god help us, I'll try not to bore you too much. :)
Saturday, October 11, 2008
brain yoga
In my intro to teaching class, the professor recently asked us to read Wikipedia's article on theory. He explained that he wanted us to see the different ways the word is construed in various disciplines and to understand that in the context of teaching, theories are more like methods—tangible practices determined by amassing a lot of evidence that suggests that these are the effective ways to do things—than abstract principles. In another class this week we encountered the latter. The course, which focuses on organizational behavior, pairs case studies with theory to equip us to become leaders who know how to effectively shape organizations. As I sat down with an article that posited theories about how people make decisions, I felt like I was back in a class on existentialism that I took in college. I remembered how hard I sometimes find it to process paragraphs and pages that revolve entirely around abstract ideas and logic; it just seems like that's not how my brain works. As I plod through such texts, I fail to visualize anything from what I read, and when I don't visualize, I often don't retain the information. So I have to sit down and read it again, taking notes along the way, building structure into the flow of thoughts since the author didn't seem to. After the note-taking, I can understand the text much better; I can at least visualize the notes on the screen, the four questions the author posed about how decisions get made and the subsequent categories I broke his explanations into it. I still don't visualize the content itself, but I put my mental processing of it onto paper, and somehow, that imprints visually on my brain.
That I learn best by interacting is not news to me. It's the crux of why archaeology impassioned me in college but history often didn't. Some historical accounts, like Zapata and the Mexican Revolution and Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, read like novels to me and don't get put down until I reach the last page; but a lot of history isn't written like that, so back in college, anyway, I found it harder to get into. In anthropology classes, on the other hand, I got to sit down at a lab table and face off with the skulls of our hominid ancestors; I got to study their size and shape, the prominence of the brow ridge, got to hold them in my hand and feel their weight. When I studied the ancient Maya, I got to stand amidst the buildings and stellae they long ago constructed and learn to read the hieroglyphs inscribed upon them; in that incomparable outdoor classroom, I got to listen as the man responsible for deciphering most of the glyphs taught us to see a smoke scroll here and a monkey's face here; taught us to add up the syllables and say the words; taught us to differentiate dates from textual statements and to slowly understand how these artful building blocks relayed information about warfare and conquest, royal births and deaths. In classes, I got to study slides professors had taken at long-excavated or newly rediscovered archaeological sites. Even when learning theory—that often-times deadly, abstract stuff—I got to study maps covered in symbols and differently colored arrows to learn the locations of hominid skulls or coastal campsites, to learn the competing explanations of the migration of hominids out of Africa or the newer take on the route homo sapiens followed to populate the Americas. That all this content stimulated my interest is no surprise; it stimulated my brain waves, tapping into all kinds of functions in my head.
Being back in school after almost a decade away from it is not just an adjustment to my schedule; it's an adjustment for my brain. While both my undergraduate studies and my professional work as a social studies editor were heavily focused on content, my graduate classes are teaching me mostly about academic disciplines and professional fields. That the subject at the heart of them—all courses being connected by the thread of education—is something highly tangible to me, something I have experienced in many settings and from both sides of the equation, doesn't always mean that the way my brain has to work to access the information is comfortable for it. It has been a long time since I read theory; a long time since I read so much of anything in one sitting, or in daily nine-hour sittings. But I consider all the struggles toward adjustment to be brain yoga. In some classes, the teaching methods are entirely new to me; in others, the packaging of the content is; yet in all of them, as the different control centers in my brain stretch their legs, shake out their muscles, and get back on the mat, they exhale a collective sigh of relief. It is exhausting to be inside your head so many hours a day; but it is exciting, especially when you realize that you can learn anything, in any format, no matter the limitations you might think were placed on your brain at birth. The brain is elastic, I think; resilient. Some corners grow dim over time, but all it takes to re-light them is a little effort, a little will, and a solid dose of curiosity. And with that optimistic thought, I leave you, my readers, to get back to my homework!
That I learn best by interacting is not news to me. It's the crux of why archaeology impassioned me in college but history often didn't. Some historical accounts, like Zapata and the Mexican Revolution and Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, read like novels to me and don't get put down until I reach the last page; but a lot of history isn't written like that, so back in college, anyway, I found it harder to get into. In anthropology classes, on the other hand, I got to sit down at a lab table and face off with the skulls of our hominid ancestors; I got to study their size and shape, the prominence of the brow ridge, got to hold them in my hand and feel their weight. When I studied the ancient Maya, I got to stand amidst the buildings and stellae they long ago constructed and learn to read the hieroglyphs inscribed upon them; in that incomparable outdoor classroom, I got to listen as the man responsible for deciphering most of the glyphs taught us to see a smoke scroll here and a monkey's face here; taught us to add up the syllables and say the words; taught us to differentiate dates from textual statements and to slowly understand how these artful building blocks relayed information about warfare and conquest, royal births and deaths. In classes, I got to study slides professors had taken at long-excavated or newly rediscovered archaeological sites. Even when learning theory—that often-times deadly, abstract stuff—I got to study maps covered in symbols and differently colored arrows to learn the locations of hominid skulls or coastal campsites, to learn the competing explanations of the migration of hominids out of Africa or the newer take on the route homo sapiens followed to populate the Americas. That all this content stimulated my interest is no surprise; it stimulated my brain waves, tapping into all kinds of functions in my head.
Being back in school after almost a decade away from it is not just an adjustment to my schedule; it's an adjustment for my brain. While both my undergraduate studies and my professional work as a social studies editor were heavily focused on content, my graduate classes are teaching me mostly about academic disciplines and professional fields. That the subject at the heart of them—all courses being connected by the thread of education—is something highly tangible to me, something I have experienced in many settings and from both sides of the equation, doesn't always mean that the way my brain has to work to access the information is comfortable for it. It has been a long time since I read theory; a long time since I read so much of anything in one sitting, or in daily nine-hour sittings. But I consider all the struggles toward adjustment to be brain yoga. In some classes, the teaching methods are entirely new to me; in others, the packaging of the content is; yet in all of them, as the different control centers in my brain stretch their legs, shake out their muscles, and get back on the mat, they exhale a collective sigh of relief. It is exhausting to be inside your head so many hours a day; but it is exciting, especially when you realize that you can learn anything, in any format, no matter the limitations you might think were placed on your brain at birth. The brain is elastic, I think; resilient. Some corners grow dim over time, but all it takes to re-light them is a little effort, a little will, and a solid dose of curiosity. And with that optimistic thought, I leave you, my readers, to get back to my homework!
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