The Non-Reflecting Mirror

6/13/2013

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The Non-Reflecting Reflection

Harold’s mini-lesson has me thinking, “What is the right way to reflect?” What process, what perspective, what mirror is the correct one for proper reflection?  The sort of reflection you perform would seem to depend heavily on the mirror you gaze into as each type of mirror produces its own unique angle on what is being reflected upon.

You might choose a convex mirror. Those mirrors on the side of your car with the warning: objects may be closer than they appear. The surface curving away from you so that you see a larger picture than would otherwise be possible. This sort of reflection would mean broadening your scope, scanning beyond the immediate to objects far removed. If you were an English teacher in south-central Kentucky, this might include pondering things like world hunger, peace in the Middle East, the existence of God. Topics that seem removed from everyday life in the bluegrass; topics that you would think your actions have very little impact upon. There are advantages to this angle. Things fall into perspective, but they can also sneak up on you if you get too lost in that perspective, and as your driver side mirrors admonish, these subjects can be a lot closer to home than you might think. The reality of world hunger can be as close as the kid in your third block who immediately goes to sit with friends because his parents won’t take charity and there just wasn’t enough this morning for all the kids to have lunch money. Conversely, it may be the kid who is loading up his plate because it’s going to be a long time until lunch on Monday and it’s the end of the month. It is easy to be fooled by the illusion of distance.

You might choose a concave mirror. Structured like the inside of a spoon, these mirrors focus inward. They magnify small issues until they fill your perspective. Like the convex mirror, there is a caveat. Your subject may appear upside down until you reach the point of focus. It really is possible to make more out of things than they really are, focusing only on minutia to the exclusion of reality. Sure, you stuck your foot in your mouth, maybe even up to the knee, but it really isn’t the end of the world. Spending hours trying to decipher the expression on your principal’s face when you made your proposal for a new class could be wasted time. It may have nothing to do with you at all. Cafeteria food and budget concerns can have delayed effect that only reach facial expressions in time. And consider, while the comments you made on a student’s paper are important, spending hours wondering what the most uplifting shade of ink would be to write them in rather than making them and getting the work back to the student may be bordering on obsession. Freud was right about one thing; sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Self-analysis can go too far.

 Then there are also two-way mirrors, lightly silvered so as to create a reflection while allowing those on the other side to see what you are seeing, perhaps without your knowledge. Sure, you want to use your writing as an opportunity to check yourself, but keep in mind who else is reading you. Audience is always important to a writer and nowhere is audience awareness more important than reflective writing. You have to know who you are addressing. If the piece is strictly for yourself, then total candor may be advisable. May? You ask? Yes, may. There are times when total transparency is less than optimal. Self-delusion can sustain you for a long time when necessary. When it has been one-of-those-days, you may not want to reflect on how none of your students got it, the teacher next door made a less than appreciative remark about the way you decorated your door, and the universal law that says whenever there is chaos in your classroom that is when the people from central office will show up for an observation. At times like that you really don’t need an intense analysis of all your personal faults in alphabetical order with an attached Depth of Stupidity score. Besides, that is what administrators are for. Come back and reflect on the day after you have treated yourself to your favorite over-priced coffee. Deep soul wrenching angst may also not be the best idea when you have others reading your work. If you don’t understand why you are a magnet for all irony of the world, it is unlikely that that your students do. Pouring your guts out on social media is probably not your best option either, you never know who is friends with your friends’ friends and my see your confession via their commiseration. Again, get to know your audience or you may find out more about them than you anticipated.

Fun house mirrors can be entertaining. Their distortion can create comic effects. If you want to write comedy, a warped reflection of society seems to always be a hit. You can take every day, normal situations like getting along with your spouse and turn it into a hilarious narrative that will entertain you and everyone you share it with. However, while it is true that there is a little bit of truth in all comedy and it is the recognition of that truth that makes us identify with the comedian, the amount of truth we are referring to may be very miniscule. Do you want to build the direction of your life on a minute morsel of truth that has been distorted to the point of being nearly unrecognizable? The whole point of truth is to arrive at some form of truth, but is a distorted truth your destination? There really isn’t a requirement of all persons receiving social security that they take turns being out on the roads driving at a glacial pace every time you have somewhere to be. Sure, it is a funny thought, but if you start building your ego on it, you are going to end up in trouble.

A relatively new term would be a non-reflecting mirrors, two mirrors set at perpendicular angles, essentially reflecting on the reflection. At first glance, this seems like a paradox. The whole idea behind mirrors is to reflect, as well as reflective writing. Strangely, non-reflecting mirrors actually result in a truer image than a simple flat mirror as they reverse the reversed perspective of the first mirror. Non-reflecting reflective writing then would mean looking at how you look at things. This may be the most productive, if not confusing, form of reflective writing. It causes you to take a step back and consider your biases, both when it comes to your view of the world and your view of yourself. Why do you get defensive when someone questions your authenticity, validity, or reliability? What is going on below the surface that causes you to self-deprecate when someone compliments you on the way you manage to connect to that group of kids that makes the complimentary person pull their hair out? What is behind the continuous self-promotion with those whose opinion you value? What, or more to the point, who made you think that the world was out to get you? Sometimes, just asking yourself the question is answer enough, because if you put enough non-reflecting mirrors together with just the right amount of perspective, you have a kaleidoscope, a magic tube that creates infinity within a confined space and beautiful patterns out of odd bits of colored glass and beads.
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This I Believe essay

6/13/2013

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Saving the Time-Space Continuum

Barbara Walters in her “pre-interview” asks, “If you could change anything in your past, what would it be?” That becomes an interesting point to ponder. What would I change? As a die-hard science fiction fan, I know the pitfalls of altering the flow of time. Marty McFly taught that changing your past can be problematic, such as wiping out your own existence. Therefore, this is no light choice to be made. Something small, being hit by your grandfather’s car while saving your stalker father, could prevent your birth. The Doctor claims that there are fixed points in time that cannot be changed without endangering the entire time-space continuum. Whoa! That certainly ramps it up. I could screw up the entire cosmos. Better make this count.

I could change my father’s cancer. Lymphatic cancer survival rates have greatly increased since 1979. He died by slow inches over twelve years until the man who died that January was not my dad. Weekly battles with the chemotherapy drove me to the pages of numerous works of fiction. However, I would have never been able to become so engrossed in reading that thermonuclear devices can’t reach me. Long trips for radiation pushed me to conquer motion sickness while reading in the car, allowing me to rewrite a curriculum and figuring out how PowerPoint works while riding down the interstate. At the time, his slow his slow death excruciating. Now, I realize that losing him all at once at the age of four would have been more devastating.

I could complete my B.A. at Ball State.  I would be ready to retire from teaching, or, maybe the career of political campaign management would have carried me to that Michigan Avenue penthouse. I might just as easily be dead from the lifestyle I pursued. I certainly would have never met my wife. How many guys were hired by their wives? Meeting Nora, the greatest love of my life, saved my life in more ways than one and brought number two into my life, my daughter, Deah.

I could have stayed at Fruit of the Loom. I would have nearly thirty years in. Punching the clock ended responsibility, the money was good, and I was moving up, I would be management by now. I would also be brain-dead. It was a good job, for some the optimal job. I found the routine of factory life mind-numbingly boring. Probably the most mind-expanding times were the three years of full-time employee/full-time student/full-time father. There is just something about becoming who I was meant to be.

We are the sum total of genetics, relationships, and choices. Altering my past would alter me. Has it all been pleasant? No, but they are a part of me, and I like who I have become, who I am becoming. The answer to the question is an unequivocal…nothing. The time-space continuum is safe

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Does this have possibilities?

5/31/2013

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Below is the opening paragraph for an essay that has been "brewing" inside me for some time now. Give it a read and let me know what you think in terms of pursuing it further.


A great deal has been written about the ground-breaking nature of the Norman Lear’s situation comedies of the 1970’s, and it is true that shows like All in the Family and its spin offs, Maude and The Jeffersons stared down the issues of the day will a brass and bravado that may never be equaled. However, is it possible that the elite critics who first heralded this new era of television were not as discerning as they thought they were? Could it be that television was addressing the issues of race, ethnicity, the generation-gap, social activism, gender equity, and gender-identity much earlier and they were quite simply not perceptive enough to recognize it? While other programs of the mid-60’s certainly deserve analysis, the culture clash embedded in television’s first mixed marriage serves as a fertile ground for discussing the realities behind the hyper-normalcy of the American suburbia of the 1960’s and the dirty little family secrets that must be kept hidden from the neighbors, all the while relentlessly pursuing the American dream of corporate success as defined by Madison avenue while keeping the typical American family intact.  Never being taken quite seriously by middle-class America, the artistic community, or even the actors themselves, the television series Bewitched allowed the Stevens family, friends, and extended family to hold a mirror to the American society of the 60’s that was magical and not nearly as distorted as we would like to think.

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The final product of reading Night, and the answer to a much larger question.

5/30/2013

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Why do I teach literature?

When we were going over my student work samples for a demonstration for the EKU Writing Project, Dr. Gil Hunter commented, “ I’m wondering where this is going. I’m sure this constructed response is not the final product of the study of Night.” At the time, I didn’t know what to say. The constructed response was the final assessment for the memoir unit. I had always thought it a good place to leave their reading of Night, offering my students a chance to reflect on the significance, relevance, and value of the work they had just finished. To that extent, it was the end product.  But he is right; it is not the final product. I think, perhaps, it is the first product rather than the final. My thoughts were coalesced recently by a comment of a former student. He is dating my daughter, so I see him often. He picked up the copy of Night setting on my desk and said, “I remember that book. It may have been the only book I actually finished.” He set it down, his fingers lingering for a moment on the cover. I remember. That is the final product of the study of Night, remembering. Wiesel comments that he wrote Night, “to bear witness” to the atrocities of the Holocaust so that we all remember.

My students have never crammed into stinking cattle cars, smelled burning flesh, fought starvation, neither have I, but we remember. We remember things we have never experienced, yet they shape who we are. They influence choices, for good and for the Good. They, we, have seen where minor violence such as words like “fag,” “nigger,” “bitch” can lead--what happens once you start to think of your fellow humans as something less than that, less than you are. However, being the initiator of the dehumanization is not required for culpability. All that is necessary is to do…nothing.  We have considered the inherent danger in standing by and giving even tacit approval by not objecting to the dehumanization of others, not objecting to becoming less human ourselves.

I guess the answer to Dr. Hunter’s question, “what is the final product of their reading of Night?” would be: students standing up for each other--for what it means to be human, the kid who refuses to laugh at the expense of others, the one who puts themselves between their angry/drunk parent and their sibling, every one of them who decides that he/she will make a difference. That is my final product  I would go on, but I can hear the choir music starting to warm up in the background too, and I dislike pretentious sanctimony.  So, many appropriate quotes come streaming to my mind right now, but the best, the answer to the title is my favorite from G.K Chesterton. “Fairytales do not tell children there are dragons; Children already know there are dragons. Fairytales tell children that dragons can be slain.” I teach to tell children that their dragons can be slain, must be slain, will be slain by us all working together.

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Where I'm From Poem

5/30/2013

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Here is my Where I'm From poem, such as it is. any thoughts are welcome.

The house I’m from sits empty

                Except for a few feral felines.

                The huge oak pocket doors no longer part to reveal

                                the magical Christmas tree ensconced in packages

                                my grandparents’ color TV (the first in our family)

                                my budding showmanship that was not yet encumbered by embarrassment

                                forts made of card tables, couch cushions, and hand crocheted afghans.

                                They hang silent.

The kitchen no longer bubbles over with

the laughter of mis-measured Christmas recipes

(a lot more  math than I wanted to do for caramels)

                                Depression era ham salad made from bologna

                                Manual typewriter keys pecking out first affirmative constructives and negative rebuttals

                                Gentle reminders of too much salt, too little time.

                The staircase no longer

Conceals the secret stop on a railroad without tracks

Rings from cleats that weren’t supposed to be worn in the house

Clicks beneath Sunday shined shoes

Reveals the truth about Santa

                                I wonder if that mysterious lady in yellow still ascends it,

                                                now that the house is a fading apparition too?

                And yet the lilacs, lavender and white still grow in the backyard they were transplanted to years ago.

                                Their fragrance wafts through the skeleton of the home, filling the spaces that a family left.

The house I am from is now the home to a different family

                The sculptured rose-taupe is gone

                                So is the danger of losing traction on the steep steps it covered and going down “the fast way”

And the crevice to wriggle through the time the sleeper sofa opened as it was being moved upstairs

Along with the impressions of the upright piano, the place of torturous practice

                                As are the stains of red Kool-aid spilled during Saturday cartoons

that covered the stains from more mature beverages from the night before

The little window where shouts would tell friends the coast was clear

now offers a baby his first views of the world

                                Its loose pane that rattled in the terror of the spring winds is now triple-pane secure.

                                It no longer offers access to the ancient cherry tree that was access to the garage roof late at night

                                It no longer vibrates from late-night conversations that consisted of only dots and dashes

The light mint exterior has blush pink, aged to gold, and now turned white

                                The parking lot that extended the backyard into an icy snow mount is as empty as the factory beyond

The rails that brought the thrill of danger and promise of hobos derelict too.

The pond that held the goldfish won at fairs is filled with dirt and peonies

The horses still clip-clop by pulling the plain people to the worldly wonders of town.

                And yet the lilacs, lavender and white still grow in the backyard they were transplanted to years ago.

                                Their fragrance wafts around the home, filling the spaces of another family’s life.

The house that I am from is about as far from the house I dreamed of as it could possibly be.

                The brick and asphalt softened by millions of little green hearts and pink blossoms

                The library overlooks the homes of families I meet at church.

The side door swings open to

                                Shouts of “howdy” and drawn out “hiiiiii”

                                                “Y’all come back” “Y’all come over.”

                                A table where there is always room for one more and the only sin is to not have too much.

 “Don’t you want some” [plop} “more?”

Thirty pounds of homemade fudge and white chocolate raspberry torte

 “Do you share your recipes?”

“Not that one, but…for you…well”

Guileless love from a plain spoken woman

                It is guarded by a chocolate and black panther, or so he thinks.

                                The terror of robins and blue-jays

He has trouble getting traction on the kitchen floor

The front door opens only to visit in the rocking chairs on the porch

                                What is front-door company?   

It is surrounded by blue grassy hills, not glass and boxes of concrete and steel

And yet the lilacs, lavender and white still grow in the backyard they were transplanted to years ago.

                                Their fragrance wafts around my New Kentucky Home, filling the spaces with memories.

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We interrupt this childhood for a test

5/30/2013

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This started as an early childhood memory piece. I augmented it in the research phase. I managed to find the raido broadcast from WOWO 1190 in Ft Wayne. It was weird listening to it. Took me right back to being seven. Also found the AP wire feed . Ha! the whole world was really coming apart at the seams, and all I wanted to do was watch my story.


We Interrupt This Childhood for a Test

Once upon a summertime
Just a dream from yesterday,
A boy and his magic golden flute
Heard a boat from off the bay
"Come and play with me, Jimmy
Come and play with me.
And I will take you on a trip
Far across the sea…"

I ensconced myself like any Saturday morning; fort build of TV trays and blankets, bowl of Frankenberry, pillow and blanket, to watch the animated fantasy unfold on our big, enormous 19” black and white portable TV. The lilting lines of the opening of H.R. Puff-n-stuff cheerfully invited me to come play in a land where the worst thing to worry about was the latest machinations of Puff’s arch-nemesis, Witchiepoo, which, of course, would be undone in no less than one hour with four breaks for sponsorship.

But the boat belonged to a kooky old witch
Who had in mind the flute to snitch.
From her Broom-Broom in the sky
She watched her plans materialize.
She waved her wand!
The beautiful boat was gone!

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

Not now! Not when Puffnstuff is just getting started!

It was the Emergency Broadcast System. It seemed to break in right in the middle of my favorite shows. As soon as that obnoxious sound stopped, the announcer would say, “This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. Had this been an actual emergency, you would have been informed where to tune in your area for news and official information. The FCC, in cooperation with local broadcasters have designed this system to keep you informed in an actual emergency. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.” Then the show would pick up as if I had been watching it the whole time and I would have to try to figure out what had happened in the meantime or wait for a rerun of that episode to see what I had missed.

The skies grew dark …
The sea grew rough …
And the boat sailed on and on and on and on and on and on…

But that February morning in 1971, the announcer said, in an almost artificial calmness, that we were instructed the to tune to AM 1190 WOWO in Ft. Wayne to receive the official news of a national emergency. My dad, who had been getting his coaching things ready for that day’s Little League game, came into the living room just in time to hear the repeat and the announcement that regular programming would be suspended until the crisis was over.

“What’s suspended mean?”

“Your shows won’t be on…” He said absently as he made his way back to the kitchen to switch on the radio on top of the refrigerator.

“But Da-ad! Why! I’ll miss…”

“Not now…We gotta find out what’s going on…”

….received authentication of a national emergency from the FCC. If you are listening from outside the Ft Wayne area, please tune to your local station broadcasting official information. Please do not call the radio station….

But Pufnstuff was watching too
And knew exactly what to do 

Dad stumbled to the black phone on the wall in the kitchen and dialed numbers with shaking hands. I had never seen my dad like this. Unsure, uncertain, scared. I knew by the tone of his voice when his brother answered the phone who he was calling and this was something big.

“Yeah?...Okay then…yeah, I remember…No, I understand, you got stuff you have to deal with…thanks...bye…love you too.”

Something else I had never seen: my father pale from fear. The blood had drained from his face as he spoke to my uncle. He weakly hung up the phone.

“Doug?…” He said weakly, coming down to my level, “you remember a couple of weeks ago when Uncle Monty came home from his Guard weekend?”

“Yeah! He had all that neat stuff…Does he need it all back?” a note of fear in my voice as I had not yet gotten to show off all the cool stuff he had given me to my friend next door.

“Dee, don’t…” My mom had come in from the other room. My dad pointed to the radio, repeating the available information about the national emergency. She listened and fell silent.

“No, I don’t think he will. But do you remember what he said about an attack?”

“You mean before Grandma told him that wasn’t anything to talk about around me and he’d give me nightmares?...Sorta, but I didn’t really understand it. She pushed me out of the room before I could ask anything…”

“Dee! We need to go to the basement…”

“Won’t help. Not sure I understand it either, but that’s not important now. He said our best bet was to go out on the porch and look toward the Air Force Base in Peru when the initial blast hit.” He pause gathering himself to say what he was about to say to his son. “He said that way we’d be vaporized” He sounded strange.

“What’s vaporized?

“It means we won’t have to deal with what comes afterward”

“Dee?”

“What’s ‘afterwards’?”

“Let’s go…” Solemnly, he led us out to the front porch we had just added a few weeks before. I had “helped” to pour the concrete foundation and busied myself with fitting my hand into the imprint I had made to see if I had grown any yet. I looked up at my parents.

“See, it’s still the same size. I’m NEVER gonna get big!”  I was furious. Mom was crying.

“Look that way, Doug…” We stared in the direction of the setting sun, but it was mid-morning. I couldn’t figure out what my parents were looking at. It had to be important to drag us all out here on a Saturday morning, and to su-suspend, my new word, my shows. And scary…my dad was…afraid. I didn’t think that was possible.

He saw the witch's boat attack
And as the boy was fighting back

“…any of the staff of the WOWO newsroom who may be listening, please come to the newsroom immediately…..

He called his rescue racer crew
As often they'd rehearsed
And off to save the boy they flew
But who would get there first?

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

The EBS signal again. The announcer was saying something about a mistake, the crisis wasn’t a crisis and that the last few moments had been tense ones in the station. They would now resume their regularly scheduled programming. Mom and Dad hugged me up, crying even more. I had no clue why. I struggled free from the protective parental cocoon with “Does that mean I can watch my shows now?”

“Yeah, D.O.  Go on in…”

“Now so close… You’ll ruin your eyes.”

I scampered off to my installment in front of the television. Some years later, I learned from my uncle that someone at an Air Force base in California had hit the wrong button when it was time for the EBS test and had sent out terror instead of a test. Things were complicated by the fact that when radio and television stations had opened the envelopes containing the “authentication codes” they could not find the word “hatefulness” on the list. One operator in Texas was in a near state of hysterics when he opened the envelope and found it empty. It took forty-five minutes for the mistake to be discovered out a correction, a very long forty five minutes for the adults in the world of a seven year old. Now, from the perspective of a father, I can feel my dad’s impotent rage. His family was about to die and he was powerless to stop it. All he could provide was the quickest end, the one that caused them the least suffering. Over the next nine years, the same emotions would play out again and again as my father died by inches from Hodgkin’s disease, or the chemo and radiation weapons his doctors used against it. Like that day, I retreated to a shelter of my own making, stories.

Today, I wonder how many people were crawling out of backyard bomb shelters, kissing and hugging in relief that the crisis was over. Such were the days of the Cold War. Oblivious to the crisis I retreated to the shelter of the blanket covered TV Tray. By the time I had resumed my position and the program was restored, the episode was ending. Predictably, the hero had foiled the machinations of the villainess. The boy and his precious golden flute were still safe, at least until next week.

But now the boy had washed ashore
Puff arrived to save the day
Which made the witch so mad and sore
She shook her first and screamed away.
H.R. Pufnstuff,
Who's your friend when things get rough?
H.R. Pufnstuff
Can't do a little cause he can't do enough.

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