Meditation: Day 1

Today I sat in my basement classroom and meditated. Among the mildew and trash and before the onslaught of kids, I set a timer on a meditation app and had 5 minutes of the best nothing I’ve had in a long time. Through the app, I chose the sound of a campfire and an ending note on a gong. Thoughts sprang to mind and I wrote them down. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Uncuffing myself from my thoughts is a major reason I want to and need to meditate. But they didn’t feel forced or tortured; they felt more like the basic machinery of the system. I searched for nothing profound and I found nothing profound. And that’s fine by me at 7:15 in the morning.

In my first post on meditation, I made the link between it and prayer. The connection struck me while I was doing it and again later in the day. But for me, there’s a key difference. When I used to pray, it felt like work. I had a desired end and a supposed means to get to that end. Give me a goal and I use what I have to get there. But today meditation didn’t feel like work. I had no expectations except to slow myself down so that I can pay attention to my breathing. It took me a while to accept the idea that I needed to pay attention to an automatic bodily function and that paying attention to it could have any real effect. I came across an article saying 90% of people don’t breathe correctly. I can’t find that article now, but a basic internet search shows that idea is not new or isolated. What ultimately convinced me was when I paid attention to my breathing, I felt my normally racing mind slow to a near-halt. Time and the gyrations on of humans on a spinning globe are things I have no control over. I can’t slow time. I can’t ask life to pause itself so I can catch up. But that’s what it feels like is happening when you stop yourself and slow yourself enough to pay attention to the rhythms of your body.

One things for sure, the benefits of meditating before the onslaught of the day do not defend you against what that day has in store for you. I wished it worked like that. That my morning thoughts could he hardened like steel. That I could toughen my skin into leather. No such luck. I’m glad I didn’t go into mediating thinking that. I saved myself some disappointment. I didn’t have a chance to meditate when I needed to later in the day, but I did take a few deep breaths and in that space I was able to agree with myself that it wasn’t anything too difficult to handle.

A lot goes into having a good day. Mostly luck, I think. But meditation is shaping up to be one of my basic tools in my psych-survival kit.

Meditation

Words are funny. Say the word “meditation” and you might picture a monk or a dedicated practitioner of an Eastern religion. You might picture robes and a serene background. You might hear “Ohmmmm.”

A lack of information often informs what we (think) we know about something. Stereotypes are the end product, but it takes time for a stereotype to build. Sometimes a word conjures a meaning or an image lined with meaning, and we lack the experience or sometimes even the words themselves to convey a new idea. It takes many people talking about something, naming it, describing it, doing it, to make an idea acceptable and accessible. Notice mental health in today’s world. People are more willing to talk about it (even athletes) and therefore people have the words and a structure in which they can talk about their own nebulous problems.

I was taught to pray. I was taught to pray to God the Father via Jesus. I was taught that I couldn’t talk to God if I had un-confessed sin in my heart. I was taught that God answered prayer, that answered prayer was a sign of one’s faithfulness, and that prayer was a duty. I was taught that formulaic prayers like the Our Father were wrong/legalistic; I was also taught so many other rules about prayer that despite the prayer’s content being up to the individual, there were still gates and dead ends and other obstacles to access the Almighty.

I used to pray. A lot. I would pray for an hour-and-a-half every night, reading through a list of everything I could think of. I thought it was my duty to pray for everyone I knew and everyone situation that I came across. The need was great, and so my effort needed to be greater.

All that prayer never got outside the ceiling. I don’t know or care if God ever heard. For me, it was conformity. I was doing what I was told to do. I brought no agency or will of my own to the situation. I did because I was afraid of the consequences of not. And so I stopped praying.

I miss prayer not like one misses a dead loved one but like the body misses food when it needs it. There’s something anemic about my life.

But I can’t pray. That ship has sailed. Prayer is sent out to God, and I don’t believe in God. I believe in something, but that’s another post. So what do I do?

Meditate.

I’m not interested in official meditation of any sort. Maybe somewhere down the road, but anything organized, even if it’s not religious per se, smacks of narrow-minded, blind obedience. Even if it’s not that in reality,  I perceive it like that.

And that’s what I like about the idea of meditation. It can be hijacked, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be simple. It can be one individual soul communing with itself, sending out tendrils and forays into the unknown. It can be just this, an opening to those things that nourish a soul. In my case, it’s opening to the possibility that nourishment exists.

This is an intro to an occasional series about the things I’m meditating on. Meditation for me is tied to writing. Writing for me is the easiest and most comfortable form of communication. But communication is the goal, and perhaps my writing/meditating can lead to improvement in other areas of communication.

Trying to Pretend

I went to the doctor the other day
To see what ailed my soul
He told me to look into the light
To help account the toll.

He told me there’s a little known organ
Tucked right behind the heart
It’s your Emotional Capacitor, he said
It’s basically fallen apart.

I demanded to see his license
I threatened to call the authorities
But he wrote on my chart
‘Patient proved my diagnosis.’

So what’s the remedy, doc
What pill can I take?
He smiled and shrugged
You’ve just got accept it’s all fake.

He handed me a placebo
I sold it to a friend
Thanks man. Really, he said
I’m having trouble trying to pretend.

Book Review: Godsend by John Wray

Remember John Walker Lindh? He was the California guy captured fighting for the Taliban when the US invaded Afghanistan after 9/11. I remember not caring much about his story when it came out. A privileged white boy from California going off to fight with the Taliban? I didn’t care about his reasons or his outcome. After reading Godsend, based on Lindh’s story, and then doing a quick internet search, I realized there was much I didn’t know and much worth knowing about the case besides what I heard in the perfunctory news.

 

Look at the Newsweek cover above. What a photo. It captures the fear broiling in the hearts of Americans after 9/11. Islam, born in the devil’s womb that is anything outside America, turned its sulfurous attention to our Christian nation. The only recognizable thing about Lindh on the Newsweek cover is that he’s white. The style of his long hair and beard, the war-grime on his face, and that knowing, insidious look that gives proof to the invisible menace birthed only to destroy our way of life: all of these are firmly outside the American experience, and thus something we fear. The moniker “American Taliban” is telling. Two disparate things. Two enmities. One phrase. What cannot be joined together, is. John Walker Lindh is everything we as Americans fear. That our way of life can be joined to an evil one. That the city on a hill can be tarnished by all that it looks down upon. 9/11, Osama bin Laden, the Middle East, Islam: these things caused comfortable America to quake on its perch. We didn’t understand who we were, and who we thought we were turned out to be self-created myths. Therefore we succumbed to our fears. Even today, we still view 9/11 and its aftermath through our fear. There’s no reason to expect anything different from our novelists either.

But John Wray does deliver something different. Not taking the bait on any of the interpretations of 9/11 and its aftermath that would be justified based on the overwhelming support of a fear-based reaction, Wray tells a different story. A subtle story. Wray is quickly becoming my favorite living author, but he isn’t popular. While he should be, it’s this approach to his subjects that define his skill. Wray delivers much more than he could have had he taken the conventional critical tack on Lindh. And yet you won’t walk away from this book with any shining light of insight into Lindh himself. What Wray does with is, well, subtle.

So much bullshit falls away with Wray’s approach. It’s clear, focused thinking that is sorely needed in our knee-jerk, fear-based world. A legitimate question, though, may need to be answered. What can we learn from Lindh’s situation? The answer to that question leads us down one of two paths. One is Wray’s, which I’m getting to, and the other is a lizard-brain response, one in which our lack of understanding and binary perspective forces us to categorize Lindh and those he fought with as less than. It’s a tricky balance because the Taliban and their ilk aren’t up for any peace prizes. But they are humans operating in a human world which means, right or wrong, they have reasons for their actions. They are a point along some continuum. If only someone in power had had the following thought when deciding how to respond to 9/11: What do I need to know about my enemy before I can defeat them? Sadly we thought bombs decide this sort of thing.

I’m going to resist the temptation to summarize the entire book. I’m no fan of summary, but this book almost requires it. The other side of Wray’s subtlety is that it takes a while to build up to it. That Aden is a female is interwoven so deeply and effectively throughout the whole book that it takes on deeper and deeper meanings as the story progresses. Something as simple and yet somehow silly in terms of “serious” fiction as how Aden would use the bathroom in this type of environment is made an antonym of itself. It becomes complex and important. When Aden is discovered squatting instead of standing, she has to lie, which provides a warning to her that she now has to live the lie instead of living her own life, something Decker warned her about, and something she ignores as she pursues her goal. Aden being female  is a metaphor for Lindh’s American-ness; it’s something off that others can see but not name. In this world of fundamental Islam, political strife, and a host of other issues, Aden/Lindh/America is the other.

I want to tell you everything! I want to continue that train of thought above. I want to sit with you as you read the book and exclaim and jump around and scream “Did you see that??!!”

Go read John Wray.

Why are These Kids so Dumb?

It’s a lament I hear (too) often from my teacher colleagues.

Why can’t my students identify the main idea in a paragraph? It’s right there in the first sentence!

Why can’t my students follow the steps in the equation? They have the steps in front of them and we practiced it for three days!

Why can’t they follow directions?

Hearing complaints like this is as normal as hearing colleagues greet one another in the morning. It’s part of the culture of our school, that the students are behind and they’re unable and/or unwilling to complete the tasks we teachers put in front of them.

I’ve struggled with this issue. On one hand, there’s legitimacy to some of these complaints. The academics in my school are less than stellar. Along with that come behavioral, involvement, and other issues that make the task of teaching that much harder than it already is. On the other hand, the reasons for this are so complex that any attempt by an individual teacher to solve it inevitably ends in frustration. And sometimes the issue is simple and the solution available but the will isn’t there. On another hand, there’s the problem of teacher’s beliefs and their effect on the students. A teacher might not be able to alone believe a student to graduation, but a teacher can believe a student into dropping out. That’s already too many hands, and I could delve further into this bizarre aspect of the surreal world of teaching. But that’s besides the point.

I don’t know what the point is. So here’s a scenario that happened yesterday that exhibits the highs and lows of teaching, the confusion and bewilderment that is my everyday life.

I teach a class titled 21st Century Literature Strategies II. It is a scripted program bought from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I’m pretty sure they come around in a wagon with fancy writing on the side driven by a tall, charismatic man. This class is for students who score below 1000 on a reading-ability test. It is the epitome of school district’s buying expensive programs from textbook publishers in order to address a “need.” It is checking off an item on a to-do list without ever following up to see if it is done. This also is beyond the scope of this post, but suffice it to say I have intelligent kids in a class that labels them “below.”

Today I started off my class with two questions on the board:

What’s one specific way you can show respect to your grandparents’ generation? 

What’s one specific way your grandparents’ generation can show respect to you?

I often get awkward silence when asking a question to the class. I’ve been in classes as a student where this happens so there’s nothing significant in this alone. However, this silence is significant when it reveals students don’t understand. It’s sometimes easy to interpret this type of silence since no one will say anything at all. Or if someone does, it’s a few words and then a “Never mind.”

In each class, after the awkward silence, I had nearly every student say they didn’t understand the question. As the day progressed and the periods moved along, I grew more frustrated. The same thing as yesterday is the same thing as today which is the same thing as tomorrow.

Here it is: how the fuck is it possible to not understand those questions? To me, they are simple. There are no big words; there are no complex concepts. The questions aren’t worded in a difficult way. Having to explain questions on this low level is a waste of time and evidence of…something? I don’t know, but I view a student not understanding these questions as I would view someone who willfully walked into heavy traffic. The stupidity of it reeks.

And that’s where I might be wrong.

One student said she didn’t know how to answer the question because she didn’t know what her grandparent’s generation did.

In my final class, a girl asked me to explain the question and when I asked her to tell me what part she didn’t understand, she said, “Everything.” I wanted to do two things: walk out, and begin explaining every single word. “What” is a question word that asks for information. “One” is a number, the first after zero. “Specific” means something precise instead of general. I wanted to do this in order to drive home the point that this girl should be able to interpret those questions. Easily.

I might be wrong there too.

The girl in my final class did finally understand and her answers were awesome. What worked? Another student gave her an example. I told the student I couldn’t explain it. The girl next to her said, Let me try. She didn’t explain it so that the first girl could come to the answer herself, which is what I do because I think giving an example leads them to close to the answer without them getting there themselves (I might be wrong there too). She gave her an example. And that’s what helped everyone in the other classes: one student giving an example.

Setting my frustration and bewilderment aside, quality learning happened in this situation. Throughout the day I engaged the students in conversation. I collaborated with other students to help those that didn’t understand. I asked questions to understand why they didn’t understand. Once the students were able to answer the questions, we had an in-depth conversation about it. They learned something.

But I don’t understand why they needed to start where they needed to start. I still can’t wrap my mind around it. Even if you don’t know how your grandparents were, can’t you make inferences based on your experiences with other adults? Am I expecting too much by expecting them to make those deeper connections?

This issue is too much for me. Maybe this is all frustration. Maybe I need to be more ok with where the students are and more ok with meeting them there. Maybe I’m holding them to standards I was held to. Maybe and maybe and maybe and maybe. Maybe I don’t need to understand; maybe I just need to do what’s required in the situation. Maybe. Or maybe I’m the dumb one.

 

I’m Free This Afternoon

When I have the time
I should take the time

An open afternoon
Like a can of soda
Will go flat soon

I got nothing in my head
Is it peace, or laziness,
Or am I just dead?

Every second of every day
Needs to be the highest high
And not a single shade of gray.

Reality is What Marketing Says It Is

I started writing this post last Thursday, and the more I work on it, the larger it grows and the harder it is to tame the thoughts. I read an excellent article on the recent news that humanity had erased 60% of animals since 1970 in which the author argues that the statistic is being misread, though the situation is grim. The author argued for precision and impact when disseminating information to the public and against an imbalance that lacks precision but has major impact. It’s not a bad way to think about writing. But for all the necessity of structure and well-formulated writing geared for maximum impact, sometimes the thought lies in the imprecision. Perhaps impact is outside the writer’s influence.

My premise is this: we are not as technologically advanced as we think we are. We have taken the existence of technologies as evidence that something about the world has changed.  We fell for the razzle. Or maybe it was the dazzle. Whatever it was, we fell. Hard.

Some thoughts in that general direction:

I came across a couple articles about how 90% of students’ homework is assigned online, that in-home internet access is about 85% (the NY Times article says 2/3), and how some rich schools are shirking the tech trend and getting back to basics (Digital Gap and Homework). I’m a teacher and while nearly every student has a smartphone, not every student is connected. Some students use the phone for music and social media only. They have not been trained in how to use the phone for research or to strengthen their productivity. The existence of the technology doesn’t guarantee its universality. Are we at the beginning of all this technology, like car technology when only some had them and other modes of transportation, like something pulled by a horse, still shared the road? Will we get to the point with the internet and internet connected devices in which the old way will be relegated to special circumstances or as an ironic luxury?

My wife is casually shopping for a new car. Her 2006 Toyota Matrix has 180k+ miles, and while it probably has a few more years in it, it’s telling us it’s old and tired. She’s been looking at electric cars. The batteries cost $6k to replace. They last 8 – 10 years. What kind of market will there will be for six-year-old electric cars if an additional $6k payment is needed soon after purchasing the car? The tax credits that help make these cars affordable are due to shrink and eventually disappear. Are we at the beginning of electric cars? Will the issues of material supply be solved (how sustainable are electric car batteries? I’ve read stories of Volkswagen trying to corner the cobalt market for use in batteries. Is this a next step towards something else? )so that we can sustain the economics of electric cars?

I am a big Doctor Who fan. I’ve been looking forward to the current season since I finished the last one, and even more so since it was announced that the Doctor would regenerate as a woman. But I haven’t been able to watch the new season. I have cable, but I don’t have BBC America. I called up my selfless and benevolent cable provider to see what I had to do to get that channel. I effectively couldn’t get the channel. In order to get it, I’d have to switch packages. While I’d get BBC America, I’d lose other channels that I actually watch. I could buy a Season Pass from Amazon for $29, but I already pay a cable bill and a Netflix bill. The Gatekeepers have shut me out.

We pat ourselves on the back for our modern technological word. We look back on those who lived only a few years ago as Neanderthals with their 3G clubs and their prehistoric slow internet speeds. We stand in awe of the next gadget, children standing around the next shiny thing. But we aren’t so great. We’re not that technologically advanced. In comparison to the past, sure, we are. But permanent, sustainable technology is an illusion.

Tech companies did an amazing job selling us on the future. From Apple’s “i” products that sold us on the idea of our power to create and curate our lives to streaming services which promised freedom from the overlords that throttled our access to content, we were told we would have the power. It was all a lie. It’s always a lie.

Sci fi movies like Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and a host of others have it right. These movies portray a future world with advanced technology superimposed over the regular world. The world in Blade Runner is more stark, the rundown physical world supplemented with rundown tech. Minority Report portrays a recognizable Washington DC run from on high, so to speak, via technology. This mixture of future and present is our perennial present.

The most sustainable thing about life on Earth is that whatever pushes us forward is built on the backs of weaker things, mostly people. Slavery never dies away, and there are different levels to it. One might not be able to own slaves in America anymore, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people who are trapped in something. Tech companies sold us on the idea that we need a phone. Our money, our time, and a host of other things are now tied up in a device. What do we need to do to do something different? Is it possible?  Fundamental changes occur as we froth forward for capital. Today the commodity is you.

I’m not a troglodyte, but the sell-sell-sell/buy-buy-buy aspect of technology got me thinking about Walden Pond.