music: The Flaming Lips- The Soft Bulletin
I walked into a bookstore yesterday to pick up a moleskine for the upcoming trip and was immediately overwhelmed. I should have seen it coming; every time I walk into a bookstore I fall into a mental state somewhere between dissociative fugue and Christmas morning anxiety.
Bookstores are great because they are full of books I haven’t read. But bookstores are awful because they are full of books I haven’t read. On one hand there is infinite potential for learning about stuff and indulging in cool stories; on the other hand I realize that I’m not even making a dent in the collected wisdom of the human race. There’s a moment of minor panic followed by a rare case of the gimmies: maybe I could go home with a few more stacks of printed word which will bring me that much closer to an understanding of the universe. But then, despair. Even if I wanted to I’d never make a dent. There’s no way to keep up. And these are just the most popular books of the day. Never mind newspapers, magazines, electronic print…and all the books that aren’t sold in bookstores. I’ve come close to short circuiting in libraries.
Reading for myself has been increasingly difficult this year. A friend started a book club and I couldn’t even consider it unless the chosen book was BSCS Biology: A Human Approach. I’ll have a book with me this summer that I’ve been meaning to get to for a while (in addition to the requisite lonely planet guide) But then, do I really want to spend all this time reading a book when I’m halfway around the world? Shouldn’t I be spending more time experiencing things directly? Everything I’ve read (ironically) says that direct experience is the better informant. Doing is empirical; reading constitutes a priori knowledge. But that doesn’t help matters much either. Every time I travel anywhere I realize how small I am and how large this singular world is and how little of it I will actually see in my lifetime. Two fancy college degrees and I all I know is that I know nothing. This is all very overwhelming.
The final result, and perhaps appropriately so: I left the bookstore with a blank book.
music: Orchestra Baobob- Pirate’s Choice
My friend Guy got married this weekend. It was a distinctly Guy and Katya affair, entirely homegrown and tailored to the tastes and idiosyncracies of the bride and groom. They dressed down by wedding standards, scripted the whole ceremony themselves, asked friends to share thoughts, meditations and blessings, enlisted Katya’s brother to officiate, enlisted their close friends here to help with the organizing and grunt work, and ended their ceremony with an exit to the reception on a tandem bike. The service was held in a small glade in the arboretum and guests stood in the shade of towering oaks and pines and sat on blankets and camp chairs. It was non-denominational, non-traditional, but to those of us who know Guy and Katya, it all was perfectly as it should be.
Two thoughts kept bobbing to the service over the course of the weekend. The first was on the nature of weddings, and the second was on the nature of marriage.
Weddings, by all rights, should reflect the people getting married. It is their moment, by all rights. I can’t quite wrap my head around the possibility of my own wedding, for no other reason than it would really be the only way I’d have nearly everyone I care about in one place. That in and of itself is overwhelming. But to the point: weddings should reflect those who are getting married. That’s why Guy and Katya’s wedding was so great-everything made total sense in the context of the two of them. From my perspective at least. I had no problem wearing a short sleeve shirt, straw hat, and sitting in my Crazy Creek, and I certainly did not have a problem being outside in the Arboretum despite the searing heat. That little park has always been a special place for our circle ever since Guy showed it to me some time in the summer of 2001; now that little stretch in between the wedding site and the sequoia tree is something like sacred. That the older crowd was obliging to Guy and Katya’s plan was a testament to the two of them and the community behind them. They acknowledged this; during the ceremony they pointed out that this is not the start of something new, but a recognition of something that already is. They, like most couples that go through weddings, are already married for all intents and purposes. To my eye, the formality of it all was exhilirating and affirming to them, but wholly unnecessary in terms of the pith of their relationship.
The second point then: marriage. It’s an incredible gesture towards another, possibly the most incredible on the good side of human emotion and action, something that befuddles and astounds me. As a child I thought that once you were married you were inexorably swallowed by your identifying role as husband or wife (which might be more true as your role as mom or dad, but that’s another topic). But as I aged I slowly pieced together that your life as an individual is not over when you are married, even though you have willingly sacrificed a good deal of independence. For as long as I’d known Guy I’d thought of him as quite an independent soul, a spirit unhindered by what others thought and said of him, an individual who has little problem forging his own path in this world and walking it alone if need be. Katya I only have known because of Guy, but I’d imagine falls more along the same axis. That they chose not to walk it alone indicates a great deal about the power of human relationships relative to individual experience. But it also indicates that the constraints of marriage do not have to be as rigid as I imagined them as a child, and that the couple who is married has license to make their own parameters as to how they will operate relative to each other. I have yet to reach that point. It’s still very hard for me to imagine spending the rest of my life with one other person, but at the same time I think the summer’s coming adventures will reveal a great deal to me about my own independence, freedom, and relationships.
I met Guy in the summer of 2001 when he allowed me to stay in the uninsulated corner of his attic for very cheap. I arrived at the stoop of a yellow house in Jamaica Plain a couple days after I graduated from college. At the time Peet and Tim were friends of friends and Guy was one degree removed beyond that. Despite discovering that I had cat allergies, that summer brought Guy, Doug, Peet, and Tim into my personal narrative and confirmed a lot about how I now choose to live my life. The Chowdahaus, with Guy at the helm, became my home here in Boston. At the time we were all men in various states of transition. When our living arrangement dissolved there Guy pointed out that in the end, it was just practice, implying that we would move on to more mometous experiences in creating a home. Practice, indeed. But Guy was right. Perhaps it had something to do with Katya coming along right at the end of Chowdahaus. Now, by appropriate and formal acknowledgement to their community, Guy and Katya make a go of it for real. I have the utmost faith that their choice to spend their lives together is better than good. Like their wedding, it is exactly as it should be.
music: Louis Armstrong- When the Saints Go Marching In
Midsummer Night. The Summer Solstice. The days start getting shorter starting tomorrow. And I haven’t even started.
music: Phish- 11/20/98, Hampton, VA
Yesterday was the last day of classes at school. I remember the last day of the year when I was in high school as a loud and raucous occasion with kids tearing down the halls and notebook paper flying all over the place. I expected my kids to be no different when the last hour of the day ticked away but it was really like any other day: kids lingering, hanging out by the window at the end of the hall, some typing on computers, others chasing and being chased (we humans still dance that dance, thank goodness), and a handful of emptying the contents of their lockers into garbage cans. I even had three or four kids stay for around an hour after school patiently penciling their way through make-up assignments. Sure, we have finals next week and I’ll see them again, but the last day of class was so subdued that it was almost disappointing.
It wouldn’t have hit me that the school year ended were it not for graduation. We teachers put on ties and nice dresses and handed out some awards and some pieces of paper and in doing so sent 40 or so human beings out into the ether. The ceremony itself was run just like the school: highly informal, low on ceremony but big on humanity. We are a school of quiet diligence and of overly modest industry. Performance and presentation are not our forte, nor is formal structure and organization. We don’t really speak about the fact that we have two Boston Teachers of the Year on our staff of 18, that two of our staff members (one being the headmaster) are also lawyers, or that about half our staff can drop the H-bomb. I suppose it fits the personality of the public school teacher to be so understated. Nobody in search of fortune and glory goes into teaching. It doesn’t pay all that well, it’s excruciating work, it’s far from glamorous, and it’s a job often taken for granted by the rest of the adult world. Last night, though, as the graduates made their way across the stage, I was reminded that the crap I deal with during the day and the rediculous hours I put in evenings and Sundays is important, and is sometimes appreciated by those that benefit directly.
The graduates are one story; my own students are another. Grades for my own kids this year are more or less in (save the final exam) and things aren’t looking good for the home team. I feel guilty here, as if I could have done more to yank some of these kids up by the collar and smack the sense into them to put forth enough effort to play the school game so they didn’t have to repeat the course and they could get on with their lives. But no, no matter what the Feds say, at some point the kids’ successes and failures are their own. At the end of the day (or year), it is almost all about playing the school game; content is secondary and grading becomes a tool used to sort kids out and ultimately distribute them into society at various strata. The unfortunate truth is that those kids that come out on the top of my heap still have mountains to climb. I shudder to think what might happen to those who can’t muster passing grades. Thinking about the kids I had this year that ended the year expelled, dropped-out, or involved with the juvenile courts (and there were several) still keep me up at night. This teaching thing is certainly an uphill battle, but I’ve always been one to side with the underdog.
Graduation, and the completion of a year of school, is an event worth recognizing and celebrating. Too often these kids get nothing in terms of recognition for their hard work. I’d like to take a moment to recognize and applaud their efforts this year. For most of them it’s a struggle just to get to school every day; that they made it through a year of school and passed is positive. My own academic experience was a foregone conclusion: of course I would graduate high school. Of course I would graduate from college. Of course I would graduate from grad school. Not so for these kids.
There were brilliant moments this year and graduation last night was one of those moments, but for the most part this past year sucked me dry. I managed to scratch out some time here and there for myself, but the majority of my time, talent, and effort went to educating a group of teenagers about the living world. My reinforcement (besides paychecks every other week) was minimal, but I knew it would be. I’m still so overwhelmed by my first year of teaching that it hasn’t quite sunk in that I leave the country for the summer in less than three weeks. I have no perspective. I hope I did alright. I hope that the grades I’m about to bubble in on the Boston Public Schools scantron sheets are not the indicator of my success. The school year, for all intents and purposes, is over and I don’t even realize it. I don’t want money or applause or even that warm fuzzy feeling that you get when you do something good. At this point, I just want my students to be good people. And a decent meal. And a good night’s sleep. And that same sense of closure I had when I was in high school.
music: Gillian Welch- Hell Among the Yearlings
The Appalachian Mountain Club offers a killer training: teach youth workers, especially urban youth workers, to take kids camping. There might not be anything I was more cut out to do. So when school’s guidance counselor mentioned the opportunity at a meeting, I jumped at it. I spent the last 5 days hiking around the White Mountains of New Hampshire neck deep in my first outdoor leadership training since leaving Camp Minikani.
I knew parts of it would be frustrating for me. The program was geared towards people who have never slept in a tent and who have never gone more than a day or two without showering, so much of the preparation bordered on excruciating in terms of content and depth. Can I set up a tent? How about a tarp? Do I know how to tie a bowline and a taut-line? Can I work a whisperlite? Can I pack a backpack (accessibility, balance, compression)? Can I use a topo map and compass? Do I know the principles of layering? Can I recognize the symptoms of dehydration and hypothermia? Check, check, check, check, check, and then some. After so many years of camp counselorhood and my own minor obsession with camping gear the real problem was that the AMC was forcing me to leave my gear at home and use their backpacks and sleeping bags.
The hard skills were necessary, yes, because most people in the group had never had the experience of using a map and compass or setting up one of those four person Eureka tents. Fine. But the soft skills, the emphasis on leadership and group dynamics, were sometimes equally as frustrating. We had instructors, and excellent instructors they were (one had summitted Denali among other accomplishments) but at a certain point I didn’t buy in when I was assigned to be a leader of the day. Too much was already decided and taken out of my hands that leadership in this training was totemic, was a hamster-wheel hoop-jumping exercise, and I didn’t want to play. I also have to question leadership decisions to stop a group on-trail and do a mini-lecture about lightning drills in the middle of a thunderstorm. I also have to go. Beyond it being incredibly patronizing to treat a group of professional adults like kids, I didn’t feel the need to prove myself to the people who were actually in a position of uniformed authority. Adolescence rears its ugly head, even after all this time. I stepped back, opting for a more transparent (read: uninvested) leadership style as a group member, and let my co-leader take the uniformed position up front. As a result the group got lost and interpersonal dynamics suffered. I was fine with all of it, but my co-leader and the instructors were not happy about it. Fine. I enjoyed the bushwhacking. And at the end of a long school year I don’t really feel the burning need to be the adult when I don’t have to. At least we were hiking.
Hiking, though, is a relative term. We didn’t hike; we plodded. It was easily one of the slowest hikes I’ve ever done. We covered about four miles in just over 8 hours. It was mostly due to one of the participants who was not in shape the way he thought he was. He came on the trip to challenge himself, and challenge he got. By the end of the trip my pack weight had gone up 10-15 lbs and his empty pack was being carried by someone else. While it was nothing short of amazing to see him struggle and succeed in making it through the terrain, it was an enormous test of my patience. Our route was cut short. We hiked ourselves off the Kinsman Ridge on the last day for the sake of one of our group members and missed the final participant celebration. A hard way for someone to learn their limits.
Perhaps patience was one of the lessons meant for me in this training. After all, where did I really have to be? And how important was it to actually get to where we were told we were going? Apparently I bought in to the training enough to have this cause concern.
All negatives aside, it was an important thing for me to do. I had amazing bouts of nostalgia for the Explorer staff trips at the beginning of the summer. This training went so far as to have a little vesper at the end of the night. The group, a dispirate bunch who never would otherwise mix, coalesced around the very issues that would rub people raw: a painfully slow hiker, the weather, leadership who withholds enough decisions that matter to render the training itself a simulation. Adversity and challenge made our experience out there explosive in its unadulterated humanity. Between the requisite inside jokes that came out (see title) we were all fallible, we all had needs to varying degrees and couldn’t manage by ourselves, and while some of us pulled through ok, others struggled greatly. The rewards of the experience went to the strugglers. I enjoyed my time in the White Mountains and took to the group despite my difficulties being a participant, but I’ve been there before. I’ve backpacked and been a part of groups enough to know exactly what to expect from the experience. My new friends who experienced it all for the first time felt the Earth move, were shaken and awakened, and watching that happen might have been the greatest part of my trip.
This training marks the beginning of my return to what I realized I really believe in: giving others experiences with nature that change them for the better. The teaching I’m doing now is really an attempt to bring the water to the horse, but I can’t help but wonder if I could accomplish all my goals so much more effectively in the Cathedral of the Pines. This training brings me one step closer
I slighted myself out there in my impatience. I left the training with lessons of my own, the foremost of which is one that has been with me since the sixth grade: learn from all people. I shut off from much of what was offered because this was my self-proclaimed area of expertise. I would have been better to remember that even experts (of which I’m not sure I am) can get something out of the same experience if they remain open to it. Yes, camp prepared me well for the outdoors and leadership and working with youth, but to fall back on that as a gold standard is to limit my growth. I seemed to forget camp’s most important lesson. I will be humble, for I know my weakness.
music: Charles Lloyd- Forestflower Soundtrack
When was the last time anyone was literally at a party all night? I can only remember a handful of those since moving to Boston; the ragers at Skip’s house about a year back saw people out until the sun lumbered its way over Boston Harbor. Last night was one of those nights, except the venue du jour was the 1-2.
I was at a training all morning, but when I got back home things were in full swing: food prep, sweeping, beer runs, rearranging furniture, general bombproofing, and effectively turning the basement into a small music venue. The last feat was the most incredible part-in addition to throwing the double doors to the biosphere wide open we cleared out a good size of floorspace, enough for a legitimite crowd, and even threw together a “backstage” area.
There was music. Matt played a set with his band, and I played a set with mine-our first time playing in front of a live crowd. It was well-received, I think, and I have no complaints about how we played. My conclusions about the whole ordeal post-set were that we need to learn some more songs (with vocals especially) and that our single-chord jamming, while decent — good maybe — has hit a plateau and something new needs to happen. I found that the room itself swallowed some of the sound and it was a bit muted on the outside (a good thing considering concert-level noise level in a residential area would attract police) but all in all things came together nicely. Having one “gig” under our belts I think will make us realize some degree of maturity and legitimacy to this little project we’ve got, and give us some motivation to start to craft our musicianship.
The party itself was a very unexpected affair from my point of view and I spent the entire night walking through crowds of complete strangers. Not even one-off strangers, but people who had no connection with us or our friends or even friends of our friends. A good chunk of the crowd was people who say flyers that my roommate handed out and decided to come. Tmo spun our party pretty hard and as a result we had complete strangers in our basement, lounging on our porch, even crashing on our couches when the morning rolled around. I wasn’t bothered by the fact that there were strangers in my house; most people were considerate and positive and didn’t trash the place too bad, but when we opened things up for an open jam I got antsy. Whether it was carelessness or not knowing, my music gear got knocked around and abused and didn’t make it through the night in perfect working order. Considering we only had two outlets powering the entire Biosphere (2 bass amps, 3 guitar amps, pedals, mixer, vocal mic, lights) I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that we didnt’ have any really bad electrical problems. But still. That room is a haven to me, easily my favorite room in the house, and to see people treat it and our musical equipment with such indifference and disregard knotted me up a bit. The Tragedy of the Commons in action.
I finally went to bed around 6:00 AM, about the time I usually get up for work. There were still a couple people hanging on, and the post-bar wave of people had come and gone. I could have easily gone to bed hours earlier, so I didn’t have much problem face-planting into my pillow. I woke up around noon very groggy and convinced that I was back in college. We spent most of the afternoon cleaning up, and amazingly enough the 1-2 looks better than it did before we started. Things are not only clean, they are put away and organized. We had a leisurely dinner tonight after all was set right again and played some table hockey, so it seems that things are back to what passes for normal around here.
It was a good time. For sure. The night turned to day pretty quickly, but upon surveying the mess in our kitchen and basement at first light I thought to myself that the days of the all-night ragers are not my speed anymore. The mess wasn’t it; my broken guitar amp wasn’t even it. I like hosting gatherings and I like bringing people together, but I’m less up on hedonism and overindulgence and staying up all night. Maybe if the function didn’t have alcohol I would have felt different (but if it didn’t have alcohol, sadly, nobody would have come.) I’m 26 going on 60 it seems. Fine. I now have a gig under my belt and had a chance to see some friends. As for now, though, the 1-2 is quiet and serene after the torrent of Saturday night into Sunday morning. I couldn’t ask for more.