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| Dear Pragmatic Teacher,
You should be ashamed of yourself, asking the articulate child to tone down the honesty and the idealism of his/her writings. What has become of you? Do you not remember who you once were? Wasn't there some pseudo-firebrand waiting to kick-scream the world into political change? I think you once had opinions and beliefs, and you once had (gasp and gawk) idealism, and it carried-buoyed your spirits, that there were better angels somewhere in this universe and you fought, aspiring towards them!~
And now you do the child disservice, preaching restraint is maturity, quietness is clever, apathy is virtue! How could you? And where is your patriotism in all this? Aren't you hypocritical once-and-again - don't you suggest people must somehow change-the-system, fight-for-their-beliefs? And what about you? What do you fight for?
Is your minor rebellion in every classroom even significant? Yes, have you ever considered that maybe your spurious pretend-revolutionary, culpable-injunctions-to-make-the-world-a-better-place-for-your-children TO your students is really nothing at all? Do the starfish listen when you explain that your role in transforming the world is to be a teacher, to effect change-change-chains from this cubbyhole (from which you are afraid to venture) by making every kid somesuch self-reflexive-thinker? How safe and secure and ultimately insignificant you are! How little difference you make?
And now, eroded by years of this fragile conviction, thinking that you are doing a great-good-maybe deed to the golden-future-time, you are the self-fulfilling, inadvertent, unimportant and ineffectual non-entity! We laugh at your pragmatism and your "academic-al" pontifications, and your painfully abstracted rebellion (none happen at all, nothing happens, nothing), because look now how greatness is thrust upon the ones who believed and truly strove and truly fought and truly spoke up.
Memento mori - but maybe you already are dead, actually, and you don't know it yet. Your pragmatism IS death. You must know: e pluribus unum - and in the woodwork you stay - stay there, we don't want to hear from you anymore.
Regards,
Youthful Idealism | | |
| So I scold a group, and then I expect catharsis. I see irresponsibility and silliness. I see the non-thinking-ness of that age, and I think of myself, in many ways stupider at that time in my life, only hidden from the haranguing, quick to evade the reprimands, or maybe worse, not even cared for, and so no words come pouring, and no maxims about how someone wants me to be better at life.
I expect that I make some difference, thinking my words will move, change, transform - but this moment is all I have. Afterwards, when they're in another reality, they're escaping me - or escaping themselves - and I watch this-that-the-other walking away, trundling on, and I see myself similar once-now, adrift and wasting no time in avoidance-aversion-the politics of distraction. Then, in a blink, I'm gone.
But I'm still here, staring out over the balcony, spending some time thinking about the drop from the seventh floor, and how long can the mind tolerate the lack of solid ground- the wind reeling in your ears, a gash of noise, cutting-tearing at the world?
How long can you take falling? In a blink, I'm gone.
But I'm still here, knowing that no matter what, nothing seems to change. I see one of them, he's already on the ground floor, shuffled quickly enough away after my tirade. He's waving to a girl. They're smiling and exchanging a laugh, and I am gone.
So I just stand here, watching. It just leaves me infinitely sad, you see. Something about... I don't know, how I'm not doing-saying anything different... something about not making any difference. Dear Melancholy, can it get any better? | | |
| And so two years on you email and ask if I am leaving, because you heard I might be, and someone (you can't remember who) shared this information with you, and you thought it would be sooner, but now since I'm all sunk-costs and invested and rooted and comfortable (though not comforted) is there any real point in leaving? You say that you will swing by for a visit, to check on me because you're concerned I may have reached some insensible exhaustion (or you say you heard it happens, and the horrors of other burdens have gone haywire with daily regularity), or tumbled into despair and sudden-tired-broken-hopeless-wanderlust, or maybe I have shrivelled into a corner of things and am disappearing into the everydays and never awake but just travelling-travelling each moment, eyes straight ahead and (don't look back you can never look back) missing it all.
It's alright, really it is. It's fine. Every little starfish still matters. But I'm not sure who they are right now. And I'm not always myself, and I'm never asleep. So I sing this song of the other lands in my mind; these are the contours of my journey, the hoarse throat I nurse each evening, the giddiness I sometimes get (in the middle of all things, and not at the end - because it never ends), songs which are about why I am still here, justifications that suggest my reasons, reasons that back up the justifications, and I'm hoarse, but I won't go silent. I think I'm shouting somewhere inside, and then maybe I think I won't make it but I do. I suppose I never believed it would become like this, but then again who knows how it turns out? It's alright, really it is. It's fine. I miss you all a lot, but I don't think it used to be any simpler than this. It's a fiction, and that's fine. Will you be coming by? I'll wait for you, but I won't be around forever. One day this is all going to end. And that's alright isn't it? I hope you will tell me it's alright. Don't encourage, because that's not what I want right now. Please just sell me the justifications, and I will be ready. Ready for it to happen, and the parting, the closing of days, the absence and the swathe of freedom. | | |
| So you say to me that Robin Williams is your favourite actor, and that it was high time he won an Oscar for Good Will Hunting. But when I rear my evil movie buff instincts and ask about some of his other performances, you can't name a single one. And you didn't know he was on Mork and Mindy on TV. You can only tell me all about Dead Poets Society. You rave about the inspiration that is this movie, about how it spoke to you in dreamtime youth, caused you to cry at one point (and now the tears run freely), reminded you of the beauty that is teaching, and thus came you to this point, choosing to be a teacher, knowing it was meant to be, believing that from the age of 15, this was the path cut out for you in life. You explain the drama of the poor boys who learnt bad and stale Literature - I ventured that I had seen the movie (you cut me off, continuing to speak) - you explain that you loved the scene when all the boys stood on the desks and said "Oh captain my captain" one by one - what an emotional moment! (a clap of the hands, those kids really showed the establishment!) - it really spoke to you, it really said what teaching was all about.
But... but what was it about, Dead Poet?
When they called that Robin Williams character (I know his name was Keating!) their captain and defied the replacement tutor, what was that all about? (I'm hoping you will pause and let me try)
Quick as I could, I ventured into your string of excited words about the wellspring of why-you're-where-you-are: "But, that was a hollow and manipulative movie, and the Robin Williams character was shamelessly playing the minds of the young boys - did you notice that?"
You're quick to deny, and I'm immediately impossible to listen to (of course!). I can't give you a single comment anymore, and nothing I say makes any sense. You're shaking your head, over and over, and on your mouth is a no-no-no, silent and continuous, as if gasping for air. Until at last you say: "I didn't see that you know, I didn't. Are you sure? No it's not like that." And it never mattered that I had anything to offer in reply.
I tried to explain - you're starting to rummage the piles of paper on your desk, looking-searching for something left behind, some teenage memory of the greatness foretold and the possibilities (carpe this that or the other diem) - suck the blooming marrow out of this harrowing-horrid life, live free of the conventions of everything, take your life if you must, for the love of Midsummer's Night magic and other dramatic passions - that's the lesson, that's what you knew and recognised from the screen, and the honey sweet words of "be a teacher" and thusly become like the Keating of this film, a shameless self-aggrandizer, a man who shows favourites and ingratiates himself into students' lives, a man who without responsibility exhorts children to defy their parents, a man who without gravity sees himself as so important so great so much the captain (oh...my...oh), a man who insists his value systems are everyone's and proposes-imposes-poses, a man who thinks inspiration comes in dollops of sugary psychobabble and maxims and dishonest seizing-of-the-days, a man who sings high key misleading songs, leading choirs of the brainwashed - that's who you want to be - that disingenuous character, not even real, not even true, but hollow, filled out with the lives of others you've dragged into your web. How small, how sad - oh dead poet my dead poet...
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| To my form class of yesteryear
And so at last...
you are all free, and the urgency of our times has come and gone, including how I used to stand before you arguing for an appreciation of the crisis you were about to face, including how I was all pained-anguished with my repetitive tempus-fugit-this-and-that and my now-that-you're-in-the-light-who-do-you-hide-behind-this-is-your-time-your-time-yours, including your dalliances with sometime hardwork, touch-and-go lethargy, momentary inspiration, undercurrent despair, day-to-day nervous anxiety, fleeting comfort and peace, long-and-drawn-out study-a-workaday worlds, midnight-oil-and-coffee-and-loud-music darkness, your prayers and your hopes and dreams, and my prayers and my hopes and dreams, your voices and your straining against my tethers, my confusion and sometimes distraught loneliness and spinning despair-not-unlike-yours, our lives a part of each other for quite something of a very frantic and rocky and exhilarating and sad and happy year - was it worth it, in the end?
I like to believe so. Seeing you all come back on 4 March, knowing that everyone had made it, and that things had turned out well. That was me whooping without showing it - that was me so unburdened (and you were never a burden, but it doesn't mean you didn't sometimes feel like one) and so free and so light-headed I couldn't concentrate at all the whole day - dazed and lost and found and blinded by what I saw. I like to believe it was all worth it - and I really hope you understand me now - I hope you understand that everything I did was about the 4th of March, good or bad, that I would do anything for you silly people, even when you seemed unable to shake the silliness.
So I want to say, I'm glad you took me with a pinch of salt (me and my bile and my bitterness and my vaulting-about-with-imperatives-you-sometimes-never-completely-understood), but I'm also glad I did what I did (because maybe in some indirect-unforeseen-unplanned-and-unknown way it worked)... I'm glad because I don't think there's a day of 2004 with you people I regret (especially the most frustrating days when I was sure I wasn't getting through, and that I had no idea what on earth I was doing, or where I was going, or why I was doing anything). I don't regret it, and I hope you don't either.
I'm proud of you all the time, and I hope you sometimes, infrequently and out-of-the-blue, remember our stormy-happy-days-words-exhortations-and-strivings, and smile about how we somehow survived the best of times and worst of times, and came out singing (i get knocked down, but i get up again!) and knowing for sure that we probably did all we could have, and regardless how it all went, it was was worth every single shining moment.
I'll miss you, and I wish you all the best.
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