This happy breed of men, this little world!

No, patient reader, I do not speak of England; I speak of her Bard. I have realized today how much I miss Shakespeare being the axis mundi of my day. Today, the trailer for Richard II is released on Facebook, and more out of habit than genuine curiosity, I clicked it open. I cannot express the flood that overwhelms me! I have missed the absolute perfection of phrase, the underlying lyricism that flows through and balances those words, the well-loved, well-remembered cadences that do not require closed captions, the list goes on.

There was a time when I used to do  A Midsummer Night's Dream with students, in days of yore, when I taught Literature survey courses. I no longer do that, but when I did, I feared that my enthusiasm and excitement at the primary text would be misconstrued as an affectation or, worse, snobbery. So I'd like to take this space to establish that there is nothing snobbish about Shakespeare; there never was. He is the easiest to meet and own; the very humanism and poetry ensure this. If we learn to babble poems, lyrics, and rhymes before we can consciously string words in deliberate, coherent syntax, then nothing is easier than meeting Shakespeare. The best part of doing the Bard was how smoothly the students connected with him. What a joy that was!

Of course, my Literature courses now are more than wonderful, and they feed another starving part of me. I would never give them up at any cost (were I allowed to tally costs). And then again, doing Shakespeare can be a personal thing, an acquaintance that can be renewed as I sit here, away from students and classrooms. In fact, I would even argue for the value in meeting Shakespeare when one is not distracted by the concerns of the happy breed of men, this little world.

Before my child got too busy with her school work, I remember doing a lot of Shakespeare with her. We used to own quite a collection of plays, especially our favorite productions; we used to spend weekends, days, evenings, indulging in dream realities of Twelfth Night, arguing over which Shylock we preferred, delighting in Beatrice and Benedick's rapier exchanges, succumbing to helpless hilarity at the Rude Mechanicals' Pyramus & Thisbe, cursing out Petrucchio, and sighing at Juliet's hormone-driven decisions. Now that my child is at college, hours away, I haven't indulged in one of those sessions; it seems silly, like cooking for just oneself. What's more, our collection has burned with the house, so it also feels like an unnecessary plucking of a healing scab, which might do more harm in the long run.

However, today, I am also thinking of my father, with whom I associate my first memory of Shakespeare. I think of all the losses that my particular flesh has been heir to, and I realize that I owe the Bard much more than an association with people I miss. If it hadn't been for The Tempest, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, I would never have dared to walk upon these golden sands when I first moved here. If it hadn't been for Richard III, King Lear and Hamlet, I could not have survived any of my losses. If it hadn't been for Winter's Tale and Cymbeline, I would never have learned of the comfort that comes with losing and regaining oneself. My understanding of a large part of European history I owe to the History plays.

This morning, my good friend and I attended a training session for literacy tutors, a volunteering opportunity we are considering. It shocks me that in spite of being in school, such a large percentage of children find reading a serious challenge. I am all the more grateful to the star (that twinkled, and under that was I born) for affording me this privilege and awareness of the magic that words can weave, so that the brief candle of my life is no walking shadow.

I am grateful for the Bard, whose words help me rise from a poor player that struts and frets her hour and let me stride this  narrow world like a Colossus. This post is a shout out to Shakespeare (please forgive the alliteration). So long lives this, and this gives life to thee!
 

Patronus!

Give me a ghost, a ghoul, a witch any day. Lonely evenings do not frighten me. Rats? Disgusting,yes, frightening? No. Spiders are fascinating, not frightening. There is only one being that elicits uncontrollable screaming from me, and that being is organic, mortal, and weighs a fraction of what I do; but the thought of this being on my hand is unbearable.

Fear amazes me. I realize that fear is the most primal feeling, undefinable as it is unmistakable; insubstantial like the wind, but solid like a typhoon. The world bows to it, yet it is often the axis mundi of our horizons, a compass. In fact, I have willingly circled my home with poisons, like spells, to keep away undesirable insects. One strong dream is enough to send me running around, checking bank balances, or shutting windows and doors, or plunge into boxes in quest of objects which MUST be found. I HATE to admit this, but Freud does have a point about fears defining who we become.

I see the cats learning, unlearning, and otherwise navigating fears as they step around with caution and deliberation, unwilling to explore terrain with hind legs, as they get used to sofas and shelves that form the landscape of my house.

My daughter, who is unafraid to speak her mind, can happily live on her own, and remains unfazed at prospect of harrowing journeys across time zones and date lines, even she holes up in the only place she feels safe, her room. If an unwelcome bug flies in the window, she believes that her closed door will keep it out. Likewise for all movie ghosts and ghouls that frighten her.

When I was young, I remember the best cure for all that frightened me: the voice of my father. I knew, then, that if I only called or screamed loud enough, he would speak, sometimes only a word, and the world would turn back to the recognizable familiar, everything in place, everything explained with a name.  Now, I have shlokas that calm whatever restlessness haunts.

I wonder, now, in times of fear, what my father's solace must have been. He often used to tell me to order myself to think of some happiness, plagued as I have always been with strong, concrete dreams. I suspect my father was not the only one to counsel their restless child thus; this might be the reason why the idea of a Patronus is so easily grasped!

My sincere gratitude goes out to my father for righting my topsy-turvy world with a mere word. I thank him for banishing and diminishing my fears, for giving my sword light in all manner of darknesses, for filling up  my dreams with the sound of his voice so they never bleed into my waking worlds.

Something scared me today, frightened me enough so I forgot myself momentarily, and behind a closed door, I ordered myself to hear my father's voice saying my name; I produced a corporeal Patronus and my Potterite readers will know what a big deal THAT is!

Happy Fathers' Day, Daddy!




 

Navigating the Tornado: CMS and Other Frustrations

This month has somehow taken wing and I stand here, on its exit threshold, not quite remembering how I got here. The first quarter of the year is past, my child's FAFSA updated, my CMS  (Classroom Management System) updated for next quarter that begins on Monday, and even my laundry is more or less done. So, of course, I worry about my work ethic, hopefully to re-examine the way I work, the hours I spend on it, and if I am doing too much or too little for the job that has defined my decade.

One can always argue that it is not possible to do too much: after all, this is the only job I have and the way I do it will define who I am in ways I cannot control. Do I love it? Yes, most days I honestly do. I don't love it so much on days like today, when I look back at my break week with frustration and defeat.

My patient reader would argue, of course, that all that frustration and defeat stem from within me, and that my job has little to do with it: after all, no one has mandated that I change the text book for the course no one asked me to create in the first place; no one has mandated that I construct individual, detailed rubrics for each assignment in each course; no one has suggested that my courses have insufficient assessment / evaluation tools, or that these tools need to be rephrased, re-constructed, or changed in any way. I also know that no one really likes change, and that these hours and days I have wasted on these updates are going to earn me dissatisfaction and frustration from the very people for whom I've made these changes, the students, who will not be able to use their friends' notes, books, and tests for this quarter.

I also know I am isolated in my struggle to manage and force my CMS into doing what I want it to; it resists! It seems that no one has the power to make it do my bidding, even though everyone wants it to. So I have spent most of this week constructing, breaking down, revising, adding, and subtracting the same elements repeatedly until my head is spinning and I've had to walk away to get a perspective. I have felt what the doomed Athenian youth must have felt as they blundered around the Minotaur's labyrinth, trying to get an idea about its structure and ending up lost, not knowing which way North lies.

Actually, most of this month has felt that way, like trying to navigate logically through a tornado. This week, I talked to a few people at work about our CMS and some other electronic resources available to faculty. I have been embarrassingly, foolishly enthusiastic about adding customized rubrics to my GradeMark, about the new databases our library is going to add later this year, about the new tools I am discovering, like the Prezi. I confess to waxing poetic about the wonderful free Google resources for educators.

I usually look for my compasses in the eyes of the people around me, to get  my bearings, to figure out if I am headed the right way or at least the way I want to go. But I have received mixed signals: half the people give me thumbs up and seem to cheer me on, promising to call me if they get lost; equal number of people have looked away, vowing to have little to do with me or my ways, shaking their heads over how lost I've allowed myself to become. A friend suggested that I should learn to curb my excitement a bit, for if I indulge it, I am likely to spend hours, days, weeks in learning about these resources, helping whoever wants my help and that to realise that I am not going to get paid for all those hours, days, and weeks. A respected, well-meaning colleague, only half in jest, showed me a pencil and asked me if I'd forgotten how to use it. I remain shell shocked and lost.

The form and idea of higher education are changing at Warp Speed. I realise that. I also understand that institutions like the one I am with presently might either not survive this change or might metamorphose into something completely different. So my enthusiasm and excitement do sound pointless and foolish, even to  myself. I stand here at the end of my break week, and I must confess to an undeniable strain of guilt and indulgence that run through my enjoyment in learning little things I didn't know before, things that are little more than clicks and links and a few taps on my keyboard, when everything is said and done.

A very good friend, one of the few people whose opinion I value highly, one of my Axis Mundi, wondered at my excitement at the saw that is cutting away the branch I perch upon. I feel unwarranted in pointing out that there would be no other way for me to fly, unless that comfortable branch were sawed off. Most probably, I will have to leave my body behind in this flight. So this post goes out as a hope and prayer that the skies are worth it, that the wings are strong enough, and that my eyes are keen and wise enough to absorb the views.

 

Fallow Season

This weekend has been one of the quieter ones, the kind of quiet imposed on the centers of storms, the kind that is needed to sustain, the mandatory opposite of action. I do understand the balance such days provide, the kind that force me to just sit still and wait.

Now I don't presume to evoke ghosts of Milton, where the waiting has some cosmic significance or divine directive. On the contrary, actually, this waiting has been forced on me because my constant worrying over trifles, the various, varying demands made upon my conscious mind, and the fast pace of our disjointed lives has caused a system failure of sorts in the primary circuitry of my being.

I have been primarily couch-bound for the past few days, weighed down by a fever and an exhaustion that looms by 2pm, and I have spent hours, supine beside my computer with stacks of ungraded work, surrounded by floors that need cleaning and a house that needs picking up. I have had to take many, many naps, each feeling like an infinite stretch of time, where the world outside the door shifts axis while I am held captive by whirlwinds of unresolvable worries that clutch me in their nightmare jaws.

I acknowledge the necessity of this fallow season. It reminds me of other fallow seasons which have changed my inner landscape irrefutably. The one that comes to mind is the long three weeks of enforced bed rest when I was on the brink of puberty. It was ages ago, from where I stand today, of course. But that was the season during which I realised that my true love was going to be, had always been the fictional word. My students today ask me when I had the time to read all the mythology and tales I teach and I know I have my fallow season to thank.  My inner self had used that season to adjust, fit, evaluate, and compensate for the being I was growing into, while the stories of the past ages whispered important input and sketched indelible patterns on the basic structure of the self as it moved towards a stable, crystallized form.

This fallow season is no exception. The difference is in the stories I am feeding this self. These are newer tales (though it is the same Story), woven in different hues and textures. On the one hand, I am going through the Puranas (the most ancient, contemporary, changing, iconoclastic of Hindu literature), and on the other hand, I watch all the television series that I never usually have the time to catch up on, as I nap. Squeezed between the cracks are the occassionals, like the books my book club is reading and the latest Umberto Eco I just stumbled upon at the public library.

I do not hope to have a firm grasp on why this season has been necessary, or what it is supposed to give my inner landscape. Those thoughts are nebulous and will wisp away if examined. All I know is that some sort of regeneration has been required. My house is being worked on (for the time being), my child is fluffing up her wings and checking her compasses to begin her first flight into adulthood, and even my usually clueless conscious self can clearly see that a stage of our lives is closing up.

Today is the first day that I have been able to stay up this late after 3pm, and I've had only one nap, so I know that the time for me to get up is very near. Unlike the end of the earlier fallow season, however, I do not find myself particularly looking forward to the new season that awaits around the bend; I am afraid I might not have the energy for it. These past months have, I fear, broken something in me, re-wired something essential. I am afraid I might be proven unable, lacking in whatever the new stage demands of me, that this fallow season might be sown in dry earth, incapable of bringing forth all that it used to.

I lie here, shivering, the napping cats my main heat source. I hope and pray that I find the new stage a recognizable setting, with familiar choices and realised hopes. I invoke the kind gods I read of to rudder and steer my ship; I invoke the stars to guide my compass; I invoke the fallow season to sow enough for me to recognize the axis mundi from mirages; I invoke the Story to map understandable directives; and I invoke the true horizon to steady my course.