If I have a halfway decent nights sleep morning is my favorite time. Such as right now. I can drink my tea and type away for a couple of unmolested hours. Then my attention wears down because the screen quite literally drains my energy. (Has anyone ever researched the physiological effects of screen-exposureor did that stop with the heyday of TV?) Believe me: pen and paper never had the same impact... but why write longhand when Ill just have to copy out the result on the keyboard sooner or later?
In any case theres work to do on the small part of my 25 acres that can presently be cultivated; and especially over the summer Ill pay dearly for getting outside too late if I tarry. Yet Ive lately been dreading the prospect of what awaits me. Deer ate my young walnut tree back to the bark despite the netting (which their teeth severed like shears); and though I was able to rehabilitate the plant somewhat after constructing an impenetrable fence (and also keeping handy a replica Navy .36 loaded with crayon) the heat has fried away those tender young leaves to nothing. Im afraid the sapling may never again spring back to life. Then after the deer and the blazing sun I had the grasshoppers. My efforts to become a subsistence farmer in retirement are not off to a rousing start (despite the cannonades of my black-powder crayon-sprayer).
I dont miss my drudgery in a college classroom... or I do miss the classroom but not the bureaucratic and quasi-political drudgery surrounding it. But no... the classroom itself too is something I cant claim to miss: not the classroom as it was forcibly transformed. In my final two or three years of employ I was actually prevented from doing what I did bestand which of course gave me greatest satisfaction. I had developed such a strong syllabus for the first half of the World Lit Survey that I would have matched it against any in the country. I had translated for use in the class Solons first fragment Maries Eliduc a small sampling of Ariosto... but all of that was swept overboard replaced by a peculiar course that claimed to teach American immigrant" literature (and which appeared to be a semester-long rail against racist patriarchal capitalism). I would never have consented to teach such folderol at the expense of Euripides Virgil and Dantebut of course I was never asked. It was designed for a Russian immigrant working on her Masters whom the Chair wished to help along.
And then there were my freshman composition classes which most profs of my years disdain to teach but which I had grown to love. My approach had been devoted to critical thinking taught via Socratic method. Students produced essays by following a chain of thoughts to its logical conclusion. The discipline of seeking such objectivity was often a tremendous aid to the young person if prosecuted properly: I had seen it light up many a cold lamp. Shallow clich assumptions were often left exposed by honest impartial questioning; e.g. If certain races or DNA profiles are identified as cultures then how can we define culture as a cultivation of shared habits?"
This class too disappeareddevoured by a massive initiative to merge instruction with the latest self-teaching" software. The instructor became a kind of roving geek" who answered questions about where this or that dropdown menu was hidden; and the students learned... what? How to persuade by picture file and how to light up sentences with hyperlinks Im guessing.
That should be enough to depress any responsible professional in education... and depressed I was. During those last two years I felt like some lower-level Judas in a dense Kafkaesque network of nameless traitors. But Ive been rid of that living hell for almost fifteen months now. Strange that my sense of breathing free air has only resuscitated my regrets over courses lost four or five years ago now… over opportunities already long lost while I was still on the payroll. Any weeds of mourning should have found their way back into the closet by this point… wouldnt you think?
Maybe my activity on social media wasnt a good idea. You might say that a hermit-farmer whose sole daily contact with other humans (other than his long-suffering wife) is through Twitter and Parler cant help but have the decline of Western civilization sitting heavily on his heart. My wife says that very thing in different words. People go on Facebook to share photos of their grandchildren and of their vacation in the Bahamas; people go on Twitter to post videos of dunghills in San Franciscos streets and of tattooed immigrants" flashing gang signs through the windows of detention centers
But again... its not the decline per se whose prospect oppresses me. I think Ive been keenly aware of a vast downward spiraling in our society since I was fourteen or fifteen a very lonely resistance-fighter against the Sexual Revolution and the academic culture" of relevance (i.e. the counter-culture). Ill admit that now as then the organized Christian church has been a severe disappointment. I found little support in its shifting positions half a century ago; and having just joined a rural Presbyterian church Ive been shocked to hear innuendo that Christian duty" compels us to collaborate in undermining border security. I have a son living in a sanctuary" (i.e. crime-forgiveness") city... and my minister is busily patting herself on the back for working in a soup kitchen!
But... but my point is precisely that I knew all thisnot in detail but in tendencyyears and years ago. I knew that the earth wobbles when she turns. I think whats taken me completely by surprise is the staggering number of lost opportunities that are truly lost at least for my lifespan: the number of things that were goodthat were beautifulwhile they lasted but that simply didnt last... the fragility of life of its best moments. Thats the pain that I seem to take out on this hard red clay with my hoe. I knew very dark despair when I was young but also silver stars of hope. Ive now been to some of those stars and they were indeed silver: they were exquisite perfect in their way. And then my life cycle extended beyond theirs. Remembering them... its something I do more and more oftenmore I think than I brood over our impending social and political chaos. And maybe its not their absence that haunts me or the terms of their destruction: maybe its knowing that as they were first firing up or building their radiance to its peak they were also ending. They were very finite. The thing that silvered them also made them short-lived.
Misery isnt always ephemeral; perhaps its seldom so. I dont know how that can be possible... but human society does seem somehow to be perpetually degenerating! That steadily descending vector is in itself a collaborative work of stunning genius. The good things meanwhile are like a rare tree that bears life-giving fruit: it struggles to survive the juvenile stage supports several animal species in its prime if it should mature... and then it yields to briars and vines. The briars and vines seem ever-ready to overgrow everything else. Should we humans self-annihilate and leave a deserted planet for some alien to discover in future millennia its surface will teem with briars and vines. No walnut trees. Yet the good life is all about coaxing a walnut tree up from the hard red clay.
A year ago this past week as we sat at our kitchen table in the old house for the final time (I would bundle that table too into the van the next day) I looked out the window upon the yard where my little boy and I had played baseball games with tennis balls where I had later built him a mound and where he had learned how to pitch well enough to send himself through college... and I cried like a baby. My wife and I didnt particularly like that house that town... but they were collectively a treasure chest of our sons upbringing and I had just about emptied the whole thing out. We couldnt get all of it into a forty-foot trailer and much was thrown away or left at the curbside; but I also found a place for more than one toy that hadnt been touched for twenty years. What I saw just then as I melted over a plate of untouched food... was it just my graying hair in the kitchen windows twenty-year mirror?
I thought briefly that I saw all the slights of a hard hypocritical East Texas town shortchanging my child because his dad wasnt a big fish in its tiny puddle of oil moneyor that I saw all the failures of Dad to intervene in a timely effectual manner to get his son equal consideration here and there... but no. No that wasnt it. It wasnt bitterness at all though it made me weepbut not all tears are bitter. Ive managed to figure out by now that what I saw was all the happiness and the beauty. We had had a good life there in spite of the towns deeply embedded problems. We had had enough sun: nobody could take that from us. And Dad... he had done just what he was supposed to do. He had raised a fine young man... and released the young man to make his way in the world. Mission accomplished. And the curious old house had helped and the sandy battered yard had helped. We had all given what we could... we werent perfect but we had done well. Now it was all over. Mission accomplished.
I have become aware that these are not thoughts accessible to a young man. This is not a young mans depression. A new house in a new state with plenty of new chores wont drive it away. The things that you do well in this life must be released: only the failures abide like fragments of ancient jalopies in an old garage. What you build that works drives away. Somehow in these years or days that remain to me I must learn how to absorb the sadness of so much beauty so many missions accomplished. I hadnt known that such a task awaited me. How could I have? Its not the sort of thing a young man would ever understand.
If I have a halfway decent nights sleep morning is my favorite time. Such as right now. I can drink my tea and type away for a couple of unmolested hours. Then my attention wears down because the screen quite literally drains my energy. (Has anyone ever researched the physiological effects of screen-exposureor did that stop with the heyday of TV?) Believe me: pen and paper never had the same impact... but why write longhand when Ill just have to copy out the result on the keyboard sooner or later?
In any case theres work to do on the small part of my 25 acres that can presently be cultivated; and especially over the summer Ill pay dearly for getting outside too late if I tarry. Yet Ive lately been dreading the prospect of what awaits me. Deer ate my young walnut tree back to the bark despite the netting (which their teeth severed like shears); and though I was able to rehabilitate the plant somewhat after constructing an impenetrable fence (and also keeping handy a replica Navy .36 loaded with crayon) the heat has fried away those tender young leaves to nothing. Im afraid the sapling may never again spring back to life. Then after the deer and the blazing sun I had the grasshoppers. My efforts to become a subsistence farmer in retirement are not off to a rousing start (despite the cannonades of my black-powder crayon-sprayer).
I dont miss my drudgery in a college classroom... or I do miss the classroom but not the bureaucratic and quasi-political drudgery surrounding it. But no... the classroom itself too is something I cant claim to miss: not the classroom as it was forcibly transformed. In my final two or three years of employ I was actually prevented from doing what I did bestand which of course gave me greatest satisfaction. I had developed such a strong syllabus for the first half of the World Lit Survey that I would have matched it against any in the country. I had translated for use in the class Solons first fragment Maries Eliduc a small sampling of Ariosto... but all of that was swept overboard replaced by a peculiar course that claimed to teach American immigrant" literature (and which appeared to be a semester-long rail against racist patriarchal capitalism). I would never have consented to teach such folderol at the expense of Euripides Virgil and Dantebut of course I was never asked. It was designed for a Russian immigrant working on her Masters whom the Chair wished to help along.
And then there were my freshman composition classes which most profs of my years disdain to teach but which I had grown to love. My approach had been devoted to critical thinking taught via Socratic method. Students produced essays by following a chain of thoughts to its logical conclusion. The discipline of seeking such objectivity was often a tremendous aid to the young person if prosecuted properly: I had seen it light up many a cold lamp. Shallow clich assumptions were often left exposed by honest impartial questioning; e.g. If certain races or DNA profiles are identified as cultures then how can we define culture as a cultivation of shared habits?"
This class too disappeareddevoured by a massive initiative to merge instruction with the latest self-teaching" software. The instructor became a kind of roving geek" who answered questions about where this or that dropdown menu was hidden; and the students learned... what? How to persuade by picture file and how to light up sentences with hyperlinks Im guessing.
That should be enough to depress any responsible professional in education... and depressed I was. During those last two years I felt like some lower-level Judas in a dense Kafkaesque network of nameless traitors. But Ive been rid of that living hell for almost fifteen months now. Strange that my sense of breathing free air has only resuscitated my regrets over courses lost four or five years ago now… over opportunities already long lost while I was still on the payroll. Any weeds of mourning should have found their way back into the closet by this point… wouldnt you think?
Maybe my activity on social media wasnt a good idea. You might say that a hermit-farmer whose sole daily contact with other humans (other than his long-suffering wife) is through Twitter and Parler cant help but have the decline of Western civilization sitting heavily on his heart. My wife says that very thing in different words. People go on Facebook to share photos of their grandchildren and of their vacation in the Bahamas; people go on Twitter to post videos of dunghills in San Franciscos streets and of tattooed immigrants" flashing gang signs through the windows of detention centers
But again... its not the decline per se whose prospect oppresses me. I think Ive been keenly aware of a vast downward spiraling in our society since I was fourteen or fifteen a very lonely resistance-fighter against the Sexual Revolution and the academic culture" of relevance (i.e. the counter-culture). Ill admit that now as then the organized Christian church has been a severe disappointment. I found little support in its shifting positions half a century ago; and having just joined a rural Presbyterian church Ive been shocked to hear innuendo that Christian duty" compels us to collaborate in undermining border security. I have a son living in a sanctuary" (i.e. crime-forgiveness") city... and my minister is busily patting herself on the back for working in a soup kitchen!
But... but my point is precisely that I knew all thisnot in detail but in tendencyyears and years ago. I knew that the earth wobbles when she turns. I think whats taken me completely by surprise is the staggering number of lost opportunities that are truly lost at least for my lifespan: the number of things that were goodthat were beautifulwhile they lasted but that simply didnt last... the fragility of life of its best moments. Thats the pain that I seem to take out on this hard red clay with my hoe. I knew very dark despair when I was young but also silver stars of hope. Ive now been to some of those stars and they were indeed silver: they were exquisite perfect in their way. And then my life cycle extended beyond theirs. Remembering them... its something I do more and more oftenmore I think than I brood over our impending social and political chaos. And maybe its not their absence that haunts me or the terms of their destruction: maybe its knowing that as they were first firing up or building their radiance to its peak they were also ending. They were very finite. The thing that silvered them also made them short-lived.
Misery isnt always ephemeral; perhaps its seldom so. I dont know how that can be possible... but human society does seem somehow to be perpetually degenerating! That steadily descending vector is in itself a collaborative work of stunning genius. The good things meanwhile are like a rare tree that bears life-giving fruit: it struggles to survive the juvenile stage supports several animal species in its prime if it should mature... and then it yields to briars and vines. The briars and vines seem ever-ready to overgrow everything else. Should we humans self-annihilate and leave a deserted planet for some alien to discover in future millennia its surface will teem with briars and vines. No walnut trees. Yet the good life is all about coaxing a walnut tree up from the hard red clay.
A year ago this past week as we sat at our kitchen table in the old house for the final time (I would bundle that table too into the van the next day) I looked out the window upon the yard where my little boy and I had played baseball games with tennis balls where I had later built him a mound and where he had learned how to pitch well enough to send himself through college... and I cried like a baby. My wife and I didnt particularly like that house that town... but they were collectively a treasure chest of our sons upbringing and I had just about emptied the whole thing out. We couldnt get all of it into a forty-foot trailer and much was thrown away or left at the curbside; but I also found a place for more than one toy that hadnt been touched for twenty years. What I saw just then as I melted over a plate of untouched food... was it just my graying hair in the kitchen windows twenty-year mirror?
I thought briefly that I saw all the slights of a hard hypocritical East Texas town shortchanging my child because his dad wasnt a big fish in its tiny puddle of oil moneyor that I saw all the failures of Dad to intervene in a timely effectual manner to get his son equal consideration here and there... but no. No that wasnt it. It wasnt bitterness at all though it made me weepbut not all tears are bitter. Ive managed to figure out by now that what I saw was all the happiness and the beauty. We had had a good life there in spite of the towns deeply embedded problems. We had had enough sun: nobody could take that from us. And Dad... he had done just what he was supposed to do. He had raised a fine young man... and released the young man to make his way in the world. Mission accomplished. And the curious old house had helped and the sandy battered yard had helped. We had all given what we could... we werent perfect but we had done well. Now it was all over. Mission accomplished.
I have become aware that these are not thoughts accessible to a young man. This is not a young mans depression. A new house in a new state with plenty of new chores wont drive it away. The things that you do well in this life must be released: only the failures abide like fragments of ancient jalopies in an old garage. What you build that works drives away. Somehow in these years or days that remain to me I must learn how to absorb the sadness of so much beauty so many missions accomplished. I hadnt known that such a task awaited me. How could I have? Its not the sort of thing a young man would ever understand.