Days of fog

Last night I dreamed that I (a teenager) met a cousin I didn't know I had: a boy about my age, dark haired. Then there was a handsome, slightly older blonde boy who I was speaking to. He asked if we were Jewish and I said yes. To my surprise, he was too. He had written a book that talked about his experiences on a kibbutz. I really liked this guy and got myself into a knot wondering how to tell him I was Jewish but... How could I make him understand I would never try to convert him? I would show him my book, which told my story. I looked and looked on the shelf and then, to my sorrow, realized I had never written it. I cried now, remembering the only book I have written was my dissertation. I remembered that we are in the days of awe: Yom Kippur was just three days away when I could recite the Kol Nidre and renounce my baptism. Entering that prayer would be like entering a cleansing fog, a deep darkness that would erase all the person I had been... I cried, realizing I needed more than three days to decide.

To Thine Own God Self Be True

The Duffer and I used to debate about whether the advice Polonius gives to his son Laertes' in Shakespeare's Hamlet is to be taken at face value or whether S. was a bit tongue in cheeck. My father thought they were simply well articulated bits of wisdom: there was no subtext. End of argument. I believed, from the context of the play and the character of Polonius, that S. viewed the wisdom as many of us view such good advice: that and a token will get you on to the subway. Of course, I could see why this would be disheartening for a father who felt he had so much wisdom to pass on, but here's a post on "Shakespeare 101" that argues my point in case you are interested: http://shakespeareantheatre.suite101.com/article.cfm/polonius_speech_in_hamlet .

It is in this disputed speech that the lines "This above all: to thine own self be true, /And it must follow as the night the day/ Thou canst not then be false to any man" are spoken. And it is from this dubious wisdom that Rabbi Lerner of the Network of Spiritual Progressives derives his variation: "to thine own God self be true" (the phrase appears in an email sent out today, featuring a prayer of forgiveness for the 9/11 terrorist attacks).

There is some wisdom in this new turning of the phrase, thought it is awkward and unattractive. I am not averse to the idea that Christ is within me. (Col. 1:27). But reliance on doctored cliches reveals a sloppiness in thinking that concerns me, and makes me skeptical.

I don't know how I want to pray on this day. When I lay in shavasana at the end of this morning's yoga class and image came to my mind. The Palisades in Fort Lee, N.J.: the rocky stone cliffs just to the north of the George Washington Bridge. I am sitting there with a teenage girl I was friends with in high school. She has a black dog and a car: she is self-sufficient and cool. We walk up there and the bridge sparkles. Maybe that is the day I walk back and forth across the bridge, just for fun, for the airiness of it. This memory dates back to either 1974 or 5. The city for me then was like a geode, sparkling with art and music. I didn't yet know about the filth, the urine and how tired one gets when one is always inside it, and not on this promontory, looking out at its dazzling potential. The World Trade Towers would have been a recent addition to the skyline. We didn't particularly like them: the ornate stylings of the Chrysler and the Empire State Buildings were much more attractive. But all of those were distant spires from this northern end where we sat on rocks and thought about our limitless futures. As I came out of corpse pose, I remembered what day it was, and sent my mind downtown, to look at the rubble as it appeared the day I brought the Duffer to see it.

Adjunct Adventures I

It is still technically summer, though the temps are at this moment (7 a.m.) in the 40s. I'm in my fleece robe with a scarf draped around my head. The birches outside the window are speckled with yellow leaves, though this is due more to the lack of rain than to the actual position of the earth and the sun. It is beautiful and at this moment, feels right for school to have begun, though yesterday afternoon, when it was time to teach my first class, it seemed like a better time to lie in the sun and take a dip in the pond! The dazed students apparently agreed. It is an adjustment to get used to teenagers again after having worked in programs geared towards older students. I had forgotten their default attitude of skepticism and boredom. There are a few exceptions, young women who seem to enjoy reading and hope to get something out of the class, but for the most part it is clear that this is just a hoop they have to jump through. (Only 4 read Harry Potter this summer!) That does not mean I don't think I can win them over, and get them to have fun. I am surprised that two of them (in their responses to my freewrite questions about their hopes and fears regarding this class) mentioned that they had had their writing torn apart by "Grear." Hortense Grear, I recall, from the last faculty conference, is one of the fixtures of the department, its grande dame. I guess her methods precede the Elbowian theories I was raised on--get them to enjoy expressing themselves, then worry about tweaking the grammar… so I can see why I have some work to do in winning them over. It is interesting, when you ask them to freewrite, to see that some fill a page and others give up after a few lines, exhausted. Why is it that the three girls who fill in the seats right in front of me are the ones that want to chat amongst themselves? Perhaps because they really do want to engage with me.