Saturday, August 25, 2007

A double-take of feeling

I discovered how good that SPF 30 sunscreen is that my sister sent me after our grueling day in the sun for our Olympic Games today! I used it generously, except, aha, for the now-crimson triangle where my purple-shirt-for-the-purple-team was open two buttons at my neck. I should be used in an advertisement for Coppertone Sport!

The boys are now in their rooms, lights out, and now the real work begins! Tomorrow we put away our camp counselor hats, and don the much beloved teaching hat. In a strange way, I think I am more comfortable for this first-day-in-a-new-school than I have felt before in those three previous U.S. schools. Maybe the games and skits and near-sunstroke today bonded our ragtag “Wadi Rum” group. Each of the 8 KA Olympic teams was named after a city or region in Jordan. Wadi Rum, my group, is an area in Southern Jordan that is the exotic desert as we all imagine. Scenes from the film “Lawrence of Arabia” really were filmed there. Supposedly it is the height of bohemian chic to camp out there. As my traveling companion Anne would likely say, “my idea of camping is when the maid service is every other day.” Actually Anne is very adaptable, but I remember on one of our first trips together, to Spain, when I hadn’t quite understood the style of accommodation Anne enjoys when traveling. We were in Cordoba, and as she sized up our little hotel I had chosen, she raised her eyebrows, smiled and said, “well, this must have been a bargain!”

But I digress…

The Olympics were well-organized, the students showed good sportsmanship, and enjoyed the camaraderie during the 16 events. Parents came for a barbecue (I had my first hamburger since coming to Jordan) and we all were hot and dusty.

So now that the boys are in their rooms, I get to muse about tomorrow and the promise of this school year. Earlier today I thought about a poem I really like, a poem by Irish poet Seamus Heaney, but one I had not thought about for awhile. Take a moment and read his words:


Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home

History says,
Don't hopeon this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter self-revealing
double-take of feeling.

if there's fire on the mountain
or lightning and storm
and a god speaks from the sky.

That means someone is hearing

the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.

Seamus Heaney, from The Cure at Troy

This poem starts out pretty hideously, doesn’t it? “Human beings suffer”?????? What kind of lovely, lyrical poem is this? And by the second stanza, one begins to beat one’s breast over all the angst and mistreatment in the world. Then we get to the third stanza, and we meet the mundane historian mouthing conventional wisdom that we should not hope for goodness in this life…But then…the little tiny hint that once in a lifetime, oh, and I love this phrase: hope and history rhyme. It could. It might!

Then the rest of it is this rush of possibility. The Pollyanna in me loves that possibility of “a great sea-change.” The global citizen in me longs for that “further shore.” The dramatist in me revels in the special effects of fire and lightning and storms. And of course, the teacher in me seeks to cultivate that “utter self-revealing double-take of feeling” in students.

I used to teach this poem when I taught a certain 20th century history class at Hackley. It was a poem beloved by James Agee and Walker Evans, two intrepid men who worked together in the 1930s hoping that their prose and photography might spark new empathy in Americans. I used to teach about Agee and Evans, and that little opening allowed me a chance to share this poem with my seniors hoping they might enjoy it as well.

As I enter my classroom tomorrow in the King Hussein Humanities Wing, I will lean on those possibilities. I will look for those possibilities. This school is certainly founded on a noble ethos, and it may take a long time for this school to live out the lofty principles and promises set (and of course there is always the possibility it will not), but tomorrow I will start to enjoy that double-take of feeling along the way, and I can help my students long for those connections when hope and history rhyme.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

John, You inspire me. Good luck with your first day of classes. -Julia

powellsa74 said...

John,
I can't wait to hear how your first day and week goes! It is such an exciting moment...the one right before the kids come in. Good luck!
Sarah

Mary said...

Johnny,
I love reading everything that you are doing. Thank goodness someone came to their senses and realized Squash was not your strength!! Killer is such a great game! I know they loved it.
You are so right about me and camp songs! Don't you just love it?!? I was the song leader at Camp Sunshine again this year. Remember our year in the pool with the kids? I didn't do the pool this year.
I loved the poem. I think about Zimbabwe so much these days. They desperately need a "great sea-change." I am praying for"miracles and cures and healing wells" for them. My trip really opened my eyes to how the rest of the world lives.
Keep up the writing. What a great contact. I love hearing your observations. You make me feel like I'm there.
Love you way more than this oppressive humidity!!
Mary