FRENCH HORNS AND ENGLISH CLASS

"French Horn", oil, by Jia Tian Shi

This morning, just before school, I listened to several movements of a Mozart wind quintet, and the perfectly beautiful French horn solos started me thinking about the art of teaching. Here was this outsized, cumbersome instrument, one that is usually kept in the background of classical pieces, playing lovely melodies by itself, and playing them in an enthralling manner. As I listened, I thought of certain of my students, the ones who stay on the outskirts of discussions and seem to be only marginal members of the class. I wondered whether these reserved students had "music" inside them that I was missing -- whether they could perhaps “solo” as skillfully as this French horn. What this led me to was the realization, for the thousandth time, that all of my students have a secret, special brilliance, and it is my duty to draw it out. The quiet ones may not be able or willing to solo like the French horn, but at least I can let them know that I appreciate the irreplaceable loveliness they are able to lend to the class. In order to do this, though, I have to be truly attentive to them, and to listen carefully to their fleeting but beautiful thoughts. Like the French horn in the Mozart piece, these timid, retiring students have singular music to share.

SPECIAL CRAYONS

"Colorful Crayons", oil,
by Linda Apple

       Some days, I feel like my pockets are full of special crayons that can color the world in beautiful ways. Of course, it doesn’t really need coloring, for all things, even the smallest stick in the grass or the most short-lived cloud in the sky, shine with assorted hues of color, but sometimes it’s fun to feel like a kid again and color my days like they’re pages in a coloring book. Most days can be made to glow with colors, and I take pleasure in pretending that I’m the artist. I swish my crayons across hours of gray rain, and what I see then is hours of softness and freedom. I color a tedious meeting with various shades, and suddenly there’s something stirring in the words we speak. I use “sky blue” and “melon” on some strenuous duties, and step back and see the secret rewards in them. It sometimes takes just a second to swipe some colors across a person or a situation and notice, however faint, something beautiful. It doesn’t always work, but in a world that often seems stained with sorrow and darkness, it’s worth a try.          

SUNSHINE AND WIND IN THE MIRROR

"Foothills Farmhouse", oil.
by Don Gray

     When I look in the mirror, I don’t see sunshine and wind, and yet, in a sense, that’s what’s there. The atoms that swirl in sunshine and wind are the same ones that shape my bones and blood. The atoms in my bloodstream were made as many billions of years ago as those in the sun I see rising outside my house this morning, and the timeless winds are no older than the calcium I carry inside me. I am an inseparable piece of the single, immeasurable universe, as are sunshine and wind. We mix and mingle as surely as the breezes across our yards, as surely as the seamless rays of sunshine. The separate person I seem to see in the mirror is no more separate than one swirl of the wind is from another, or one shaft of sunlight is from another. We shine and swirl together, sunshine and wind and I.

THERE IS A RIVER

"Enchanted River Canyon", oil,
by Laurel Daniel

 When my students, like most of us, occasionally fall into dismay and discouragement, I always hope they will soon be able to see the river of good thoughts that’s constantly flowing inside them. There is, indeed, a river there, and in all of us, and it has more rousing and optimistic ideas than we could ever count. It flows from somewhere or nowhere in its relentless manner, and the only way we don’t notice it is by turning away and noticing the pessimistic river instead – a steady and persuasive one, for sure. It’s easy for kids, in their sometimes frenzied and snarled lives, to be spellbound by the flow of downright depressing news and thoughts that pour past them, which is probably why I try to select books to read in class that will bring a brighter view. I don’t mean that I avoid books that show the certainty of sorrow in human life, just that I look for books that also show the strength and inspiration that can come with, and even be created by, the sorrow. There is a river I love in great books – a river that carries light for the darkness and quiet confidence for the future – and those are the books that can be the creators of new life for young students, bringing a stream of stirring ideas that any teenager can make use of. Those are the books, too, that can turn the students back to the good river of hopeful thoughts that’s always with us all, if we could only turn and see it.

THE TIME HAS COME

"Yellow Apple with Alarm Clock"
oil, by Hall Groat II

I have often heard the phrase, “the time has come”, and more and more it seems like a significant truth to me. The time, after all, has always come. The present moment has always been all there really is, has always been splendidly arriving with flags flying. It’s like the entrance of a procession, or a powerful person, or a stunning sunrise, each and every moment. It’s like a band beginning to play a stirring song, every single second. If I’m sitting at my desk typing, or talking to my wife while spring winds are shifting in the trees, or if I’m simply sitting outside in the generous sunshine, the time has come. Every second, I should hear an orchestra starting up with a symphony, should shout like someone who just received the greatest news, for the time has truly come. 

WATCHING MY STEP

"Spring Nest", pastel,
by Karen Margulis

     “Watch your step” would be a useful slogan for me these days. I especially like the word “watch”, because it suggests the kind of completely committed awareness I want to foster in myself – an awareness that sometimes, sadly, seems absent in me for hours and days at a time. I want to be constantly on the alert, attentive as much as possible to the nuances of this peculiar and beguiling life I’m living. I want to watch what’s happening as carefully as a sharp-eyed sailor watches from the deck. This is a demanding mission for me, since an almost youthful heedlessness still, at 71, seems more prevalent in me than awareness. I still sometimes see in myself the rash impetuosity of my teenage years. I seem to come panting into a new day, dash through it, and then rush into sleep at the end, hoping that a few hours rest will help me race even faster tomorrow. It’s a swift and hassled world we live in, hardly the kind of environment to encourage “watching your step”, but I want to give it a good try. Instead of simply glancing at the gifts spring is giving us along the roads these days, I want to occasionally stop and study them; instead of a quick look, I want a long look; instead of just shooting past the songs of birds on my bicycle, I want to pause and truly listen, to sometimes let the bike come to a silent stop among their brave new songs. 
 

RISING

"Beach Sunrise", oil, by Sharon Schock

I rise early each morning, and it’s nice to know that other risings are also occurring, and are constantly occurring. As I type these words, my fingers rise above the right computer keys, and my chest rises each second as my lungs lift to let new life into my body. The grass in yards these flourishing spring days rises slightly higher almost by the hour, and flowers stand a little taller each morning. Even the tallest trees are slowly stretching higher this morning as I sit at my desk, and of course the sun, or so it will seem, will soon ascend and cause new light to lift up around me, somewhat like the surprising thoughts that sometimes slowly rise inside me.

I stood up a few seconds ago just to stretch, but maybe it was to show respect and praise for this life that leaps up, almost always, all around.

WITH EACH OTHER

"Italy Walk", acrylic,
by John K. Harrell

       It’s strange that most of us see ourselves, at least sometimes, as basically separate and alone in this life – strange, because togetherness is perhaps the most fundamental force in the universe. We can’t be alone, even if we wanted to, for all of life is linked in innumerable and unbreakable ways. To take a simple example, when I see people passing by on the street, they live, if briefly, inside me, in my eyesight and my thoughts. They have their own private lives, but those lives are linked to mine as I carry them, for a few seconds, inside me. We are, in a sense, side by side in our lives as we pass along the street. We share this world in special but unseen ways – by breathing the same air as we pass, by seeing the same sunlight and feeling the same air flowing past us, by placing our feet down on the same spinning planet as we walk. Even our feelings are shared among us, for who can keep a feeling from flowing out to everyone? A feeling, be it love or loneliness, cannot be kept inside us like locked boxes, since all feelings flow among all people like the sea among the dwellers in the sea. If I’m sad, I’m simply sharing in the sadness of the world, and any happiness that happens to pass through me is the same happiness that lifts up lives in Indonesia and Indianapolis. We dwell in endless alliances, whether we like it or not. We are comrades and collaborators, created by the same extraordinary universe and seeking, side by side, the same happiness that heals us all.        

EVERYDAY BALLET

"Pointe Shoe", oil,
by Oriana Kacicek

     My wife and her son, Aaron, and I saw a stunning performance by the Boston Ballet yesterday, and it reminded me, as we rode home on the train, that beautiful ballets are continuously being danced all around us. It’s strange that I so often miss this marvelous fact – that dance-like harmonies of the highest order are all around us, always. Closest to home, there’s the graceful symmetry of our bodies – our balanced limbs and organs, as well as the flawless steadiness of the passing of blood through our veins and arteries. There’s the graceful twirl of tree limbs in winds, the spins that sparrows show off as they search for food, and the stylish skips and leaps of squirrels. Even the slow fall of old spring blossoms to the grass these days seems to be done with poise and precision, as we saw yesterday while walking in a park in Boston with floating white dogwood petals pirouetting in the air around us. Ballet at the theater is a blessing, but no more so than the skillful dancing of the everyday world.

A SEA, NOT A STORY

'Sea Cloud", oil.
by Oriana Kacicek

I got to thinking today that the cause of most of my problems lies in thinking that my life is a “story”. Without realizing it, I have spent most of my days deeply engrossed in “the story of Hamilton Salsich”. In this story, as in most works of fiction, there’s a protagonist – me – who is faced with an antagonist – in this case, the rest of the universe. As in a good story, there’s a plot (me against the universe) that involves a goal the main character (me) has set for himself – being as personally happy as possible. There’s a beginning to this story (my birth), a lot of rising action (all the battles I’ve fought with the innumerable manifestations of my antagonist, the universe), and certainly there will be a climax, although I seem to have already experienced countless numbers of them. And, of course, as with any story, there will be an end – my death. It’s been an exciting story, I guess, full of thrills and spills, but the truth is ...I’m tired of it, and it’s all make-believe anyway. The story of Hamilton Salsich is a complete fiction, because in this universe, there are no stories, at least no separate ones. The universe, as its name implies, is one whole unified story, wherein all the characters and scenes and actions mingle together in seamless unity. In fact, the universe can’t be a story at all, because there are no separate protagonists and antagonists. There’s just one vast creation blending and intermingling and fusing in endless harmonious patterns. As a story, in truth, our universe would be a flat failure: no plot, no rising action, no climax, no end. Rather than a story, a good metaphor for the cosmos would be a sea, one with no shores whatsoever. The entity called “Hamilton” is simply a wave in an endless sea of creation – a sea in which all waves are equally important, a sea which exhibits continual and innumerable harmonies rather than artificial “dramas” and “plots”. When did “I” begin as a wave in this universe? Who could ever tell? When will “I” end? Never – at least not until the sea does. I’ll change, yes, (and death will be one of those changes) just as the waves in the ocean are always changing – but somehow, someway, I’ll always be a part of this astonishing, nonfictional existence which we call the universe.

LIGHTHEARTED LIVING

"Big Sky", oil,  by Jason Tako

     Living in a light-hearted way would be a good goal for me. To have a heart – an inner spirit, a manner, a mind-set – as light as the spring winds that wander among my wife’s unfolding flowers these days would be something special. There’s too much heaviness in the world – too many burdens brought on by our countless cares and concerns – and I want to lessen the weight. I want to lay my load down and dance a little. I want to learn from the lightness that’s all around me – from the sunlight that always floats and never forces or pushes, from the breezes that seem as carefree as hopeful thoughts, from the occasional single clouds that hover above us as if they’re satisfied with the way things are. 

     There’s bending under burdens, and then there’s sailing with buoyancy and good spirits – and I now choose the latter.         

     

SO FAR, SO GOOD

Over the last several decades, the old pedagogical practice of praising students has been severely disparaged in articles and books, but I must confess to still being fairly enthusiastic about it. I think my students, as individual persons, deserve to be praised – all the time. Certainly their actions sometimes deserve criticism, but their inner lives – their hearts and souls, you might say -- always deserve praise. In the most fundamental ways, they are good people – now, tomorrow, and forever. At every moment of every class, I could say to each of the students, “so far, so good”, because at that moment, as far as they’ve come on their life-long journey, they are so good, so just what they should be at that instant, so perfect for that particular split-second of time. They may not know how to use semicolons or what the symbolism of a James Joyce story means or how to always listen carefully when the teacher is speaking, but for that specific moment of their lives, they are, in their own special ways, just right. I guess what this suggests is that I don’t believe in the linear theory of learning and human development. I don’t believe my students will necessarily be smarter students or better people tomorrow, or next year, or twenty years from now. Wisdom and graciousness don’t grow gradually along a straight line. I know teenagers who, in very real ways, are just as gifted and good as 60-year-olds with advanced degrees. I suppose, when I think of the young people in my classes, instead of a straight line I think of a circle of an infinite size, and each student is always at the center. No matter how many days or years pass, no matter what the students do or how many books they read or how many courses they take, each of them will always, at each moment, be at the exact center of the universe – precisely where they should be. They will always have come so far, and be so good, and deserve so much praise.

SUDDEN YOUTHFULNESS

"Redbud Path", oil,
by Laurel Daniel

“As for the [old woman], she took on a sudden look of youth; you felt as if she promised a great future,
and was beginning, not ending …”

-- Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs 

     Every so often these days I have a feeling of sudden youthfulness, as if I’m 6 instead of 71, as if spring is just starting in me as well as in the trees beside our house. This feeling flows from somewhere I’m not familiar with, somewhere as far off, I guess, as the farthest stars, and I’m never sure when it will show up. Sometimes it starts when I’m eating something special and sensing, for some reason, how young the universe is and how young my love of life is. It might begin when I’m breathing hard on my bike on far-reaching roads on days that sing of cleanness and new starts. Sometimes it’s only a little feeling, but one that finds me just when I most need to feel fresh and unfenced, when I most need to notice the childish shine on my hands. Since, like all of us, I hold this kind of innocence inside me, all I need to do is see it as if I’m seeing the inside of a miracle, and let my life leap and flit around like the young thing it always truly is.

PASSION AND COMPOSURE

I am slowly becoming more skilled at working and resting at the same time, something I sometimes see in the outdoors. Trees, for instance, seem to be busily working when they sway in a strong wind, tossing their limbs in a spirited manner, but they also seem absolutely stress-free. Perhaps their secret is that they don’t resist, but simply settle back and let the wind do the work, allowing them to sway tirelessly for hours. I see a similar situation in the fall, when leaves offhandedly float to the ground in an effortless way and in a few days completely cover square miles of land with their colors.  This is an astonishing achievement, one that would take we humans a supreme effort, and yet the loose and untroubled leaves do it in an almost leisurely way. And of course there are snowfalls, perhaps the most restful of nature’s activities, with whole crews of snowflakes working in perfect peacefulness across the landscape. Within a few hours, a sovereign state of snow can set itself up across miles of fields and forests with a soft but irresistible sheet of white, and yet it does it in the quietest possible way. A snowstorm has a way of combining effort and restfulness, something I greatly admire. Perhaps my goal in life should be to live like snowflakes live, with both passion and composure.

WONDERS WORKING

"Springtime Awakening". pastel,
by Barbara Jaenicke

Driving through coastal Connecticut yesterday, my wife and I were impressed by the colors in the early leaves and blossoms on the trees. We both said we had never noticed so clearly the soft shades of trees in the first weeks of spring – the pastel pinks and crimsons and light grays and even subdued shades of white. The trees looked like sprays of the softest crayon colors – tall, smooth bouquets spread out along the roads. It was astonishing to me that never before in my 70-some springs had I noticed these understated nuances of color in the blossoming trees. I marveled at what I had missed, and I wondered, as I drove along, what other miracles had worked their wonders around me without my knowledge. What marvels had unfolded before me and I never noticed? And are they still happening constantly, like the sunlight that spreads around me every morning, and the air that effortlessly lifts my lungs, and the words that sometimes seem to write themselves when I’m writing?

SILENT UPON A PEAK

“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific – and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise –

Silent upon a peak in Darien.”

-- John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”

I’m always hoping to more often feel what “stout Cortez” and his men felt on that “peak in Darien”. Keats pictures them standing on a hill above the Pacific Ocean, staggered by the scene, and I would like to foster more of that kind of bewilderment and wonder in my life. Cortez and his men saw a startling sight, and every day – every moment – I am witness to scenes which, in their own special ways, should be almost as amazing. Hard as it is to remember during the sometimes wearisome routines of the day, the various circumstances that arise around me are as unique and mystifying as an indescribable ocean, and really, the only suitable response to them should be honest amazement. My small seacoast town is my “Darien”, and wherever I happen to be is the “peak” where I can look “with a wild surmise” at the picturesque inscrutability of life. A “surmise” is a guess, a supposition, a hunch, and that’s honestly all I have when it comes to understanding the things I see and experience. In the end, they’re all complete conundrums to me. If you ask me to make clear the mystery of even the simplest circumstance – the look of lamplight on a table, the sound of a car coming past the house, the whole sky shining at 7:00 a.m. -- all I could do is make a hit-or-miss guess, a “wild surmise”. A better response might be to just stay respectfully silent, like the astonished explorer and his men.

LUCKLY LEARNER

"Stream, Trees, House",
oil, by Tom Brown

It’s always a special pleasure to attend a “workshop” of some sort – a chance to dust off some skills or discover new ones – but no structured workshop is any better than the unrehearsed seminars presented to me day by day. It’s as if all the hours and minutes are my teachers, and each separate experience creates the classroom. A quiet moment as I make my breakfast could bring new knowledge to brighten my life, and a short walk with my wife around her prospering spring gardens could give us both a better understanding of ourselves. Even setting out my clothes for the coming day, or shifting my chair as I choose what words to type next, or driving my car in the daylight of a new morning, or simply standing in a store beside bins of apples and pears, can provide opportunities for fresh insights. Teachers are teaching everywhere. The tree that towers over our house holds knowledge I probably need in some way, and people I pass today could tell me stories more instructive and inspiring than textbooks. I’m a lucky learner in a classroom with no walls.   

RUSH RENEWALS

""Spring Renewal", oil,
by Kit Hevron Mahoney

   I sometimes receive renewal notices from magazines, and occasionally the word “RUSH” stands out on the notice, sometimes reminding me that other kinds of renewals are always rushing towards me. Actually, the entire universe is constantly renewing itself, whether I send back notices or not. Each second is a fresh and unsullied one, sent from the center of the universe straight to me and to each of us. Every moment is new- made, ultra-modern, and in mint condition. The little lamp on my desk has never sat just the way it is sitting now, and the stars spread across the sky are shining in slightly new ways from yesterday, and from ten seconds ago. I’m a new, state-of-the-art 71-year-old every moment, and all of our lives, and all stars and streets and mountains and atoms in the air, are -- lucky for us -- on automatic renewal.