The Demise of a Tree

I'm chopping down the apple tree in my front yard this weekend. It's become overwhelmed by Fire Blight, despite the fact that I've treated the tree and tried to stave off the its slow decline for about a decade now. I finally lost hope that it can be cured. Even though almost every year this tree produces a bumper crop of apples, this year they all ended up rotten and diseased before harvest time.

I guess you could say the same thing has happened to my personal hopes over the years since I last posted on this blog. I am still discouraged about why or how I might have done things differently in order to remedy the ailments that have struck my life over the last few years and have spoiled the goals I had hoped would come to fruition. After all, I worked really hard when I went back to get a second B.A.  in English Education. I graduated with a 4.0 GPA. I spent endless hours writing English papers and then planning, writing, preparing, and executing lesson plans. Student teaching was nothing short of stressful itself, but I learned a great deal about teaching and myself with that crazy experience, and I reflected on how and what I might do better. I was hopeful that there would be "many apples in my orchard." But that didn't come to pass.

Six years after I graduated and became certified to teach, I still have not been able to find a permanent teaching position.

There are many reasons why that happened. First, I got certified in early 2010, just in time for the economy to be the worst it had been since the Great Depression. Recently hired teachers were laid-off in droves, and those who kept their jobs were furloughed and had salaries slashed. Second, I am certified to teach Language Arts and Literature. When I entered my teaching program in 2007, the field of English was considered a "High Priority Teacher Shortage" in my state. However, that quickly changed after the recession. Today more than ever, English and Humanities fields have become marginalized areas because of the frantic urgency of pushing the STEM curriculum (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). English classes are, of course, still required for high-school student across four years, but it's not a "critical needs" area like Physics or Mathematics. I didn't even bother to apply for jobs directly after graduating because I knew I probably had a less than five percent chance of finding a position ("five percent" is a random figure—the chances were likely even lower than that in my area). Finally, I also encountered some significant personal challenges and disappointments shortly after graduation, including family concerns and family health issues.

My solution was to continue on to graduate school. The rationale was that while  I waited for the economy and job prospects to rebound, I would go ahead and get my Master's degree—but not in Education. At the time, my university's M.Ed program required students to be current teachers anyway,  but to be honest, I felt the Education program was weak. Thus I ambitiously enrolled in not one but two graduate programs: Professional Writing and American Studies. Without getting into all the gory details in this particular post (I'll save some of that maybe for future posts), it suffices to say that many things did not go as planned as I moved forward, and they continued to get worse over the next few years. I couldn't have made-up a sequence of events more disheartening that what followed in reality. Most of the things that transpired were out of my control, despite the fact I tried to control them. What happened could be described using a quote from Star Wars: Episode IV.  Princess Leia says to General Tarkin: "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers," except' "star systems" weren't slipping through my fingers. What was slipping through my fingers was a galaxy of other little things that slowly overwhelmed me: students loans, car problems, house problems, money issues, and my son (that too is a story for another time.) Then, finally, the worst thing struck: I could no longer write. Writing  was something I had loved to do and prided myself on doing well, but it suddenly seemed to abandon me. And with that, my confidence evaporated.  You might say that it was as if I felt there were suddenly no more "Apples in the Orchard." That orchard that once had so much potential for producing great yields slowly withered away, and it took all my energy and hope with it. I floundered and lost my way in a very dark forest instead.

I still haven't completed either Master's degree, although I'm projected to finally finish my M.A. in American Studies this Spring semester. My inability to write really did a number on my being able to write a thesis paper, even though my head was bursting with ideas. But most disconcertingly, I still haven't found anyplace that feels like I belong, and I'm not getting any younger, either.

Some days I can pick my way through  the spoiled fruit that litters the ground around me; other days I  look around and all I see is rotten and barren terrain.

So, back to that apple tree in my yard.

In it's demise, I see something more symbolic in that for my life, too. Something lost, something very sad, certainly, but maybe there is a deeper meaning here. I want to think  there is something greater in its demise, and maybe I can figure it out fairly soon. Maybe there big obstacles in my own life I need to cut down. Maybe it's time to take a slice out of a different apple.  Or maybe it represents a need to make a clean break from something else altogether. I don't know. But I'm going to chew on that for a while and see what grows.

An American Horror Story: "Birth"

I knew I was right! This "horror story" is the horror story of the European invasion and contamination of America and the decimation of the original people and landscape of this country. The "new inhabitants"  (the ghosts) of this "Murder House" (our country) are, I suggest, the "newcomers"—the Puritan settlers, if you will. They aim to over take the "infantile" and innocent land, with little regard for the lives that are living. Yes!!!!! I knew it!

As I just finished watching this episode, I want to say it was very..."moving," but that sounds weird for a "horror story." I suppose, though, considering some of the horror in U.S. History, there are some very heartbreaking episodes in our past as well. The more I think about it (in my PTSD haze from this semester), Walter Benjamin's writings would probably have been the better choice for analyzing this series rather than Michel Foucault, although both scholars have relevance. Really, in all honesty, the best social theorist to use is Reinhold Niebuhr. Unfortunately, he wasn't one of the critical lenses we had to choose from to do our analysis in American Studies.

More to come as I take it all in. What a frickin' brilliant series this is...I would guess a lot of people don't "get it." But that's the American mentality for you...

Does American Rhetoric Use Undemocratic Vocabulary?

The boundaries of two of my classes this semester have collided in a rhetorical "mash up" of sorts. Through my writing class and my language class, it is becoming clear to me how more and more Americans have come to dismiss rhetorical arguments about American public policy-making as merely one-sided pieces of propaganda that have no merit.  Americans have either tuned out or are not included in legitmate debates about our Great Democracy that demand our critical consideration. There are many reasons that rhetoric has become the eqivalent of a four-letter word, but that is a topic for another post. However, let me go on record as saying that I believe the reasons for our' dismissive attitude toward rhetoric are valid.

Last week in my writing class, the conversation about rhetoric turned to the state of American education and the observation that young people are no longer "readers." The discussion included ideas about how to motivate young people to read more and the barriers that prohibit their reading proficiencies and critical understanding. It's a real concern because the future of our democratic society depends upon an educated American population. However, much of the "politi-rhet" about advancing the state of our educational institutions is pure rhetoric only—there is no "functional rhetoric." By that I mean that the purpose of rhetoric and the rhetorical argument is to spur the audience to some sort of tangible action to address the exigence of the situation. Yet American rhetoric has not been able motivate citizens to action over our failing educational system or even change the tunnel vision of those who have real power to affect significant change.

However, believe it or not, rhetoric molds our history, culture, and language and has a profound impact on "public discourse" within our grand democratic American Experiment, as de Toqueville called it, and  America is constantly evolving, which renders the "experiment" semper novum. Therefore, incorporating new "vocabularies" into our society becomes particularly important when there are certain voices in public rhetoric that are missing from the democratic process on which our country is built.

The crux of problem appears to be that an increasing number of groups in the American population deprived of the language and support through which they might engage in discourse about public policies.  Currently, our educational system fails to support new segments of the population, and consequently, these new groups become only invisible shadows in our society, but their presence still haunts the changing relationships and associations within America's pluralistic society. When there is no shared dialogue about civic participation and responsibility, the cohesive structure of a society begins to break down. Whole parts of the population are left in a netherworld or limboland, occupying neither a common space or place within the fabric of the country.

For example, more than a century ago when African-Americans were freed from slavery they did not have the knowledge or vocabulary that could give them in a voice in America, and it was purposefully withheld from them to keep them under the thumb of majority whites. Black people could not go back to Africa because the majority of former slaves were not even born in Africa, but they were not given a the tools to engage in the commonalities that bind a society together, and as a result, civil unrest and violence eventually ensured. Now, in the 21st Century, large contingents of Latinos, a majority of which are Mexicans, have lived in the U.S. for 20, 30, 40, or more years, but have never been citizens of this country. Although the South and Southwest U.S. were the indigenous geographic area from which their ancestors may have come, Mexicans are not welcome here anymore. Those that have been able to live here for generations as undocumented immigrants may feel American, but they are not considered American. When they are "sent back," although they may never have stepped foot south of the border, they are misfits in the Mexican culture to an even more dramatic degree than they were in the U.S. Their voices are not part of the "grand narrative," suggests Claudia Galindo, a professor of linguistics and culture at the University of Maryland, of the American history as a nation of democratic equals.

Until Americans reimagine a culture that embraces the rhetoric and vocabulary of what E.D. Hirsch calls "a Pluralistic Nation," until we reconsider the way we all relate to each other—remember e pluribus unum?— until our country revisits the way we view each other, treat each other, and conceive of our democratic responsibilities, our nation is made vulnerable to a potentially disastrous disunity, such as one Arthur Schlesinger warned against in the early 1990s (yes, even we liberals must also consider the voices of the conservatives like Schlesinger). The "rhetorical situation" must be broadened to include the stories, cultures, and vocabulary of all groups that have had an impact on the American Experiment and will continue to have in the future. It is in the historic chronicle of our nation to embrace and adapt to evolving philosophies of what it means to be an American and to listen to the variety of voices that make up the "remarkably diverse racial, religious, and ethnic origins" of America (de Toqueville). This can only be achieved by unconditionally allowing immigrants, whether of legal or illegal status, the access to respectable public and higher educations. Through tolerance, justice, and ethical action, a productive population that contributes to the on-going welfare of America can be truly articulated.

In order to facilitate the great strengths of our nation in the future, the educational system must prepare itself to act on the rhetoric that our country's leaders regurgitate. It means educators much actively expand the cultural vocabulary of rhetoric in our classrooms to foster a more critical and dimensional conversation. It does not mean to pay cursory, "politically correct" attention to various cultural groups, it mean to truly engage in issues that address cultural conflict, the principles of a democratic society—a society that respects the voices of all America's people, not just those that control the rhetoric. The loss of true democratic debates and the disregard for moral justice in our country should be what alarms us most and should be recognized as a frightening crisis facing our country today. We must support leaders who fearlessly use American rhetoric to produce not the rhetoric of "change," but to instigate palpable, substantive results that focus on the welfare of all, particularly when focused on local community involvement and improvements. Only by giving all segments of our society the tools to enter into the critical debates that will confront our next generation, can authentic conversations about the endurance of our "grand experiment" extend democracy for all American people, by including the people.

Stuffing Our Eyeballs

In the world of writing, "hunkering down" is a term taken from a section of essays in The Writing Life published by The Washington Post about "writers on how they think and work." "Hunkering down," can mean getting serious about your craft, but it can turn writers into becoming isolationists, solo adventurers,lonely wanderers in the phantasmagorical world of language. A Scrooge-like, Grinch-y recluse then emerges from an hazy veil of flickering images that casts shadows on a cave wall created by some magic lantern.  "Hunkering down" tends to beget some idea that the dedicated writer's only world consists of "spiritual and artistically inspirational" landscapes shaped by a profundity of words, sentences, and paragraphs.

However, the craft of writing is initiated by the opposite experience. It comes from watchful observations of the outside world, interactions with and between people, the exploration of places and times that fall outside the boundaries of the familiar, and attentive awareness to surrounding conversations. Wendy Wasserstein, acclaimed playwright and author writes, "the joy of being on the road is having dinner alone" (The Writing Life, "Holiday at The Keyboard Inn"). Dinner is a time to become a student of other people's lives rather than live in the solitary world of the mind. It is a time to immerse oneself and to "listen carefully . . . to judge harshly the surrounding couples," and to speculate about their private lives.

There tends to be a notion that the "serious" writer is some irascible loner, such as William Faulkner or, more recently, Cormac McCarthy, although the latter is known more for his hermit-like persona rather than his Faulkneresque irascibility. "Hunkering down" conjures an image of the lonely writer hunched over a slaving hot keyboard. However, to be an authentic writer, one must engage in the outside world, and make time to put aside the remote, virtual world that exists only on the printed page. Otherwise, as Patricia Cornell writes in her essay, which is also included in The Writing Life, "If I stop seeing, hearing, touching,

there will be no story. I will be a writer with nothing to say—a violin with no music to play," which inadvertently rhymes and might be used as a kind of mantra to accompany a writer on the journey to a final destination. Or, as David McCullough, author of the critically acclaimed book-turned-mini-series John Adams, quotes, "What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything."

"Hunkering down" means, then, not only getting serious about the so-called writing life, but also never forgetting that real life is rich with meanings to write about. We must “stuff our eyeballs,” as Ray Bradbury says, with metaphors and symbols of the actualities of the surrounding landscape—living metaphors that only then “bid [writers] jump to run and trap them” with words that subsequently “stuff” the page with “compacted truths of a life” that echoes with the refrain, “Live forever!”

All quotes are taken from The Writing Life, edited by Marie Arana, 2003)

The Art of Shorthand

I conducted my interview today with the author of my choice, a woman who is a published writer and an academic at a local university. As many writers can be, she was somewhat difficult to get talking, although a bit surprising since she is a professor too. There was also a big hiccup because I couldn't get a digital recorder as I had thought I was going to be able to do in order to tape our conversation. Our conversation took about an hour and a half, with me scribbling furiously since I couldn't record the interview. Sure wish I knew shorthand. Que será será.

1. When did you start to write, seriously?

2. How would you characterize yourself as a writer? Your style,
your tone, specifically?

3. Through reading your books, I got the feeling that you got away
from writing and academia for a long time while you worked on
the railroad, although I'm sure that it still shaped who you were
a working class person—your world view, etc. How did you get
back into writing again after having been distanced from it in
many ways during your years on the rails?

4. You mention reading poetry as a sort of guiding force,
particularly Wallace Stevens. What other writers or writing
shaped you as a person and as a writer?

5. Wallace Stevens writes, "The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real. When it adheres to the unreal . . . its first effect may be extraordinary, that effect is the maximum effect that it will ever have." Does he express here what ultimately drives you to write non-fiction.

6. How did you first find an agent or a publisher? How difficult was
that, and what were some of the responses that you first got
when you submitted your work?

7. How do you balance the truths in your autobiographical writing
and your relationships with people whom you depict? What kind
of consideration do you take into account when writing about
some very personal details involving the people in your life?

8. What has been their reaction?

9. How do you want others to think of your writing? And how do
you think other might describe your writing? Does that please
you?

10. Your writing exudes a certain kind of critique of modern
American culture. What issues in American society do your feel
your work bring attention to?

11. What kind of response do you want to elicit through your
writing? From others, and from yourself, perhaps, too?

12. Autobiographical or memoir writing in many respects can
be more difficult because what you may find interesting and
intriguing, may sound like whining selfindulgence to others.
How do you decide what life events or epiphanies you can build
some kind of "arc" around, and which ones may be less
attractive to readers—despite the fact that they be significant to
you?

13. You writing, by the nature of its genre is very personal.
How does "developing an authorial voice" in your writing differ
from your own personal voice. Or does it?

14. In your life you've made decisions that opened you up to
a larger community of people and experiences. What has that
done for you as a person and a writer?

15. Plot, characterization, setting, voice, tone: all these things
are used to describe writing and literature in general—but which
of these qualities do you feel is most imperative in bringing
writing to life?

16. You say in your book that you've always felt like you've
violated the "membership rules" of the communities around you.
You say, "not money, status, or happiness" is what you seek.How has writing helped your in your quest to find some
kind of niche?

17. You write a good bit about your partying, drug use,
alcohol use, and sexual preferences and experiences: Do you
feel that these unorthodox experiences and "altered states" of
mind contributed to your ability to "see beyond" the norm, as so
many authors have implied it does?

18. Self-abuse seems to be a thread that runs through some
of your writing, from wearing the hat with the silver wings that
calls attention to you in the rail yards and to the way you manage
your love life and substance abuse. What surprised you most
about yourself as your wrote about the search to find a sense
of place? or to be "a part of it all" (7) as you say in your
memoir?

19. How has your sobriety changed the way you approach
writing? Or has it?

20. On page 111 in the memoir, you write that you wanted to
become your own story, to find out who was the hero of your
own life. What was it that drove you to set your "hero's journey"
into motion? Is this part of that inner drive that some people are
born with—a need to search for and express some force of life?

21. When you look back on "your story," how did you
approach writing about it? What is your working method or
routine like? Describe it.

22. Can you read this passage on page 166? That is
beautiful, poetic language—is that kind of writing what became
your sober "high," because it's really heady, gorgeous prose.

23. Another theme that shows up in your writing is this idea of
"pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" (individualism) vs. the
uniting power of community. You write some in Railroad Noir
about the kind of entitlement and materialism that seem to
possess American youth today. How has that materialist
sentiment in society —and the dependence on social
technology to express oneself —changed the way that people
read and write today? Good thing or bad thing?

24. You write, back in your academic days that a literate
society was assumed, and after a few years as a writing teacher you "figured
out" how to these, shall I say, subliterate youth. How DO
you teach them?

25. On page 245, the last page of your memoir, Ellen, the
boatman says to you, "when you've come to the end of the trail, it
means you've lost it somewhere" . . . still feel this way? what
does that mean to you now?

Shakespeare— Jungle Spud or Killer Bee?

I seem to operate on only two modes: busy, buzzy bee or hairy, stinky sloth. I know; neither of those animals lead much of an appealing lifestyle.

In case you are wondering, a sloth is a very bizarre-looking creature that really isn't directly related to any other mammal. All of their closest connected relatives died out during the last Ice Age. Now they live only in the rain forests of South America, sleep 15—18 hours a day, and expend energy only when it becomes absolutely necessary. They mostly just hang their atrociously smelly and hairy bodies from the forest branches; sometimes even after they die, they can have been found still just hanging from a tree. In other words, they are lazy couch potatoes, although based on their habitat, perhaps it's more accurate to call them something like jungle spuds. (See sloth picture below: honestly, can you imagine trying to get anything done with fingernails like that?)

When I am in school taking a full load of classes, I am always reading, researching, and writing, and I stay in a constantly stimulated state. My brain is in overdrive, making connections, looking for answers, budgeting time for deadlines on projects and papers, while simultaneously working out what kind of frozen or boxed meal I can throw together for my neglected kids while I am working. I am as focused on my target as a killer bee.

However, when I am not in school, or I'm not taking a full schedule of classes, I turn into a sloth—a mangy, slovenly, lazy jungle spud. I take a shower every three days or so, don't shave my legs or armpits, and just kind of "hang." This worries me about my ability to be self-disciplined enough to be a productive writer. Most profiles I've read of successful authors indicate that the prosperous writer does not wait until some momentous synaptic-rattling jolt of inspiration strikes from the sky. Quite the contrary seems to be the case. The process of writing is often described as an ritualistic practice of tedious trial and error, false starts, and humiliating frustration. It got me thinking about whether Shakespeare had a compulsary writing routine. Did Homer, Dante, or Proust sequester themselves in some kind of regimented writing routine? Did Sun Tzu cordon off special time in his ancient Chinese Day Runner so he could scribble a few scrolls of rice paper on The Art of War? I suppose it's possible that Sumerian scribes got up early each morning, had a cup of joe, and then carved out special time to sit in front of the ol' clay tablet until the sundial moved a certain number of degrees, just to make sure they could grind out at least a few lines of cuneiform each day.

There is no question that man's ability to convey concepts and ideas to each other through complex languages preserved in pictures, symbols, and eventually, scripted language greatly contributed to the unique evolutionary development of human beings. It is what drastically differentiates us from lower animal orders. Archeologists and anthropologists have uncovered an amazing amount of information that was produced by ancient peoples, and these scholars believe that the earliest forms of communication, cave paintings, were not just decoration. They were representative of the transfer of important information and part of a ritualistic practice of some kind. So, here we are, back at ritualistic writing practices again.

I suppose writing does take take disciplined practice; hell, it is work. It had to have been quite a challenge for the ancients to develop alphabetical systems and methods of putting all those ideas down in perpetuity. When one looks at the work that it took to develop writing from scratch, today's authors have it easy—at least they don't need to undertake the monumental task of developing a way to capture language in order to share documented information with other humans. Most contemporary writers simply tap away on the ready-made symbols that decorate those little plastic keys on the computer.

Thinking about all this makes me realize how very little scholars actually know about the individuals who first revolutionized the way humans communicate or what kind of "writing methods" they used. Even within the Early Modern era this remains true. For example, although historians know a good deal about Shakespeare, there are still a lot of questions left unanswered about how and where he went about forming, drafting, and penning the prolific number of works that he produced. But I'll bet one thing's for sure: Shakespeare was no jungle spud.

I guess this means if I want to "bee" a successful writer, I'm going to have to shower, shave, and, of course, write on a routine basis.

"The Lady and the Leg"

In "Reading Like A Writer," Francine Prose devotes an entire chapter to extolling the virtues of Anton Chekov's "profound and beautiful . . . involving" stories that made bearable her wretched bus commute between work and home. Clearly the woman savored the time she spent nibbling greasy sugar cookies and sipping soda whilst reading Chekov's work, but I agree with the "disgruntled student" who also got sick of Fran's mooning over this Russian—there are plenty of other authors who can inspire budding writers just as well as Chekov. I realize that I've made it clear that Prose's prose doesn't click with me, so if Chekhov is one of her favorite writers, then it is doubtful he will do much for me. However, seeing as though I have, I don't think, ever read any Chekhov, I will not prejudge his writing as a way to project my rejection of Fran on to Chekhov. Yet even his compatriot, Vladmir Nabokov (Lolita), is alleged to have called Chekov's writing a "medley of dreadful prosaisms, ready-made epithets, [and] repetitions" (James Woods essay, What Chekhov Meant By Life).

This discrepancy in "taste" (ironically, I also care neither for sugar cookies nor sodas) between Fran and me brings up another important issue that is quite apparent in relief against our increasingly multicultural society. I refer to the idea that the master canon of Western literature seems to be the standard by which all writers must ascribe. The "profundity" of Chekhov's writing as described by Fran seems to emanate from his astute social observations about the intricate ways people connect with one another; however, the methods and modes through which humans interrelate can vary enormously between cultures. Social interactions differ to such a noticeable extent that it is not at all an exaggeration to say that the "norm" in one culture may be completely inconceivable in another. Thus, I submit, the level of importance of one author in a particular culture can also be rendered completely negligible in another. Fran's take on authorial imitation is not revolutionary or original; it is a technique that can be a valuable as a writing tool, but only as long as the aspiring scribe is imitating a writer whose work he or she admires.

I could go on nitpicking at Fran, but in the interests of appearing fair and open-minded, I will give props to her chapter entitled "Details." In that chapter she recounts a story that a one-legged lady tells about how she lost her leg. For the first time in Reading Like A Writer, Prose offers up something that holds my interest. I think the reason is because Frannie seems to finally use her own authentic observations and interactions with others as an example of good storytelling and characterization. The story of the lady and the leg is humorous and horrifying at once, and the details in this one paragraph tale leave a far greater impression on me than the rest of her entire book.

So, Fran adores Chekhov's "The Lady and the Dog." Fine. She can choose to use him as a model for her own work. I'll partake of the "The Lady and the Leg."