Mittens are only a metaphor

This is my third autumn in Berlin. I work too much and don't get out much unless I'm on holiday. If I don't work as much as I do, I am not a very effective teacher. It takes me a long time to plan because I can't get in front of a class and pontificate and prattle on about stuff. I do have some texts that I'm better at simply because I've taught them more than twice and know how kids react and respond to them.

It's when I teach stuff for the first or second time that I suffer. I am not a quick thinker which is why I take so much time planning because I try and consider as many possible outcomes that might develop. I know this is futile but sometimes it pays off. I know that good teachers can superimpose and transmogrify content into any given situation and leap across material utilizing their powers of metaphor--applying point of view from text to text. This is not my forte.

I see all texts as unique--themes are limited for sure and cut across texts, but characters are all different and require the lens to be focused differently. Another problem I have is that I don't believe in analyzing literature through literary devices. In reality, the only time symbolism is relevant is in poetry. I see symbolism in fiction like Hemingway does, if you're putting symbols intentionally into your work, you're inauthentic. Or Flannery O'Connor suggests that teaching literature by deconstructing symbols is missing the point, sometimes the hat is just the style of the time period and that's why the guy's wearing one.

Read Dostoyevsky and it's clear he's not strategically dropping symbols around to get us to understand.

It's raining out but the sun is trying to find its way and I'm going to go for a ride and do some shopping for Halloween costume materials. I love autumn, always have. If you've ever flopped down exhausted in a pile of leaves and stared up at the sky and breathed in the peppery flavor of smoked earthen leaves, then you understand. Indian summer is one of the greatest gifts a kid can be granted...on the heels of fresh summer memories, an Indian summer is like getting a chance to do it all over again, make up for lost time, fix mistakes and make everything right in the world. I feel the same way now as that old excitement shimmers its way up from my belly and finishes off with a slight buzzing sensation that inspires me to brew coffee, fill my thermos and get out there and blow the leaves off the sidewalk with my speedy bike.

If you're looking for symbolism in that last little bit, in my humble opinion, you're missing the point.

I don't mean to besmirch figurative language, in life and language, metaphors and analogies connect us. They allow us to empathize and understand one another. But making concrete decisions about malleable content dilutes or streamlines, or commodifies it into something contrary to the beauty it should represent. I realize that criticism is necessary. But we should use the texts we have to analogize our experiences, not the other way around.

Freud uses Oedipus to examine why we behave certain ways because it creates a common point of understanding. Nietzsche alludes to Lessing's son's death to give us a shared experience. This is different than arguing the meaning of Big Nurse's orange colored lipstick. If I said that woman is my Big Nurse, then like Adorno alluding to Ford's assembly line to explain the film industry's marriage to advertising is enough to make a connection to how we've become products thru watching too much TV--and you would understand my perception of that woman--and I assure you it's not because she's wearing orange lipstick.

This is only relevant to me and the small number of teachers who I'm true friends with or poet friends, shout out to J-mack and JJ...but the fact is, I'm supposed to be a teacher of literature and because I don't believe in the fundamental element of teaching literature, like deconstructing a story until it's dead, then I reside in an ever-present state of conflict. I know that I should be telling the kids in my class to stop worrying about symbolism and metaphors and get to the point...why doesn't Nick nail Jordan, and who's your Big Nurse, and what hope are we supposed to have after reading "1984," but I know the next teacher they get is going to expect them to understand the symbolism in "The Pearl," and because of that I abandon my true nature for the greater agenda.

So I go out and ride my bike on a beautiful fall Berlin day and it's as if I'm traveling through time. I start to think about the books I've read and why I read and continue to read. I am searching. I read for the same reasons I go to museums and stare at art or learn about history. I talk to homeless people and people who are smarter than me or have had different experiences because I know there's so much more to learn. I do this with my teaching, I expect that I'm going to learn from my students, even the little 7th graders.

The fact is "rebellion" is dead--or more precisely, it's been commodified. You can drink poison but to what end, Socrates already did it and the effect is understood, assimilated and re-configured and now it's on a t-shirt and some kid spent fifty bucks for a cheap shirt made in china for fifty cents. When John threw off the shackles of Soma and society, he became a hero--he was--is a hero to me, but I am a relic. Now when John throws off the shackles of Soma, it's simply a symbol of a cautionary tale--a reminder to people to be-ware but don't get crazy about it and do something drastic, you'll ruin your credit, or mess up your permanent record and that shit stays with you for seven years and you'll never get into the college of your choosing.

When Holden loses his mind, it's ok and understandable because he was an archetype of a never-before-seen demographic of a consumer society that'd mass-produced itself into uber-supply...Holden loses his mind because he sees what's in store for him--vapid supply/demand, production/product, product/consumer. Holden is John the Savage--an American teenager who's parents are busy making money so their kids can get into good schools and get good jobs so they can raise kids of their own and they can get into good schools and have good jobs. Now--Holden's just so negative, is there nothing he can't find to complain about, why doesn't he care about his future or his education, he's never going to get into a school if he doesn't change his behavior...he's just making bad choices.

Bad choices, this is the response our society has come up with. Eventually you're expected to come 'round to our way of thinking...and if you don't, well, we can find an alternative program for you to go to. And that's it man. Socrates, Plato, Raphael, DaVinci, Shakespeare, Douglass, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Dostoyevsky, Camus, Huxley, Miller, Keroauc, Burroughs, Kesey and Carver...they're all just bad choices. Shakespeare was writing to save his life and his material is reduced to the study of iambic pentameter...I didn't give a shit about iambic pentameter then and I don't now. Now Shakespeare's characters teach us what not to do, serve as warnings...I see them as mirrors. When I re-read Cuckoo's Nest I grow increasingly distraught. I see R.P. and Cheswick, Ol' Pete, and Big Chief reduced to symbols and the text commodified into lessons on how not to mis-understand the real issues of mental illness, and Kesey's done more harm than good by presuming these self-institutionalized ding-bats could just walk out and live lives as normal as any ol' asshole on the street.

This is the conflict that sits inside me...like an ancient ghost, or a recurring dream of which you only recall the same short snippet of...it's because I'm learning from being a teacher and I'm starting to doubt, not just my ability or quality of the teaching I'm doing..that's always been a concern, but to what end this "gig" will lead to. I used to think, well, I'll teach these kids how to think critically, to listen, read and watch the news with a critical lens and that will be enough. I try to do that. I gave out Adorno's "Culture Industry," essay as background information leading up to reading "Cuckoo's Nest," and the kids' perspective on it was that it was dated. When I read it almost 15 years ago, I was astounded and felt as if Morpheus had just woke me up, but now, Adorno's ideas are understood...like that goddamn gorilla in "Ishmael" keeps telling the narrator, mother culture has informed these kids about the culture industry...they know it inherently because it's been uncovered now for 50 years and BMW and Mercedes can actually produce commercials in which rebels and outsiders have become their target audience. Kids know so much about the way the world works and they know it when they see it. If you show them the origins, it's only confirmation of something they learned along the way. The really smart ones can put historical contexts to certain ideas and understand the value of history as well.