I like when I come off the train--eyes forward--keeping track of the people passing, crossing, pausing, etc. When I'm late or pushing it, I get assertive with an aftertaste of aggression. Single-minded. Having to cast glances to the side or even behind me in order to check the time is inefficient and unsafe. The major bahn stations would be providing a great service to its people by placing their clocks in the four corners and as distant from the center as possible at the height where the walls meet the ceiling.
I need to find articles on "Canonizations" of literature and how that whole process works. This kid in class asked why we read Of Mice and Men, and it wasn't that it was Of Mice and Men, it was any book. Why this book? To his credit, he wouldn't let me disregard his question. I think he expected that I would reply with some hyperbolic transcendent rationale typical of a rhetoric suitable for the sort of wind-baggery associated with most English teachers.
"It's on the book list here in JFK's English department," I said. He stared at me...not wholly disappointed but not impressed. "As well, a couple of students in class asked if we could read it," and I thanked them in front of the class and the two kids smiled ear to ear. "And, I like teaching things for th e first time. I make a lot of mistakes but learn a lot about teaching. It's a healthy experience for me because I'm visiting this moment for the first time. The first times of anything always teach us a lot."
Then he asked, "Why these though....this book, I mean, why not Game of Thrones, or Lord of the Rings?"
"That's the big question. And you've hit on a very dynamic argument in academia. You see," and I wrote, The Canon on the board and continued... "The Canon is something that is established in universities around the world and people decide what we'll read. Books that become canonized are usually representative of important and significant ideals...provoke strong reactions as well as evoke the most subtle and invisible emotions. The canon is definitely dominated by "old dead white guys," but in recent decades the cannon is opening up to the not dominant culture...er economic system...not sure which anymore....but this is one of those wonderful subversive phenomenon that contribute to the combine, in Cuckoo's Nest...." is what I wish't I'd said. But the truth is I never rant as a teacher. I save those insufferable, mis-informed, bombastic rants about the culture industry replacing our humanity for my friends, my right-leaning family members, and drunken nights...not necessarily in that order.
"It's really a question, why do we read this book? that can be best answered if you look inward." Is what I really said and we moved on. Subsequently, I'm locating a few articles on the subject of canonizationing of literature and when we come back from break I'll do a couple of activities and give them some experience with this sort of discourse--maybe even generate interest. Kids are curious...and like good fiction, a little is a lot.
I got food-poisoning for the second time since moving to Berlin. Both times were street food. This time it was bratwurst at a weinachtmarkt after drinking gluewein and rum all night. It hit me at midnight. I lay in bed wondering why I'd had that last cup of wine, If I could stop the nausea or at least ride it out...but no amount of concentration helped. It was touch and go for a while, but by three AM I was certain it was the food. Yeah, three hours like that puts things into an existential perspective. I had to go to the doctor and felt like a gollom. My friend JJ, when he was in his early twenties, he got sick...some kind of flu/cough and he would hunch over and hobble around the place. We used to live in the same house next to this lake outside of Kent, Ohio with Dave and Beeje along with a handful of transient-vagrants. Our neighbor Pom would come over and he and Dave would start in on him.
"C'mon grandpa...." and "Ohhh, man, look at him...he looks just like an old guy." And then one or another would hunch over and hobble around, coughing and hacking into a clenched up fist, cursing like a crooked wildebeast. One time we were hanging out at the laundromat and we convinced JJ to just see if he could fit into the dryer. He got in and we pinned him inside and clunked enough quarters into the slot to start up the tumbler. He tossed around one time and was able to brace himself and keep from tumbling, but the second go around he lost his foot-hold and dropped an elbow and soon he was tumbling like a thread-bare afgan and me and Dave were hooting like drunken owls.
I guess he's my oldest friend. In Mice and Men, the friendship between Lennie and George is really prominent...like a 3-D projection standing out, forcibly put there by Steinbeck. To some extent the literary critiques of the piece contribute to the mythology he's impregnated his story with by perpetuating and writing to the end of the earth about the sacred friendship between men. Steinbeck's not so subtle seed has evoked responses that are remarkably similar and like a painter uses paint Steinbeck uses words to the effect of a painter. He is an artist. Nonetheless, the friendship they have is based on their mutual fear of becoming cranky old loners with nobody to mind--George doesn't want to end up a bitter old man--and ultimately his is the only opinion that matters.
In my younger years I would say shit like, you're either with me or against me, or I'll trust anyone....once--a lot of this type of sanctimonious hogwash. I would never befriend--forgive a friend--or lower my standards in order to be friends out of any ideology other than both parties would do for the each other without expecting payment or reciprocation in some way. I was never friends with someone because I wanted to use them. And if you didn't follow the am I my brother's keeper, creed, then our friendship was not a significant one. These are good ideals and I still draw from these...allude to these old standards on occasion, but time has made them impossible to hold people accountable to.
The possible rationale for George and Lennie's friendship: They need each other...support, company, defending one another, collaborative budget, lounging, chatting, games.
Lennie's reasons: George treats him fairly and won't leave.
George's reasons: solicit friendships with others, inspire sympathy from others and to promote self-pity for his plight and what a great guy he is for his charity toward Lennie, he needs Lennie to defend him physically.
Looked at it in this way, you can go through and say well George gets more variety from the relationship. If each guy has a pie that represents his capacity for friendship, or simply put, each pie is the elements of the friendship. Lennie has a pie and George has a pie. Each pie contains the reasons why they are friends. Lennie's pie is the same size, but it's got fewer slices, one slice is George's dependability and another slice is the fairness with which George treats Lennie. George's pie is the same size as Lennie's but it's got many more slices. If Lennie couldn't say--beat to death anyone he pleased at George's say so--well, the pie would have less slices. In this way the reasons why these two men are friends are disparate.
George is friends with Lennie for many reasons and each reason is important but take any one of them away and George is still going to survive. Say Lennie didn't inspire sympathy from people toward George--for being such a great friend--George would go on fine, might even remain friends with Lennie, even without this quality. Or maybe Lennie twists an ankle and can't beat up the next guy who wants to tussle...well, George has to bite his tongue occasionally and not mouth off like he's prone to do. But, if George is no longer reliable...well that just leaves one thing to fill Lennie's pie...that George treats him fairly. The phrase, don't put all your eggs in one basket comes to mind. Should friendship supercede this axiom? The only thing left in Lennie's pie is George's fairness while George's pie is still maintained with many slices giving many reasons for him to remain friends with Lennie.
The hitch is Lennie doesn't know any better. Our neighbor at that old lake house outside of Kent, his name was Pom, used to say, If you get to be fifty years old and you haven't learned how to get along in the world on your own, you probably shouldn't bother. I always interpreted this idea as one may as well just end it, cause, I mean, what's the quality of your life. You can't be living a very interesting life if you have no more wit than to sit huddled up in a ball and absorb the swinging hammers of life over and over and over, never doing anything about it...I mean, right, ending it must be better. But, lately, I've begun to think maybe I'm not seeing what he may have meant. Like, by fifty, if you don't know yet, why bother? Why bother trying? The outcome is the same. If you stop trying then you only endure. Endurance on it's own must be like volunteering for animal testing or water-boarding--just because you got nothing better to do.
So while I had food poisoning a couple of friends helped me out. They brought me sprite when it was the only thing I could hold down. I am not so stringent in my dealings with people. Time and experience are excellent teachers if you listen. I thought between JJ and me, I must be Lennie, but it's a lot like these personality tests, Briggs and Stratton or Type-A personality...paying mind or reflecting on your life based on these standards must be like drawing still-lifes without any shading, geometric shapes on a page.
This time I learned something frightening while teaching product for the first time. Humans are remarkably similar when it comes to thinking. I took another look at my friendships and what I get from them and what I contribute to them. I thought of my buddy Andres--Oso, he calls himself. Oso is the kind of friend you make that reminds you of what friendship is. He reminds me of my friend Matt...MM, M-squared, double M, from Boston. This guy has fists the size of sledge hammers and a heart of gold. I met MM in Florida on an abandoned disc golf course, leaning on a tee-pad post that demarcated the hole and distance to the pin. He was wearing flip-flops, carrying a beer and a single disc. I felt embarrassed to have a whole bag slung over my shoulder. One time, after I'd known Matt for a few years, we were teeing off from six pad and he whizzed a low-flying zinger down the right fairway and where it hit, a little armadillo scampered off into the woods. When his disc hit the little armadillo everyone standing on the pad jumped up and started screaming and laughing and after that happened I never again doubted anything he'd ever told me...and he told me some wiz-bangers.
For these reasons I closely associate my friendship with Andres with the one I have with Matt. They would both, for reasons unsolicited on my part, go down fighting for me because of our friendship. They both have kids now, so I suspect that dedication may waver due to larger considerations. Oso was one of my friends that brought me some sprite--two litres--at the breaking point...I was about to lose it. Drinking water when you have the stain of vomit and gluewein and rum in you mouth does nothing but reinforce the bad taste. He came to the door which I opened as a gothic butler might, and he stood in the doorway hoisting the two bottles as if he'd climbed a mountain pass to bring them and I took them unceremoniously. He was not deterred and assured me his services were at my disposal.
Students are like water and wind and pretty much all people, they take the path of least resistance and they've learned how to read their teachers and as a teacher it's difficult to discern between a genuine response to something like Mice and Men, and one that is canned. Students are good at doing things just to say They've done them. I do the same thing. I am given tasks at work and I do them as quickly as possible without much thought and put it in the outbox with a rubber stamp. If I ask the students to ask a question about the text they write down a question and rubber stamp it complete and this is a perfectly natural thing to do. My dad says it's "schemers scheming schemers." My buddy Fred says it's people just doing for their own. Nobody wants their kids to starve so one mechanical task leads to another and another and before you figured out what's going on you're 35 with a wife and two kids. This process begins in school because people have better things they imagine they might be doing--so, a seemingly simple task, like asking a question about a text--which is designed to elicit genuine responses, turns into just another thing to check off the list...mindlessly. Buddhists on a mountain in the middle of China might not fall prey to such devices...but I do.
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