RSS

Category Archives: Writing

Mr. Tritt’s Parent-friendly Guide to Why Teaching Didn’t Completely Suck

27 Nov

I taught for a long time. I don’t want to get into it. It depresses me. Yes, all you students who still write me, call me, see me, visit me – it depressed me. It affected my voice, my habits, my health mentally, spiritually and physically. Hell, I even ended up with a bladder infection because we, students too, were thought so much as mechanisms that we had to pee by the bells. See, that’s how much I hated it. You have never heard me use the word pee before. Now I’ve used it twice.

It’s ok the students know that. The students who still write me, call me, see me, visit me were generally depressed too – thoughtful, curious, intelligent, sharp and kind. People like that tend to get depressed when treated like mechanisms.

I have written about it before. Suicides, mementoes, workshop trips, field trips, those special students. I have taught classes of one hundred and thirty at a time, had an attempt on my life, been told by a principal he was tired of teachers who thought they were artists and our job was to surround, capture kill and destroy (Yoo-hoo, Mr. Johnson, how come the website blurb next to your picture, as of this publishing, is outdated by three years? ) and by other principals that Shakespeare and Homer were being removed from the curriculum because a classical education would do the students no good if they could not pass a standardized test. You have to be able to run a frialator.

I once had a high school principal, Andrew Taylor of Piper High School in Ft. Lauderdale, mandate all poetry being taught needed to have parental permission slips. Seriously. He would call teachers to stand during faculty meetings and dress them down using such language as “coward” and “useless” coming withing inches of their faces with his wagging finger. Seriously. Not long after, he abruptly resigned after the married fellow was found to have several “inappropriate” relationships with members of the faculty. But I’ve written about all that. I’m much better now.

You see, it was never the students who I had problems with. Not even the one who tried to kill me. Administrations, on the other hand, that’s another story. Really, that’s the whole story. The only story.

Still, after a while one begins to doubt oneself. This one did.

Once in a while I peruse the Internet looking for folks who have co-opted my writing. I find bits of me here and there and usually let them know they are using it without permission (which they know) and what the copyright rules are (which they usually don’t know) and that I could sue them (which I have never done but that is also something they don’t know) unless they remove it or send me something or say please and thank you. Sometimes I even find my work non-cited. I ask for that to be removed. Fair is fair.

This week I found the work copied below. It is from a school at which I taught eighth- grade Honors English. This was the school at which I taught six week workshops to the entire eighth-grade and then the entire seventh-grade all while teaching my normal classes. State assessment scores went up remarkably. I was told I could no longer do this as it was not duplicatable. It upset the department head who could not write an essay even if she were being paid to do so which, essentially, she was. When I asked her for one, to share with the students as an example that everyone writes, she balked. The principal caved. You should have seen their scores the year after that. Flushhhh…

So slow is their movement, so high their inertia or so great their apathy, I still have my web page there even though I have not taught there in two years. In the midst of state assessments, we were required to learn to make web pages on Macs. Stop everything. Build a page. And so I did. Prostitution is prostitution. They want a page, they get a page.

And it is still there. So I read through it. It was good for me. Very good for me, in fact. I’ll let you read what I found before I tell you what it means, as far as I am concerned.

Mr. Tritt’s Parent-Friendly
Field-Guide to 8th Grade
Choice team Language Arts

Ok Mom and/or Dad/and/or Legal Guardian, you are confused. No problem there at all. I understand. Like you, I’m a parent too so I spend a fair amount of my time confused as well. My son is fifteen so I also find myself addled, perplexed and confounded. Some of this is just because he is fifteen. Much of this is over his classes and what their requirements are. While I can’t belay my own confusion, maybe I can alleviate some of yours.

In the next few minutes we can answer most of your questions as long as those questions are about writing and Language Arts in the Eighth Grade Choice Program at Stone. If your questions are about anything else, we’ll see what we can do but I won’t make any promises.

First of all, let me introduce myself. I am Adam Byrn Tritt. I have a bunch of initials after my name. Some are of consequence to teaching, like my masters in Education and my masters in English and in Communications. Others aren’t. I am a writer who teaches and am a published author, essayist and poet so you know and, more importantly, your student knows I practice what I teach and teach what I practice. This adds up to an authentic workshop and class experience for your student where they learn how it is really done (no matter what the ‘it’ is we are learning).

Books. We use plenty of books. But we don’t use textbooks very much. I prefer the students pick books they are interested in and get as deeply into those as possible. I’ll check them for difficulty and appropriateness, of course. We want subjects that can be discussed openly and have literary merit. We also want to make sure the books will develop the students ability to recognize the use of literary devices and themes, have a vocabulary that will allow your student’s minds and brains to stretch and grow, question and reach.

I provide ample opportunity for this with novel suggestions as well as shorter works. Your student can choose among essays old and new, collections of short stories, plays and poetry. Many of the more meritorious of them are worth more points. When I say that I don’t mean the longer ones. Some short essays are worth extra points as well. Have your student ask.

What are they to do with these? Read them, examine them, enjoy them (we hope) and struggle with them. Most weeks they students will prepare a reading log. It consists of five entries and each entry has what book was read, how many pages, plot summary (Colonel Mustard was killed in the parlor with a candlestick. Scooby Doo is on the trail.) New vocabulary, what the student thinks it means from context and what it means when your young’n looks it up in his or her favorite dictionary. The last part is a small portion for notes of whatever your student found was of interest or even a statement of how much they like or, sometimes, dislike the book. Perhaps it mentions writing style, devices used or word choice. In the end, this reading log makes the creation of note cards and the literary analysis a breeze.

I give the students some suggested forms but they make their own. If typed, I give them extra credit for them. If they are for an extra credit book, they get even more credit on top of that.

Five entries per week from whatever novel or essay or collection he or she is reading. If there are no new words one day, this happens. If it happens more than a few times we know the book material isn’t stretching your student. Time for harder material.

Once a month we’ll be doing a literary analysis using the material your son or daughter read. We’ll start off oral with note cards. Oral presentation is mandated by Sunshine State Standards. After a few the students will have a choice to do this orally, on video, by PowerPoint, in writing or in any other creative way s/he can think of as long as the points on the rubric are covered. Of course they have the rubric and we practice hitting each point first. All this gets them ready for the FCAT and Pre-AP English.

Speaking of books, we don’t make great use to the Literature textbook, which most students appreciate. We also don’t make great use of the Grammar text. Do we use them sometimes? Sure. When we see specific difficulties in the writing we address them in small groups or mini-lessons.

We study grammar in a real-life context; in the context of writing and communications. Studies show we can give grammar instruction and tests but, when given a writing assignment, the tested material does not translate into correct use in writing. So we learn grammar while writing.

If your child doesn’t need help with comma use, we aren’t going to waste her or his time with work on comma use; we’ll save that for the students who do need that instruction.

Likewise, the Literature text is used selectively when we want a specific story or poem to illustrate a point or device.

So what will your child be bringing home? Writing and plenty of it.

We will be working on the ability to format our typed papers in any number of ways. The ability to follow a format means your student will learn his or her way around a word processor and will be able to fulfill the requirements of any class. It means he or she will be able to follow directions, enter contests, publish in the newspaper, submit essays.

Your student will also be learning how to revise and proofread and we hope we can count on your help to support this. Please read your child’s essays out loud so s/he can hear them. Help with grammar is you are able. Look at transitions and check of elaboration, organization, clarity. I have one hundred and twenty little darlings and I could sure use you to check their work at home since we often can’t check them as thoroughly as we’d like in school.

I have provided plenty of guides for your child to use as tools and add to his or her notebook. Don’t throw these away at the end of the year. I assure you your student will find these of great use next year and the years after. You can use these as well when helping your son of daughter proof essays. He or she will have sheets on transitions and transition use, on words to use instead of ‘very’ and other weak words, sensory words, color words, words to use instead of “said.” Verbs to use instead of adjectives and adverbs. S/he has rubrics and evaluation guides so you an look at the work and see, ahead of time, what sort of grade it will get before the paper is turned in. In other words, your little one has tools-a-plenty and, at home, you can help make sure he or she uses them.

Reading the essays out loud to your son or daughter will allow him/her to hear what the writing actually sounds like to the reader. This is invaluable. I assure you, if that is all you do it will be an immense help.

What will your student be writing? Essays to start. Essay after essay after essay. FCAT mandates essays. Our school has the students write at least one every week. Many of these are timed and check as first drafts.

We’ll be writing essays on surprise prompts, essays on literature, essays for Science, essays for Social Studies. Some essays will be for contests in English and we’ll be writing essays for Science contests as well. We write for FCAT and we write for real life.

We practice many kinds. We write some which are descriptive to get use to describing carefully and accurately, we practice using verbs to describe instead of adjectives and adverbs, just alike Twain did. We practice sentence combining and transition use.

We write expository essays to explain, expose and express. We write persuasive essays to convince and persuade. And all the while we practice better writing overall.

We have a monthly week-long writing workshop where the students learn not only to write, revise and proof better, but why we do this. We learn techniques, we learn reasons and we practice again and again. We even learn about the brain and how words affect us physically. We are, after all, a science program.

Students also learn the essay was, originally an art form and we treat it as such, rewarding chances taken and skills learned, creativity as well as accomplishment.

We also do journals. The students will have specific topics and will have to answer, in writing and within a short timeframe, specific questions or write to a prompt or quote. No help is given. This is graded on how well they applied themselves and stuck to the instructions (just like the FCAT) not content.

Let us have a word about homework. I dislike homework. I have to give some. After all, our classes are just 45 minutes long. But it will be minimal. If you help your student with time management and organization, it will be a breeze. We have our reading logs. That means reading a few nights a week and filling in the log.

Sometimes they will have an essay to revise and proofread. As I asked before, please help them with this even if that means only reading it so they can hear how it sounds. Rarely will homework be something they must have back the next day. Most assignments are long-term. I expect about an hour to hour and a half of homework a week.

And speaking of homework and assignments, the work due is listed on the board in our room often more than a week in advance. The work is also listed on StudyWiz so it can be accessed by your student or even by you from any Internet connection. Since your child is probably on the computer typing away in IM, just ask him or her to pull it up for you.

If there is ever a problem with an assignment, please write an email note (best) or send a note with your student. I know things happen and emergencies come up. Late work can be accepted with a note as well. If there is even a problem with a printer at home, just bring the work to me (in the morning) on a disk, flash, thumb, floppy or send it in an email and I’ll happily print it out for your darling.

In the end, no matter what your student chooses to do academically, she or he will be better of, will have the skills to write what he or she needs to, the flexibility to do so for and under any circumstances and the confidence to know he or she will do it well. With your help, we can make their grades reflect the new skills and confidence.

Holy cow. This was the teacher I wish I had. At any point. Middle school, high school, college. Anytime.

I was told once we teach the way we learn. In this case, I taught the way I wish I had the opportunity to learn. And I did my best to bring that to my students. Among them are many in Harvard and Yale and other ivy league school, the youngest Discovery Award winner on record, several students who published in magazines while still in my class instead of just writing for a grade.

Reading this I remember something important: I did good. I did the best I knew and then worked to do better than that – for my students. Because they deserved much better than just ok, deserved better than I got, deserved the best possible and I worked to the end of my strength and ability to give that to them.

I was the teacher I always wanted.

Bless them for that opportunity.

As far as Stone Middle School and their still using my material on their webpage, I get five cents a word standard. You know where to send the check.

 
3 Comments

Posted by on November 27, 2008 in Culture, Education, Poetry, Social, Writing

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Fugue State: Fugue on a State Memo for Four Voices and Dog Barks

23 Sep

Long ago, in another lifetime, in a land called Gainesville, Florida, in a time called the mid to late nineties, I worked for HRS (Health and Rehabilitative Services, not the House Rabbit Society). During my tenure as a social worker (food stamps, AFDC, Medicaid), it became DCF (Department of Children and Families, which we called Decaf, same lousy service but half the caffeine), bosses came and bosses went. My caseload grew, diminished, morphed into other caseloads, but no matter what changes, the job remained the same. I swear, one of these days, I will write about it. Maybe a book. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll stop paying your taxes.

Once, my supervision (I was a Public Assistance Service Specialist, or PASS, and my supervisor was a Public Assistance Service Specialist Supervisor or PASS II) went from Susan Einman, a woman any of us in her “unit” would have killed for, to a fellow whose name I cannot remember and any of us would have killed. My boss went from a literate polyglot who manifested the very essence of understanding and compassion to an obsequious, smarmy, condescending chimpesque proto-human pencil pusher. There was little to do but retaliate. For the next five years that is exactly what we did, myself, W.D. and A.C., (no, you can’t know their names yet) in prank after prank of falsity, forgery and fun.

Some day, I swear, I’ll write about it. Maybe a book. You’ll cry. You’ll laugh. You’ll be glad you paid my salary.

One day, a memo, one I did not forge (I really should check the statute of limitations on the falsifying of federal documents before I publish this) came across my desk. It was from my new boss, the obsequious, smarmy, condescending little proto-human pencil pusher we called Monkey Boy for his habit of hanging bright red Eisenhower jackets on his bony bod—a vestment that would have been more at home on an eighties dance floor under a flashing disco ball but still a bit over the edge even for Disco Duck. He looked like an organ grinder’s monkey. Monkey Boy.

Susan was always afraid I would call him that to his face. I think she almost did once. I hope so.

The memo was horrible in all the ways writing can be: awful, terrible, atrocious, worse. It was badly worded and those same badly worded bits were repeated again and again and again. It pressed a point Monkey Boy didn’t need to make to already disempowered, demoralized “workers” (that was what we were called) who didn’t need the point pressed.

I was, at the time, studying fugues. The musical kind. Not the kind where one realizes, after twenty years in St. Louis, raising a family and having a meaningful life, that one is really from Des Moines and has (or, to be fair, had) an entire other family, life, job and name. Not that kind. But, for longer fugues, one can see the relation.

The memo passed my desk. The pattern of repetition looked like a fugue to me. I was caught up with my work, as usual, and had nothing better to do. Even if I had, art called and it was time to write. The memo was deconstructed and reconstructed. Barely re-written.

A fugue is meant to be performed and this was no different. After a few readings, it was set. It was scheduled for the Gainesville Spring Arts Festival. Time to get cracking. We had a fugue to perform. But we was still me. I needed people. Four of them. I needed a clock. One of them. I needed a dog.

I had none of these things but I did have Moon Goddess Books, my own store. A book store with lots of unconventional arty types. A Pagan store with folks who would be delighted to do something to slam The Man. A café where people got buzzed on caffeine and, in their mania, could be convinced to take on nearly any manner of whacked-out project. A fugue of a government memo. A fugue of clocks and dogs. Yes, this fit.

We found our folk and set about arranging the vocals. We had a month to prepare and rehearsed as often as bi-weekly. Grueling.

Four voices. Some parts were done together and some parts separately. Some by two and some by four. How did we choose? The performers did so by how it felt. One German Shepherd, whose bark was downloaded from a sound effects recording, barking randomly, or so it seemed. I wanted the barks to stand out as jagged jolting. A recorded clock getting louder and louder as the fugue progressed, the voices getting softer as the fugue came to an end, the barks harder to hear through.

The performance time came and I am gratified, still, that it went without a hitch—or at least none that anyone but myself and our four performers, two guys and two gals, would have noticed. At the end the applause hesitated. Perhaps because the audience was stunned silent or perhaps they were confused. I was happy, and still am—either or both being a desired result of the piece.

Strangely, wonderfully, the person who wrote the memo, Monkey Boy himself, was there, and did not talk to me for quite a while. Those were a great few weeks. Eventually he had to speak to me though. But never was the fugue mentioned.

No recording exists. Not yet.

________________________________________________

Fugue on a State Memo for Four Voices and Dog Barks

Most of you already do this, and I thank you. Customer service is the key and one of our values is PEOPLE. Thank you for your assistance in this matter and see me if you have any questions.

Most of you do this. Customer service is the key. One of our values is PEOPLE. Thank you for your assistance in this question.

Most of you do customer service. One of our key values is PEOPLE. Thank you for this question.

Most of you do this key value. PEOPLE thank you for this.

Most of you do this.
Most of you do this.
Most of you do this customer service.
Customer service.
Customer service.
Most of you do this customer service.
Customer service
Customer service.
Customer service is the key.
Most of you do this.
Most of you do this.
Most of you do this.
Most of you matter.
Most of you matter.
Most of you matter.
Most of you question.
Most of you question customer service.
Customer service is the key.
Customer service is the key.
Customer service is the key.
This matters.
This matters.
Customer service is they key.
The value is the key.
They key matters.
PEOPLE matter.
PEOPLE matter.
PEOPLE are one of our values.
PEOPLE are one of our values.
The key is the value.
We value the question.
Value the question.
Value the question.
We value the key.
Value the key.
Value the key.
Value the key.
Value the key.
Question the key.
Question the key.
Question the key.
Question the key.
We value the question.
Value the question.
Value the question
Value the question.
Key question.
Key question.
Key question.
We question the value.
We question the value.
We question the value.
Question the value.
Question the value.
Question the value.
Question the PEOPLE.
Question the PEOPLE.
Question the PEOPLE.
Question PEOPLE.
Question PEOPLE.
Question PEOPLE.
Key PEOPLE.
Key PEOPLE.
Key PEOPLE.
Key.
Key.
Key.
Key.
Key.
Key.
Key.
Key.
Key.
Key.

Values

PEOPLE

 
4 Comments

Posted by on September 23, 2008 in Culture, Fugue State, Gainesville, Poetry, Social, Writing

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

Seven Questions for Craig Smith

19 Sep

Craig Smith is an author and web designer, a translator to and from dead languages, the well-respected and well-read author of the blog Notes from the Dreamtime, the translator of The Inclusive Bible and a shaman. Even better than that, he is my exceptionally good friend.

Craig has been interviewing interesting characters for some time now. But no one has interviewed him. While I could not believe such an oversight, I sought to correct it. The result is below.

Enjoy.

________________________

Late Monday night, Adam emailed me and asked, “So who’s doing your interview?” I replied that he was the first to offer. On Tuesday morning, these questions appeared in my mailbox. I replied that he was the cruelest human on the face of the planet.

His questions both terrify and exhilarate me, which I guess means they’re good ones.

1. You spend much of your time, it seems, as an editor. Thurber once wrote about editing, “Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, “How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?” and avoid “How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?”

Do you prefer to be an editor or collaborator? Or do you play both roles or either role depending upon with whom you are working?

The latter. It depends entirely on the writer.

A good writer—that is, one who has a strong writing style and a good command of the language—needs minimal editing. Then the task is to find overt mistakes (which the writer in haste simply didn’t notice), and occasionally smooth over rough passages where the writer’s intent doesn’t come through clearly. I am very careful not to change their style, and yes, it’s very much the role of a counselor.

The vast majority of writers fall into a second class. They’re not great writers, they’re just writing as a means to an end. These I take a heavier hand with. For a while I got a reputation for being able to cut a piece in half without the writer even realizing he or she had been edited—”You make me sound so good!” is a comment I’ve heard more than once. For them, I honor the writing style they’re trying to establish, but which they haven’t quite succeeded in creating. For them, I am definitely more collaborative.

Occasionally I come across bad writers. Honestly, I want nothing to do with most of them. I don’t want to read them, I don’t want to correct them, I just want them to go away. A few are on the bubble, and if I like the individuals at all, I absolutely want to show them how I’d approach it if it were my piece.

2. You once traveled, though shortly, rather extensively across the U.S. Whether you were in search of something, drawn by something, or leaving something may be of debate, but travel you did, and you wrote about it rather extensively in your blog before stopping short. Many of your readers might think you stopped before a revelation or just at the point you found a portion of your travel unresolved.

A Zen monk once asked, “It is the same moon outside and the same person inside, so why not sit?” Does location really make a difference or is it the process of transition? What did you gain? What did you lose? What is stuck? Could you have done as well staying at home? Does changing location change the person?

“Many” of my readers? Really?

Did I stop just before some major revelation? I didn’t think I did, but maybe you’re right. I had gone all revisionist on it in my mind; I thought I had stopped writing about the trip shortly before I took that long break between last December and this April, but it turns out my last Big Trip post was in March of 2007. I was shocked when I realized that.

Let’s see, when last I left the story, I had just visited Little Bighorn and was heading toward Bozeman. And I guess I do view Bozeman as the gateway to the most significant part of the journey. It doesn’t feel like I’m afraid to dig deep and expose something important, but my behavior may be telling another story. I’ll have to look at that.

That said, each trip post takes a long time to write. At the time I remember thinking I wanted to do some lighter, faster, easier posts, to take a little break. But you and Indigo have rattled my cage long enough; I’ll have a new Big Trip post next week.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that trip changed everything for me. You know how a lot of people personify Nature, talk blithely about the Web of All Being, and speak of divine immanence as being “the Goddess”? I knew all that, intellectually, but on the trip (somewhere in Washington, if I recall, but I haven’t checked my notes in a while) I had a palpable experience of it.
Does location really make a difference? I have no doubt that it’s possible to have any important growth experience in any number of ways. The same truth keeps knocking on our house until we let it in; sometimes it comes in by the door, sometimes through a window, sometimes down the chimney or up through the floorboards.

But for me, it was important to go out on my own, with two thousand bucks in my pocket (and no credit cards), in a car that really wasn’t all that road-worthy, to follow a quiet but insistent tug in my heart—a “calling,” if you will; to camp out in the national forests and wildernesses, searching for some essentially spiritual experience, rather than trying to go sightseeing; to be utterly alone with my thoughts and the world for an extended period of time. All of which I don’t think I could have gotten sitting at home.

“What did you gain? What did you lose? What is stuck?” Tough questions. I gained an understanding of the living, nonphysical energy that interconnects everything in the material world. I gained a hunger for greater personal and physical freedom. I opened the door just a bit to becoming more authentically myself and less what others expect me to be. I lost a parochial worldview, a limited image of who or what God is. I guess I’m still stuck in Comfortville (I laughed as I typed that, because everything in my life seems the opposite of comfortable): I don’t need to risk my life, physical or emotional, right now. I’m all initiation and no completion. As one of my favorite (and one of your least favorite) poets, T.S. Eliot, wrote:

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act . . .
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow.

3. It has been argued that cues for discrimination that are obvious, such as gender or color, are of greater import than those which are not, such as religion or gender preference.
Is this so? Has discrimination affected you and, if it has, has this been your choice to reveal what could be occult and accept the discrimination as burden?

I don’t know that obvious cues for discrimination are of greater import as much as simply inevitable. When you can’t hide, the bigots have a more obvious target.

I came out in 1982, at the age of 26, shortly after my father’s death. I used to describe it as feeling a cloud of judgment over me had been lifted. In time I came to feel that my father had been a convenient excuse for my not being true to myself. On the other hand, when we decide it’s time to make a change in our lives, I think we probably use whatever tool or trigger is at hand to aid us.

For me it was all tied up (as just about everything is in my life) with my spiritual journey. I was wrestling with the realization that the God I knew intimately and the God of conservative theology (and much of society) were in conflict with one another. I knew that my God valued truth in the inner being above all else, so I knew I had to speak the truth about my sexuality even if it meant being damned for eternity: to save God, as it were, I had to be willing to give up God. And the moment I did, I knew that love and acceptance and was the ultimate truth, and nothing else mattered.

I can’t say I’ve faced a lot of discrimination. Some of it is because I’m not terribly fey (though I’m not terribly butch, either), so many people just assume that everyone is straight unless they announce otherwise. And I don’t wear buttons or have gay bumper stickers, and I tend not to announce it unless or until it comes up naturally. On the other hand, I tend to correct people if they make invalid assumptions about me, because (a) it’s nothing I need to keep quiet about, and (b) it’s no big deal. The older I get, the less I care what anyone thinks. To quote that old philosopher, Popeye, I yam what I yam.

In the ’80s, I lost dozens of gay friends or acquaintances—thirty-two to AIDS, one to a gay-bashing incident, two to drug or alcohol abuse. That was pretty awful. And I’ve seen lots of discrimination; I just haven’t been on the receiving end, except for having a few bottles (and epithets) hurled at me. Annoying, but not that big a deal—just some drunken rednecks.

So I don’t feel much of a burden, honestly. I once had a dream in which I was standing at the creation of the world, and God said, “This time, would you like to be straight instead?” I thought a minute then said, “No thanks, I’m quite happy the way I am.” It was a very satisfying dream.

4. Your religious and spiritual experiences are not quite within what we might call the common American experience. How do you define your present spiritual life? How have you come to where you are? Do you find your spiritual life effective? If so, are you more a spiritual materialist than purist—in other words, do you practice to build ego or to gain something, regardless of what that might be, or for the practice itself? Where do you think you are going with it?

I am an animist because I see all natural phenomena as alive. I’m a pantheist because I see God as synonymous with the material universe. I’m a panentheist because I see God as interpenetrating every part of nature and extending timelessly beyond it as well. I’m a Christian because for me Jesus is God enfleshed, and teaches us how we too can become God enfleshed. I’m an adopted Jew, a God-fearer who learned Hebrew to read the Bible in its original language because I wanted to know what YHWH was really saying. I’m a Buddhist because of the life and teachings of Siddhārtha Gautama, and the silence, and the kōans, and the still point. I’m a Hindu because I revere Ganesha. I’m a Yoruba because I was visited one night by the orisha Shango, the sky father, the god of thunder and ligntning. I’m a pagan because I honor the natural rhythms of the earth, the sun, the moon.

But beyond all those classifications, I am a shaman, because shamanism, stripped of its cultural overlay, is simply a toolbox. It’s how the human brain naturally accesses nonordinary reality. It’s plugging into the way the body and the psyche can be balanced and healed. And it’s what underlies all human religion and spirituality, the barebones of our Selves, if you will.
How have I come to be here? Wow. I guess it’s just a straightforward process of following where my heart and spirit have led me. I would say it’s a combination of the theological and psychic shattering that my coming out afforded, and working through decades of chronic depression until I came to understand myself and God (or spirit or the Universe or whatever terminology you want to use) and the world in a radically different way.

I’m not sure what an “effective” spiritual life would be. Does it give me comfort or meaning? Yes, definitely. Does it make my life work better? Yes and no. It doesn’t make me more “successful,” particularly as the world defines success, but it gives me tools to deal with many of the challenges I face, and gives me a context with which I can understand the world better. But I can’t honestly say I practice it as a means to an end, as a tool to get something or become something.

It all comes back to that ineffable Call, the music from the Piper at the Gates of Dawn. I’m like a dog snuffling the air, forever following the scent, wherever it may lead.

5. We all have traits that are annoying. Some of those traits, when found in another, are deal-breakers and we simply cannot abide them. What traits can you simply not abide in others? Which traits mean “I’ll not deal with that person,” and why? Which traits send you running? Of those traits, how much of each is found in you?

When I was a good deal less self-confident (and those of you who know me well will be rolling on the floor by now, because you know that deep down I am a mouse afraid of his own shadow), I was in a relationship with someone I believe has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. One day he gave me a collection of Jane Kenyon’s poetry, and told me to read a poem called “Biscuit”:

The dog has cleaned his bowl
and his reward is a biscuit,
which I put in his mouth
like a priest offering the host.
I can’t bear that trusting face!
He asks for bread, expects
bread, and I in my power
might have given him a stone.

He didn’t need to say so, but I knew I was that dog to him. And more often than not, I was given a stone instead of bread. Much has changed in me since then, and such cruel treatment—toward me, or toward anyone, frankly—is intolerable, and provokes a fierce reaction from me.
I can’t abide liars, though I understand the impulse all too well: the need to protect oneself at all cost, even when telling the truth might be so much easier in the long run.

And yes, the cruelty and the lying that I hate: both of these are parts of me. I don’t know that I hate them because they are in me; I know that I have worked hard to overcome them in myself, and so perhaps I am like an intolerant ex-smoker. I don’t know.

I am impatient and short-tempered with people who give poor customer service (I used to teach classes in how to go above and beyond expectations when dealing with the public). And I am intolerant of people I call “willfully ignorant,” who seem defiant in their lack of education or gentility. Perhaps this intolerance is a form of intellectual snobbishness, but I hope it’s because I love the language so much that when people abuse it, it’s like spitting on something sacred.
Occasionally I’ll run across people whose “vibe” makes me want to either run away or (more likely) do them bodily harm. I can’t explain it. It’s nothing they’ve done or said, really, or maybe it’s everything they do and say. It’s a reaction so visceral and so strong that I have to step outside myself and say, “What in the world is that about?” So far I haven’t found an answer.

6. Tell me about poetry. You say you are not a poet. Why have you said this?

Payback is so unbecoming, Adam.

I am not a poet because I am clumsy at it. (And don’t tell me that lots of people say they are poets who write perfectly wretched poems. Just because a mouse is in a cookie jar, it doesn’t make him a cookie.) I can sometimes shape prose with enough felicity that it sings; poetry needs a much sparer touch, which I don’t often have. Generally the best I can do is take a prose poem and break it into shorter lines.

What I think I do have is a poet’s heart. I think Deloney is a natural poet, despite the fact that his poems always look like paragraphs. Indigo Bunting sometimes comes up with phrasings that are breathtaking. I can see poetry in words. I can even edit poetry pretty well. But I think my natural element is prose. Maybe I just need a larger canvas to say what a poet can express in a few brush strokes.

7. We each have ways we make others suffer. Most of the time this is inadvertent or, at least, not on purpose. How have you made others suffer? Was any of it purposeful? How have you made yourself suffer? Are you doing so now? How and why? To what end?

I have been cruel. I don’t know if my cruelty made them suffer, or if they just shrugged it off. On the other hand, our actions have far-reaching consequences, and even acts of charity may have caused suffering, while acts of deliberate meanness may have brought someone to a new and better place.

I have certainly wanted to make a few people suffer, to make them feel what they put me (or others) through. I have wanted them to have a taste of their own medicine.
But me—ah, that’s the person I have been the cruellest to, both deliberately and inadvertently. I have a running tape in my head (I guess we have to change that metaphor now, don’t we? No one uses tape for recording things anymore!) that tells me what an enormous failure I am, how I always let everyone down, how I never live up to my potential, how stupid and petty and worthless I am. I think I am starting to hear it as old, worn-out programming, and I am trying to say “No, that’s not true,” and replace it with something that heals those old self-inflicted wounds.

Why is that programming there in the first place? Some of it stems from my childhood molestation. Most people who are abused spend their lives trying not to feel dirty and worthless. Some if it is habit—we keep repeating the things we’ve heard repeated over and over; we don’t question, don’t object. We’re sheep at heart, especially when the critical voice in our head is our own. We just say, “Yes, you’re right,” without questioning it. One of the blessings of meditation is that you get to see your thoughts as just thoughts, without attaching any value to them. You get to look at them dispassionately, then decide if you want to keep them or not. So I’m trying to rewrite the old self-destructive script, and I’m making progress. But I don’t know that I’ll be finished anytime soon.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on September 19, 2008 in Culture, philosophy, Religion, Social, Writing

 

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

This I Believe

05 Sep

About two weeks ago, riding in the car with my wife, we were listening to about the only station, locally, anyone is likely to find in our car – NPR. After the story about the upcoming political conventions the series “This I Believe” aired another in its weekly essays. I have written for the project, which can also be found in print, and while I cannot say I listen faithfully or find every one of the essays a treasure, a few stand out. I can remember hearing them and (this is the important part as a writer) they had an effect on me. As a writer, I could not ask for more praise or better praise. The sheer beauty of writing aside, if a work is forgotten, if a reader is not affected, then the sound and glory are nothing.

My favorite is by Penn Jillette and is called “There is no God.” As much a fan of Thoreau as I am, I cannot help but wish he had written this. It seems to be what he was trying to say through much of his time at Walden Pond. The essay is transcendentalism without the deism. It is a wonder of words and I am appreciative.

What we heard that afternoon in the car was by Sufiya Abdur-Rahman and is titled “Black is Beautiful.” It echoed so much of what I had written on the topic of the dark and lonely side of the headlong rush to assimilation and the expectation that we should all want to fit into a homogeneity so stark that we should have trouble telling each other apart. I am not a fan of Hyphenated-American-ism but what is wrong with have identities? I guess I am more a tossed salad American than a melting pot American.

I was moved to write Ms. Abdur-Rahman. It was rather hard to find contact information but I managed to do so by looking her up on MySpace. I sent a note to her from her MySpace profile.

Ms. Abdur-Rahman,.

I am writing to thank you for your essay on NPR.

As a second generation American, it has been my belief we need not be like everyone else to be an American. Indeed, it has been pointed out, and I feel truthfully, the differences among peoples are one of the things that have made this the amazing country it is. I applaud you essay for pointing out we can be, and should remain, who we are at our core.

I am Jewish. I was raised in the North and now live in the South. I have taken my children to see the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery to look upon the names of the heroes there and have pointed to the names of the six Jews next to the rest of those who fought for freedom. I have shown them the my parents took pictures of, when we moved to Miami, that said “No Niggers, Jews or Dogs Allowed.” I have explained that giving up our heritage means giving in. And we held on despite my daughter’s high school beatings for being a dirty Jew, the head start teachers command our son should learn to be a Christian so he can “pass” when he needs to, my own difficulties attaining academic posts because I did not attend the right kind of church.

We moved here during WWII. It was my feeling, after having lost two-thirds of my family, that it would be a slap in their faces to assimilate. My parents though, my grandparents, said “assimilate.” They spoke Yiddish. My parents understood it. I can do neither. Now my daughter, 23, and I are relearning what we lost. We have a long way to go.

Your essay brought the importance of that back to us. I applaud what you are doing and bless you for your struggle.

Adam

Adam Byrn Tritt

Did I get a response? You bet. It was quite a heartfelt note back and I shall not share it here. If you want a note from Sufiya, write her yourself.

 
2 Comments

Posted by on September 5, 2008 in Culture, Family, History, philosophy, Social, Writing

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Seven Questions for Adam: An Interview by Craig Smith

27 Aug

I’ve known Adam Tritt for a few years now, though it simultaneously feels like forever and no time at all. He’s a kindred spirit with enough significant differences to keep things interesting. His blog, Adamus at Large, is where he publishes essays and poetry. He doesn’t post as frequently as any of us would like, but when he does, it’s an incomparable feast of words and ideas.

(Note from Adam: To make this as authentic as possible, I did no revision and answered all questions given without reservation and as the responses came to me. What you see is what was written the first time. I looked back at not one question. I wanted this to be as conversational as possible and not a prepared document.)

1. Why are you a poet?

I am not a poet. What a strange question. To call myself a poet would be terribly presumptuous and boorish. Not only that, but it would set up an unfair expectation and then I’d have to perform. Sit, Adam, sit. Show the folks how well you poe.

I am not a poet, I simply think metaphorically. I think in metaphors about everything. The contents of the world—whether we believe they originate from within one’s head, are a combination of that which is without and the experiences and expectations from within, or come wholly from within one’s head—always rumble around and find things to connect with. Everything is a metaphor. Since I don’t see terribly well and remember nothing of the visual world, I think in words. So I get a picture or a sound and I make them into words.

Well, enough of that and my head fills up, so I write. I can’t stand not being understood so I revise and revise and revise, cutting out everything that is not meaning because I’d hate for people to think something I didn’t want them to. My goal is to lead them to the same metaphoric feeling and understanding I experienced. By the throat, if need be. By the hand, if I can. Though truthfully, by the throat is much more fun.

The poetic model allows me to do this in a way that is deceptively short so people will read it. Otherwise I’d have twenty-six page essays.

I then put it out there for people to read, on the blog, in magazines, in anthologies, and in my own books, because part of me believes Descartes: I publish, therefore I exist. Besides, I like the fan mail and the undies that get thrown at me.

Of course, none of that explains why I also write twenty-six page essays.

Asking why I am a poet is very much like asking why I have two legs. I can’t help it. I’d have a prehensile tail if I could. My wife would love that. It would be like in Venus on the Half-Shell. But I don’t. So I have two legs. So I think metaphorically. So I put everything into words. It’s burden. It’s a pain. I’m simply built that way. It’s not my fault, I swear. I blame my temporal lobe. I once filled an entire sliding glass door with poetry. I write on my office walls. I write on people if they stand still long enough and give me enough exposed area.

2. Your first public reading was at a clothing-optional event, and you performed in the nude. And you’ve written about your visits to the local nude beach, and clearly have no problem with nakedness. On the other hand, you write about how you wrestle with body image, and seem to feel ashamed when you are battling weight. For me, being fat means I don’t want anyone to see me naked, even though I thoroughly enjoyed my one and only visit to a nudist resort, and am a closet naturist (I’ve even been skinny-dipping in my neighbors’ pool while they’re away, when I go over to feed their cat).

So how do you reconcile that dichotomy? How do you find the freedom to be nude with others even during those times when you feel discomfiture over the way you look?

Because I’m ornery. Because, unlike dancing, which scares me silly and I force myself to do, or parties, which scare me sillier and I don’t force myself to do, reading poetry at a clothing-optional gathering flies in the face of so many conventions I have no choice but to do it. I teach myself my fears are meaningless and my self-judgments are baseless and thumb my nose at society at the same time? Hell, where do I sigh up? Can I do it twice?

You can walk all the fire pits you want, jump out of airplanes hoping the chute opens, bungee-jump from any bridge you choose, but for sheer fright, read your poetry in front of a crowd while wearing nothing but glasses.

I always reserve the right to not reconcile anything. No need. What makes sense anyway? I am about as dysmorphic as a fella can get. I just got over yo-yo binge and starvation. I no longer run three miles because I ate a piece of bread. That ended last Thursday. A friend who knows me better than well (bless you Joyce) will notice the look in my eye as we are out to eat and take away the menu and order for me. It’s insane. And so, through all this, while I thumb my nose at the culture I live in I simultaneously thumb my nose at that part of the culture that lives in me and is discordant with my world-view, or at least the view I would like to have of the world.

In my mind, the more I push this particular illusion, the thinner it gets and, sometimes, I can see clearly through it and know it is untrue.

There is another part to this as well. I want the walls, those illusory walls between self and other, to disappear. I want the illusions to go away. I am happiest when I cannot tell self from other. That is a theme in my writing. That is a theme in my spiritual practice. That is a theme in my massage practice and in hypnotherapy. That is a theme in my life. Maybe I know it is true and I am working to make it happen, to experience it as much as possible and bring that to other people as well. Maybe I am just trying to convince myself that it is so. Which depends on when you ask me.

And let’s be clear—I do not seem to feel ashamed when battling weight. I have, in this area, a self-disgust that is deep and abiding. It’s open 24/7 and never takes a vacation. I am not sure where it came from and I’m not sure when it’s going, but my job, since I can’t seem to shake it, is to be happy anyway. Happy with the world around me. Happy with myself. My job is to thumb my nose, even from within, at anything that keeps me from being happy, at anything that keeps the illusion of separateness alive.

Besides, I am awesomely cute.

3. In both “Funeral, Expurgated” and “My Grandmothers Came from the Ukraine,” you talk about the quandary a writer faces over how much personal or familial information to reveal and how much to conceal or change to protect the innocent (or guilty). David Sedaris, when asked if his books should be filed in fiction or nonfiction, replied, “Nonfiction. I’ve always been a huge exaggerator, but when I write something, I put it on a scale. And if it’s 97% true, I think that’s true enough. I’m not going to call it fiction because 3% of it isn’t true.” And I can’t remember which writer says that the first duty of a writer is to kill his family—that is, write as if there were no one to offend, no one who would be upset if secrets were revealed.

So how have you struggled with the issue of “truthiness” in your writing? And what kind of fallout has there been among friends or relatives when you’ve revealed something that they would rather keep quiet?

Some of what I write falls into the category of New Reporting or New Journalism. Some into creative non-fiction. But, regardless of what I write, I have never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Many have made the mistake of thinking every piece I write is true just because most of it is non-fiction. So the poetry must be as well. Sure, some of it is but much of it is not. Poetry can be creative storytelling just as much as any other type of writing. My daughter never gathered angels in a field. My wife never complained about her life over coffee as I dreamed of moving west. But with few exceptions, what I write is based on the amazement of that which makes up everyday life. So I did almost hit a wall while she was changing in the passenger seat and the monk did make the spoon stick to his nose. But just because most of it is true does not mean it all is. I reserve the right to tell a story from time to time.

Given that, those who read me know if you see a name in the essay, the account is true. Percentage? If you see a name, it happened. If you see my name, I reserve the right to make my life what I choose it to be. If that is after the fact, then that is just fine with me. My memory is fluid.

That said, there are some things I just don’t write. I don’t write things I feel will hurt a person or compromise them in some way. I have made that judgment incorrectly from time to time but I never set out writing knowing what I am putting down will hurt. I can’t do that. It’s not in me. Even if the person has done me harm, I won’t.

There is so much out there to write. There is no need.

As far a narrative therapy goes, that is the truest account, the most full exposition I can manage. Your example of “Funeral, Expurgated” is narrative therapy. So is “The Shadow.” I write them so fully, so completely there is nothing left inside and, in the end, the content is all without and not within.

Many fail at narrative therapy and are sure it does not work. But they just write it once and get it out in the immediacy of the moment. That is ineffective. To work it must be revised and revised and revised again, experienced over and over in the writing, pared down, blown up, filled and emptied until it is all truth as you see it, until it reads like drama and feels real to one and all. Then, and only then, is it out.

In the essay you mentioned I spoke about the potential fallout a writer can experience and the fear that can engender. My wife, I mentioned in the first paragraph or two, said she cannot grasp the bravery of writing in tha manner. Sometime, neither can I.

But I did not think I wrote anything that would hurt anyone. As my daughter had pointed out, if they thought what they did was wrong or embarrassing, then why did they do it? One would think they felt their actions just fine and so why not record them?

But I did hurt some feelings. After it was out for a while my mother calls with some confusing story about an email and a letter and whatnot. It took me quite a while to put the bits together and figure out it was about the essay. The feeling was, I gathered, that I had aired the family’s dirty laundry in giving the blow-by-blow account of the funeral days.

I have a very small family. Now, it is much much smaller.

4. A casual reader of your blog may be confused about your spiritual inclinations. Are you a Buddhist? A Jew? A Unitarian? A Pagan? How do you reconcile all your disparate beliefs? Or are they really disparate after all?

I am a Jewitarian Buddhaversalist Pagan. What could be more clear than that? I follow the shamanic elements in Judaism as well as in Buddhism but find Buddhism and Judaism are quite similar in their emphasis on tikkun and right action.

I am, of course, a panentheist. But I am also a solipsist and once attended a convention of solipsists where we spent the entire weekend trying to figure out which of us it was.

I spent ten years studying with the Center for Tao and Man. Master Ni told me I had the cosmic egg. What difference what I call it? OK, so I am a Taoist. I follow the watercourse way and sometimes that flows through Judaism and sometimes it washes me into the Thai Buddhist Temple where the abbot explains to me the deeper meaning of the Kol Nidre.

After many years of attempting to reconcile seemingly disparate paths, I have stopped any attempts at reconciliation. The result is that all things now seem much more similar and it becomes more and more difficult to see the space between them or recognize there are differences.

Besides, name one cantor who does not like to be accompanied by a rattle or drum.

5. Tell me about turtle shells.

[Note: I had a turtle shell that I brought out whenever I did any group shamanic work. Every time Adam was present, he clutched the shell as if it were a talisman or protective shield. And when I do energy work with him, particularly when I use quartz or amethyst crystals, he seems to find the shell soothing, since my energy feels “edgy,” for lack of a better word. It became clear one evening that the shell wanted to go and live with Adam.]

The carapace is the dorsal, convex, magical part of the shell structure of a turtle, though a turtle would argue it is concave. It consist primarily of the ribcage which is a strange concept because there is never any chance of the ribs escaping. The spine and ribs are fused to bony plates beneath the skin which interlock to form a hard shell when blue and yellow make green, locking freshness in. Exterior to the skin, the shell is covered by scutes, horny plates that protect the shell from scrapes and bruises. Underneath they are made of backhoes.

They are alternately named Don, Horace, or Filbert.

They are not like crystals at all.

They go wonderfully with a cup of papaya juice and Northern Exposure.

One called to me for a year before it ended up coming home with me.It was playing hard to get.

If you lie one on your stomach, you might not have seizures.

Turtles don’t mind.

6. A dear friend of mine named Geralyn said an old chum once told her, “You know what’s so wonderful about you, Schulz? You can’t sing worth a damn. But it never stops you!”

I know you love to listen to music—music of all genres, music that makes you think and feel, with a smattering of Broadway just for good measure—but I think you like making music even more. Singing for the joy of it.

I remember a workshop you conducted on chanting. It was something everyone could do even if they couldn’t carry a tune. And there’s that wonderful Yom Kippur piece you wrote where you imply that chant and prayer and incantation are different aspects of the same thing.

So what does singing give to you, or do for you, that other forms of creativity do not?

Everything sings. The Earth sings from beneath and around us. Everything on/in/apart of it sings. We come out of the Earth and go back into the Earth and, therefore are never apart from the Earth, and so we sing. Any part of a whole carries the nature of the whole. So I do a whole lot of singing.

I think everyone should. And, no, it does not matter if the person can carry a tune. Sing. We are made of an Earth that sings and it is a function of our bodies. We get caught in subjective notions of quality which we mistake for objective ones and which we then assign value to. People do not sing because they are not good at it. But we do many things we are not the best at. We don’t see people refusing to walk because so many other people do it so much better. So sing.

Music reconnects me to all that is around me. I can disappear as a separate entity—the illusion of disconnection evaporates—when I sing. When I am singing with others in harmony there is an experience that is ecstatic, in what I feel is the true sense of that state: I am outside of myself. The harmony creates a larger sound that is made of but is not simply the voices that create it. The harmonious vibration is larger than the sum of the voices. Larger and different. And that applies holographically from the macrocosm to the microcosm, and fractally from the microcosm to the macrocosm.

What is it that vibration does not do, is not made of? I remember someone wrote somewhere in some well-known book something about “In the beginning there was the word; the word was in God’s presence, and the word was God.”

Names, sounds, create things. And it is the naming that creates separation and, therefore, identity. It is my feeling that what wounds can also heal, and sound heals. Singing heals. Music heals. The cantor sings to the congregation the holy words. We chant holiness. Incantations create. All is sound.

Other forms of creativity are, for me, secondary. They are derivative. They pale. To learn to write I took music classes. My writing exists because I do not play an instrument well.

7. I actually went back and reread every single entry in your blog this evening. I teared up at a few, but mostly I smiled. Or sighed. I am honored to know you.

One of my favorites (though to pick even a Top Five would be next to impossible) is Day of the Manatees. There’s a quote by Henry Beston that we both like—in fact, we’ve emailed it to one another, forgetting that the other had already sent it to us—that goes:

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

If you’re a panentheist, then you believe that God (however you define the concept) interpenetrates every part of Nature. My friend Tim has a wood carving of a fish; on the side is painted the word COD, except that the bottom of the C curls in just a tad too much, making it halfway between a C and a G. It’s the God Cod. (Or, for the dyslexic, the Dog Doc.)

Speaking of dogs, here’s my second favorite zen kōan: A monk asked Zhàozhōu, “Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?” Zhaozhou answered, “Wú!” (Wú means “no” and “non-being,” and is also the sound of a dog’s bark.)

There doesn’t seem to be a question in there anywhere. Hmmm.

How’s this: Manatees. Dogs. Cod. Us. God. If all our separateness is maya—illusion—then do manatees bark, and does God swim in Turkey Creek?

Hafiz tells us:

Ever since Happiness heard your name
It has been running through the streets
Trying to find you.

And several times in the last week,
God Himself has even come to my door—
Asking me for your address!

If God can come to my door, I am sure God can swim in Turkey Creek.

 
4 Comments

Posted by on August 27, 2008 in Culture, Family, philosophy, Poetry, psychology, Religion, Social, Writing

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Kayak Book

27 Apr

The date is May 17th, a Thursday, and it is my planning period and lunch. I have no need to plan anything and it is quite too soon for lunch. In a middle school, lunch can range anytime from ten-thirty to twelve-thirty. It is a quarter to eleven and that is far too early.

I also have only a week left of school; hence, the lack of need to plan. Other teachers are planning already for next year, looking at recruitment, collecting materials, packing up what they have to be stored for the next year. They’ve been doing this for weeks.

Me, I had opened up my desk drawers and filing cabinets for the students to take what they liked, yanked wide my closet doors for students to take what they chose. My books, academic, scholastic and otherwise: given away. Papers: given away. Posters: given away. Rulers, staplers, pens, hole punches, clips: all given away. My plan book with my year’s lessons and projects, nearly everything, all gone to students. The little that remained: left for the teachers to scrounge. I had to scrounge at the beginning for the year. The day before the start of school my room was ransacked for furniture, supplies and books. I had to enlist students to help me find tables and desks from the trash. So the students can have what they like and the teachers can do what they will, what they do best: thieve. I have no need of any of it. As of next week, I am no longer teaching. I am done. I have had enough.

All but my writing program. That, I kept neatly organized in a binder. My principal asked to have it. I laughed, quietly, subtly but visibly enough he asked what seemed amusing. After all, I was let go for being more a writer than a test trainer, more a teacher than a techie. “You’re a genius,” he said, “but you’re not duplicatable. Neither is what you do. We can’t afford that.” I suggested he could purchase the program or hire me to teach as a consultant but, no, he would not be left the fruit of five years’ labour and two decades experience.

So I have little to pack but a portfolio and a few papers. I have finals to give and grade – pass them out, pick them up and run them through a machine. I have students for whom I must enter grades and, averaged, their final grade will not look like the letter grade on their report card. Students, eighth graders, who published essays, poetry, journalism, won contests, accomplished works of beauty and artistry but whose ability simply cannot be expressed in the final the administration mandates must be multiple choice and look very much a mock state assessment. No score will go down but several will be much higher than the numbers alone might dictate.

As a matter of fact, some of those final grades can be entered even before the test. As I start, I remember to turn my phone on, as I do during my planning periods. It chimes and I hear the signal that tells me I have voice mail.

The call is from Witney. I left him a message about kayaks some days earlier. I have been interested in kayaking and canoeing ever since I went on a rather surreal canoe adventure down north Florida’s Santa Fe River with an entire Hebrew school student body. The result was a blues song called “Jews in Canoes” and a love for quietly paddling calm waterways.

Jews in Canoes

(chorus 1)
Jews in Canoes
Bad News
Jews in Canoes
Bad News
You’ll always get the blues with
Jews in Canoes.

(chorus 2)
Jews in Canoes,
Bad News.
Jews in Canoes
You’re gonna sing the blues.
You’re always gonna lose with
Jews in Canoes.

Went or a trip
with my daughter’s class mates
from her Hebrew school
I couldn’t guess my fate
We set out on the river
at the outpost site
oh my lord
I had such a fright.

We were set in the water
barely two feet deep
There were thirteen canoes
in our Hebrew fleet
one paddler in the front
and one in the rear
rocking the boat
both trying to steer.

chorus 2

Then we got it straight
headed down the stream
twelve canoes
from a very bad dream
When I heard a little chuckle
on the bank from an otter
when our fleet was jam
from one bank to the other.

Well I floated down the river
as easy as can be
Then I make the mistake
of looking next to me
out on a river
one hundred feet wide
a canoe from the blue
hit me in the side.

Shema Yisroel,
Adonai Elohenu.
Adonai echad.

chorus 2

Now we’re out ahead
just my daughter and me
I look around
at the scenery
Here comes a canoe
with a mother and a child
next thing I know
we’re a canoe pile.

When we reach the end
our destination in sight
I hang back
to avoid the flight
canoes left and right
my chances are slim
next thing I know
I’m hangin off a tree limb.

chorus 2

I get off the limb
and walk to my boat.
Barely ‘nough water
to keep it afloat.
Canoes all around
ahead and behind
paddling to the beach
like they was all blind.

Out on the grass
sitting in the sun.
licking my wounds
kinda glad we’re done.
Then my daughter tell me something
leaves me cold with fright
“Our next canoe trip, Daddy, it’s at night.”

chorus 1

Jews in Canoes,
Bad news.
Jews in Canoes,
You’re gonna sing the blues.
You’re always gonna lose
You’re gonna pay your dues
You always get the blues with
Jews in Canoes.

I had asked him, in an email and phone message, if there was such a thing as a stable kayak or if I had to look for a canoe. I further wanted to know if he had a line on one that was affordable on my schoolteacher’s salary, which meant I was looking for someone who had a perfectly usable boat and wanted to pay me to take if off his or her hands.

I return the call.

I ask my question.

There is no such thing as a simple answer to any question asked Witney. This is not because he doesn’t want to answer a question in a simple way but because he wants to be sure the answer is right and complete to the best of his ability. It requires patience. Sometimes it also requires coffee and, often, strong drink.

What do I want? To paddle easily along Goat Creek, Horse Creek. To get some exercise, see the manatees. To cross the brackish shallow sound of the Indian River, eight-mile wide, until I reach that quarter-mile spit of land that keeps it from the Atlantic Ocean. To be alone on the water.

How about a johnboat? No. I want to see where I’m going. He doesn’t blame me.

I ask if a canoe is more stable and the answer is, “It depends.” This doesn’t surprise me. Some have flat bottoms, some are meant for the sea, some for rough water. What about a kayak? Same deal. Some actually ride a bit under the water, some are for racing, for smooth water, for the sea, for whitewater. For me?

This is why I called. He will take it apart, find exactly what is what and, together, we will find the answer. I might take a month, but we will find it.

A month. Little do I know.

Don’t kayaks roll? Sure, he tells me. People actually roll them on purpose. Not me. Not me.

I don’t swim. I am perhaps a poor candidate for kayaking or, for that matter, water sports in general.

It is not for lack of trying. I hear I could, if I would just try hard enough. That’s what people tell me. They say, but they don’t know.

I have taken classes. Chicken of the Sea classes from the Red Cross. Adult Beginner classes from the Red Cross. Classes designed for little kiddies from, again, the Red Cross. I once swam about ten feet. It was an accomplishment. Then I panicked and flailed and reached for the comfort of feet on solid surface.

My wife tried teaching me. She was a certified lifeguard and tells me she never felt in danger in the water until she tried to teach me to swim. She says I almost drowned her. Almost doesn’t count, right?

I took a swim class in community college. My instructor was a tall, solid, chiseled figure of an ex-marine drill sergeant. He told me I would learn because he could teach anyone. Has never failed. He, himself, was a difficult case – being all muscle, he explained, he sunk immediately. Yet he learned.

I, on the other hand, overweight, fluffy, was in no danger of sinking. He was sure. I was never so happy to be fat.

Like a rock. Like a brick. Like an enthusiastic member of the Pharoah’s army chasing the Israelites, I went down. Oh, Mary, did I sink.

Sergeant Swim signed my drop card.

And now I want to kayak.

Not as strange as it may sound, he tells me. A kayak will work. Some have keels and flat bottoms. They are stable, don’t roll, smooth. The deal is I should come down and try one and see. Good idea.

What price are we talking about? How much?

Don’t worry about that. He has a better idea. Witney wants to build one for me. The cost will be materials. What can I do? I don’t do power tools. It’s the old story about the one-eyed epileptic with the chainsaw. If you don’t know the story, just use your imagination. Does it end well?

I once owned a jigsaw and a circular saw. I owned other tools as well. I once had my thumb nearly removed simply in the process of starting a lawnmower. I came home from a trip to discover my wife and my father had gotten together and sold my tools. They love me.

So I won’t be helping build. Oh, I could hold something while it dried if it wasn’t an important piece and we could afford having it call of the first chance it got. If that isn’t a problem, then I can do it.

No. He has a better idea. Watch. Just watch. Watch and write. Record the process. Chronicle building from beginning to end. He has a lead on a publisher. He gets to build, I get a kayak, we get a book. Everyone is happy.

Has he read my essays? “New reporting” some call it. Creative nonfiction. Not technical writing. It will be chronicled. Every bit. Each delay, mis-measurement, discussions. All of it. All of it surrounding the building of this kayak. It must be more than measuring and cutting, gluing and painting, if any of those are even part of the process. I’d want people to see the event in its entirety. He understands, he says. I wonder.

Let’s make a date to come down to Ft. Lauderdale, to make the two hour drive. I know I’ll have to do this a few times and this will not be built in one or two days.

First, we must get me into a kayak. We make a date. It’s set. Early June.

My second book is out. The Phoenix and the Dragon hits the shelves – there are launches, readings, performances. The date for the building approaches and I figure, since I’m going to be down there, why not set up a reading or two, a workshop. I’m making the trip anyway and the first time down is for kayaking, not building.

It is the second week of June. I look at my ringing phone and it is Valerie. I hear Witney in the background. They live next door to each other in a duplex. They share a wall and a child. They also shared about ten years together. But there were some basic philosophies and proclivities they did not share and now, they get along well enough but a marriage is no longer one of the things they share. In the past, yes, but not today. Not tomorrow. I know them both. I met them in church.

He wants to know if I am sure. Should he order the plans? What plans? Weren’t we going to check out the stable kayak first? Wasn’t I supposed to get into one before we decided to build a boat from scratch? I have never been in a kayak.

Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry? He is telling me, from the background, not to give it a second thought. Val says she took one for a ride, built, by Witney from the same plans we are going to use. She and her daughter and it was smooth, non-tippy, non-rolling, stable. Val would not tell me this if it weren’t true. I’m pretty sure she prefers me alive to be her partner in crime, camping, contradancing, singing showtunes in front of gay bars – all difficult to do after drowning.

Sure. Order the plans.

Don’t worry.

*****

I have waited ‘til mid-day as the early February morning is cool. It has been eight months since the idea of building a kayak was suggested to me, since I was offered to build one, write about it, take it home, author the book.

Mine is orange. The company, Pelican, based in Quebec, calls this material RamX resin. It seems rather indestructible. It is extruded and multi-layered and all sorts of other terms that means it floats and does not fall apart. I was told this by the company secretary with a quiet, musical French accent in a soft velvet voice, so I know it’s true.

It is not wood. I did not build it. I’m writing about it anyway. I’m quite happy.

This is the third time I have been out in it. Me, who doesn’t swim, out on the expanse upon which I am comfortable and in which I am not. And it is glorious.

Within ten feet of the slip, down which I carried my small boat between craft larger by far than mine, the world had changed. Within ten feet the manatees are floating alongside me. I paddle. I am but slowly getting the hang of paddling and, at times, I am a bit overzealous, but when the manatees are alongside, I stop. One of us belongs here and it is my place to be still.

Within five minutes I have passed through Turkey Creek, past the Palm Bay Marina where I paddled in and out between parked boats just for the practice of it, and under the bridge on which the thousands of cars a day buzz on US1 over the creek. And there is the Indian River.

Immediately I hear the spray of a dolphin beside me. I register the sound, understand what it is just in time to turn and see the water shooting from the blowhole of a dolphin well within arm’s reach. Thrusting water high and in my direction. Without expelling water, the dolphin would drown and expel water it does. A muscular flap opens and other muscles push with such force the water leaves the beast at slightly over one hundred miles an hour. Plenty of speed so that it lands, less than gently, on me.
I am glistening with water from the spouting dolphin. One, two, three, more swim along as I slowly skid toward Castaway Point. In the water and out, jumping up, wetting me down. Surfacing next to me and disappearing again, again, again.

I pass the point on either side and the water opens in front of me. To the left, in the distance, North, up the river, I can see the Melbourne Causeway misted gray faint by the bay air. To the right, the nearest bridge is thirty miles downriver at Sebastian. Aside from the scant beach behind me, the nearest land is two miles away, over this river that, more properly, is a sound, a brackish bay. Indialantic is a quarter-mile-wide spit and all that separates me, this river, from the Atlantic Ocean. I am headed there.

Once there, I’ll beach, take my shoes and wallet from the ziplock bag (terribly unreliable, I’m told. Get a drybag.) and walk a block to the cafés. I’ll sit and have coffee. Stroll to the ocean.

In the meantime, here I am. The boats race by, longitudinally, as I cross. Each larger than I and each given the right of way. Wakes come and I learn to meet them head on, the water rising before me, above me, under me, behind me, before me.

I am delighted to find myself not becoming seasick.

From upriver, sliding toward me, is a barge. Perhaps this is coming from Cape Canaveral. From the distance it appears massive and grows as it approaches. I backpaddle.

I had not thought of backpaddling before. I imagine it is the same as paddling frontward but just the opposite direction and, of course, the kayak stops. I drift as the barge is pushed south toward me, Sebastian Inlet and the ocean.

Drifting. This kayak is tiny, even by kayak standards. It is small and cheap. Nine feet and four inches. A kayak to sit in, float in, paddle in but not race in.

I bought it for one hundred and forty dollars. A few years old, it sold for about three hundred new. Bottom end.

Stable. Very stable. I needed that. It isn’t long so it won’t be spun much by the wind. But it also takes work to keep it going where I want it to. It does not track well.

Track. That is a word I learned recently while teaching myself about my little boat via Internet searches for explanatory material, tutorials, instructional videos and glossaries. Track means to go straight. This kayak doesn’t.

It tends to drift. Actually more what feels like a skid. If I paddle straight it goes straight, paddling one side, the other, the other, the other, with correction here or there. But if I stop or paddle a bit more strongly to one side, the skid is obvious and anything but minor.

And I don’t care. Paddling is exercise and all I wanted was to be out on the water.

I did try to find a skeg for it. That is another word I picked up recently. A skeg is a non-movable rudderish device to keep a kayak from skidding. It helps it track. Mine is, I discovered, not designed to take a skeg. The Ms. with the velvet voice told me so. No problem.

At times, when there is a current and I am paddling toward the dock or one side of a fork in the waterway, the kayak pointing slightly in the direction of the current, my head, facing the point I’m aiming for, the kayak moves slightly forward and slightly sideways, skidding in a way that tosses my senses a bit, my body facing in one direction while it moves in another.

What a kayak this size does have going for it, however, is more important than what it does not. It fits in my truck with no problem. I pick it up and carry it with no difficulties. From home to slip with no stress and all ease. It feels as stable as a floor and, at its size, I can turn with almost no space needed. It can nearly spin in place.

Spinning in place is what I’m doing now as I wait for the barge to pass. The closer it gets the more clear it is to me how thin lines between safety and danger are, between good sense and opening oneself up to the universe saying, “I’m here. You’ll take me if you want. It doesn’t matter. My stuff was part of the world before I was born, I did not come into the world, I grew from it, I am not separate from it and I shall go back into it when all is done. And now, I lay myself out on it, onto myself, and trust it will be OK.”

My small self, this small boat, the water beneath me, surrounding me, the barge. And, still a half-mile away, coffee.

*****
June, and I am ready to build a boat. School has been out two weeks and I have been two weeks gainfully unemployed. As planned, it is time for a short trip south and my first writing assignment since leaving college. And this one should prove much more satisfying. It should certainly be more fun. Time to build a kayak.

On an early Saturday morning, I head south in plenty of time to arrive by eleven-thirty and put in a full afternoon of building. It should take a few days I’m told. Four or five. Two weekends.

I arrive at eleven-thirty, as planned, knock on the door and find Valerie on the phone. Witney is not here. His car is not here. Where is he? On the other end of the phone. She hands it to me. Can I help him pick up something?

I don’t drive much in South Florida. Drive in and drive out. After I arrive in Broward County, I tend to get carted around. But there is building to do and that requires materials and I have a truck. That leaves me with the toting.

I assume we are going to pick up kayak parts. Raw materials for boat building. We are picking up wood; plywood, two by fours, posts. From Witney’s description of the materials, this is either a super-long or monstrously heavy kayak we are building and I ask, eager to learn, about his choice of materials. No kayak parts, these. This is wood for a table. There will be no kayak building today. We are building a table. I don’t know why we are building a table. Do tables float?

Katarina, the age-six daughter of Valerie and Witney, who spells her name with a “C” but which I stubbornly refuse to and replace with a “K” on the sole concept her name rhymes with Tsarina and, therefore, should be spelled appropriately, laughs. She knows why we are building a table and wants to tell me. I want to hear it from Witney.

The table is to build the kayak on.

One would have thought this might have been done before, but I do want to chronicle the entire experience of building, start to finish, so, sure, why not.

The plan was to build the boat using common woodworking tools one might find in a home workshop. Well, the plan was, originally, to get into a kayak first and see if it worked for me, but I’m not mentioning that. Now, instead, we’re talking old-time carpentry. No production tools. No professional woodworking shop with specialized devices. A home-build at home, in a yard, using what Witney had called “primitive” tools. On this he was adamant.

But he was adamant about this at eleven-thirty the previous night. He was adamant about this in a conversation with Valerie, not me. I knew nothing about this. And so, at eleven-thirty the previous night he decided at eleven-thirty today we would be building a table.

“Where do I meet you?”

I am given directions and five minutes later I am back in the truck, in Ft. Lauderdale, Valerie beside me to ensure I don’t become hopelessly lost.

I just missed Tina, she tells me. She had come over to give her Valerie’s other daughter, now eighteen, a driving lesson. Valerie still attends the church, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ft. Lauderdale, where, over most of the last decade, she and Witney were well known. Witney has not been there in over three years. He was, at one point, a Sunday school teacher in the teen program. So was I. I frequently return for guest appearance, readings, to take part in poetry workshops or services. I am greeted warmly, joyfully each time. Returning to the UU, for Witney, would be a much less welcoming event. Tina, complicit in Witney’s lack of welcomed status, was in the teen program as well. But not as a teacher.

Tina is now twenty.

Just before we arrive at the woodshop Val receives a call from Witney. No need to head to the woodshop after all. We’ll receive another call, with a new timeframe, in five minutes. In my bones, I feel the doubt growing. The look on Val’s face tells me I should have known better. We head back to her house.

A third call. A third-person, intermediary, go-between conversation about timing with me the only person not on a phone. The table is to have one straight edge and, apparently, this must be built at the woodshop. It is to be built first, then an edge cut of to make it straight, then transported to his mom’s house. I am to tote the table. We will then start the building.

He says he wants to have this done before, “but,” he says through Val, “you know how things go. With Witney, yes I do and all too well. I have attempted projects before with him – overly bright, overly eager, underly reliable with no developed sense of time. Do not wait for him to start ordering dinner.

He’ll call, yet again, in a few minutes and let us know when to meet him there. I don’t expect that call anytime soon. My day, suddenly, is much more open.

I was hopeful. I’m not sure why. The angels of my better nature must have been having a particularly good day.

A few minutes prior, before Witney called, I spoke with my parents. Certainly, there is time for lunch. No, there is no rush. Yes, I have plans. No, there is plenty of time. Trust me, there is absolutely no rush.

I am free until eight tonight when I’m giving a reading at the Chocolate Moose in Davie, twenty-five traffic-free minutes from her house. When we had woodworking plans, Valerie has asked we get home by seven, thus giving us enough time to shower, eat and get to the venue. My sense of logic is sure I heard the suggested time incorrectly but my experience tell me I heard what I heard. This would account for Valerie’s unparalleled ability to be late to her own parties. I suggest six would make much more sense. At least it does to me. We’ll see where exactly between those times we end up.

I am waiting for my parents to arrive for lunch. The plan was for them, already out of the house, to meet me at Val’s and for us to drive the few further blocks to Lester’s, a large chrome and brilliant white diner. An hour passes. More. More still as my blood sugar hits a Black Friday low and they arrive. As I head out the door Val suggests a title for this book, for this day: How Long Will it Take?

Once in, once my mother, in her wheelchair, is trundled into the open, external elevator to rise in the world the height of one short flight of stairs, once we have fought the crowds, we find a seat with sufficient room and look through the menu. I find little here sufficiently healthy, succulent or intriguing to draw my interest and resign myself to something I am sure is going to kill me. I watch my parents eat things which I am sure will kill them as well. Another hour passes. Another. We leave and I find myself back at Valerie’s at about three-thirty. I have one thought at this moment: Witney is going to pay for this. He will pay and pay and pay. But, behind this, a voice reminds me I should have known better. I did know better and ill-advised hope to this moment led.

It is four-thirty. And then five. Five-eleven. The phone rings and it is Witney. He is calling Valerie’s phone, not mine, to ask for my schedule. She tells him I have plans this evening, at eight, and am expected to be reading at that time. It’s my stage for the night. I should be there.

Can we move a kayak-building table after? After? Eleven-thirty at night, through Fort Lauderdale, with a table in the back of my pick up? No. I shake my head. I enunciate as clearly as possible so Val, talking to Witney, still insisting on using an intermediary, can see me, clearly, decisively stating there is no way I will be toting a table of unknown size around unfamiliar streets on a Fort Lauderdale Saturday night. I say it loudly, so Witney can hear me.

All the while, phone crooked in her neck, Valerie is cooking and one brief scent makes the question of missing dinner to move the table now easily answered by Hell No. Val is cooking real food and I know, from this point on, I’m hers for the evening. I am being plied with food and all she wants in return is time, laughter and shared bottle of port. I don’t need to be waiting for something that won’t be happening when time with my friend is happening right now.

A truck goes by playing, in bells, a song I remember from my childhood and I know what it means: ice cream on wheels. I grab Katarina and we each get an Italian ice.
On the lid of the Italian ice, as I had hoped, as I remembered, I find a small wooden spoon. Wide at both ends, tapered in the middle – a shape very much a double kayak paddle – and I am thinking this is as close as I’m going to get to paddling anything anytime soon.

“I should have prioritized” is what he says when he walks, late, into the house. It is six-fifty three. Dinner is over. Let’s move the table, I suggest, recognizing the mistake as the words leave my lips.

We jump into my truck. It is an industrial area. Warehouses. Here is a clamp factory. There a sailmaker. Then, the nautical shop and the massive specialty production woodworking shop within. Seafarer Marine.

The shop is stacked high with posts and pillars. In vertical slats five feet high capped with horizontal slots, up to the ceiling, there is exotic wood after exotic wood in solid sheets and plywoods, varying thicknesses from veneer thin to inch thick. There are rolls of wood. Slats and pieces. Some of these in the most beautiful patterns, glorious colors and amazing grains I have ever seen and could never have imagined. Was my kayak to be made of these?

But we are here for a table and it is a few minutes after seven. I see none. No table here. I am leaning against a trough, about twelve feet long, three feet high and just as wide.
“Funny that,” Witney says. I found the table all on my own. The bed of my truck is barely six feet long.

Witney shows me around.

*****

“Four sheets of four millimeter okoumé.”

“And why don’t we get this from Home Depot?”

“Because they don’t have it.” He says this very mater of factly.

“And why not use plywood? Regular plywood?”

“You mean why not just use plywood from Home Depot?”

“Yup. What’s wrong with plywood?”

“Well, your Jo Average plywood you might get from Home Depot or your local lumber store that doesn’t specialize is made to pretty much stay flat and look pretty on both sides but it generally is not waterproof, which is not a huge concern for this because it is going to be covered with epoxy but it is not guaranteed to have totally filled cores. The cores are not guaranteed to be high quality.”

“So there are spaces inside? Sometimes voids or the plies don’t quite meet?”

“Right. There will often be a line where two pieces of the core material don’t meet when you bend the wood, because you make a kayak by forcing wood to bend in the shape of a kayak. You take a piece of plywood and force it to curve to follow the hull. What happens is you get a kink if you have a void in the core.”

“So the plywood this place has is of a different quality.”

“Right. Marine plywood. It is certified to a British standard called BS1088 that basically says it is going to be high quality faces, it’s going to be the same material faces and cores, not just whatever you happen to have laying around in the cores and the cores are going to be contiguous and free of voids.”

“You said something about Russian birch?”

“Yup. And wenge, an African hardwood with a gorgeous light relief in the grain.”

And the okoumé is actually a light mahogany? What about the clear fir?”

“Yes. A light mahogany. The clear fir is a dimensional lumber we are planning on cutting into long thin strips to make the sheer clamps out of. We’re also going to make the cockpit carlands, which are the cockpit equivalent of sheer clamps. They’re the part that goes between the visible combing and the deck and they’re up on the inside.”

“Now, what is this about the hatch you were saying? You asked about that and I have no idea how to answer.”

“Well, it is possible to fit a hatch in either the fore of aft deck or both, accessing the normally sealed off compartments fore and aft. On my larger Mill Creek two-person kayak I chose not to put hatches in because the deck is so pretty just the way it is. On my longer, thinner, single kayak, which has a much smaller cockpit area, there will be a hatch fore and aft. The aft cargo hatch will be quite large and the forward hatch will be of a moderate size.”

“What would you suggest for me?”

“Well, it all depends on its intended use. If it’s day trips, no. If it is limited over-nighting, no.”
“I don’t intend on taking it out over days at a time.”

“Then make it pretty.”

“OK, then there is room in the cockpit for a bottle of water and such?”

“Oh yes. Much. The cockpit is large enough for a camera, a bag, lunch. Use a dry bag. Those are usually made of PVC that has a roll-down top that clips back on itself and keeps things from getting wet.”

“Or a ziplock bag?”

“Notoriously unreliable. Get a drybag at any kayak store. Any outdoor store.”

“So you know this guy named Kayak Jeff and before you take a boat out you bring it to him for a blessing?”

“Well, not so much ‘a’ blessing as ‘his’ blessing.”

“And you brought your first one to him and he gave a blessing to your hull?”

“Well, in the most kayak way. Basically, I am building a slightly modified long skinny single. And he is a very experience kayaker who is also a certified instructor and he runs a kayak store called, appropriately, Kayak Jeff and he came over last night to my mom’s where all this is being built and looked over the shape of the hull and the curvature of the bottom and said ‘This is good.’ That’s the blessing.”

“So I want to know I’m not going to play twirly-games in the water.”

“Oh, this boat will spin very well.”

“Not on its longitudinal axis?”

No, on the vertical axis. As far as longitudinal… OK, if you have a center point and you try to rotate the point, it’s very easy. If you make that point low on the arm, center or not, and you try to rotate that arm, it’s very difficult. It has resistance to turning.

“You’re describing a fulcrum. I’m not sure how that applies to this. You’d think having a fulcrum would make turning easier.”

“Well, actually, I’m describing center of gravity. What I’m saying is if you put the friction at the ends of the arm, what you are effectively doing with a boat hull of this shape is your center of rotation is the center line of the boat. It is very low because you are sitting low in the hull. You are actually sitting on the lower hull. And the deeper the boat goes, up to a certain point, the greater its resistance to turning. Of course, once you go so low the entire boat is covered by water, there is no more resistance to turning.”

“But I wish to not cover the entire boat with water. I want to be clear on that. I don’t want to build a submarine.”

“Do not gain a lot of weight.”

*****

On Sunday the plan is to start early. How about eight? Eight isn’t too early to start building a kayak. That is the plan. I have it in my PDA.

Witney tells me he has a kayak class tomorrow. How to roll and recover. Tomorrow? The plan was to build a kayak. He signed up for this class three weeks ago. There is nothing I can say in the face of this temporal absurdity.

He knew. Never told me. I didn’t know, but, really, really, I should have known better.

The reading comes and goes. We stop for coffee on Las Olas, walk, talk, laugh and make up names for the kayak book. The Kayak that Almost Was. How Long Will It Take? Sunk: The Story of Not Building a Kayak. Building with Witney and Other Myths and Fancies.

It’s late and a two-hour ride home. I could stay overnight, but my own bed is so close and, despite Val’s objections and worry, I head north on I-95.

I should have known better.

*****

It is the last week in January. Plans again. Plans to travel to Ft. Lauderdale and build a kayak. Everything will be ready. For some reason, I am skeptical.

I am headed south on I-95 on this bright Friday afternoon. My phone rings and it is Witney. There is no wood. Specifically, no quarter-inch okoumé. None. Anywhere. Not in Florida. Not in the US.

I am not surprised. I am not upset. I am not worried. I tell him so. I don’t tell him I’m going to keep heading south anyway. I had made other plans. People to see, things to do. It’s Val’s birthday party. I’m having dinner with my daughter. At no point during this trip had I an illusion I was actually going to build a kayak. I don’t tell him this, of course. I also don’t tell him I have a kayak waiting for me at home. It’s orange. The dolphins seem to like it. I know I do.

And who wants to read about kayaks anyway?

 
3 Comments

Posted by on April 27, 2008 in Books, Nature, Writing

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Spent

12 Apr

Who wrote this? Well, Craig Smith, he of super human editing ability, says I did. My words.

“You wrote it,” he tells me. They are my words, true. But I was only responding to an email he wrote.

In the end, he suggested it should be a poem. I had not thought of that. He sent it to me. On his suggestion, and prior to receiving his version, I had written it as a poem as well.

His version, with three minor differences in line breaks and a word or two more, was exactly the same as mine.

Craig Smith wrote it.

Adam Byrn Tritt wrote it.

Maybe it was just laying there waiting.

Spent

One of my biggest fears is
I’m of no use.
Silly, perhaps,
but there you are.

I know one thing
for certain:
when we are done,
whether several lives or one,
what we leave is
what we have done with our hearts.

Fritz Perls said,
“I don’t want to be
saved,
I want to be
spent.”
Me too.
When I’m done,
I want to be
fully done
and have used what I could reach
of my heart.

So these days
fully half of what I do is done
so I can reach more
of my heart
so there is more to use.

 
2 Comments

Posted by on April 12, 2008 in philosophy, Poetry, Writing

 

Shaman’s Journey

24 Mar

I journeyed last night.

The shaman’s drum kept pounding and with
Each concussion wave
The candle flame died and was reborn.

Now full
Now slight
Gone but for a wisp
A remnant and now,
At once, a flame again
Bright bright
Ephemera
Bright bright
Ephemera
Bright bright

I was the flame
What a joy to burn and shine
I wisped into near non-existence
What a joy to disperse
As I evanesced
Coalesed,
Out and in to being.

It felt like dancing.

 
1 Comment

Posted by on March 24, 2008 in philosophy, Poetry, Writing

 

Little Girl, I am not a Cracker. (An occurrence at The Martin Luther King Rec Center, Gainesville, Florida, the year 2000)

21 Jan

Little Girl, I am not a Cracker. (An occurrence at The Martin Luther King Rec Center, Gainesville, Florida, the year 2000)

I am here, just like you,
a citizen of this state,
at a city pool.

My son is your age
and he plays here with his friends,
takes swimming lessons,
splashes in the same water with you.
And, yet, you are none the lighter for it
and he, no more dark.

How old are you, little girl?
Seven? Eight?
Who thought teaching you about Crackers
was a good idea?

There you were, with your friends,
And I, with my son,
passing by you, having just paid my fees
for his class,
and you talking to your friends,
pointing at us
saying how
You don’t like Crackers.
Never did like Crackers.

Little girl, I am not a Cracker.
My people were slaves, just like yours.
Go Down Moses, we sing at Passover.
Wade in the Water my favorite holiday song.

When my grandparents came here,
they were not white. They came from a ghetto,
moved to a ghetto. I can still hear them call me kike
like I’m in second grade.
Are you in second grade? What do they call you?

When Selma was marched upon,
My people were there.
We came from all over this nation
to beat back Jim Crow,
face the flame on the cross,
stare through the hoods.
Freedom Riders came
and in the obvious light of the Southern sun
we fought with you,
rode with you,
walked with you.
Our dead rotted in the summer swelter
just like yours.

Little girl, did you read
I Have a Dream?
I read it to my son.
Did your Mamma read it to you?

In Montgomery,
there is a memorial
to the many slain in the fight for civil rights.
Little girl, did you know there are Jews on that slab?
We lay next to you in memorial,
under the ground.

Little girl, I am not a Cracker.
Do not judge me by how I look.
I will try to do the same.

 
3 Comments

Posted by on January 21, 2008 in Culture, Family, History, Poetry, Social, Writing

 

Adamus on the Air

20 Sep

We shall be taking our blog to the air. Tuesday, 9/25 at 11:35 EST (8.35 PST)

Do you live in California? In Australia? Have a streaming Internet connection?

KZSB AM 1290. The program also airs in Santa Barbara, Goleta, Carpinteria, Ventura, Thousand Oaks and Los Angeles County.

In addition, the show is rebroadcast on KNRY AM 1240 in Monterey, Salinas, Santa Cruz and Pebble Beach; KNWZ-II AM 1270 in Palm Desert, Palm Springs, Indio and Rancho Mirage.

The program is delayed broadcast in Australia on 99.7 FM in Queensland and to another 30+ radio stations via ComRadSat.

You can listen on the Web as well.

Tune in on the radio or on the web.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on September 20, 2007 in Books, Social, Writing

 
← Older posts
Newer posts →