A Star Is Born

I must have walked by the laptop a dozen times in the last two weeks to write this particular blog entry. Maybe even two dozen. Writing the blog entry has been on the proverbial and literal “To Do List” every day—what has happened? Where has the enthusiasm gone for me to write my appropriate-for-the-world bi-weekly thoughts down as well as any Broadway, literary, religious and sit-com references…oh, the intention is there, and so therefore, I guess the enthusiasm is there. It is just that Time keeps stealing away itself. Or Devouring? I seem even more busy with committee meetings and, let’s see, what else…while the running of our little project has become so much more efficient and manageable, there is little time left for such blogging pursuits. I still have those “wouldn’t that make a nice reflection for the blog” moments, but I seem to be like the dog chasing his tail to make those observations in the laptop and set our history down for posterity.

Anyhoo, a few weeks ago now, I attended the third of a series of evening events that have been dubbed “Sympo.” The Sympo came about when two students, Abdullah and Thaer, two seniors whom I have taught every day of this enterprise, decided that they wanted to start a speaker series featuring…themselves. The name, of course, is short for “Symposium,” and the guys wanted to emulate the practice in ancient Athens where young people would sit around, speak, wonder, muse, engage, and challenge each other, all for the benefit of imagining a better world. They wanted to create a forum wherein students may feel comfortable making a public address, or wondering about something, or writing a skit, or, just giving themselves an arena in which to invite peers and teachers and hear them. Kind of like a live blog, I guess.

In the first Sympo Abdullah spoke about why he and his peers rarely use the Arabic language for the discussion of scholarly matters. As someone fluent in both languages, he lamented that Arabic was the language for fun and conversation, but not a metaphysical conversation. Several students presented, again, kind of like live editorials, and there was a Q&A period at the end. Of course people applauded their initiative at wanting to create a new forum. There was a second one, and then recently, a third Sympo.

At this third meeting of Sympo there was a theme—the sun and the moon and the stars. One student, Tamara, began with a poem about the moon. The next speaker was Abdullah’s older brother, Moamer, who happens to be a first year teacher here at KA. He teaches physics and offered us “A Glimpse of the Universe.” Moamer’s 15-minute presentation was so masterful—I intended to run home and dash off a blog entry immediately to announce that a new teaching star had been born. The in-joke in all this is that Moamer explained how stars (the literal kind in the night sky) are born. Moamer is one of the teaching fellows with whom I have worked this year and he has been exciting to chart his progress, akin to how one might chart the progress of the gaseous star bodies in the sky. Technology and imagery have become so marvelous that his presentation not only held me captive for his level of engagement, but also for the sheer majesty of the pictures. Moamer attempted to present to us in a quarter of an hour a history of the cosmos and explain how these stars come to be. I wanted to sign up for an astronomy course or physics course or really just sit in his class every day to continue the wonder of what he had presented. Here was a young man so excited about his subject, so in command of his speaking abilities that his presentation was mesmerizing and riveting and captivating. Wow. The Sympo finished off with Mansoor, a student who had composed a piece of piano music. Mansoor had an interesting dimension of audience participation in it. He informed the audience that his piece of music was inspired by the moments just before dawn. He asked the audience to close its eyes and when each audience member felt the moment had arrived in the music when the sun had indeed come up, they could open their eyes. Over his three years here, Mansoor has written a number of memorable pieces, but what a startling and fun thing to do for the audience—what an inventive way to make us listen in a new way to a piece of music, to reflect on something as basic as the morning sun.

At the end of the 45-minutes, after a reflection on the moon, the birth of stars, and the rising sun, I felt rejuvenated to go back and attack the work that must be done to help run a school.

But why did it take so long to get this little blog entry down? Am I running out of energy? Well, we are still three weeks away from spring break, and maybe my body clock is so attuned to the Hackley schedule of spring break in March that that has caused a little run-down for me. Maybe it is all the new committees on which I sit—I try and make sure I know which one I run into after the class day so I know what the tenor, tone, agenda might be. Maybe it is ennui after several years of novelty here in Jordan. Maybe it is the beginning of anxiety at letting the seniors go. Oh, heck, maybe I just need a change of scenery. Doesn’t matter.

I did decide that I should contribute something to the presentation on the sun, the moon, and the stars. On the top of the blog page is one of my favorite paintings, by a German guy named Caspar David Friedrich. It is a fairly simple image with a simple title: Two Men Contemplating the Moon. One of the most endearing elements of this painting is finding out who the two men are. They are a former teacher with a former student. They have donned the “costume” of what they wore back in the day when they enjoyed the stimulation of a shared classroom years earlier. Friedrich writes that they have come back together, picking up the threads of friendship and fellowship, and have taken a moment to drink in the beauties of the natural world and assess their places in the world.

Friedrich is one of the most passionate of the painters of “Romanticism,” that 19th century belief and attitude that we can eschew reason and seek out the answers of life in a natural setting. The goal in Romanticism is to achieve a state of sublime. That word is always so hard to define and explain. I once had an invitation to a dinner party where the dress, it said on the invitation, was to be, “Chic yet sublime.” I never quite figured that out. I hoped the sweater vest I agonized over would somehow achieve that goal!

But Friedrich urges us to find a retreat, either with a companion, as we see here, or on a solitary journey, where the majesty of the world around us presents us with a chance to chant hallelujahs. Friedrich doesn’t use his art to explain the suffering of the world, but in piece after piece he urges us to know that the world is full of suffering. As I just said, what Friedrich doesn’t do is try to explain the problem of suffering—his art suggests that down the road, up the mountain, through the woods, on the hillside, we will find answers. In the meantime, Friedrich wants us to notice the things that give us hope, build faith and cast out fear.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired this piece in 2001, and I remember the excitement at the Met for the acquisition of their first Friedrich. They printed up posters about the mini-exhibition of Friedrich’s works (borrowed works) and his peers. I remember seeing the posters and adding that to my “To Do List” for September, 2001. If you read at the bottom of the poster I have, it says that the exhibition would open on September 11, 2001.

Of course it didn’t open that day. There was little hope and too much fear on that day. Everything was going to be closed that wasn’t helping the situation in lower Manhattan. But in the week that followed, I remember wondering when the Met would re-open and when I could go see that art work. That is probably a very strange thing to be thinking about if you lived in the New York area that week. But I had been to the Met just the week before to celebrate my friend, and former student, and current colleague Chuck’s birthday. When the Met re-opened a week after 9/11, and the Friedrich exhibit did open, Chuck and I went to see the Friedrich. Of course outside the Met there was worry that everything we knew was crumbling and we must assume a brave face.

The Friedrich painting is not far from that same emotion. The former teacher and student, in communion with Nature, are near a gnarled tree. Romantic painters loved the trope of the gnarled tree—it meant disaster sometimes, God’s fury sometimes, anguish over change sometimes, storms and strife always—it was an ominous symbol. But here stood these two comrades—looking out at the simple moon, enjoying the comfort of nostalgia, assessing where they stood at the moment in their careers, and wondering what the world had in store for them.

The painting never fails to help me do the very same things. Where have I been lately? Where am I at this very moment? What do the next few months have in store for me?

I put that poster up every March in my classroom as I teach about the Romantics, looking at the date printed long before the disaster, and remember when Chuck and I stood at the Met, side by side wondering about the world, contemplating the universal and the mundane. Since that day almost 10 years ago Chuck is married with three children teaching in the school where I first taught him 20 years ago. I ended up in the Middle East.

I thank Tamara for her poem on the moon, Moamer for his dazzling skills enlightening us about the stars, and Mansoor, bidding us to wake up and enjoy the rising sun and the new day. Thank you for reminding us of the simple pleasures and the enormous complexities of these fixtures in the universe.

Here’s to your own contemplation at the appearance of the moon on your side of earth.