me playing karma police

hopeless musings

if a gen ed teacher doesn't want to work with a specific child (for various reasons), then he will paint the child's performance in consistently negative terms, and possibly not work to construct real solutions (i.e., "she's hopeless... i think your child should be pulled out of my class... she's too much to handle, she shouldn't be MY responsibility."). if the same teacher thinks that that same child has nowhere else to go (i.e, "the buck stops here") and he has to make the best of a perhaps nonideal situation, then he will be far more invested in working on a solution.

what i'm trying to say is: hopelessness (of escape) is the authentic crucible for the creation of hope. hope (as escapism, as some vague "other person, other answer somewhere out there") is abdication, and true hopelessness.

***

as an educator, i've realized that the biggest tool i have to work with is hope. hope is what i have to cultivate within me, and it is what i have to ignite my students with: hope that they can do something challenging, hope that they aren't limited to what people say they are, hope that their lives can be fulfilling and that they are in control of its direction.

like water, or any medium that functions to pass from areas of high concentration to lower concentration, hope is most effective when "pressurized" and then released in specific streams, to specific purpose. when hope is vague and diffuse, then it is like the faintest of drizzles: you can't feel it, and it might as well be not raining...

in order to "pressurize" hope, a person HAS to accept a certain amount of responsibility for the moment. and it's not an "active responsibility" (or it doesn't have to be). it's more of an openness, a realization that you are connected with everything, and that the suffering of one (particularly with regards to the feeling of hopelessness) is intimately tied to YOUR suffering. once you accept this responsibility, then you really have no choice but to help the person who is ostensibly "hopeless."

that's why it is never "good practice" to describe a student as "hopeless." to do so is to cut the tether or lifeline from the student. to do so is to say as much about your power and passion as an educator as it is to say anything about the student.

there is always hope. there must be. the work of an educator, again, is to deal in hope. it's not to fill a student's head with such-and-such information to pass the hsa test; it's not even to make him/her an "independent" or "complex thinker." i mean that it is this, and it isn't. these things are just the branches, the leaves. the real root we need to nourish is the child's hope: hope in the self, hope in the teacher, hope in all relationships, hope in the world, hope for a place in that world.

***

i'm a parent as well as a teacher. i once mused that, in order for parents to be good parents, and teachers to be good teachers, parents must be more like teachers, and teachers must be more like parents. just so i'm not misconstrued:

"parents must be more like teachers": i think that parents are, ultimately, the child's teachers. unfortunately, i think that some parents are not fully aware or conscious that they are playing this role. especially when it comes to academics, many parents (including me, unfortunately) tend to think that the child will "figure things out" independently, or at least eventually at school ("that's what the teachers are paid for"). in other words, parents don't take FULL RESPONSIBILITY for the performance of their child.

this is one thing i have realized. you can't necessarily count on the child to "realize" things on their time table. i was once a heavy proponent for what is called the constructivist model of education, the "if you build it, then the child will learn" philosophy. i still believe in many of its tenets, but i don't hold to it exclusively any more. sure, you can surround a child with great books to read and art supplies and whatever, but there are many children who will NOT spontaneously develop an interest in literature or painting or whatever just because the materials are there. SOMEONE has to explicitly teach, and yes, at times PUSH the child to do something, to learn something. as we often mentioned in religion class, "nothing gives," i.e., nothing happens on its own.

you also can't rely on the school or teachers. heck, they are overworked and underpaid. how are they supposed to know the specific needs of your child, and address them one on one? they CAN'T. if they are good teachers, then they may be better at this, but they only have a small amount of time with your child. ultimately, you as the parent are responsible for this. the parent is, IN A VERY REAL SENSE, a child's first and primary teacher. accept the role. embody the role.

parents should know what a child's strengths and weaknesses are, and do as much as possible to bolster those weaknesses... whether it is "encouraging" reading, restricting access to mind numbing television or nintendo dsi or wii, etc.

okay. "teachers should be more like parents." i debated this one for a while. at one interview, i carefully delineated the two roles, basically saying that teachers don't and shouldn't share the same sort of responsibility that parents do. now, i realize that things aren't and shouldn't be so clear cut. teachers ARE the student's parents- in the context of school, and for the period of the school day. (oftentimes beyond).

it would be nice and convenient if the work of a teacher were limited to passing on the curriculum. i suppose in higher education, this is the case, and it is as it should be, because we are presumably dealing with responsible adults. but in truth, no matter what we are teaching, we can never limit what we teach to the syllabus. we are dealing with people. we are, in essence, responsible for people, in the same way that parents are "tied to" their children. our students, and the performance of our students, represent us, just as much as they represent their parents.

if teachers truly feel this (often painful) responsibility, then they may despair (like many parents do), but they will be far more invested in making the child a better person (they HAVE to). but then again, this makes a great teacher: someone who REALLY cares for the child, who advocates for him/her, etc.

the sign of a poor teacher, or at least one who is nonideal for a child, who will not ultimately help a child grow, is one that throws up his hands and says, "i give up on this child... she is just plain stupid/unfocused/incorrigible. her test results shouldn't reflect upon my performance. she is just a bad seed. she is... HOPELESS."

***

here's another piece of advice: when you communicate bad news that is potentially damaging to a person's self-esteem (criticism), as much as possible, you should always sandwich it in positive statements. you should also be sensitive to timing, to setting, etc. also, if you do have a criticism, you should offer a possible solution. otherwise, you leave the recipient feeling wounded and hopeless...

i wish a few layoffs would have been delivered with more sensitivity...

preparing the space

there is a voice in the weariness and despair. it calls you to return, and to die (both are the same thing). you can't resurrect yourself without surrendering completely and senselessly first. the phoenix must be immolated without a trace before its ashes can remember how to return to life...

the world is not only productive and positivistic, much as we would like it to be. in fact, in its truest sense, the world and the real is precisely what resists us, resists all of our efforts at sequestration, at control ( i believe that one of the best definitions of "the real" is found in its resistance)... to surrender, on the one hand, can appear to be the gesture of abdication and failure (which it often is), but it can also be the most beautiful and effective thing in the world... to spread oneself upon the winds of fate.

yes, i believe in fate. perhaps it's a cop-out. i like to think of it more as a survival mechanism. if i didn't believe in fate, then i would never give myself over to the chance that perhaps the world is larger than i am, and works by rules and whims that have little to do with what i would will. if i didn't believe in fate, then i couldn't accept god, or love, or any of the greater swells and ebbs of the universe...

right now, despite my best efforts to make my life a "productive force," i keep returning to this truth of truths, the lie within all truths, that there is nothing underlying this edifice we have built, and we are all subject to the tides and the storms. i cannot concentrate, there is no will left to resist the wind of the world. i am a useless thing, a scarecrow blown away, fragmenting and tossed... beautifully mad and dizzy upon dreams that have nowhere to "go to," dreams that are merely the surging blindly, attempted resolutions of unresolvable conflicts...

***

distract. attention slack.
the world hangs loose
in an empty noose.

the wind is sliding through the leaves of trees behind my house, pulling them with whispers. at times, it touches the flat glass windowpanes, with a strange tapping sound. objectively, the noise is caused by the glass rattling gently in its housing, but quite honestly, it seems sometimes as though someone or something were gently knock-knocking with a cold ephemeral fingertip. i half expect to look at the window, and see some floating cloud-like face gazing in upon me...

i can't sleep. i was exhausted earlier, and collapsed at around 9 or 10... but now i am awake, and can't sink back into dead dreams... i walked over to the kids' rooms, stirred them in their dreams with whispers of "i love you," and wrapped their blankets around their shifting bodies like clouds... i think love, especially parental love, is like that: a soft and warm enveloping, especially when your eyes are closed and you aren't aware... i wish such love would come back to me, encase me like another womb, so i can dream the lightning and mist of some wonderful stratosphere again- instead of being the only waking soul in a cold and window-rattled house...

***

i speak to my grandmother, as i speak to god, in these empty moments, and in the moments that seem to drag and pull at me with an insistent despair. sometimes, many times, i feel so inadequate. my past, a disappointment, and the future, a long "green mile" of imprisonment and futility... i am filled with good intentions, and perhaps my grandma saw that in me, and believed in that within me... but now i am on my own, and good intentions count for little if they do not bear fruit. there is nothing worse than a broken promise...

so i speak to grandmother, and god, and i talk about my feelings, just as i would on hot afternoons, across from her at her dining table, with some aloha iced tea sweating in a can, and some unagi over stale rice that she hadn't eaten... funny. i believe in ghosts more than most people, but the spirits of ancestors never speak to me as they do others, never fill me with comfort or teach me lessons... or maybe i'm just too blind and stupid to see...

***

the morning paper is slapping on the pavements of nearby houses... i really must sleep.

i wish, at times, i could end these empty moments... or, failing that, make them last forever, without time interrupting with each new glaring tomorrow...

i felt tired and somewhat overwhelmed this afternoon/evening... when i get this way, the best thing is to go with it, and get some rest. i usually regroup in the wee hours of the morning (or i try to), and have either an action plan to address my worries, or some platitude/philosophical outlook to help me accept circumstances...

we are living in hard times. i am an insular individual, but in my heart, i try to reach out and help others. oftentimes, i feel ineffectual to change the circumstances around me, but i believe in the effort, the constant unrelenting effort. i take some small comfort in hearing the words of people actively engaged in helping others. this afternoon, on this npr show called "human kind" (i think), there was a segment about some guy who has been involved in helping out his community (sorry, can't be more specific). he mentioned something i thought was so true: "you can't keep people from doing wrong, and you can't make people do right." on the one hand, this can be a statement of despair. you essentially can't change anything substantial in the world. but he continued by saying that "you just have to continue spreading the seeds..."

***

i am thinking of ways to help some of the students i worked with today... my mentor teacher is excellent, btw; very systematic, very caring... i hope i can fulfill my duties as effectively...

***

i had an idea to start selling my book, and having the proceeds go to various charities/events, perhaps by month, but 1) i think it would be perceived as self aggrandizement, and 2) nobody buys it anyway... but if i could, it would give me a way to monetarily contribute to some of the things/people i believe in. example, shari tamashiro's chimagukuru (sp?) event, coming up in october... or mililani ike's fundraising shortfalls...

there is a strange tapping coming from the rain drainage gutters on the house. it sounds like some animal is tapping in its sleep or something. occasionally, a nightbird squeaks in its dreams, hidden somewhere in the shadowed bower of a tree.

i am awake, but tired, anxious about yet another tomorrow. there is always so much to do.

i once wrote that, in the primordial situation, man, represented by sisyphus, confronts the boulder of the world, and is essentially equal to it. he in other words has as much sense as the boulder, resisting the inertia of it with his own being, and then helpless to counter its momentum as it rolls down the hill. with the advent of the word, man creates imbalance, and thereby asserts his own existence: the word is the lever that allows man to separate the primordial border from mother earth. the word, in essence, makes man "bolder" than the boulder. it frees the boulder, and it frees man for other things...

but there are other dangers, dangers beyond falling back into the smothering non-existence of primordial sisyphian existence. the modern dilemma is the nano-machine repetition of that original act of separating the boulder from its housing... the boulder, transfigured by the word, fragments repetitively, into successively grainier detail, until man no longer makes contact, or is even able to make contact with the world. words fall apart, over and over and over again...

the task of an individual trying to change the world is similar. the world resists, certainly, by its very inertia, like the primordial boulder... but there is an equal danger in man's "divisive" labors, his language, his organizing mind, his midas touch... the world and its tasks repeatedly fall apart right before his eyes, and right beneath his fingertips... the end, which once seemed conceptually so simple, withdraws, turns corners, dizzyingly disappearing, until man no longer knows who he is, or what his purpose was...

there is a reason why taoism favors the yin, and the simple. to follow the way of the world is to instantly fall apart into the ten thousand things... true taoists look stupid, but it is only because they understand that the only way to stay together is to follow simplicity, to hold to the origin via a second return to innocence...

***

i want a dream again. i want to feel my life, my waking life, to be like the flat thing it is, afloat upon a monstrous surge, upon the back of some leviathan mistaken for a wave. an unthinking thing, without purpose, but filled to bursting with the plenitude of the abyss and the depths... ALIVE.

i dream of the sea and the waters in all its incarnations. last night i dreamt of crossing the ocean on a decaying bridge with my father... someday, in my dreams, i will walk on water, unafraid and alone.

or else, i will become the waters themselves.

red dawn dream

this red morning, i woke up from a dream... apparently, i had won some sort of strange contest after writing/drawing stories for some book. i was to train in a pagoda of some sort. the pagoda had to be reached by crossing an old bridge across a very busy harbor/sea. the bridge consisted of ropes and wooden planks. i was with my father. we proceeded halfway across the bridge, when my father noted how old some of the planks were- and lo and behold, as we were walking on it, the bridge seemed to dissolve before my very eyes! not only were the planks old, there were some portions where there were no planks at all! eventually, we found ourselves holding on to one railing rope and essentially tightrope walking across the roiling busy harbor. and then, my father suggested i let go and hold on to him, something about how our combined volume would make the trip easier. i begged to differ, but dream logic doesn't seem to work that way. so i held on to my father. suddenly, the wind picked up, and it actually blew us upwards into the sky, holding the rope of the bridge as a kind of tether. i could see the pagoda and the waters of the sea hover below us, wavering madly. after that, we decided to give up, and find another way...

back on the other side, we discovered that the only way to gain access across the bridge was to meet with the tulku (he looked like a buddhist abbott) named kuul. "cool!" my grandfather cried (for suddenly, he was with us as well, bouncing up and down, and looking and acting just like aiden). we waited as another party paid proper respects to kuul and his elderly family (apparently his whole family joined him on these meetings). my grandfather jumped ahead excitedly, shouting "cool!", and i had to hold him back...

that was the end of the dream...

behind it, there was a feeling of expectation... as though i had to do something...

in any case, the whole adventure with my father was the coolest... hanging onto the bridge for dear life, i had no fear of death- it was just my dad and i, laughing like kites.

oh yes, there is also a fragment about some great violin performance that was to take place in the tenth floor auditorium... and i took my daughter and son (and someone else) to go see it, only we were in an adjacent building. sounds strange, but we went up to the tenth floor of our building, and through the windows (giant and clear), we could see the violinists in the next building as though we were right next to them... i do remember that part...