LANDING THE HELICOPTER

LANDING THE HELICOPTER

I’m floating in space in a helicopter, somewhere between the sun and the earth.  About all I can about my home planet is that it’s a blip of light, like the illuminated tip of a fingernail. It seems, when I reach my hand toward it, as if I might be able to hold the whole earth between my thumb and index finger.  But, of course, it’s an illusion—I’m only squeezing stale cockpit air—a false sense of control, to think I could hold a planet in my hand.  Even the image of the earth entirely disappears between my finger pads.

It’s quiet here.  The rotors have no work to do because there is no gravity to resist.  No sound, other than the vents and my own breathing.  No smell other than the accustomed ionized air.  Little motion.  I am utterly alone.  Utterly trapped.  Once my supplies diminish, I will have no recourse but to expire. 

            Better descend toward earth, while I can. The cockpit fills with the sounds of chattering instruments and the thump-thumping rotors. A million miles away, I notice colors—the blue of oceans dividing the mottled green and brown lands, the white, paisley shaped patterns of clouds.  I have a lot more to say about the earth.  There’s North America on the upper left, South America to the lower right.

             I want to go home.  So I steer my chopper over the United States.  I’ve lost my view of South America and most of the Atlantic, but there are the two crazy zippers that are the Rockies and the Appalachians.  And the Great Lakes reach into the continent like a ragged umbrella or a monster hand.  And, hello, the states are not divided neatly into alternating red or blue splotches. 

            At 62 miles above the earth, I hit the Kármán Line—where the earth’s atmosphere hits outer space.  My craft is shaking, my instruments rattle, I feel as though I’m going to explode into smithereens.  But what safety do I have with dwindling supplies?  Better to disintegrate in an instant than to freeze, suffocate, and starve out in space. 

            I survive the re-entry.  I descend over the trickle that seems to be the Mississippi River.  As I veer south, I lose the monster hand to the north.  The waters widen.  I descend over Louisiana.  Zoom in on New Orleans.  And here are the streets, like the grids on a digital chip, the buildings rising like bristle, the sunlight glinting off glass.

            In time, I land—the whip of my chopper blades scatter a stray plastic bag, like jellyfish on a mission.  The gravity tugs hard on me—come on down. It will take the most fuel and concentration, now, not to land hard.  I’m still spinning my rotors.  I can hardly hear for the roar of thrusters.  I’m dizzy with anticipation and fear.  I have been out in space, too long.

            Then the thud.  Solid ground below me.  As the chopper blades whip to rest, my ears feel as if they are stuffed with cotton.  I have trouble focusing, so unused I am to stillness.  But I’m OK.  I can let go.  No chugging engine, no spinning wheels, no fear.  I push open the door, against hard suction.

            A gentle breeze, wafting with the sweet smell of—yes, gumbo.  There is life here.  Out of the cramped helicopter and zero gravity, it will take me some time to reorient myself.  But oh, how much to experience with my ears, eyes, nose, tongue, skin.  Although I can’t seem to hold the entire earth between two fingers, I am happy to hold what I can—a greasy potato chip, the slight moist of a warm palm held out to me.  All of my body—held and holding what is real.  Just look at this feast for the senses:

                 “Land the helicopter,” I tell myself and my student writers and readers.  There is a false sense of power in interpreting the world from the far distance of generalities and abstractions. “But if I don’t write about the whole play, cover every aspect, I won’t be able to get five pages out of it.” That’s like saying, “I have to write about the USA, France, and Kenya to fill up five pages.” Instead of writing a general paragraph saying things about Shakespeare that everyone knows, anyhow, I land my helicopter on the first word Horatio says in the Hamlet—“Friends”—and let that word lead you through how Horatio is a friend in the play. I’ll have only ten lines to write about love, in general, before realizing that it’s all clichés; and that I’m straining to find more words; and that I’m writing to get it over with. I write, instead, about feeding my ailing mother her favorite Kozy Shack chocolate pudding, how I choose a red plastic spoon because she’ll be able to see it and it will be easy in her mouth, and so on, until I wipe her lips—with what? I’ll have to specify.

            And, yes, I have to relinquish the sense of power that comes from the illusion of holding the world in my hands. And I have to take courage to confront my fear of  nothing to say, just as I had to weather the fear of exploding as I entered the Kármán Line in my helicopter. But rather than “spinning my wheels” in the la-la of blah-blah-blah empty, ungrounded talk, I choose the life-supporting particulars that sustain, nourish, and validate. All that coming home, being real, and belonging—the soft hemlock trees waving their tops to me from my window, the gurgle of my humidifier, the clicketying and the soft edges of these keys.

            How are you landing your helicopter?

© 2014 Susanna Rich

Damning with Praise

 

      "Look," I said, "all the balls are together in the corner, and not one at the net."  So, in The Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey remarks to a group of students who had just finished successfully hitting  back thirty balls. Gallwey adds,

                          Although semantically this remark was simply an observation of fact, 

                          my tone of voice revealed that I was pleased with what I saw.  I was 

                          complimenting them, and indirectly I was complimenting myself as their 

                          instructor.

                                  To my surprise, the girl who was due to hit next said, "Oh, you 

                          would have to say that just before my turn!" (38-39)

       In the following series of balls, the students reported that they were less aware of their feet and hand positions--concerned as they had become with hitting the ball over the net. And they kept missing. In response to Gallwey's implicit compliment, they had become distracted, self-conscious, and absent-minded. Educator Claire Weinstein would say that they had become focused on performance instead of mastery--the score (grade, approval, ranking) instead of the what and how of a skill.

       Gallwey's book radically transformed my sense of writing workshop. Students understand how corrosive negative judgments are--vague, undeveloped, derivative, boring. But they are initially shocked when I stop them from praising each other's work. No Wow, Great, Powerful, Amazing allowed. Compliments are comparisons--they polarize. I know that in workshops of my own work, something withers in me when someone else is complimented--and, I find myself become dependent on/victim of those who will be reviewing my work. I start writing to manage their responses, instead of writing to create something genuine. In one disastrous workshop, a poet savaged my work, claiming he wanted to take me to the next level--then, feeling guilty for his harsh treatment of my work, spent the rest of the afternoon over-complimenting everyone else. Ouch!

       I've seen this happen in the classes I coach when a compliment is delivered--across the room, someone slightly rounds her shoulders, someone else masks envy with a fake smile.  The more forthright will spurt an epithet followed by "Just slit my wrists, now." When the next person's poem is in review, a writer will preface the workshop with apologies, explanations, a lot of don't hurt me chatter.  All this creates an adversarial atmosphere.

      

      So, how are we to develop our various crafts--writing, giving and receiving responses, teaching. How are we to be godparents to each other's work? How do we move from the politics of praise to appreciation? Throughout his book, Gallwey emphasizes two things:

                           (1) Keep your eyes on the ball.

                           (2) Increase your awareness of "what actually is" (34).  

Focusing on what should/might garner compliments isn't focusing on what is. As his student put it, "

                            Compliments are criticisms in disguise! Both are used to manipulate

                            behavior, and compliments are just more socially acceptable! (40)

     The language of what is is what we develop, not only in writing workshop, but in literature courses.  Let's take a stanza from Dickinson:

                             Wild nights -- Wild nights!

                             Were I with thee

                             Wild nights should be

                             Our luxury.

We could yadaya about how spare, risk-taking, sensual, breath-taking, OMG she is (notice the focus on she and not the poem). This is fawning, not appreciation. Here's how we notice what is:

(1) REMEMBER. We look away from the poem and report back what we remember. Simply, and without judgment or comparison.  We look back on what tended to stick.

(2) DISCERN PATTERNS. What is on the page?

                             four lines

                             four syllables per line

                             visually, the first line is longer than the others

                             Wild, Were, and Our are capitalized

                             the sound w appears in wild, were

                             wild is repeated three times

                             three punctuation marks, in this sequence: -- ! .

                             high frequency vowel sounds of ai in wild, nights, I, luxury

                             exclamation point after the second Wild nights

                             when reading the poem aloud, the mouth puckers and unpuckers on w's

                                 and widens on ai's

(3)  ASK WHERE DOES THE STANZA BEGIN FOR YOU? Working on our poems in process, this question helps the writer consider alternative beginnings.

(4) ASK WHERE DOES THE STANZA END FOR YOU?  See (3) beginnings=endings.

(5)  ASK WHAT DID I LEARN FOR MY OWN WRITING? 

There's more. With a student's permission, I will post a blog on how we responded to a particular poem and what we learned by KEEPING OUR EYES ON WHAT IS.      

        Alexander Pope coined the expression "Damning with faint praise." There is a lively discussion on the internet, arguing that "faint" should be "feigned." I agree. Too often, well-meaning teachers and responders will feign--pretend--a compliment--the old sandwich method--say something nice, say something critical, say something nice. That's condescension.  It's insulting.  We know it's pro forma. We walk away feeling damned with praise.

    

        Appreciating each other's words takes patience, time, and effort. It's so much easier to dismiss someone with a compliment of Great! But oh, the difference saying what is makes! I'm posting this blog on Valentine's Day, 2014.  Instead of saying, "You look great,"  my hubby said, "the gold snake on your earring picks up on the highlights in your hair."  Did he ever (in novelist Vladimir Nabokov's words) Caress the details?!

       Gallwey keeps his eyes on the ball and racket. We are writers: let's keep our eyes on the word and Penn. 

      

© 2014 Susanna Rich

       

     

You, I, We

         In the '70s and '80s smash television series M*A*S*H, set in a surgical unit on the battle lines of the Korean War, the clerk, Radar O'Reilly, with his Harry Potter round glasses, and uncanny ESP, "radaring" coming events, consistently uses the pronoun "you" when he talks about himself. So, when he's relating the news from his home town, instead of using first person pronouns, he'll say something like this: "When your mom is having trouble making ends meet, and your uncle is having heart trouble, you really have a hard time not wanting to go home to take care of them."  I found this tendency charming, innocent, self-effacing, shy--and sad. 

         Of course, this was perfect characterization--speaking style is as much of an identity marker as facial features or culinary preferences.  Radar was the conduit, the glue for the entire M*A*S*H unit--for him, it was all about the you in his world. He was, literally (and as literature) always the demurring second person--the company gopher, communications manager, the counterpart of the mythical messenger (which is what an angel is) Hermes.

          Sometimes, though, as a child of the '60s, I wanted to take him by the shoulders, look him in the eye, and say "own it--use I and me, and my, mine, and myself."

         For me, one of the great gifts (and occasional irritation) of language study, teaching, and writing, is that, for me, a megaphone forms around words. When others revert to the "you" mode, when, clearly, they are talking about themselves, I want to take them by the shoulders.
         What might be the phenomenology, the conscious experience of you-ing?  Let's take an example, one that applies to me: When your first language is Hungarian, you prefer music in minor keys. (1) First, I, as speaker, am distancing myself from the experience; (2) if I, as a listener, don't have Hungarian as my first language, I am distanced.; (3) I, as listener, have to translate the you to I of this statement, which distracts me from the content of the statement; (4) I, as speaker, am relinquishing my personal ownership; (5) hiding behind the generalizing you, I'm making a claim that, in others' experiences, might not be true.
          Here's a translation into the first person:  My first language is Hungarian, so I prefer music in minor keys.  OK. So, I am (1) owning the statement as my experience; (2) inviting listeners who aren't Hungarian to entertain a new perspective, and inviting Hungarians to consider their experience; (3) focusing my listener on my content; (4) owning my experience; (5)  inviting both validation and counterpoint to my claim.
          How have we come to rely so much on hiding behind the you? That's a historical boulder of a question.  Some preliminary guesses: (1)  It's safer to make a general you claim. (2) It's an academic mannerism to avoid using the I--as if that lends more truth and invites less argument to one's claims; (3) It's a version of the royal we, used by British monarchs.  See (2) for why. (4) It seems more courteous and polite to not reference myself. (5) More locally, I, as teacher, notice that I often use the you during instruction--when you use the comma, for example, or you need to watch out for your use of the second person. Hearing the externalizing you you you in the classroom--and from family, politicians, religious leaders, and on--for all our lives, I'm sure, leads us to favor the you mode.
           In class, I have taken to restating students' you-when-I-mean-I statements, as they talk: When you come from a large family becomes I come from a large family; when you don't know when you'll get a job becomes since I don't know when I'll get a job. At the very least, we are all listening more closely to each other.
            I teach to learn.  It's easier to assign the you of my students to write a poem about hands than to write one myself. (George Bernard Shaw's "those who can, do--those who can't, teach" applies here.) I am experimenting with changing you/your/yours to we/us/our/ours--"Let's write a poem about hands."  This makes me appreciate more what my assignments mean.
           My devotion is to empower, energize, inspire. There is something pleading and one-downing in you-ing our lives. You-ing says Please validate this, so that I can be OK. Please hear me. When Radar was talking about his family troubles, the subtext was I want to go home--something that a faithful member of the community would not be willing to say.
           Using the I/me/mine/myself is to take ownership of my experience--to be who I am.  Using I is a going home, in itself.
           Let's I-dentify~

  © 2014 Susanna Rich

Void, Vacuum, Silence, Blank

"She just made a mistake. Right?  Doesn't have the hang of how to format a blog.  There shouldn't be such a big space at the top of a post."

"Writing Poetry" class. I walk into the room. Someone has already arranged the chairs in a circle--and students are chatting with each other (since they aren't zombied out on devices). I arrange my books and papers for easy access, and sit down.  Smile when Mary Ellen says "good morning," but don't respond vocally. I lower my eyes to look at the floor--still able to see, peripherally. And then I say nothing for seven minutes.

Students stop talking with each other--they look at their books or papers, doodle. Mary Ellen does some leg exercises.  In time, Adam leaves, returns. Because I consider facial interactions as filling silence, I close my eyes for part of the time. There's the occasional sound of a page being turned, or the rub of denim as someone recrosses a leg.

"Scared, curious, anxious, agitated, relaxed" are some of the words students put to the experience of unexpected silence. If this had been a first class with all new students, the experiment would have been more authentic--since Graig has come to expected the unexpected from me.  But there it was--the void, vacuum, silence, blank.  I filled my space of silence by wondering what the students were experiencing, how long to sustain the experiment,  how it was a challenge for me to withdraw in this way. Some of those seven minutes I actually relaxed into internal silence.

What followed was two and a half hours of intense engagement--we forgot about taking a break, fell in love with one of Rilke's colons, listened to each other's poems. Several students told stories of family tragedies--we wept, we laughed, we revealed, we hid, we looked at each other.  Mary Ellen had brought a bottle of Martinelli's for us to celebrate a week of being media free--and, luckily, Nicole (since she's a bartender) had a church key to pop it open.

I believe that those seven minutes of blank was like pressing a ball under water--the deeper a ball is pushed down, the higher and faster it will geyser/gush/catapult into the air, when released.  That silence energized and inspired us in ways that I can only appreciate in retrospect.

Like my students, anxious in those seven minutes of silence, finding ways to fritter it away or flee--whenever I am faced with transitions--blanks small or large--I become afraid.  The ancients had a term for this: Horror vacui--the horror of emptiness--a term variously attributed to the ancient Greek physicist Parmenides and to Aristotle. Francois Rabelais wrote "Nature abhors a vacuum." In the Victorian era, horror vacui was a term for art that required all spaces to be cluttered in.

But spaces are an invitation to approach the place where all things become possible, if most terrifying--absolute nothingness.  It is the place to which most religions point--whether to the terror of seeing the face of the Judeo-Christian God, or the core of divine emptiness that is the gift of of Buddhist meditation or Sufi whirling. To enter this space is to "walk the plank" reminiscent of this 19th century image

As writers, let us create the necessary spaces for the new:  the empty page or screen, the unspoken-for ten minutes, solitude, the empty hand. It is scary--this not-knowing, this not "minding."  But let's remember another formulation: "The universe hates a vacuum."  Something will fill in. The plank in the image is called "Faith"--I interpret that in a secular way--to believe, to know, that crossing into the void zone will lead to the shining city--whether that's a new poem, play, essay, story, or...

We'll explore ways embrace emptiness in another blog.

For now, what is your experience with void/vacuum/silence/emptiness/blank?  How are you creating space for what matters most to you?

© 2014 Susanna Rich