Scrolling, Scrolling

Scrolling, Scrolling

          Let’s imagine Khamet, a young scholar in Egypt, 2,018 B.C.E., the year Abraham was born in the Babylonian city of Ur.  On a high, open shelf, Khamet finds “The Story of Sinuhe” on a scroll—two wooden dowels, about 12 inches high, onto which a 30-foot length of papyrus is rolled left and right. This paper is made of special reeds that, lain flat, adhere to each other by their own natural gum.  Khamet hefts down the scroll, brings it toward his body, hugs it to himself until he  lays it on a table.  Here he unrolls the texts inscribed with special inks made of burnt wood and acacia sap.  A fragrant woody scent, reminiscent of the scroll’s natural origins, wafts up.  Khamet visits his favorite books so often, that he can recognize them not only by touch but by their individual scents. These perfumes etch the words into his memory on a cellular level.  Tonight, at dinner, he will recite a portion of the story to his family, by heart.  He traces the words as he reads, the raised edges of the letters as familiar to him as the brailling that won’t appear for another 3,809 years, when Napoleon’s soldiers had to devise a way to send night messages without exposing their location with light.

          To open this scroll is, for Khamet, to spread his arms wide—an inviting gesture that has lodged itself into his strong arms and muscular back. His burly wrists turn in coordination as he reads. This is the only scroll he will read today, spending time to discuss it with his fellow scholars, ruminating over it as he walks home by the Nile, where the papyrus grows wild, and crocodiles eyes peek above the surface of the green waters.

          Let’s now imagine Jennifer, 2018 A.D., a student with her smart phone. She’s opened her free Shakespeare’s Sonnets APP, but texts are pinging in, and Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest notices.  She has plenty of time, she thinks, and taps over to Pinterest, and scrolls, scrolls, scattered images and words spinning into a blur.  She is as devoted to her scrolling as Khamet is to his.  But whereas he practices an expansive gesture, spreading open his arms all day; Jennifer curls around her phone, like a conch, small and cramped. Khamet has defined biceps and lats—Jennifer has texting claw, Tinder finger, carpal tunnel syndrome, and cell phone elbow.  Khamet strides into the world with his head up; Jennifer is hunched and distracted—no fragrance, no exercise of her muscles or capacity to memorize, no seeing the scenery or greeting others for long talks as she walks. 

          Because it’s the same glassy surface all day and most of the night, her fingertips are dulled to touch.  And as she scrolls, the message to herself is—hurry to the next thing. Dismiss. What’s next? What else? Go away.  Her brain is enchanted by this flick, flick, flick, this not having to stop, this constant running-away-from to something from-which-to-run-away.  Gertrude Stein once wrote that to know someone’s nature, notice what she or he repeats. What we repeat is what we become.  Jennifer is always hunting, never arriving—a life of fleeting dopamine hits.  Nothing sticks.  Nothing lasts.

          Jennifer will not remember much, if anything, what scrolled past her today.  Instagram promises “Along with making over-posting a non-issue, the new feature also eliminates the permanency.” Jennifer has been entrained by her scrolling to skim—skim past nature, skim past people, skim past her own sensations.Tonight, Jennifer will not recite a sonnet to her family.  She will scroll through dinner as her family scrolls, too. She will swipe away this day as she will tomorrow, all blurring into each other.  And, oops, she forgot to read those sonnets, and, after making thousands of scrolling decisions, she ran out of willpower to even brush her teeth last night.  And now she’s already late for class.

 Between Khamet and Jennifer, we had Jack Kerouac, who wrote his travelogue On the Road, on one continuous 120-foot scroll of paper in a three-week binge.  His manuscript, like his travels, were one continuous, unbroken, cohesive artifact. In comparison, with today’s smart phones, we scroll away our lives, in a blizzard of confetti.

Addicted to Scrolling 

 

The Rude Student: Preparing the Way

The Rude Student: Preparing the Way

            She comes in eight minutes late to class, first banging at the door, noisily dragging in a large briefcase on wheels and a large bag, both of which she parks by two open desks, mutters a curse, and leaves.  Another eight minutes later she’s back with a large, domed Starbuck’s concoction, frothing whipped cream at the straw hole.  With her other hand, she’s texting, and listening to some loud staticky music through ear buds.  She reeks of smoke. A billed cap nearly covers her eyes, which are already covered by large, mirrored sunglasses.  She doesn’t notice the others in the classroom.  But wait, there’s more.

            She’s chewing gum, blowing bubbles, and popping it. She fumbles around with the zipper of her briefcase, and yanks out a laptop which she opens on one desk, and then plops her bag on the chair in which she is sitting to hide her phone.  Feet go up on a desk in front of her.  She hums to her music, and clicks her pen to the rhythm. She sucks loudly on the straw of her Starbuck’s, which then falls on the floor and spills.  Students around her run to yank paper towels from the bathroom.  She leans her head against the wall and falls asleep. Snores.

            The she? ‘Tis I. The desk I use is the teacher’s desk. I tried to get in the part about pulling out a large Styrofoam container of fish-sticks and fries, but I didn’t know how to get it all onto the two student desks the Rude Student occupied.  It is the first meeting of my class.  The other students sit at their desks stunned, because I’m supposed to be their teacher.

            When I pull off my glasses, I poise my whiteboard marker like a cigarette between my fingers and ask:  How did you feel during my performance?  The answers from my four classes include “annoyed,” “frightened,” “angered,” “irritated,” “abandoned,” “wanting to leave,” “puzzled,”  “stunned,” “frustrated.” All these I write on the board. Someone inevitably says, “halfway through, I got it.”  Then I have them “name that rudeness,” which I also list on the board.

            Before we move on to the syllabus and protocols of our semester, I say, “All these things you felt while I was acting (out), are all the things and more that I feel when students” and then I wave my pen at the gallery of rudenesses I collected from them.  “Got it?” I ask.  They all do.  I then ask them to suggest how I might expand my act for the next time I perform this act.  Many of the moves I include here were student suggestions.

           

            Each class becomes its own family, to which we bring our own strategies for surviving a shared space and mission—in the case of a class, to learn. All the ways The Rude Student acted out are survival strategies—self-soothing oral gratification through chewing gum; eating, especially sugar; drinking; playing with the containers and navigating things to the mouth. Then there’s literally tuning out with ear buds, dark glasses, cap, sleep.  Distancing through the laptop.  Stimulating dopamine release through use of the phone.

When, in the past, I droned on about course policies (you can guess them from the scenario above), it was just more constraining rules to which to rebel. When I embody The Rude Student and appeal to my students’ empathy, I enter their consciousness through the larger portal of emotions.  And, with the performance and talk-back done, I can say the last line of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, “Now we can begin.”