Visiting Puerto Rico Via The Bronx : "Can't Stop La Musica"

Narratively, the gorgeous forum which tells one story each day sharing a weekly theme, published my narrative as part of the week "The Bronx Is Not Burning." It certainly is not, but the community at La Casita in the Melrose neighborhood - a place where the music of plena travels between generations - remembers when it was.

The story is accompanied by recordings of plenero Jose Rivera and photography of the people & place that form a unique familia, both by Narratively's director of multimedia

Everyone I spent time with for the piece was incredibly generous in letting me be present in their day, sharing their stories, their pasts, and their traditions.

As writers, we are usually drawn to similar themes, expressed uniquely. This is a narrative of home, and it was an opportunity to explore my self-described genre, the biography of place.

Have a look, listen and read: Can't Stop La Musica

Yours,
CMMOB.

Here's a pull-quote that Narratively shared on their Facebook page, which I recommend you LIKE to follow all of the Bronx week stories.

"Despite the turbulence, segregation and violence associated with the area, Tito speaks fondly of his early days here. 'You’d dance,” he says. “Nobody would fight when they’d play the Temptations, Gladys Knight.'" Today, Narratively reminds you through photos, sounds & text that you "Can't Stop La Musica."

The Letter As A Genre: My Guest Blog at Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly let me muse on letters as a genre on their PWxyz blog  - did you know Amazon classifies letter collections in a category that's a subset of essays?


Here's the piece, in which I also ask biographer extraordinaire Patricia O'Toole why people read letter collections and what drew her to them as an aspiring writer. Check out my list of some noteworthy collections published in 2013. I'd love to know your thoughts!

Writing as Kenotic Experience: My Interview for The Fine Delight

Prolific writer Nicholas Ripatrazone, author of The Fine Delight: Postconciliar Catholic Literature, interviewed me for his series of conversations with writers whose work resonates with Catholicism. The interviews are a companion project to the book and include a broad spectrum of writers.

It's a privilege to have a reader give such careful attention to my words and ideas. I learned a lot by being asked these questions and in the process of responding to them.  

Here's the intro: 

"Pleased to share this wide-ranging interview with the thoughtful nonfiction writer, Cynthia-Marie O’Brien. Our subjects include methods of prayer (considering the writing act as a kenotic experience), construction of truth, how to write an essay is “to try” rather than to complete, the ability to ask questions without expecting answers, literary forms, and her new work. Her bio note follows this interview, and includes links to her great essays and articles."

Have a look: Cynthia-Marie Marmo O'Brien

An Instep to Someone Else's Heel

There's a wonderful meditation on the endless question of home, which is always worth answering anew, by this poet, scholar and friend. 


Because I want reading to be as sensory an experience as possible, I hope the video clip will help you hear his voice as you move through his words grappling with this topic.

I'm happy that my draft board became part of a conversation, and that I can pass it on. That's why we do this thing called writing after all, isn't it? In college, I had a phenomenal professor with the appropriate moniker Professor Bueno.  He was good in every way a human being can be, and it was his course on "Literature of Social Protest" that helped me understand the act of writing to break the solitude (romper la soledad) is a political act of solidarity, rather than a selfish impulse. 

Orhan Pamuk explains this well, "By nature all good novels are political because identifying with the other is political."

No matter where I live physically, I always enjoy Adele's "Hometown Glory" because her chorus about memories from her hometown being fresh continues by saying,

   Oh, the people I've met.

Those people are my most continuous hometown, the one I build that will exist on this earth for about the same amount of time I will.

If you are new to this blog and curious about the theme, check out the post Where I Was From, over to your right.

-CMMOB, June 25, 2013.

The People I've Met Are the Wonders of the My World

Why A Precious Resource Must Be A Collective Inheritance: Thoughts on "The Decline and Fall of the English Major", NY Times, June 22, 2013

        The Decline and Fall of The English Major 

               This is an op-ed I would have agreed with unquestionably before I began working in writing centers five years ago. It provides interesting statistics on the numerical decrease in English majors. My heart did sink that only 62 students at Yale studied English. My undergraduate major was not only English; it was Creative Writing. For the most part, the ideas expressed here resonate with my experiences teaching undergraduate and graduate students. What I want to offer is a possible step forward to reverse the larger trends the op-ed identifies, one that the title and the framing of the issue by English major numbers does not do justice.

                  I agree that not knowing how to engage with texts, to think, to 'write into the unknown' - to discover tension - is a weakness. But students don't have to do this via the 'humanities' alone, as staunch a supporter I am of those. They can do this as scientists, economists, businessmen if they learn to write, to think. And the place of writing should be in every department. It is the engine of all knowledge, as it is the public manifestation of thought. The greatest obstacle is that academia has been slow to understand writing is a craft and discipline. Professors without training in it often give unproductive feedback to students: feedback that does engage with the student's project or attempt to grasp at what aspect of humanity is being wrestled with. These professors never learned to write, either, despite being subject experts. The texts students have to read to learn subject matter are often poorly written, bad models that students try to emulate, repositories of information absent of the questions we consider the terrain of 'humanities', vehicles that do not move thought. 

              Into this world, enter the Writing Center. The way I have seen students of non-humanities independently realign their writing to extend meanings, after interacting as readers and writers with other students outside their discipline, is astonishing. It gives me hope that the next generation of knowledge creators know& value their work explores the meaning of life, too - or can if they frame it so, if they think about its ramifications, a process writing facilitates. 
                    
                Literature, we have seen science prove, does make us more empathetic. But we don't all have to be English majors to be good people. The fact scientists conducted this study shows they have a capacity for forming clear, profound studies. And there can be a difference between the study of literature's content and the study of rhetoric. My reaction to this essay is one of deep appreciation for its valid fears, but also a desire not to place other disciplines as marginal explorations of humanity. There's a danger in that, too. I know they don't have to be, because my students have taught me that. 

                  Why didn't I know this earlier, in the deep-in-my-bones conviction sense I do know as a professional who engages in the study of how people learn to write, despite the best education anyone could buy?  I suspect it is because my college allowed us to 'place out' of the first-year writing course based on test scores. I have no idea of the work that happened in that course, and this creates a separation on campus, a false idea that technical skills of some high schools represents a level of development as writers as agents of their ideas that few high school students have. It's a process that all college students should engage in together, as the only way to participate in a conversation is to be confident enough to speak up. That's a simple way to describe what you might miss by not having a writing course for all students - where engineering students are next to future poets. This is process of standing on the shore and pondering humanity that Verlyn Klinkenborg describes as the purpose of humanities. Isn't that pondering - leading to action in thought or deed - what the purpose of all disciplines should be? After all, we are the ones studying. Any topic we study is necessarily concerned with our methods for conceiving of it, or should be.

                 Klinkenborg says

               What many undergraduates do not know — and what so many of their professors have been unable to tell them — is how valuable the most fundamental gift of the humanities will turn out to be. That gift is clear thinking, clear writing and a lifelong engagement with literature.

           Yes. What I'd argue is many professors have been unable to transfer to students the mechanisms of clear thinking and writing that lead one to a lifelong engagement with literature. But I don't mean this in the sense he does  - literary. Rather, what I would seek is for students to develop a lifelong engagement with deep writing about ideas, literary or not. I would expand the definition of 'literature' and use it in the sense that scholars in the 'non-humanities' do when they write the literature reviews in their work. In these sections, they explore what other thinkers have said, asked or concluded about the topic the student is now approaching. Inquiry: this is the gift we need to give students. I am not convinced it must come from literature. I find myself shocked to write this, as I do believe literature is how we learn about what we do not experience ourselves. But I am convinced literature is the body of written knowledge humanity produces, whether it be a study of economic principles or of themes in poetry. 

         And here's where Klinkenborg's essay falls apart for me, or where I diverge most firmly.

Writing well used to be a fundamental principle of the humanities, as essential as the knowledge of mathematics and statistics in the sciences. But writing well isn’t merely a utilitarian skill. It is about developing a rational grace and energy in your conversation with the world around you. No one has found a way to put a dollar sign on this kind of literacy, and I doubt anyone ever will. But everyone who possesses it — no matter how or when it was acquired — knows that it is a rare and precious inheritance.

     Writing well has not always been a fundamental principle of the humanities if we define it as clarity. Have a look at the assignments students in the humanities  close-read multiple times to understand what the professor wants them to do. These assignments are written by some extremely bright individuals, widely published in the humanities. But can they form a cogent explanation of a writing task? Not always. Let's move to the next clause of that quote's first sentence. Writing well must become a fundamental principle for mathematicians and scientists. How else will the 'humanities' folks be able to realize the value of what these disciplines do? Maybe Klinkenborg is suggesting everyone should have "rational grace and energy in ... conversation with the world." 

            But why the emphasis on declining numbers of majors? Spending one's entire academic career in English is not how to acquire this ability, and must not be limited to humanities. Rather, we have to recognize that the technical aspects of writing are partg our thinking. And this must be taught as writing, ideally in writing courses and in every course. The subject can be economics. The subject can be business. If we approach the non-humanities and introduce all students entering them as people who are also standing on the coastline, looking at human existence, we will do much to alleviate the false dichotomy between a major that casts you as someone who has no soul, and one that casts you as someone who has no practical concerns or desires for an income. 

     No one has found a way to put a dollar sign on the literacy in this article because it is understood as a inheritance that is rare, reserved for one domain. It may be an inheritance, but it takes practice and time to acquire it. I don't think we can ever say we possess it: it is a constantly evolving skill, not a static object to hold or claim as complete. Only when we properly shift our thinking about where and how 'studying what it means to be human' can take place - through the ability to convey ideas in language - will the dollars to fund this start to flow. How far we have to go in doing this can be seen in how little our best universities invest in the very places were students go to engage deeply in engaging clearly with their ideas. 

    Inheritances that are shared are no less precious than if they are rare. Rather, they are even more valuable for their collective nature. This is what gives them power.

-CMMOB, 6/23/13
           

The Novelist Remains Essential In the Age of the fMRI: My Reflections on the Novel Cities of Refuge

The Rumpus has a feature called The Last Book I Loved, Inspired by that feature, here's my blog on just one book I've loved lately. The last book I loved would be hard to choose. Rebecca Miller's Jacob's Folly is astonishing, for another day. In keeping with my love of sharing literature that comes from beyond the US, I'm starting across the border in Canada. Here are some thoughts about Michael Helm's Cities of Refuge. They've rattled around my typewriter and mainstream press coverage this past week of how reading makes us better people - more empathetic - called this book to mind since it asks us to consider moral culpability of asylum seekers who have participated in violence as children or by force. Is moral culpability the same as legal culpability?  Some of my reflections on kaleidoscopic narration, how involuntary habits of the mind function as repression, and why the novelist remains essential even in the age of the fMRI. Home - who can live where and who can decide that, geographically and politically - figures prominently.

Cities of Refuge, Tin House Books, February 2013.

            Canadian Michael Helm is not yet included on American readers’ radar as a must-read author. Helm’s oeuvre will make a faster, much-deserved beeline to the top of reading piles in the United States via understanding his writing’s connection with Michael Ondaatje’s: someone we count as one of our standard-bearers, someone who has transcended any one nation’s claim and earned universal gravitas as a writer. 
             
              The two Michaels share more than first name and citizenship. Both are editors of Brick magazine, lauded by Chilean writer and human rights advocate Ariel Dorfman with an endorsement that rings true for Cities of Refuge: “so many adventuresome and courageous incursions and crossings of another sort... This is a brick that needs to be heaved right through the windows of every reading mind on the continent.” 
           
            Cities of Refuge, Helm’s third novel, was published in Canada in 2010. On its 2013 Tin House Books cover, the other Michael, of The English Patient renown, defines it: “powerful,” “intricate,” “heartbreaking.” These terms fit his peer’s accomplishments but mirror Ondaatje’s hallmarks of emotional impact and structural prowess, what enables plots that would crumble in a lesser architect’s plans to stand firm. Ondaatje isn't the only one intuiting a glimmer of his sensibility in Helm’s parallel, yet unique, literary endeavor. Both authors’ fiction has been nominated for some of Canada and the Commonwealth’s highest literary prizes. Ondaatje received the Giller Prize in 2000; Helm was nominated in 1997 for his debut novel. 
             
           With none of this symbiosis known, and only a cursory knowledge of hot topics in the United States - immigration reform, major shifts in ethnic and racial demographics - and in Latin America, where three elderly state architects of coordinated efforts to murder enemies of seven regimes in the 1980s went on trial close to the book’s release, the basic facts of Cities of Refuge could easily suggest news drives the author’s plot and is what makes his book urgent. One could imagine the setting, Toronto, is a stand-in for any number of places where the book’s population of illegal immigrants, marginal in characterization but central in concept, might seek new lives. Both of these assumptions would underestimate Helm as an artist who consistently engages with similar themes of responsibility, searches shadowed by portending deaths and obsessions with unknown figures and whose language to describe them is a master class in lyricism of the real. 
              
            The book can be intimate with Toronto’s social and physical geography because the city was Helm’s home for almost twenty years. But Helm doesn't write about Toronto simply because he lived there. Like the other Michael, his material serves evolving questions. It situates what he knows in tension with history, specific enough to fit a character, universal enough to resonate for any reader. It is a dangerous exercise in non-fiction to assume one know’s another motives. Certainly there may be a timely reason asylum policy bubbles in his novel, or Helm could have a political stake, a policy agenda for addressing these issues. Late this spring, Toronto became a ‘sanctuary city’ for undocumented workers by announcing its services would not ask those seeking help about their legal status. 
              
             As readers, we are rewarded by the longer view of fiction: what the text can do for us today and ten years from now. This text is of multiple views. Helm, in the Toronto Star, describes it as about “different kinds of belief.” There is no omniscient narrator to guide us, only a swirl of characters deciphering situations, working from different facts and values, sometimes with incorrect assumptions these are shared. Clarity and doubt compete over memory’s accuracy and the righteousness of courses of action; identity construction dominates an epic of unknowing. Truth, transparency and trust - the search for and the lack thereof - are its underpinnings. “Certain events are not time-bound,” says its shifting narrative voice. 

   Timelessness can imprison us by preventing resolution.                

             Helm moves between continents and decades, but his characters only do this in their memories; there, his most exciting work happens. The two characters on the opposite end of the belief spectrum ostensibly share a singular event as the axis around which their other thoughts move. The event is a physical attack on daughter Kim, who volunteers helping immigrants create false documents so they can build new lives, truths, on lies meant to keep them safe. This is our first encounter with appropriating others’ truths - stories copied from real testimonies - for ‘good’ purposes. But where it is transparent that secrets must be kept, trust is both necessary and lacking. The undocumented - “the world [which] gathers at our dumpsters” - are poor, fleeing lives in Africa and Latin America, specifically zones seething with violence where clients could be both victim and perpetrator. Two hundred languages are spoken in Toronto, a hub for those who are “in the world but not on the record. globally...the largest category [of people].” 

                  Helm’s preoccupation is with the wounds between those who love each other and are strangers to each other, between Kim and her father Harold, who is obsessed with finding his daughter’s attacker. The father-daughter duo’s conflicting efforts to recover after her assault lead to a deadly “physics of shame and regret.” Harold believes her involvement with ‘illegals’ must be why she was attacked. Kim, “batterer of authorities,” bridges official histories containing fact or truth but rarely both, and fictional histories, which become closest to truth. 

                 In a pivotal scene, Kim remembers spying on Harold crying on a balcony when the sun rose. Remembering, watching others in secret, emotions the watcher could not understand because of withheld or merely unknown information: Helms gives us all of this in a childhood memory. In this instant, we know Harold has repressed pain, but not the weight or source of it. Helm presents repression of many varieties: of desire, of knowledge, of responsibility ,of human rights. As “coups and revolutions don’t happen to nations, they happen to people. one by one,” repression doesn't happen only by policy forced upon societies. It happens to individuals through involuntary habits of the mind. The phrase “neurophysiology of trauma” appears when Kim seeks to understand that her attacker “had changed her brain and she needed to change it back.” 

                 Including evolving science is a valuable twist in the novel that seeps into how we consider real asylum seekers, such as young children, who witness violence. Is what they do later fate or science, without intervention? Some current neuroscience in this country seeks to connect criminal responsibility to brain chemistry, and the ramifications are tremendous. Kim senses “ [the attack] had been not a singular event but a kind of sounding within a slow pattern much older than she was.” The man Harold becomes obsessed with as Kim’s likely attacker defends an abused woman, but his familiarity with women’s scared faces speaks of acts he has committed that he cannot erase from memory. 

                 Our long sojourns with Harold and Kim’s thoughts give us explicit knowledge of their feelings about guilt and responsibility, feelings that arise later when the reader contemplates characters whose physical guilt in crimes might be definite, but whose moral guilt is murkier. Michael Gazzaniga, a pioneering cognitive neuroscience, argues against the grain of many peers that physical discoveries do not erode the existence of free will in 2011’s Who’s In Charge: Free Will and the Science of the Brain. His earlier works gave neuroscientists the green-light to openly discuss an issue they had previously tiptoed around: the relationship between physical processes in the brain and what legal systems have, for centuries, evaluated as moral in a separate vacuum disconnected from the body. Concepts of intent have come from a person’s statements and actions. Now that we understand the relationship between these and the chemistry behind those statements and actions, does the equation change? 

               Language, like chemistry, is not neutral; its betrayals render a commentary on asylum policies, labels bestowed on individuals, and our own tampering with memories, using one situation to stand in for another. Sometimes we read Harold thinking about Chile, and nod our heads thinking, yes, about the Toronto attack. The power to transcend silences with renderings of other sensations - honest indications of sentiment, of connection, of what one values and what places one interacts with - is visceral. A voice is “a physical thing borne upon the metaphysical, the resonant workings of breath and belief.” Readers visualize, hear and even smell characters. 

              The wounds that Helm is exploring are not surface wounds to one’s leg; they are wounds to one’s emotional capacities, to what some would term one’s legal culpability; to one’s wholeness. Harold demands to know if the book’s ‘true believer’ thinks “he and I and all your undocumented semi literate bloodstained young monsters” are the same. His desperate question is, are we all the same? How? Why? The novelist remains essential in the age of fMRI, insightful to policymakers, profound as the philosopher.

-CMMOB, June 2013

THE BOOK

Nothing Scares Me Anymore - But It Should: Voices our Generation

In my home culture in the United States, we're living in a state of many anxieties and fears. There's even a  column in The New York Times devoted to a different contributor's anxiety on a regular basis. Fear and anxiety is especially well-documented among my generation, in our late twenties and early thirties. Many of the social contracts we grew up with seem to have evaporated; older generations either recognize this and document it, while issuing dire predictions about our prospects for "catching up" or generations discount this evidence and try to soothe us with cliches about "this too will pass" and "this is temporary."

I'm talking mostly about economic expectations: the idea of an upwardly mobile society, and that education secures this upward mobility. But beyond this, there are trends about wealth distribution and compensation that are systemic; some have been tracked by authors such as George Packer to 1980, the year before I was born. Others may have emerged over time from evolving philosophies about changes in how the private sector sees its responsibility to the public, but the data has just exploded into our consciousness in the aftermath of the Great Recession - a term I've only heard or seen used by scholars.

Many people outside of specific fields or industries aren't aware of the magnitude or irreversible nature of changes happening, unless they are seeking jobs in those industries. And that's why my generation embodies these fears and anxieties. We understand better than anyone else that much of what we were taught, and what our nation still represents around the world, no longer applies for many people here and now. We're caught between our mentors and parents, whose advice is well-meaning but sometimes as up-to-date as a VHS, and the experiences of our peers, which affirms our discouragement but makes us feel less alone, if we confide in each other. 

Last week, I went shopping with a friend who I admire for her professional and creative accomplishments. Neither of us has full-time work, and we both do things like bring our own snacks to coffee shops so we don't have to buy a muffin with our tea. We were walking through Union Square, en route to a discount outlet of a very pricey store. Looking the part - fronting - of economic success seems as important in achieving it as anything else. But it also keeps up a mirage, especially if you have a job, as I do, where the world should be able to safely assume I'm making far more than, if not at least, the equivalent of what one senator recently calculated would be the minimum wage if it kept pace with inflation.

I'm not - and I seldom talk about it. In fact, I actively concealed it for a long time. Why's that? Because the narrative is if you take steps X, Y, and Z, you end up with your house, car, vacations, whatever luxuries you like, the ability to give to charities you support - and you do this by age thirty or so.I did X,Y, Z and I was praised at every step of the way because I did them well. I didn't want to embarrass myself. But why do I assume this embarrassment? I am proud of the work that I do; the more I share a fact about my pay with individuals, the more a similar, woeful tale tumbles out.  Many of us do our work for very little money, because we know someone else is ready to fill our shoes, for what we make or even for free.

There's a political party whose message is that you've earned what you've achieved, and if you are poor, you are deficient in some way. If you haven't risen as high on the economic spectrum as your neighbor, you're less deserving. You're less qualified. You're in the lot in life that the free market has spun for you - and that's capitalism, and that's freedom. Well, they're wrong.

Nonetheless, our national narrative continues, led by our president, whoever he is, at the annual celebration of our greatness. The State of our Union is strong, the future will be better than the past, we will overcome our challenges and create a better world for our children. I'm not alone in feeling that this message always makes me feel warm, fuzzy, proud to be an American, but also strikes the wrong key of late. I'm interested in creating a better world for today's children, whether they are mine or not, and for today's adults, too. I don't want to fetishize children of tomorrow. I love children and have long imagined motherhood. But I can't predict if I'll be able to afford a child, or when that will be. First, I have to get my economic house in order. And, doing that can seem impossible when assuming debt was done because of a promise of future earnings that are not materializing. 

I am an optimist; I believe in the beauty of my dreams (like Eleanor Roosevelt) and I'm happy with the State of My Life. Things I'm not content with are largely beyond "my life": they're not the essence of me. They frustrate me, but not to the point that they outweigh how I feel when I wake up most mornings: excited to experience a day in which anything is possible.  

Many people who are not naturally optimistic are now trying to shift their thinking to become optimistic. How? They're doing it through cognitive behavior therapy, which emerged after the realization that our thoughts impact our actions. If we don't believe something will happen, it's less likely to, because we're less likely to take steps to make it occur. That's a simplification, but the general premise of this is also the reverse: you can impact what happens through your thoughts. This sounds like voodoo, but it does make sense. If you believe you'll succeed, you're more likely to keep trying. Positive thinking can even, I've been told, give off a positive glow that will make positive things happen. Now I'm starting to put on my skeptic hat.

Here's the problem. No amount of merely thinking positively and smiling that a system will change will alter it. No amount of telling myself I deserve a salary, or health benefits, is going to alter higher education so that 75% of courses are not taught by part-timers with neither salary nor health benefits. 

What does need to change is the amount of shame, and the amount of silence, in my generation. It's not polite to talk about money. We avoid mentioning to our friends who do have secure economic situations that if we come along to a certain restaurant, we'll have blown our budget for a month of socializing.  We don't share that our annual health insurance costs more than half of one job's yearly earnings. We don't like to admit we're borrowing money to live - accumulating more debt. We don't want to have to explain the choices we make to help us deny this situation. We're ashamed personally, when it's a system that bears responsibility. We're caught in this odd state of privilege, where we feel we have no right to state facts because it'd be a complaint. No right to criticize - or no idea who, if any one person, bears the blame. We're highly educated. We do what we love.

But attempts at comparative injustice or comparative degrees of suffering or pain can be a disservice to everyone. They encourage pity for "the weakest" - "the sickest" - in a way that dehumanizes and removes the agency of these individuals. Who falls into those categories?  Nobody wants pity. For every hardship in someone's life, there is likely something else they are fantastically proud of that defines them more so. I wrote about this years ago when the woman in the hospital bed next to me was gabbing on the phone behind the curtain separating us; she was going home, she was so relieved and she felt so lucky not to be HER. I was her; the young woman in the next bed. It was a shocking moment. I loved my life and could not imagine anyone being happy that they were not me: I was boiled down to 'brain tumor.' Other than that, I had a fabulous life. I was even going to get better. This was a shadow, passing. That woman had a condition less medically serious. I knew nothing about her life, but I didn't want this terrible form of pity; it reduced me to something I am not. Scribbling this blog now, I wonder about that woman and who she is: where she is today, what she does, what makes her get up in the morning, what drives her, what her passions are, how she'd feel about being me if she could see me today. 

Some arbitrary comparisons can also create silence when other injustices seem "relatively" minor. This makes me think of a conversation I had with another friend when both of us - adjuncts at the time - were discussing our pay, and she pointed out that most people in the world are surviving on less than one dollar a day, for food. This was, she said, meant to give context. Make us feel better. I'm an amateur scholar of the Global South, so this was not news. It also does not invalidate the problems of my American generation  nor does it improve the situation of people who survive on one dollar a day. Neither situation is right, and they're not directly comparable; it's what we'd call a false binary, a simple reductionist compare-contrast. They don't have the same variables so we can put them into a mathematical formula with an equal sign, greater than or less than sign. 

What does this have to do with fear? For one thing, the hesitancy to put a face or name to a bizarre "over-educated underclass" -who exist in the thousands in anonymous numbers of college adjuncts who have master's degrees but sometimes qualify for welfare depending on the number of classes they have per semester-  is about fear. It's about exposing ourselves as part of a system that's duped us, when we haven't figured out a way to stop participating. We need to go on in this system. We can't divest. I recently went to a conference where working conditions for "contingent labor" in higher education were discussed refreshingly; then, during a Q&A, the hammer came down. "Until you get a tenure track job of your own, don't advocate for others." Oh. What we'd been discussing is the scarcity of tenure-track jobs. What if that's not the track we're interested in? What if we don't ever get there? What does this insistence on silence suggest? Protecting ourselves out of fear, until we're no longer in the impacted group. How should we weigh this fear? 

One of the most oft-quoted lines from an American president is FDR's : "The only thing to fear is fear itself." Roosevelt said this in a specific context, but this quote has become  carte blanche endorsement of the notion that fear is paralyzing, unhealthy, and an impediment to our goals. And it can be. But fear is not a one-size-fits-all emotion. And that's what we forget: fear is an emotion. It occurs in degrees, it can occur as a result of a rational thought process but it is more likely to be a biological impulse. 

Fear can be a survival mechanism. It can give us clues about our surroundings; it can sound a warning we should heed. It is absolutely true, especially in an age of over-analysis and intellectualization of everything [which I'll do further down to a Lana del Rey song, to demonstrate the existence of this era], that some fears do deserve to be thrown out the window. Maybe they're not in proportion to the situation; maybe they are not based in reality; maybe they are a form of worry, a habit that only ferments fear instead of taking action to resolve it. 

My recent thoughts about fear came from two sources besides the conference: the first was the publication of my review of Anne Lammott's book "Help-Thanks-Wow." I re-read it, after writing it several months ago. In the review, I write briefly about my sudden, surprise diagnosis with a brain tumor when I was twenty-one, which was the first time I understood, viscerally, that I would (one day) die, as EB White does in that wonderful moment in Once More to the Lake.  My first response was a terrifying fear. In the next twenty-four hours, though, this fear was washed out of my system, because I was not in control of the resolution of the problem. I had an expert brain surgeon. In my first experiment with memoir years ago, I wrote, from the perspective of 21-year old me, that the day of the surgery was the easiest of my life. Nothing was required of me. My fear would accomplish nothing: it would not give the surgeon an adrenaline rush to keep him at his best, it would not change the outcome, it would not alter the molecular makeup of whatever they found. It was, indeed, useless. I let it float away; I abandoned it. This was a healthy abandonment of fear.

The second, more unlikely source of my fear ramblings was a pop song shared by a friend. Lana Del Rey's song "Summertime Sadness" - in which she says goodbye to a lover and then, in her video, proceeds to drive recklessly on a freeway, and climb over the edge of a bridge - includes the phrase "Nothing scares me anymore." Before I listened to the song, I saw the phrase and thought of it as empowering. There was a lot happening in my friend's world that merited fear. I was glad she had overcome the fear, that she had, perhaps, achieved a form of peace - an interpretation most listeners may have.

When I listened to the song, nothing being scary anymore took on an ominous tone, one in which I feared for the song's protagonist. She's been left behind, she'll miss someone - and so she does whatever she feels like. Liberating, yes? Somewhat - she feels electric, she dances without her shoes, she wears red. Sounds great. Harmless. Celebratory. I wanted to do all of those things. The beat is  neutral, if not calm, like we'd just be waving our arms in the club. She's sad, but she's going to do her own thing. So far, this is not worrying. Then, things take a disturbing turn. "I know if I go, I'll die happy tonight...Nothing scares me anymore." So our narrator is accepting of death. She has no fears. She's moved beyond it to a place that she wouldn't mind dying, she'd even be happy with her hair done and her red dress. Accepting the possibility of an imminent death is completely different than the adult process of coming to grips with being mortal. But accepting death should come when it is a real possibility that cannot be avoided, and this acceptance does not have to mean no fear. Perhaps it does; I cannot say with any certainty.

But as this song goes, no, this is not an appropriate abandonment of fear. This is a form of madness. With no fear - that literal interpretation of FDR that is chanted to school children as incitement to "do one thing every day that scares you" (another pop mantra, one I can embrace as long as the degree of scare is from trying something new, not life-threatening ) - the protagonist is in a world where she is unconcerned for herself or others. Fear comes from a place of investment, of caring, of concern. If we have absolutely no fear, we have abandoned any precautions to protect ourselves or our world: in this case, wearing a seat belt, obeying speed limits, staying on the usual side of a tall bridge. 

Fear is also about repercussions. With zero fear, repercussions do not matter. I recall a song from another era, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." 

I began to think about Summertime Sideness, mesmerizing musically, in a different way. Maybe it's fear she's asking to kiss her once before she goes. (I doubt this is the intended interpretation, or what most listeners will hear). It is when fear is gone that nothing scares her anymore and she can begin her spree of electric activity. She'll die happy because she's irrational. The images of edges - we never see her crash her car or plunge into a bridge - suggest blurring the boundary between sanity and insanity; an incongruity of rational and emotional thinking which, ideally, align. 

This is, of course, only a song, probably written about a person, a lover, and the loneliness the protagonist feels without him. Words, in art, can be excellent ways to express wishes or desires we would never act upon. But this notion of assuming power by abandoning all fear is a dangerous illusion, like most all-or-nothing thought processes, and one that pervades much of our national dialogue. 

I'm even drawn to the "have no fear" to some extent; my favorite hymn has always been "Be Not Afraid." I like to think this is outside the scope of my analysis given that belief in God is accepted as mysterious - and the song is not called "Never Be Afraid." 

Powerful people don't have fears, we are often told in advertising or media. Wrong. They do, and that helps them direct their energy. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable is not rewarded in our society, but it's a sign of strength and perhaps the only way to overcome the fears you should discard.

It's biologically impossible to stop all fear - unless the brain reaches a state in which it is shut down, a condition in which electricity (shock treatment) can be needed to literally zap it back into action. In such states, the brain is so damaged that it can stop forming memories. 

On the other extreme, the brain can become so activated that it fears everything, and it needs to be eased back on the spectrum, in the opposite direction.

In the end, fear deserves our attention, but also our skepticism. To end where I started, a cliche that I think does help my generation: "everything in moderation." 

We feel trapped sometimes, but we have voices we can use, after we measure the repercussions and cast aside some of our fears of talking about the economic situation from personal perspective. 

This is not about blame; it's about searching for understanding. Recently I heard Robert Atwan speaking with a group of college students. They asked him how to avoid subjects nobody cared about, or  that had already been written about.

His advice? "Be the voice of your generation." He hadn't heard that yet, he said. 

Let's change that, whatever our experience has been. My fear that if we don't do that, we won't change the future is part of what drives me. And that's a healthy fear, a fear that has been transformed into motivation.

-CMMOB, 3.28.2012.


Summertime Sadness

I have a lot to blog about, but also a lot to do. We all know what that's like. I've been thinking a lot about construction of personalities online, and how this happens unintentionally, and the impact it has  on our in-person interactions. It's a bit like making the mistake you know an author because you've read his book. Someone's tap-dancing upstairs and I'd really like to know the story of who lives up there. Words are becoming less satisfying to me. I want to hear voices on the telephone.

It's Good to Be Free

I've been tempted to begin blogging again for months, noticing my Facebook posts lengthening and being unable to fight that urge to share ideas that is the writer's vocation. A blog always allow for more thought, even editing, and yet it also is a space a writer must be careful with ~ don't expect anything too fancy here, as this counts to editors as published content so here is it's one and only 'home.'  I also dislike the pedantic vibe that Facebook can give off, as posts are foisted on 'friends' via the 'news feed' - my thoughts may have (some) value, but they are not news. Reading my blog is more of a choice and choices matter, as my title suggests. Freedom is about being able to make choices. I've chosen to leave Facebook in the past, because it's addictive. I don't like addiction - it is generally not a good thing. It also takes me away from the outdoor world of people and nature; I once left for three months. But, we live now in an age where we do know hundreds of people, to some degree or another, and how can we keep up with all of them individually? What solution do we have? There must be a better option. In the past, they would float away; is that not more beautiful and natural? Should we have all this extraneous knowledge? I don't know. I once resolved to quit at age 30. It seemed a juvenile 'place' - then, parents were on; older cousins; age barriers dissolved. Was it now rude to leave? Why is the manner of defriend-ing on Facebook so touchy while the gradual dissolving of friendships in real life  - actual unfriend-ing - seems to happen without a nod of acknowledgement? Choices, everyday, about what to think about. I want to think less about technology but its everywhere. I want to use technology to help me be more efficient so I can spend less time with it.   

A choice connected to published content: I recently rejected a submission to the forthcoming literary journal I've been hyping for months (it really will exist, quite soon) - because the author had already posted a complete PDF of the text on his website next to the word 'published' with a date. By my reckoning, and that of many  editors, to insert that somewhere else as original content is misleading, an outright lie and of little value. It's accessible elsewhere. I'm not producing an anthology of blogged material. The author exacerbated the problem by even declaring it published. 

I'm already enjoying the freedom of blogging, that sense my words are not stretching longer than they should, that I can keep typing and there's still plenty of white, white space ahead. Unlike some writers, I don't fear a blank page. I relish it. It's there for the taking; it's a gift; it's freedom. Structure, too, gives freedom to writers. In the past few years I've become far more attuned to visual and sound forms in relation to their power to communicate. I often draw what looks like a house, or a series of arrows and loops and dots, or a neighborhood, and fill in different ideas before I start, a big project. I pick the music I listen to depending on the pace I have in mind for the project: is it going to be moving quickly? Is it upbeat? Is this a melancholy narrative with winding, complex, oh, so, ever, ever, delightful paragraph length sentences? (The longer a sentence is, the more I love it. Students of composition: close your eyes to that. Be precise. Be concise. Nothing else. Breaths.) If I do not deliberately choose, the music seeps into the writing - this is interesting, too. I let it do its thing. Most of all, I've grown to love film more than ever, and to try to create imagery with words. Tonight I was at the Bronx Documentary Center, and I watched a man on screen who trailed off while speaking. He looked off to the side, and I thought, There's nothing he could say here that would come close to expressing what he is feeling. His face is what we need. In this way, I'm growing more humble about 'my' medium. It's always had its limits, but perhaps its very purpose is most appropriate for when we cannot be there to experience sensations in other forms. And this might be obvious to others not so verbally inclined. I'm not conceding entirely. Without his words first, we could misinterpret his face. But we can misinterpret anything, if we believe there is only one interpretation of art. Correct interpretations are for the realm of business - and even then they are fought and argued over. Any text is only completed by the reader. That's why I loved a quote I saw today saying that writing could not be done alone, in this way it is like a kiss. I would never think to associate writing and kissing, and this is a bit of a stretch - writing is always first done alone. But the quote made sense, and was sweet, and it's good to be free to make associations as you please. We've come full circle. 

To demonstrate my appreciation for all sensory pleasures, here's a song for you to start off the new season of blogging. I hope you'll comment or write as the blog strikes you, because I've got too many words of my own so I could always use the variety of someone else's.

in Stephen Elliott style, xoxoxo. (Stephen Elliott is the founder of The Rumpus; my workshop leader from Tin House last summer; and he writes (well, sometimes) daily emails to thousands of people and signs them xoxoxo; I have a bit of a dislike of xoxoxoxo because it seems to be insincere, this distribution arbitrarily of hugs and kisses; but of late I realize it's mostly in America that we don't greet each other with some physical gesture, even a relative stranger - a kiss on the cheek, or both - and my Brit friends always sign with an x. Be free, be sincere. Take my xo's as signs of my general good well for mankind, and a hug & kiss while I'm at it.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or8TA6IPE-M

As always, I'll try to return to the theme of narratives of home, with the caveat that the mind is the ultimate home, so, I may stray, as in this introductory post.