A Certain Light Out of Place

For some reason that still remains a mystery to me, Josh Ritter's recent album The Beast in Its Tracks was the record I returned to again and again this summer. Dislocated from my regular residence (though I would hesitate to call it my "home") for the purposes of study, I found myself gathered with a small group for an eight-week period devoted to reading and study. It was a wonderful time of learning, discovery, and mirth (the dorm chalk board was a never ending supply of nerdiness); and yet it was very temporary. By the time we were friends and settled it was time to return home to students and jobs. The summer, which earlier seemed so laden with promise, passed.

The Beast in Its Tracks is a breakup and recovery (new girl!) album for Ritter, neither which I empathize with at the moment (that would require there to be girls in this state, for starters). But in-between the central emotions of love and loss runs a quiet theme of sentimentally, of memory and wishes for good things. That girl looks like your old lover, prompting an act of recall and memory; in the same way the light at evening or the way a tree frames the sky might remind one of childhood or a specific moment of the past. I suspect it is these themes—perhaps with a touch of my occasional romantic—that drew me in, especially as I was dislocated from my regular habits and thrust into new ones with new people. Even in good times we remember the old, and love is not just something that touches people, but every aspect of our beings. The things we cherish, devout our leisure to, practice, accomplish of our own will—these are expressions of love, recognized or not, perverted or pure. Through his focus on the pain of romantic memory, Ritter touches something that runs even deeper through our veins.

"A Certain Light," John Ritter from The Beast in Its Tracks, 2013.

The New Year

I confess I have never been one much for celebrating the arrival of a new year. Perhaps because our family was never good at staying up and (still) places very little significance on the holiday, perhaps because I can’t find a particular reason to care. It seems reasonable to mark the occasion – humanity has survived yet another year of ourselves, the earth is still rotating around the sun and nuclear war hasn’t destroyed us yet (69 years running since the start of the Cold War!). But I have always failed to understand the deep significance of “new beginnings” that many people seem to attach to the holiday: resolutions, new promises of health, wealth, & resolve to make the changes you’ve never been able to make before. Like Mr. Winchester, I find it all somewhat suspicious malarkey that we obsess over the opportunities for self-help and improvement that a new, artificially insisted calendar year brings. As Death Cab for Cutie so succinctly notes: “So this is the new year, and I don’t feel any different.”*

This is not to say I oppose resolutions and fresh starts. Mankind has not improved with age, as much as the various dreams and enlightenments and especially the ideologies of the 19^th and 20^th century worked their destruction. We continue to make mistakes and have failings and gain wait and distract ourselves from things we at least pay lip service to in our hearts, but neglect in our lives and habits. These failings we should reform, improve, progress, &c. But there are limits.

Right before Christmas break my tenth grade students read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Earth’s Holocaust,” as part of our study of the Second Great Awakening and various reform movements in the 1820s and 30s. Religion, morals, alcohol, intemperance, diet; nothing was left untouched by the Shakers, Quakers, Revivalists, Mormons, Unitarians, and Misters Kellogg and Graham. Hawthorne shows how hopeless attempts to remove negative elements from society, whether alcohol, religious trappings, misguided philosophies, or even plain old luxury are; not for lack of effort or intent, but for the lasting permanence of the human heart. The reformers burn everything they can: the liquor, the tobacco, the books, the guns, the swords, the vestments, the marriage certificates; everything is purified by holy fire until only people themselves remain. The horrors of 20^th century communism, socialism, fascism, Nazism and et. al. have shown us the terrible futility of doing away ourselves.

Clearly there is a difference between desiring to reform mankind, and say, hoping to lose 10 pounds or practice the violin more. One universal, the other particular; though both spring in a certain sense from the same discomfort with ourselves and others. What is it then about the new year that makes our discomfort any different? I can go to a bookstore any day of the year and find books on becoming a better teacher, father, student, youth group leader, boyfriend, executive, church leader, dater, family leader, neighborhood leader, jogger, or cook. The aisles are filled with suggestions and tips for every problem I know I have, and then those I didn’t know about. Something I don’t like? Fix it! Lonely? Online dating! Bored? Write a novel, learn a programming language, take up knitting! What I don’t understand is why the change of a somewhat artificially defined calendar suddenly makes everyone pay attention when the whole universe is trying to help us change 24/7 (lots of love, Lifehacker!).

Okay, first of all I’m not that serious about the unnaturalness of January 1^st (why not the winter solstice?), but I can't help but feel a little uncomfortable when people express more resolve on January 1st than they do at Christmas or Easter. If we are going to make resolutions, and especially spiritual resolutions, than we should probably make use of the church calendar, if we are going to attach any significance to calendars at all. There are of course some who say we should throw the whole thing out, and rumor has it that certain branches of the Reformed faith historically have placed far more emphasis on the New Year rather than the Nativity of Christ and Crucifixion, but I am unread in these matters and perhaps lacking sufficient piety to truly care.

My second discomfort comes from what I sense to be the deeper tendency in both self-help books and many new years pledges and resolutions: a fear and loathing of self. I should note this is more a cultural critique than a criticism of the many sincere, faithful Christians who make good-faith efforts to pray more in the new year or read through the Bible, though we should always be on our guard. The aforementioned Death Cab for Cutie song “The New Year” provides an interesting study.

The initial So this is the new year is followed by a rather cynical assessement of most resolutions: And I have no resolutions / For self assigned penance / For problems with easy solutions. Gibbard seems to recognize there are problems we all would like to fix, but fails to see the connection to the new year. If you want to lose weight or change your habits go ahead and do it, no need to force yourself into a strange lenten season of mutual suffering and false promises we doubt we can truly keep.

But then again, it is the new year, So everybody put your best suit or dress on, and let’s all party because we might as well have a good time. Fair enough, we all can enjoy a party, but then why make believe that we are wealthy for just this once? Is Gibbard pointing to our silly habit of toasting with affulent champagne, when most of us are regular beer-swilling Americans? Perhaps, but the real the make-belive for most of us is that we will be someone else in the new year, perhaps someone richer, thinner, and far more dashing than we really are. This is easeir said than done, as Hawthorne reminds us. Except for divine sancifitication, we can never recast ourselves in another, more perfect mold.

Fair enough, and the prevelence of jokes about our to-be-broken resolutions affirms the general deception invovled with new year’s resolutions. But the crux of the song comes in the next verse, where Gibbard wishes the world was flat like the old days / then I could travel by just folding a map. Ah, yes, the enteral appeal to simpler times when life was easy and one didn’t have to worry about passports and currency conversions and the hassles of modern travel. Because then there’d be no distance that could hold us back.

Wait, what? Hold us back from what? Let’s assume the song is about lovers, most of them are, after all. So it’s sentimental, in a perfect year there’d be nothing between them, no time or space that could keep them from each other blah blah you’re cute I wanna hold your hand forevah mush mush my married friends say to one another.  But let’s turn it around for a minute—perhaps it isn’t distance Gibbard is trying to conquer, maybe he wants to use it to his advantage. He—we—want to run away from our old selves, old acquaintances, problems, jobs, mistakes, homes, families, loves; to get away from everything and get a fresh start without worry of anyone from the past ever finding us again. To run forever and never be held back by our own failings.

But the world isn’t flat, and we are very much stuck as Gibbard recognizes by the word “wish.” So he’s left wishing, and trying to find something to celebrate in the new year beyond the clinking of glass. Nothing seems to change in the new year, and we aren’t any different.

* Confession: Confirming the lyrics for ‘The New Year’ lead to listening through all 68 Death Cab songs in my library. Time well spent. ‘The Open Door’ EP? Fantastic. And as Tom Sawyer has recently reminded me, “Transatlanticism” is one of the best albums of the 2000s no ifs-ands-or-buts about it.

Three Semesters, 6 Quarters, Still a Sophomore

The conclusion of a faculty meeting around 11:45 A.M. yesterday marked the end of our First Semester, the school's Second Quarter, my third semester of teaching, and half-way point of my sophomore year of teaching.

It's some sort of milestone, I guess.

Things move along. There were some difficulties along the way, especially in the broader school. Children doing things they should not do in places they should not be; and the resulting office visits and murmuring by the lockers that fall mysteriously silent whenever a faculty member should appear. The Hurricane Days and the missing exams, the annoying meetings where the same issues are raised and addressed but never truly solved, the quizzes, the missing assignments, the game.

I mean the cultivation of minds in grace & truth, of course. But sometimes you need a timeout or half-time break. One of the many reasons Christ came when He did, as I understand it, was his divine concern for those of us in the Western Anglo countries who insist on a 9-month school cycle. For these He came to save, along with all the other fine natives who use different school schedules. (okay, enough Kiplingesquing for now! Take up ye burdens and move along!) But sometimes it feels like a game, and one just plays along until a surprise comes along and shocks one into remembering what is actually going on.

Learning, one hopes.

Amend: This wasn't meant to sound depressed; but I suppose that is what happens when there is very little one cares to say...

The Leaves Fall for Thee!

This morning, when I woke up, I was cold. Not terribly chilled, but just enough to be aware that the temperate outside was below...say 65º F.

I checked the weather over my coffe...it was 57º F. Pansy. But considering the last three months have been one stream of clothes-are-only-really-necessary-because-of-social-conventions weather punctuated at times by rain, I felt it. The last few weeks I've been sleeping without the A/C unit going, but avoiding and fighting the heat during the day and early evening. This morning I put on a sweater, knowing that a high of 72º would be just enough to fool the school's ventilation system and make things chilly. And so they were, although by lunchtime I was throwing open the windows and letting a gloriously pleasant breeze throw papers all across my classroom.

Fall means several things, really:

• The death of Man's most ferocious and eternal enemy, the mosquito.
• The conclusion of the regular baseball season, which is a mercy for my last-place Rockies, who are really only fighting the Cubs for second-to-last place this year. But exciting for the Washington Nationals and even Baltimore Orioles, so there should be some local excitement. 
• Fall Beers, including the marvelous Sam Adams' Octoberfest and Shock-Top's surprisingly delicious Pumpkin Wheat (and and and oh never mind).
• Sweaters (and other modes of reusing dress shirts that are overdue for the cleaners). 
• Better pipe smoking weather.
• Pretty leaves, eventually.
• And the start of school, of course.

I remember in middle school playing a tune on the piano that involved the lines "the falling leaves / of red and gold." It was a nice, pretty song, and I always think of it when the colors start to change. Last year the change came very late in the season (global warming or something), but already I'm seeing a few hints of red overhanging the brick sidewalks of town. Town is absurdly picturesque in the fall--not Rocky Mountain aspens but very delightful in their own right.

School is now in week three, things have not started as well as I would like, but we've had some good days. The lessons left over from this time last year are rather...minimal and disorganized, if found at all, so there is a lot of prep work still to be done. I'm realizing how blessed I was with some of my classes last year--they were very tolerant of my fly-by-pants-almost-dead teaching that first month and still managed to learn things that the current classes struggle with when I'm organized and prepared. Kudos to you, current 11th grade, for putting up with me. You'll go far in life if you can handle that experience.

Fall does bring with it a peaceful assurance of change, that school actually has started and it is okay now, that the seasons and times of life role on. Each falling leaf sings a little tune, praising the summer for its blessings and rejoicing in the fall to earth. In time new leaves will take their place, new students, new lessons, even new places...but tonight, 50º F and lessons on Egyptian religion.

They did not wear sweaters in Egypt, alas.