The Question of Coincidence

sometimes, when I read aloud to students I carry this southern dialect. I imagine I'm Bob Dylan, or Woodie Guthrie...maybe Charles Bukowski...I draw out my S's and L's and like William Burroughs I swagger down the sidewalk slinging axioms. I imagine old folk singers--and the whistle of an old train sings in the back-drop like a painting.

A long time ago, I found this old copy of Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell. I think of this book on occasion...much like Cold Dog Soup, and this other book that I can't recall the title of. The Orwell book is about a guy who makes his living in hotels and restaurants as a waiter. It's written a year before Miller's Tropic of Cancer, and if you like that book, you should definitely check out Down and Out. 

I read it and I was a waiter at the time. I knew this attorney from Texas when I was living in Portland. He was a smart guy and he lived in one of those tenement housing places where the hallway light is busted out and you can hear the cries of babies and domestic violence as you pass by doorways on your way to whichever dingy room you're going to. He didn't need to be there...I think he was doing it on purpose. He always seemed to me like a character in a Vonnegut book. Filled with irony and slapstick. I've been in many places like this. They are always depressing and you sit on milk crates and cast glances around at the cracked paint and it must be raining outside because the grey of the place permeates the senses. His room was partly underground so he only had half light from those cellar windows. But, it was comfy and clean...he had like 5 locks and a steel bracer on his door. It always reminded me of Down and Out. 

I lived in a trailer outside of Hartington, Nebraska in the early '90's. It wasn't a trailer park, but a field of wild grass with a scattering of similar trailers as if someone tossed them out there like dice. No roadways or paths, just a grass field you drove up to and parked next to. I had this old blue stationwagon that when parked next to the old trailer must have looked like a redneck version of an Ed Hopper painting. The trailer had brown shag carpet and a kitchen that rivaled any meth lab. At night, under the dim lamplight and glow of the TV, it seemed almost cozy, but under the harsh light of day it was depressingly grey. 

On Saturday mornings when me, Chad and Brad would clean the place from top to bottom we'd open both doors and all the windows and it was like that old skeleton ship the Mariner sails up from the South Pole on. We'd play something like Chili Peppers or Ministry and clean as the fresh air filtered the dinge from the place and we'd put out the lawn chairs and crack a beer and it seemed like life wasn't going to get better. This was surely the end, and we would talk and laugh. We all knew this couldn't be all there was. There had to be more and we racked our brains trying to figure a way off this forsaken desert.  

In "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the mariner stops a wedding guest, a close relative of the groom, and tells him the story of how he shot an albatross. I read this poem in high school, again years later as a graduate student and I've tried to teach it a few times. The first time was in Florida. I tried to have the kids draw pictures of certain particularly vivid images that fill the poem. Picture this....

'The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,

Merrily did we drop

Below the kirk, below the hill,

Below the lighthouse top.'

Now this one from Farewell to Manzanar. 

'...and they were easing away from the wharf, joining the line of boats heading out past the lighthouse, into the harbor [...] from the wharf we waved goodbye [...] we watched until the boats became a row of tiny white gulls on the horizon. Our vigil would end when they slipped over the edge and disappeared.' 

Is this coincidence?

I once came to a conclusion, regarding something metaphysical...or maybe it was existential...whatever the case, I'm still thinking about this thing...this conclusive understanding I came to. I was probably in my mid-to late thirties the first time the notion occurred to me. The idea that there are no accidents. That everything is cause and effect. Like Bob Dylan telling us the whole wide universe is watching the chimes of freedom flashing, we are all of us connected--a grand cascading of dominoes. But does this point of view include the idea that like no accidents, there are no coincidences? 

Co-incident. At least two incidents simultaneously. Nothing within the semantic syntax implies that coincidence should be a surprise. Once when I was in high school I threw this party. We were sitting around the kitchen table playing drinking games with cards. It was early yet, and it was just good friends--still our group of pranksters. I was getting up to get a beer from the fridge and on a whim I peeled the top card from the deck sitting in the middle of the table and licked the back of it and simultaneously the number 10 flashed in my mind, and I slapped the card on my forehead and said, "10."

Everybody's jaws dropped and hooting and howling of the most appealing nature that I didn't even need to look at it and I took and slapped it back into place on top of the deck in the middle of the table, threw my hands up and walked out of the room. The place erupted. It was one of my finest moments...and I don't consider that flippantly. I'd consider it a coincidence tho. Not an accident. There seems to be no reason to believe my randomly saying the same number that I draw, is a result of a direct "cause and effect," relationship. And this is the test I apply to whether or not it's an accident or not. 

My thesis is only based on personal experience, but when I examine what seems to be an accident, I can trace it back to it's source. Thus the difference between accident and coincident lies in whether or not you can trace the thing to its source. I say source because it's a better term than "the beginning cause of the thing," because it's not a beginning. It's only the source of the most recent cause and effect thing that made that happen. I never go that far back...it gets wacky and I have other things I'd like to accomplish in life. I'm not some ga'dam Raskolnikov. Man talk about a head trip. I read Crime and Punishment over a summer. I drank the words. I became Raskolnikov. 

So when I tried to get the kids to draw pictures of it was a disservice to the kids. I didn't know the poem well enough to be confident. I can pull this off now and the kids are with me.   So anyway, I was talking about living in that old trailer, well my friend J.J. came out to see me and the first thing he says to me is, "Well man, here's to living like the Romans." 

I had no idea what that meant. Never even heard the phrase and to me I imagined having marble baths, steam and a lot of grapes and palm fronds. Anyway, I know I've told this story on more than a few occasions. Most of the time, J.J.'s in the same room, but I've told people this story who have no idea who J.J. is--so, suffer me one more time, for the blog. 

We decided to take the old station wagon to Lincoln. The ol' girl was a dirty mess of a heap. The attachment of the female gender to a car is not intended provocation, it's just what I did because I'd heard the same thing from other people around me. We never made it. We got stuck in the mud on a dirt road. Unbeknownst to me, dirt roads turn to mud in rain. I've driven dirt roads my entire life and never imagined it could turn to absolute slop. Like concrete when it's got just a bit too much water. That kind of muck in like 10 minutes it took from the time it started raining to the time we couldn't move. Luckily a farmer came by in the morning and pulled us out. 

It's night time and we were drinking beers on the side of some dirt road listening to Art Bell on the radio. J.J. gets out to take a leak and I start the car.

"What're you doin' esterle?"

"Nothin' man, I don't want the battery to go dead."

He finishes and goes to get in the car and I toss his smokes out the door and he's gotta go get them and as soon as he turned his back I put he car in gear and started rolling forward.

"What the fuck esterle!" 

"Don't worry man, I think that's a cop pulling up behind us." And he lunges to grab his smokes and reaches for the door and I tapped the gas and he had to walk alongside but he had a hold of the door. I sped up again and he had to jog.

"F'n' stop esterle you f'n asshole!" And I'm laughing like a crazy hyena and I slow down and he's running really fast so I slow gradually and he eventually is walking alongside the car cursing a bluestreak across my family's ancestry. But when he finally got in the car, I looked down and he wasn't wearing any shoes or socks. That blew my mind. 

But that's not really a coincidence, or an accident...intent or intention should rule out any possible coincidence or accident. Coincidences exist. When they are good, dann alles klar! 

Traveling thru the darkness...www.dig

Go into the dark and natural world willingly
quiet and still, and welcome the voices and faces
waiting for you.

Go there and greet your loneliness and fear,
sit with them and talk, drink a cup of coffee
and break bread with them.

Smoke a pipe and listen
while they teach you. Do like those prophets
who've recorded and transcribed.

Then like an oppressed slave
devour their art and wisdom and memorize
everything and make them sing your songs.

When you return and walk thru ruined architecture;
roll up your jeans; pay no mind to the wandering eye.

cat abuse; or people are scum

I can count the number of times I've been "together" enough to be proactive. For instance, most of my life I never had car insurance--or health insurance. Once, during the mid-nineties, I had my shit together enough that when my younger brother tossed me a tip on some financial advice...an investment... I was able to capitalize on it. I met with this broker in the watering hole downstairs from the office builiding of Ditech, an up-and-coming mortgage house in Orange County. I bought into an IRA that folded into the 401K Ditech offered. It wasn't long before my ability to hold onto that "luxury" became negligible and I had to funnel funds toward more urgent matters. Nonetheless,  it was during this time of never-before-seen-prosperity in which I decided to get a cat.

I've always been a cat person. Dogs require too much attention.

So, I had this sweet pad three blocks off the Belmont Heights beach between Long Beach and Belmont Shores. It was Southern California's sweet-spot...white people were moving into LBC in droves on the heals of Snoop and Sublime popularity and The Shores was already established aristocracy, and, upon my due-diligence, settled into one of the last bastions of "ghetto" left in the neighborhood.

I was working at Ditech doing the 405 hustle back and forth to work and my pad was a sweet one bedroom and a patio with enough dirt to have a small herb and tomato garden my mom'd helped me put in over one thanksgiving holiday. I found a cat shelter online and "mapquested" the address, drove over and knocked on the door.

The job I had was sweet. I was recently single, my pad was decorated minimalist. I was drawing and writing a lot. I walked into this two bedroom town-home up on Junipero--your stereotypical "crazy cat lady." I don't really know why I chose Walt--except that I wanted a cat who reflected my own personality and it wasn't until after we'd gone over the entire house and she shuttled me into the last room of the house that must have contained 15 cats all lounging around and only bothered enough to look up from whatever under-arm they happened to be licking to notice someone had entered the room, when I noticed a shy, under-sized black and white cat nervously peering out from behind a cat-trap--I knew this was the one.

"Can I see him?"
"He's a shy one."
"Hey buddy...what're you doing?"

He ducked behind the cat-trap simultaneously looking at me...a wondering look. As tenderly as possible I kneeled down and patted his soft head. He purred and let me pick him up.

"I like him. His name is Walt."

She wasn't happy about the name. I gave her a hundred dollars and she gave me paperwork. I put Walt in the cat-carrier and out to my truck. That was on a Wednesday, by Friday night, Walt wasn't eating or drinking and was huddled underneath my bed. By Monday I was worried and by the Wednesday after I'd gotten him, I was calling around to local vets offices.

The place was down off the PCH; a five minute drive from my apartment. I put Walt in his carrier. He was subdued of his own accord...he was sad and beaten. I talked to him all the way to the vet's.

"I know what it's like buddy."  "Lotta people'll tell you they understand Walt, but they don't."   "Everything's gonna work out little buddy, ain't no other way for it."

"So, I got this cat from some crazy cat lady off Junipero a week ago. I don't know what's wrong with it, but I don't have a lot of money to fork out for this so if you could just figure out if there's anything that can be done..."

"Ok sir, slow down...." and then fill in the rest with first-time-visit-rhetoric and about fifteen minutes later I was carrying Walt into a patient room.

Walt was disagreeable. Several "doctors" came in rotation, then together, then separate again, then assistants all asking questions about the cat--and me--and my relationship to the cat--and would you mind stepping out into the waiting room please sir....sir, please, just step out into the waiting room. It wasn't until after that I realized they were trying to figure out if I was an abusive owner. Which doesn't make any sense. I kept trying to explain to them that Walt is not the friendliest cat and that when you try to hold him down like that he was sure to rebel in the only way a cat knows how. The fact that I'd only known the cat for a week and understood this about him and could actually handle him in his distressed situation gave me pause only to recognize the veterinarians' incompetences...that they were secretly casting aspersions regarding my treatment of Walt was an incredulous notion. Had I recognized this, I surely would not have a cat. I would have demonstrated the typical behaviors of an abusive parent and declared that the entire lot of them wasn't worth the paper their degrees were printed upon. They would have declared me unfit because of the way I was getting "defensive."

I never understood why our society demands reservation. A friend of mine told me once that it's a wonder people aren't just walking around the planet screaming their heads off at the outrageousness and absurdity happening all around us. It's a hilarious image and one I often visualize. Sitting on the bahn in Berlin is particularly fitting to this hallucination.

You see this quality of behavior demanded of us in many places. Work, bureaucratic offices, restaurants, in public and in broken relationships, all propagate civilized behavior, otherwise you're likely to be disregarded as hostile. Like when you're calling any corporate customer service, your cell company for instance, will quickly threaten to discontinue the conversation if you---say verbally assault them or swear spells reinforced on the souls of their cowardly ancestors.

The other day I was sitting on a bench at this little spielplatz. Mostly I see people walking little dogs, never have I seen any kids playing on the little spring-loaded toys or in the sandbox. It's a bank of six benches--two rows of three facing each other on opposite sides of a walkway and you can see a bus stop and a busy street corner. On this corner is one of the places I go to in Berlin that has micro-crafted ales---IPA's no less. It was after work and I was trying to grade essays, it was a beautiful spring-like day. This old German guy comes walking across the street and he's yelling--shouting at the world. I couldn't understand him. A big pink bedsheet was bundled up like a sack of trash and hung over his shoulder and he stumbled. I wish I could've understood what he was shouting. He was angry as hell. Many people walking or biking by would look at him...much the same way I was looking at him...and then glance around for anyone else paying mind to the crazy old guy. People's eyes met other eye-witness's eyes and eyebrows would raise, small smiles of appreciation exchanged. As if to say, "Thank god! Thank god someone's willing to say it."


Sometimes when I'm talking to people, I see the glaze forming over their eyes and I just stop talking in mid-sentence and walk away. Sometimes I feel my own glaze frosting my vision and I've come to recognize it and it forces me to awaken and consider my own developed-biases...I try to let them go.

I learned this a long time ago. I used to live in this house outside of Kent, Ohio with a bunch of friends. People came and went and we had a lot of parties, get togethers more aptly and our neighbor would be over all the time. It was one of the coolest places I've lived simultaneously one of the worst. But we had this one party that literally almost brought the house down. Someone ended up getting sued over it. I was doing a background check on myself a few years ago and in my searching found that I was named on the suit. Walls were stripped down to the frame and electrical work, antiques destroyed, flags burned and this old black and white TV I'd had since I was a ten year old boy was smashed against the fire-place. When that happened I really haven't held on to very much. Always kept it simple and when people would ask me why I don't have anything I'd say, "it makes it easy to move around when I want."

It's a good philosophy and acquiring Walt was flying in the face of it. I remember thinking what sort of burden I'd be putting on him. Would I be able to feed him, how would it go if and when I decided to move, was I ready to take care of another living creature...it meant always having in mind a place for him and the notion was a warming one.

The doctors gave me a saline bag, a needle and a long hose with a valve-like contraption attached to it, and some kind of pills I was to sneak into his food. They didn't know what was wrong with him but that he was dehydrated and since he wasn't drinking on his own, I had to get him water intravenously, which meant sticking him with this needle just beneath the skin at the back of his neck.

I recalled as a kid growing up in Ohio, we had several cats roaming around our little farm. The cats would give birth and as the kittens got big enough my sister and I would help my dad take care of them. I learned from watching him handle these cats. He'd grab a fist-full of fur at the back of their necks and maneuver them around like a street-grifter playing the shell-game. That's how I handled Walt when I'd slide the saline-fed needle under the nape of his neck-fur. A cat I hardly knew at all, I'd grab a fist-full of neck-fur and pull, sliding the needle as simply as a tooth-pick slips into room-temperature-butter and hold him in my lap as the bag slowly fed him the much needed drink. He was scared--more than I was and he'd somehow impress himself deeply into my lap and look up at me, his little soft head stuffed onto the little mounded hill of his body, eyes clearly hoping that I wasn't going to hurt him and we'd do this for the next four nights after I'd come home from work.

In reality, I barely thought about what I was doing, otherwise I probably couldn't have done it. I only knew he had to have water.

And he got better. He was flea infested when I got him too. If you'd pet along his back in the opposite direction your hand'd kick up a spattering, like lawn clippings behind a push-mower. Riddled with fleas. I gave him baths. Giving a cat a bath is like witnessing shame and fear of death at once. A cat's truly exposed during a bath, but it was for his own good. It was a losing battle because I didn't really know the extent of his flea problem for a couple weeks after he'd been living in my flat. The place was lousy with 'em. My girlfriend at the time was a saint. She must have been getting eaten alive whenever she spent the night--but she never complained. Well, not until we were breaking up four years later and on top of everything else I'd fucked up, she tacked on this little ditty on her way out the door...."And I hated that fuck'n cat too!"  That hurt. What bothered me more was that I never picked up on it. I mean, I must have been blind. How could I never have felt that vibe from her.

I believe people. I need someone to tell me if they're bothered, or reveal themselves in an deliberate manner in order to see them. I'm an English teacher and a colleague once told me, "Our jobs are looking beneath the surface. How can you not notice what people's motives and issues might be." I've considered this observation. Of course it took a virtual stranger to point this out to me. It says something about people and relationships that someone close to me doesn't have the courage or the inclination even to say something. Maybe I'm thinking about it for the first time and people have tried to tell me. I used to have this conversation with my friend Dave. I would try my best to avoid making an impact on others lives. Be transparent...you be you. Don't let anything I say or think sway your actions or thought process...I'm over here existing, you exist too, and let me know if you want to talk.

Everyone's sat on a park bench and played that game where you make back-stories up regarding people walking by. This guy Patrick, I've known him for about twenty years I suppose. I would say he's on my short list of friends, even though I haven't seen or talked to him in over three years. He could figure people out. When I met him he was just walking down the street. I was over JJ's place in Kent and we were standing on the sidewalk in front of his place talking to Scott who lived across town and this guy comes walking down the street toward us. Scott knew him from a philosophy class and Pat joined our conversation as if we'd all been friends for years. It was so seamless and fluid I didn't believe Scott or JJ when they told me they hardly knew him. That night Pat showed up and we got drunk and in the course of all the talk, I kept thinking how amazingly accurate his assessments of us all were. He knew people better than anyone I'd ever come across.

Patrick was an artist then--and one of the best most original artist I'd ever known personally. And that's saying a lot. I knew at least three other artists whose art was unparalleled. The subjective nature of appreciating art dilutes such a claim, but I have studied art, art history, critical theory of art and I have my own tastes that gravitate now, toward the real...the art I liked as a young man, before I knew anything about art, was more abstract. Over the years I've come to appreciate the realistic nature of art, with an eye toward surrealism, abstraction, and impressionism. When I met Pat, I knew Dave and Conrad and loved their works. Their art made me want to know the person who could make this...to talk to them and listen to them. I wished I could make what they'd made. Pat's work had the same effect. In my life, I've had dreams about each of these three artists' paintings.

I don't really talk to any of those guys any more, but I'm sure if we met it would be warm and more than pleasant. I did meet up with Pat years later in Portland a few times. He was in a jam with a girl he'd fallen in love with. I remember sitting and having coffee with him and Scott and JJ on a bright sunny Portland morning. We drank coffee and smoked cigarettes into the early evening. He'd concocted this crazy notion that the FBI was watching him. I wanted to believe him...he was forthcoming on every front...an honest man before me. So few people have this quality. It had taken away his confidence...his chi or center. His experiences and intelligence were still intact--he was still Pat, but he questioned himself--more precisely I think he questioned his reality.

He'd gone away from art and went to law school and passed the bar in Washington and was scraping together a living, he'd explained, from basically meeting people randomly. He was substitute teaching at inner-city schools in Seattle and hatching jobs, seemingly from thin air whenever opportunity presented itself. I looked at him and thought, this person should be a giant, not what he was presenting me. He should be 10 feet tall and striding down the street, not staring back at himself and doubting.

At my apartment later that night in Portland with Pat, Scott, and JJ:

"Oh...hey. So this is Walt," Pat went right up and pet Walt on the head. Walt flopped onto his back and Pat rubbed his belly.

"Otter," Scott said. "Show Pat your coffee table." I'd made this coffee table with a flip top. It was rustic and raw but pretty sweet for a hand saw and a few carving tools.

"It's a work in progress," I said and went on to this little braggadocios spiel where I take on this high-falutent persona and explain the finer points of hand-crafted furniture making.

"Otto man," Pat said while getting his hand clawed by Walt. "This cat's crazy man. He's just like you."

And I told him the story of when I first got Walt. Feeding him intravenously and how it was touch and go and the nurses all thought I was an a cat abuser.

"Yeah, me and Walt's been through a lot..."

I got Walt in the autumn of '99 and in that same year I met the woman of my dreams, decided to go to college and leave LA for Portland. My girl found a job with habitat for humanity and I enrolled in community college. At the time California and Oregon had this reciprocity agreement that said you could forego the residency qualifications and pay in-state rates in either state. I hopped on the Oregon Health Plan and started getting food stamps for the first time in my life. I also bought a '94 Ford Ranger extended cab for six grand, cash money out  the door during this time.

I packed up the Ford with the entire cab left free I figured Walt would have plenty of space and make the trip fine. I wasn't even out of LA and had to pull over for Walt. He puked.

"Hey Walt man, you gotta chill man," I told him. He looked at me confused and a little angry.

"Look, don't give me this right now," I reasoned. "We're movin' up buddy. We're gettin' out of this race riot man. LA's been nothin' but trouble man. We been lucky lately. Sure things have been good, but that was a dead end man. We're lucky Walt. We got a woman that loves us, friends to count on, and I'm startin' school with health insurance and food stamps."

He didn't seem convinced. I put him in his carrier and he was happier. I stopped every hour or so. The Ford was loaded down and I welcomed the stops. Rest areas along the five were nice and Walt liked getting out and walking around.

We drank coffee, listened to Dylan's "Time out of Mind," the whole way up. I smoked weed and kept the speed at a steady 65 the whole way. We stopped at every rest area which worked out to about once an hour. Once we pushed thru San Francisco Walt fell asleep and it was dark and I pushed the Ford to 70 and didn't stop till Mount Shasta.

I remember how hopeful I was. I'd made a few such trips. The landscape always seems to welcome me in these moments. I often think that these images...the times when I packed up and got on the road to a new place...these images will be what I remember on my death-bed.

I've done it six times. Chicago to Yankton, South Dakota: Hartington, Nebraska to Medina, Ohio; Kent, Ohio to Los Angeles; LA to Portland; and Portland to Florida via Chicago; and the last time was Florida to Berlin. That was a little different but I still remember driving thru the South Florida Glades and watching the sun coming up over the horizon and having that same surreal feeling of wide open possibilities.

Me and Walt lived in several places starting in southern California where I had to feed him intravenously. Then we stayed with JJ and his wife and new born baby Ezra. That was trying everyone's patience and I was glad to find a place with my girl at the time off Stark street in SE Portland. Then I got my own little studio on PSU's campus and I had a little garden plot where I could take him outside and he helped me garden and brew home brews.

i don't know how you  write a good research paper kid,
if you don't have a good idea,
you might as well plagiarize.


what are you supposed to write about?
write about what you want to learn
what you want to learn depends
             upon the white wheelbarrow...
                 
the guy at the tabak shop on my street
looks like a guy i knew in florida,
but he doesn't act like him.

there's a woman where i work,
she's respected and wears her credentials
like a hooker wears fishnet stockings.
I'm more interested in the hooker.

A friend of mine stole my shoes.
I was telling him the story
about how I'd discovered my shoes gone.
His sympathy seemed so genuine
I decided the shoes weren't worth the trouble.

I had a girlfriend who understood
how unreliable her initial instincts were
concerning friendships she'd forge.
Inevitably the fast friendships soured.

Teachers who've only ever been teachers
are among the most piteous creatures
roaming the earth. None of them recognize
the caricatures they've written themselves into.

I read an article debunking the grammar rules
that say not to end a sentence with a preposition, or begin one with a conjunction.
Students at my school are required
to make index card note cards. I must
do my best to change this policy.











             

...as if

"The budget isn't inexhaustible."

       as if all
   of the
     human race
         depended on it...

would the late fees really matter then...
can I please get my passport
       stamped "EU"

       The invading race won't
      have a clue
     now's the time,
    let's take advantage while
   the gettin's good,
    now's the time,
      get in on this quick,
        might as well
           it's all going to hell
           anyway.


Should we fight it out,
even when it's all on the line,
when we're facing extinction,
   
     are we going to get a reverse mortgage for these good people Janie.

"The budget John, it just wouldn't allow for it."

as if it was talking
     "For holy sake John
          we created it...I think it would allow for it."

               The invasion is always there,
                  man, why should we pretend otherwise
                     a dying man doesn't pay late fees...fuckers!

            There's just not room in the budget this year....

            as if...
     
            there were citizens of "imminent doom"
            waiting in line at the courthouse....
                   a fool waits in line drawing his last breath....fuckers!

If there were an invasion,
can you imagine...

"That's two dollars and fifty cents sir. You've only got two twenty-five."

As if it's real.

         As if you wouldn't throw everything at it to stay alive.

Dresden or Bust; or, Do These Come With Batteries

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.

ECIS

Mother/Partner tongue policy in the JFK English department

• A disapproving gasp
• suggested that being allowed to visit the familiarity of their mother tongue in order to decode what they see happening in English
• I have to agree based on my own experiences learning deutsch...if I'm allowed to use my own languages syntax or semantics in order to understand german's then it makes it easier. (i.e., subject verb, adj, adj, adj, infinitive)
• I asked about the best approach for correcting syntax in a writing sample. 
• (my process has been to underline the error and then "syntax" in the margin
• they suggested targeting "repeat offenders" i.e. "The americans felt the urge to make even more organizations to control the living of the japanese, which indirectly forbid them to live at the east coast."
• is changed to, "Americans were urged to make more organizations which directly restricted Japanese people, but these same tactics also indirectly affected where Japanese decided to live."
• which also reminded me that I'm compiling a list of "words we always mess up!" and I will put it in the drive for anyone who wants to add to it.
• the rest was promotional propaganda

Peter Dalglish: UN Habitat

• Vigilante Educator: sends volunteers to remote areas to help disseminate best practices
• results in an organic saturation of "IB" practices throughout a given region
• I've contacted him because of the responses I've gotten from the students in my AP/Leistenskurs to "the combine" and adorno's "Culture Industry."

Google sites: 

• private pages only accessible to you and student
• blogs that are done thru "announcements" tab on GS that are open to the class
• I post student blogs on my site too
• forms
• student foldres

Writing using evidence:

• The use of "I" in an essay. 
• common practice at university level is "you are the authority" of your thesis...follows the IB policy of "Student as Knower," thru the Theory of Knowledge aspect. 
• University first two years professors are assigning 3-5 page research essays with emphasis on depth and specificity
• 5 weeks working on getting a thesis (Specific and Narrow; Researchable Question) SNRQ
• thru a variety of FFW's (Focused Free Writes)

Derivations:

I struggle with helping kids design their own theses.

I realized....

• How much internalizing, digesting, examining marginalized aspects, I am doing while I read a text.
• I come with 44 years of life experiences
• I carry with me my own tools of deconstruction methods, i.e. the critical lens with which I examine a text is finely tuned via education, self-interest, and teaching for 6 years
• I have an agenda when I read and have a bank of "signifiers" that when I see them in texts I know seemingly instinctually how to develop a critique of the text...none of the above are instinctual they are learned....hence the problem a 12 to 18 year old kid has with coming up with a provocative thesis.
• Thesis is something that you have to craft thru introspective interactive prior knowledge experiences (experiences is a verb)
• Diane and Julia (what question do you have?
• FFW's
• Your predicted answer
• an imaginary interview with someone who might have the answer
• an argument you can imagine occurs between you and the interviewee
• an invented news story related to your question
• an invented dialogue in which you discuss your SNRQ at a coffee shop
• your proposal of your SNRQ to an organization for funding
• re-read
• use those insights to write a new SNRQ
• Rinse and repeat (Ideating)
• Should a thesis be polarizing?
• If kids are using the rubric as much as we are...what's the impact of them knowing that a strong thesis is only even considered as part of the score in two areas/aspects/boxes on the rubric?
• A good thesis is invaluable to.......(fill in the rest)