Ranting and Raving

Brainstorming, Community, Family, General Thoughts, Growing Old, Technology 22 Responses »
Dec 292010

Dad Looking Out to Sea

When I was a growing up and well into my teen-age years, calling Eastport, Maine meant going through the operator:  “Oh, it’s little Gabrielle!” she would announce to those who were present, and presumably they cared.  “How are you deah?” she would ask in that wonderful Down East accent. After a few niceties, she would connect me to my Gramma Bea—WHEREVER she happened to be in town, because of course everyone knew everyone else’s business.  I miss that. 

This year –2010–began with an abrupt acknowledgement of my father’s mortality, when he was diagnosed with cancer.  In one day, my father—my sister and I call him Doggy Daddy—went in to the doctor healthy, and came out with a diagnosis of cancer.  How did this happen?  Daddies aren’t supposed to become less than; they just “are.”  He is far away in Eastport, Maine, and I am here in Central Texas, and there is no switchboard operator to tell me where he is at all hours of the day.  In an age of cell phones, my father refuses to be that available.  He has a routine, and those who know him know where to find him, but it requires physical presence or patience.  Although his art studio is online, he has only in the past year started using e-mail, though he goes to the local coffee shop with his laptop, and he jokingly refers to e-mail addresses as “call signs.”  I picture the twinkle in his eyes that matches his WWII stories about radioing HQ from the field, and I know he believes we are a primitive generation for replacing civilized letter writing and real conversation for the shortened half-sentences of delayed messages that are e-mails.  Nevertheless, he has complied with his children’s wishes for “Please, Dad, we just want to hear your voice.”  He raises his eyebrows, I know.

That man who lives so far away, a Dad who still feels oh-so-present and maybe even larger-than-life despite the decades and the roller coaster ride that is life. . . .is that how fathers are?  I think of my baby pictures, and of Baby Gabrielle standing on his outstretched palm as he lifted me to the sky….. Wow!  When I was a little girl, I took a great deal of comfort in thinking I had the strongest Daddy in the whole wide world!  I laugh when I think of my healthy, handsome Dad who hung up the phone with an abrupt “click” the day he called to wish me love and happiness on my 40th birthday, when it suddenly occurred to him that time was passing.  . . “So how old are you today, Honey?” he asked me.  “I’m 40, Dad” I replied.  Silence.  “Then how old am I?” he asked.  I told him.  Click.  Dial tone. . . . . .

His initial bout with cancer was so easy, we probably didn’t realize how dearly Fortunata had smiled upon us.  We talked about how blessed we were to live in a day and age with the miracle of modern medicine, blah blah blah….and we all went back to Life—whatever that is!  And then…..and then….WAM!  This Thanksgiving he went into the hospital with all the alarm bells ringing, and now here we are again, but this time it’s quite serious.  Now the real questions begin.  How do I deal with the end times of my father, knowing that this is a normal part of life?  I’ve been on the other side of this:  the hugs & hand-holding, the reassurances & affirmations.  I know that people I love & admire have walked this path before, of course! 

Donald Sutherland

Now it’s my turn to be a daughter with a Daddy who is finally, old.  Strange to think the words “old” and “Dad” in the same thought strand.  He’s lost 20 pounds on a frame that was already light.  He is weak, and at times his mind wanders.  He cried for the first time, ever, in my hearing.  At the signs of my father’s helplessness, my heart feels empty, cavernous, even, and I wonder sometimes where to place new & tender feelings.  I am learning to know a different “version” of my Dad.  Dads change.  They grow old.        

I have a good friend whose father joined Facebook about a year ago, and I friended him.  His long status updates read like what someone would say as he walks out to fetch the mail, or what we might say in exchange to a neighbor over the garden fence.  I can’t imagine my father adjusting to Facebook.  In fact I tried to explain it to him once, and gave up.  E-mail is probably going to be the extent of his reach.  My friend’s father, however, is a delight, and I admire his ability to carry-over his sense of a former time into the new media tools of a present time.  His Facebook posts remind me of my childhood . . . of a different time, of neighbors and a neighborhood when & where every “mom” in every house was present in a welcome home. 

I start thinking. . . summer nights and kick-the-can with all the kids in the neighborhood gathered right up to the moment of suppertime when the dads came home from work and all the moms called us home and we hopped on our bikes until the next day.  I think of winter days and paper dolls, or playing games indoors with friends where the negotiations for the “rules” of the games would sometimes take longer than the actual games themselves!  We learned so much about ourselves and each other and I can’t imagine it any other way.  I wouldn’t trade any of that for modern video games, and I have to admit I don’t understand the draw.  On the other hand, I can’t say that my generation learned how to get along with each other OR “the other” through all that play or negotiation time either.  Perhaps there is no “right” way to play or make friends.

 I was struck by a comment in a New Media Seminar I attended this year from a participant who said that she looks at the status updates [on Facebook] from friends, and she only talks to those who aren’t listed.  Wow.  I wonder how many people use Facebook as a distancing mechanism?   I’ve thought about Facebook a lot this week.  How public is something like the sickness of one’s father?  How do we project “mood” on Facebook and does it matter?  How do I announce something so private and yet also important, knowing that others actually DO care and want to know?  (I know that I want to know these things about my friends. . . . )  However, at a time like this, I find myself hiding from the superficiality.  Maybe, I just exist in a private sphere at the moment, and social networking tools seem to exist for a more public use?  Maybe the efficiency of it just seems suspect. 

In real time, I want the real comfort of hands-on presence, and the people who actually know me and know my Daddy.  I want to reminisce and sometimes rant and rave.

Posted by gsutherland at 12:03 pm Tagged with: , , , ,

Desire & Longing

Brainstorming, Education, Ethics, General Thoughts No Responses »
Nov 282010

The story of Rapunzel is a teaching tale of Desire & Longing and learning to know who we are and how we “fit” in this world. The story presents us with four images of a woman, and how each embraces and then embodies her desires.  As we follow their paths, we discover where longing leads, what is required to get “there,” and who we as women become when we arrive at our Imagined Future.  

* * * * * 

Once there was a woman who more than anything wanted a baby.  She thought the absence of maternity marked her as deficient, and longed to hold a baby as evidence of her femininity.  Since her desires were rooted in right order, deep in her heart, she believed her wishes should &  would somehow be granted.  Standing at her bedroom window and looking out and over the high garden wall which separated her own sweet house from an opulent garden filled with beautiful flowers, vegetables, and herbs, desire & longing consumed her thoughts.  Constantly thinking about the babe missing from her life, day after day she gazed at the garden on the other side of the wall.  

From her upstairs window she could see myriad colorful blossoms from which butterflies flitted and hummingbirds sipped.  The afternoon breeze carried the harmonious blend of seasonal scents to her open window.  The craving for what she lacked slowly overwhelmed all else until her outlook of yearning turned into a profound sense of loss and a feeling that life had treated her unfairly.  Thinking of herself as eponymous with lack, over time she stopped eating.  She continued to stare out the window at the lush garden over the wall, and came to focus on a patch of fresh, green rapunzel which looked greener, crisper, and tastier than any she had ever before known.  “If only I had lettuce like that,” she thought.  “I wouldn’t feel this way.  I would be satisfied.  I would be whole.  I would be happy.”  She imagined eating the lettuce, and the idea grew inside her, until it ate at her desire, leaving behind a gaping hole aching to be filled.   Misery, already present, developed into a tangled-up knot deep inside her, and she decided she would cease to exist if she continued without the succulent, leafy vegetable. 

Already well used to a woman who existed in agony based on that which she did not have, the husband asked what he could do to satisfy his wife’s tormented existence.  She replied “If I can’t eat some of the rapunzel in the garden behind our house I shall die.” 

Was this a request; a test; or something else?  With the woman’s self perception based on lack, was it up to her lover to make her whole? 

That very evening, the man climbed over the wall into the beautiful garden, carefully gathered enough rapunzel to make a salad for his wife, and clambered back to the safety of their own home.  The wife gulped down the lettuce, barely pausing to taste it.  Her thoughts of the leafy greens grew, and the next day she longed for it three times as much as before. This time she gave a direct order: she insisted her husband go back over the wall. 

This seems to be a common theme in long-ago tales, so we might want to pay attention.  Perhaps something happens to women who lock themselves into rooms removed from day-to-day concerns, worried about what is missing from their lives rather than experiencing the abundance of existence, which might (or might not) be fraught due to circumstance.  

In the story of The Twelve Wild Swans, Princess Rose’s mother makes an evil wish as she stares out a window, longing for the daughter she doesn’t have, but forgetting about the 12 beautiful sons who fill the halls of the castle with their boisterous good cheer.  What kind of sacrifice does she require on the part of those who love her as she dooms them to an alternate existence?  She is consumed with sadness, and in turn, her sons cease to be human.  The daughter for whom she hoped is then born into a castle filled with sadness and an unspoken void.   

Snow White’s stepmother stares at a mirror all alone, anxiously examining herself for flaws, ceaselessly worrying about lost beauty and youth.  Meanwhile, she becomes a caricature of herself, ultimately bringing about her own doom, embodying the very thing she fears the most.  Isn’t that how it works for all of us?  The more we fixate on a specific attribute, worrying, obsessing,  the more likely we will become that which we wanted to avoid due to the looming presence in our everyday life of “it”…the GIANT fear we wanted to avoid but cannot seem to banish from our minds or hearts.  

Orson Scott Card writes about this idea fabulously well in his masterpiece Ender’s Game.  His young hero Ender must beat a game which requires defeating a Giant.  After numerous attempts and a wide variety of focused attacks on the Giant, Ender eventually defeats his foe by making the monster part of the scenery.  The Giant falls back, lies down, and becomes a giant mountain over which Ender then climbs and continues on his journey.  Maybe that’s how a nemesis is defeated:  not by an all-out concerted attack, but rather, by fading into obscurity and unimportance.  When we can amble up and over a molehill of what used to be a big&scary mountain we could not see past, it’s time to continue on our individual journey.    

Snow White’s stepmother forces The Woodsman to perform a selfish, evil task, as if delegating the “doing” will not place the onus of “being” on herself.  Can sacrifice operate the same way?  

Rapunzel’s parents seem to act in a similar fashion.  The wife announced she would die without the lettuce that belonged to someone else.  The husband made his plans for nightfall.  He climbed over the wall at the exact moment when the sun sank into the horizon and darkness enveloped the garden.  He timed his descent over the wall for just that moment between twilight and darkness, dashed over to the rapunzel, grabbing a handful, turned, and there she was:  a witch!  

 

The old woman angrily asked him about the theft of her food.  Why did he do it?  Didn’t he see the wall?  What version of “No Trespassing” did he not understand?  He claimed it had been a necessity, for his wife desired the lettuce out of grief for her lack– her lack of. . . .what, exactly?  He asked for justice, or perhaps mercy.  The magic woman agreed, with one condition:  that if & when they had a child, they would immediately deliver the baby to her.  The man instantly agreed to everything she asked. Later when he told his wife, she also agreed.  All she wanted was what she desired:  rapunzel/Rapunzel . . .  right?  

Nine months later, the woman delivered a baby girl, and the witch instantly appeared at her bedside.  The old woman named the child Rapunzel, and took the baby girl away.  How did this happen?  In the story the couple never once protested the disappearance of their little girl, the baby they had once desired.  They cared only for rapunzel.  In the fixation for that which they lacked, did the man and woman forget their original longing for a child, and thus lose sight of true Desire? 

*  *  *  *  * 

The first woman’s story ends there, but what about the second woman in the story:  the Old Woman/Witch?  How do we decide whether she is simply an old woman, or an enchantress?  . . .  What is it to be a woman of magic?  Is it her words that make her magic—the formulas upon which she relies and lives by?  What does it mean to create beauty and nurture life, yet hoard treasure and limit exposure?  To provide sustenance and comfort, and then place constrictions around it? An enchantress has created a beautiful garden combining use and delight, then surrounded it with a thick wall to keep everyone out.  

It seems so obvious as to why it is important in Fairy Tales that the Hero-Princess must ask the right questions, enabling her to leave the Castle and embark upon a Quest for Identity, but how then, does she avoid a path of single-minded defeat based on unrealistic expectations, inappropriate actions, and unclear goals?  Ahhhh . . .  going to the woods is so important.  Perhaps, after years in the woods, it is not so clear as to how to find one’s way.  Let’s contemplate the path of the Old Woman/Witch/StepMother in Fairy Tales, and wonder how each of these women –the “evil” women of Fairy Tales– became so trapped in their individual wretchedness, sending tendrils of misery out into the world as evidence of their personal expression of power.  It seems we cannot send someone else to do a task that is ours to undertake because we cannot learn or grow in absentia.  We especially cannot successfully distance our self from an unpleasant or evil task by sending a minion. If and when fighting and even killing need to be done, a 

Shieldwoman from Rohan

Hero Princess would do it herself with sword-in-hand and soldiers supporting her like Joan of Arc or the shieldwoman Éowyn of Tolkein-fame.  When we send someone else to do a difficult or unplesant task—especially something that cannot be done in the light of day or something we do not wish to own ourselves–disaster results for others, and always redounds to our self.  The actions of a person of integrity match his or her inner core.  We cannot hide from this basic truth.  

Why is it so important to the Old Woman in the garden to refuse to share her talent or her resources? Does she not understand that the nature of Power lies in its distribution and flow?  Power is communicative, and in the absence of a Power relationship, violence and chaos erupt.  It seems that part of the Path described in Rapunzel has something to do with the recognition and allocation or sharing of attributes/ talents/skills/gifts.  We read the story and ask our self many questions: 

What is expected of us and what work are we to do? Do these expectations occur due to the roles into which we are born; in other words, are they natural or societal?  Might different things be expected of me if I live in a castle than if I start my day as a dairy maid or blacksmith?  Are the tasks set aside to be accomplished by me and for me also, or rather, biological, and do they have something to do with gender . . . and maybe that’s not so much biological, but also societal?  While we ponder these questions, we shouldn’t discount the impact of current politics on our individual lives, or the value of simple peer pressure due to friendships large and small.  Could any of this have to do with age, and timing?  Perhaps all of this has something to do with the way we view the relationship between heaven and earth?  What do we expect from ourselves and how does this fit with others’ expectations?  While we’re thinking about sharing resources and talents, how should we designate the purposeful gift of the self, and what about sacrifice?  Can we call anything a gift when expectations accompany the giving? Typically, magical thinking lies in irrational thought tied to a lack of action, and this tale is redolent with just this thought.  What makes the Old Woman (or her garden) “magic” or “magical”?  Is it magical thinking to believe that she alone has this gift and it is hers to decide where and when it should be shared or used?  From where does the magic originate?  Is it the Old Woman who holds the keys to magic powers, or is it just that she appears to be powerful as a bestower in ways the others do not have or has in her possession abilities which they lack?  Does she truly possess anything, or is she merely building walls around precious objects and making declarations of ownership based on fear?  

When the Old Woman takes Baby Rapunzel home and then locks up the beautiful girl at the onset of puberty, limiting others’ access to the golden-haired child, and also restricting Rapunzel’s freedom, what is that about?  If the Old Woman-now-StepMother wanted to change and be something else: say she wanted to be a woman who lives without walls of confinement, could she?  If she wanted to conceive of a world without the limitations of rules and formulas already set in place by reality, could she?  It’s interesting that Rapunzel is able to leave once she realizes she is not part of the Old Woman’s reality, because of course, she is only limited by her own constructs.  

*  *  *  *  * 

So we come to our third woman, Rapunzel, who grew into a beautiful young girl, with longer-than-long blonde hair.  When she reached the age of twelve, her StepMother the “witch” placed her in a tower, deep in the forest.  The tower was taller than the tallest tree, had no door and no stairs, and only a tiny window at the very tippy-top.  The Old Woman StepMother accessed the tower by speaking the words:  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair, that I might climb the golden stair,” whereupon Rapunzel would unwind her long golden tresses and drop them from the window at the top of tower to the ground far below.  The years went by. . .   

The Prince sees the Tower

One spring, the king’s son was riding in the woods when he heard the mellifluous sound of Rapunzel’s voice lifted in song, carried by the breeze to his ears.  Rapunzel’s voice was as lovely as her hair was long and her face was beautiful.  He followed the sonorous sound to the tower, but could find no door, so he sat and listened as his imagination wandered to the top of the tower.  He returned again the next day and the next, and the song became imbedded deep inside his heart.  Once, standing behind a tree, musing on the source of the song, he saw the witch come into the clearing and call out:  “Rapunzel, Rampuzel, lay down your hair. . . . “ and begin to climb the golden stair of Rapunzel’s braids.  Once the old woman left, the Prince chanted the magic formula, and immediately the golden tresses fell down over the ledge of the window and all around his feet.  He climbed up the tower, over the window sill, and into a room to behold the most beautiful young woman imaginable!  

What does this mean in a teaching tale from long ago?  How different was this traversing of a tower wall via magical formulas to meet Rapunzel, than the husband who climbed over a wall to steal rapunzel?  We might also ask ourselves about the essence of a person and whether it consists of something physical and even unique -–like long, golden hair, or if it’s about her talents as evidenced by something like singing?  Can we also ask about the inner self, and what would be the evidence for that?  The mentioning of Rapunzel instantly conjures to our minds long, blonde braids. . . but is that the essence of the woman willingly traded by her parents for lettuce, locked in a tower by a witch, about to be discovered by a prince, and is this what matters about her?  Really?  Even if she spends hours brushing her hair and maintaining its glorious, lustrous quality, is this how we should define her?  The prince is attracted to the tower not by her physical looks, but by what she can do: by the sound of her voice.  When she sings, he is entranced.  Again, we ask ourselves:  is this what defines a person: what we do?   Are there any other things that Rapunzel does, perhaps not so noticeable that also define her?  Is it important that she prove her worth by doing?  Would this make her intrinsically more valuable?  What makes this treasure called Rapunzel so valuable; is it her appearance, her performance, the fact that she is untouched, or that she is locked away and therefore rare?  It seems that Rapunzel has no concept of her value or even of her nature.  When the Prince spouts the magic formula, she performs.   

At first, when he catapulted over the sill and into the room, Rapunzel was startled and even afraid of this large, warrior-man, with his intense attitude and bold ways.  But when he began to talk to her like a friend, telling her that her voice moved him to such a degree that he had stopped sleeping and he knew he needed to see her.  Consequently, Rapunzel lost all her fears, and when he asked her to marry him, she simply laid her hand in his and said “yes.”  The problem of course, would be figuring out how to get down from the tower. 

They decided that when he came to her each evening he would bring a skein of silk which she would use to weave a ladder for escaping the tower.  Unfortunately, one night Rapunzel asked her stepmother why she was so much heavier than the prince?   “You wicked child,” cried the witch.  “What do I hear you say? I thought I had separated you from all the world, and yet you have deceived me.”  

Is this not an illogical statement?  It seems that the Old Woman believed in walls as nominative to her own existence, or definitive statements of reality.  Did she really believe that placing a barrier around something would make it cease to exist except within the invisible lines she had drawn?  What did she desire that she would be willing to grow and nurture within herself, or would she only [dis]place growth inside confinement, and love and beauty to be doled out within specific parameters.  Forever hoarding and ever vigilant, when would she allow herself to love and be loved?  Where is the sacrifice that would define her existence?  It seems sad that the only means we have of knowing and understanding the Old Woman is through others’ eyes.  As she forced others to do for her on her terms, she was perennially defined by the perception of others in the process of doing her bidding.  

 In her anger she grabbed Rapunzel’s beautiful tresses with her left hand, seized a pair of scissors from Rapunzel’s sewing basket with her right hand, and snip, snip, she cut off the two lovely, long braids.  Next, the Old Woman sent Rapunzel to the desert to make her way alone.   It is quite interesting that the means for leaving the tower were always there at Rapunzel’s disposal, in her very own sewing basket, but the young girl did not recognize the tools for anything other than their assigned use.  I wonder how often we remain trapped by constructs fashioned by others’ labels placed on us as if they have control of our world; misapprehensions or notions of existence; or others’ versions of reality . . . never realizing that we can reach in our own basket of tools and simply snip, snip and be free?  I also wonder if Rapunzel had to go to the desert in order to be found [again] by the Prince, or if instead, she could have simply walked away from tower and wall, into the woods to find her Path?  Do we ever in this tale discover what it is that the Princess desires/desired?  Her name suggests that she epitomizes Desire itself.  If this is so, where is the lesson? 

On the same day that she cast out Rapunzel, the Old Woman fastened the cut-off braids to a hook on the window sill, and when the Prince appeared and cried, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,” the two braids came tumbling down.  The Prince climbed the braid-ladder, but instead of finding his True Love at the top, he leaped over the sill to encounter the witch, defiantly glaring.  “Rapunzel is lost to you. You will never see her again!”   

The Prince was distraught, and in despair, he leapt from the tower. Thorn bushes broke his fall, but pierced his eyes.  He wandered blind in the forest, unable to eat anything but roots and berries, weeping continuously for the loss of his love.  At length, he came to the desert where Rapunzel lived in wretchedness with the twins to which she had given birth.  He heard her voice, singing, and he went towards the sound.  When he approached, Rapunzel knew him, wrapped herself around him, weeping with joy and gladness.  Two of her tears wetted his eyes and they grew clear again!   It’s interesting that the tale specifically states that Rapunzel “knew” him, making this a definitive point in her journey.  She had come a long way from the young, passive girl who existed– it seemed –only as that which everyone else desired.  Previously she was the recipient.  Now, she acted upon her own knowledge and experience.  This is important.  

When the Prince moved through the woods and was captivated by her honeyed voice, then saw her spectacular hair and climbed teh tower to feel her melt into his arms, it was assumed that she existed to be loved.  Rapunzel is the fulfillment of everyone’s desires.  Afterall, her parents willed her into existence to satisfy their hunger, and the Old Woman took her home and kept her locked away to fill a craving for possession.  The Prince came to her tower and claimed her as a prize.  A question we can’t help but ask is why?  What had the Prince done or who was he that he deserved such a prize?  Or is this the wrong question? 

The tale of Rapunzel derives from Italy, so we might look to another story for an answer to this question, the Italian version of St. George and the Dragon from the Legenda Aurea, or the Golden Legend.    

The Legend tells of a fierce dragon that came out of the sea “so terrible to look at that all the people began to run away,” and more than two thousand knights even ran away in fear.  The king realized he needed to offer a beautiful maiden “to appease the fury of the dragon.” Naturally the lot fell on his own daughter, “who was the most beautiful maiden of the time.”  As the princess waited, alone on the island, trembling in fear: 

Blessed George appeared on his great horse, and he was the handsomest young man to be found anywhere, and wearing beautifully decorated armor.  He went to the princess, who was crying and said to her: ‘Gentle maiden, why do you cry here all alone?’ and she replied: ‘O most noble young man, I await the dragon who is to devour me.  I beg you in courtesy to leave at once, so that you do not perish with me, because it is to me that this cruel fate has fallen.’  

Isn’t it interesting, that the Princess takes on the role and is the model of knightly courtesy?  

At this point the dragon came out of the water and hissed loudly and came toward her.  George immediately knocked the dragon senseless with his lance, then called to the maiden to take off her girdle and place it over the neck of the dragon.  The princess complied, and “drew it along behind her, like a lamb, all the way to the city.  And all the people greatly marveled, in seeing such courage and such wisdom in so young a knight.”  

Did you do a double-take?  The people marveled at seeing…..GEORGE?  No one marveled at the ingenuity and bravery of a princess stringing a dragon along behind her?  I would think George was glad for the presence of a Hero Princess with such skills and composure!  What were they thinking, the writers of the story, the culture that produced this tale, and we who accept it and even embrace it as lovely and romantic?  What does it say about us, and what is it trying to teach us? 

The princess led the dragon to a spot in front of the king, and George pulled out his sword and killed it: “Six pairs of oxen were required to drag the dragon out of the city.”  The king had churches built in honor of God and in reverence for Saint George.”  Then George left the realm.  What?!  What about the princess???? 

Beyond the similarity in cultural norms in shared storylines, there are other, more basic clues as to the Italian origin of the Rapunzel story.  In fact, many clues reveal the story’s origins in Ancient Rome, and the “cuts” (“cuts” are changes made over the centuries) which ground it in the Italian worldview.  

Virgin Martyr tales were easily the most popular stories of Ancient Rome, and the heroines of Late Antiquity would provide many of the tropes, or themes, for later tales about female virtue.  . . . 

Lustrous, Magical Hair 

In these early stories, evidence of the heroine’s virtue is revealed right after the “evil” authorities strip her naked—usually publicly—and she is blessed instantly and miraculously with overly long, thick, hair which strategically covers her nakedness.  Italian maidens already possessed thick hair well past their waists, so that was not unusual.  Heaven’s intervention meant something more; unusually lustrous hair with practical, magical qualities.     

Locked in a Tower 

Locking away the heroine in a tower with no door was such a common theme that we almost overlook the part it plays.  In the virgin martyr tales, the maiden was locked in a tower built by a member of her family, always related to puberty.  Sometimes she had refused to marry the designated man, and sometimes she chose contrary to her family’s desires.  Sometimes her family locked her away preventively.  The common theme for all of the heroic women though, was their ability to escape the tower with no door.  St. Barbara was one of the Four Capitol Virgins of antiquity, and also a favorite throughout the Middle Ages, whose story was translated into the vernacular throughout Italy.  Her legend tells of her renowned beauty, due to which many nobles sought her hand in marriage.  Barbara, however, repeatedly refused marriage in favor of her new religion and reverence for the Holy Trinity.  Her father was consumed with anger due to her unwillingness to follow his marriage plans for her.  One of her most famous miracles occurred during her escape from the family tower in which she had been locked away.  No one knew how she could have done it, but just at the right moment a hole in the wall opened, and she went through.[1]  St. Clare of Assisi of the 13th century accomplished a similar feat when she escaped from the family tower seemingly walking through stone.  

Women with Children 

An aspect of the Rapunzel story not typically seen in other fairy tales is the presence of her baby twins.  In fact, modern re-tellings often either leave out the babies or give a disclaimer, warning parents that the heroine has “unexplained” babies!  Gasp!! This, too, is a carryover from Ancient Rome and the Virgin Martyr’s tales.  One of the most famous and beloved tales is the story of  St. Agatha who is locked away with her baby and is martyred as a heroic mother figure.  Similarities with her story and to her in particular are an important element from this time period because the entire populace was interested.  Folk tales imparted Agatha’s story, and her Passion was  part of the formal liturgy.  Individual’s breviaries were filled with saint’s lives, and people especially focused on the virgin martyr’s tales.  Throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the saint operated as the hero/heroine of the people.  Saint’s tales confronted issues and identified fears pertinent to various socio-economic groups, and promoted their fantasies and desires.  They remained popular throughout the time period as evidenced by their legends repeatedly copied in breviaries, Books of Hours, and their abundant representations in the art of the time,  The backdrop of religiosity was not the point; it was merely part of universal life and thus part of the tale.[2]  Originally about martyrdom, typically portrayed with gruesome and bloody detail, over time, a life of asceticism and renunciation replaced violent death.[3]  Even so, renunciation, sacrifice, and violence remained important themes.  In these tales, part of the saint’s role linked to her appeal pivoted around the reversal of earthly injustice and its defeat.  

The Legenda Aurea listed Saints Agnes, Cecilia, and Lucy as wealthy, patrician virgins who rejected their former lives.  Cecilia’s opposition to her father, her reinterpretation of marriage, her leadership in spiritual and intellectual matters, and her confrontation with political leaders and those in authority made her an ideal model.[4]  The miracles performed against male brutality or to prevent violence altogether proved especially powerful.  We don’t always realize that women like these were the champions of the time.  

The very popular Legend of St. Agnes was the most popular tale in Late Antiquity and medieval times.  It became part of the early Roman Office of Matins, and maintained its prominence and extensive length despite papal efforts at abbreviation.  It was one of the first stories translated into the vernacular, with verified written accounts in multiple languages by the twelfth century.[5]  We refer to this as cultural redundancy because the elements of her legend became part of the lexicon of the time.  Anyone of the time period would have some knowledge and experience of St Agnes.  As E. D. Hirsch explains, cultural literacy requires not just a recitation of data, or even an accumulation of knowledge over time, but cultural literacy demands participation in a shared body of knowledge and the accompanying ideas and history within the culture that deems it pertinent.[6]  This speaks to both milieu and process, and makes the text (and the narrative within it) dynamic.  Gabrielle Spiegel’s social logic of the text is a process for the modern scholar to employ when engaging the past, identifying narrator, audience, and context.  Cultural literacy, on the other hand, describes a process of discernment or a measuring tool regarding the actual participants in a given local and time:  what do they know/should they know without thinking about what they know?  The Legend/Passion of St. Agnes fits into this category.  Virgin Martyr’s Tales in general fit into the patterns of the lives and existence of the people who read and know the tale.  

When Rapunzel is left alone in the barren desert, she is bereft of all human ties and finally free to decide who and what she is.  Like the virgin martyrs before her, her story derives from a dynamic time period, and she represents women who are living in a time when love and marriage is being re-interpreted.  Romance has entered the consciousness of both men and women, as both sexes are actively reading, and the literature is actively incorporating romance into contemporary tales.  

Many questions arise:  What would happen to societal order if women started thinking about more than duty and obedience?  What could happen in a society where women followed Desire and Longing?  We see that exile and ostracization are the result of breaking social mores.  

In great distinction from her own mother Rapunzel has no lush garden to covet, dream about, or wish for.  Rapunzel does not contemplate her lack,  although she is living in the very essence of deficiency.  Like the princess tied to a rock by her father in anticipation of the dragon’s arrival, Rapunzel decides to live and live well.  She does not place boundaries around herself—shutting others out.  If the princess had shut George out, she would not have been able to help George, and her people would not have been saved.  If Rapunzel had placed boundaries and rules around her desert abode, the Prince would not have found his way to her, again, and they both would have suffered unnecessarily.  The world would not have received any benefit from their union.  

Ultimately, the power of a virtuous woman—whatever is deemed worthy in a given time period—shines through.  She is rewarded with a prize: in this case, True Love and a role in which to express herself.  

As it was, the Prince took her in his arms, gathered the children, and led her to his kingdom where they were joyfully received.  There they lived for a long time afterwards, happy and contented. 

* * * * * 

Finally, we come to modern day and the fourth woman: our own images of Rapunzel the princess.  She is beautiful, she has longer-than-long hair and she, too, is locked in a tower.  Except for the long hair and a tower . . . there the resemblance to the Rapunzel tale ends.  Nothing else remains.  We know that fairy tales operate as mirrors of the particular society telling the tale, so what does Disney’s Rapunzel say about us?  

American moviegoers should feel comfortable with this tale of a thoroughly modern princess, representing everything the Millenial Generation of womanhood manifests.  Disney’s Rapunzel is a super-achiever, as we see that she studies the classics, paints, cooks AND bakes, works out, sings, cleans house, and gives us a list of her accomplishments of the above, completed each day before noon.  She doesn’t compete in a man’s world.  In fact, the hero, and all the male characters by the end of the film will adopt a frying pan as their weapon of choice.  Perhaps we are saying that it is a woman’s world afterall?  But seriously:  a frying pan is evidence of feminine virtue in 2010!?!?!?!  The hero loves her and is there for her.  He does not save her: she saves him, and he helps her sacrifice.  Since sacrifice is part of the hero’s “journey” this is again, quite interesting.  The confusing part of the so-called sacrifice is the theme of “unfairness” that permeates Disney’s version.  Disney’s Rapunzel cries because she is afraid and her unPrince mocks her and taps his toes while he waits for her to finish crying.  Yes, he guides her through the forest (breaking yet another important trope), but he does so because she threatens him….ah, again, a modern version of female power!  It seems that Disney-Rapunzel cannot make up her mind what “power” is.

There is nothing in this tale about exile or being outcast.  Disney’s Rapunzel is stolen by the Old Woman, who by look and sound vaguely resembles an Eastern European.  In our society, we are concerned with a seeming increase in kidnapping, and the rise of white slavery abroad, linked to child pornography, etc.  This cartoon version certainly mirrors that fear, as Rapunzel is kidnapped due to her beauty and her magical ability.  

Sadly, the conclusion of the movie is not a process of self-actualization as with Fairy Tales time-out-of-mind, but rather, a return to her parents–again, like the current generation who are returning to live with parents–and a voiceover reference to Happily Ever After someday.  Her True Love participates in the group hug.    

In Disney’s Rapunzel there is no bravery or attributes on the part of the Princess that mark her as independent or capable of forging a path.  She is often afraid, and has a difficult time making decisions.  The unPrince offers himself in Zoolander poses: two of them to be exact.  In an age when we are watching “It Gets Better” videos produced by the Pixar team, it’s interesting that that same team has produced a cartoon that is soooooo tame and promotes the status quo.  In a previous cartoon, amidst a great deal of hoopla, Disney produced The Princess and the Frog, finally promoting diversity by highlighting an African-American princess. . . EXCEPT–ahem,  she wasn’t a princess, and the tale revealed and relied upon tired and decades-old stereo-typical behaviors and outdated cultural expressions of being black, in the South.  Again, the status quo.  Could the team at Disney not find it in their combined creative energies to write a story surrounding diversity about a princess and a frog? 

What can we say then, about women—especially young women—who do not fit the cultural norm or who break the rules?  Do modern versions of the tower without a door exist?  Of course they do.  Not too long ago, I was introduced by my students to a video that sums up much of this discussion.  The artist Lil Mama sings about Lip Gloss. 

I often walk into class to a video on the screen that the students believe is pertinent to the current topic under discussion, and this one was one of the best.  After watching the video, one of the men in the class said, “What’s with the baby she was holding in that scene at the end?”  In the comments that broke out, several students –mostly male–said things like “Girls like that were sent away from our school.” Gasp!  Is that a modern corollary to the Rapunzel story?  Do we, too, have rules embedded deep inside that demand that we lock away or punish “girls” who show evidence of sexual behavior outside societal boundaries?  What about “boys”?  Recent media attention  and postings on social networking sites have focused on bullying that might also have a bearing on this idea.  A current storyline on Glee portrays Kurt, an openly gay character, choosing to exile himself.  This is an interesting plotline, perhaps telling us that the human condition and the solutions we seek in order to live together do not change over the centuries as much as we imagine. 

Maybe the best we can do is consciously listen to these folk tales as they were originally created and intended, as dynamic stories that operate as both lamps and mirrors.  A lamp offers a light that shines brightly on the subject matter at-hand, helping us see and understand what might not be immediately apparent at first glance.  The longer we look and the more we study, the deeper our insight and the more we learn.  A mirror helps us to understand things about ourselves.  The story proffers human characteristics—good and bad—and, if we are honest when we read, we will recognize that truth.      

[1]  Kristin Wolf, Santa Barbara:  The Old Norse Icelandic Legend of Saint Barbara, The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Sweden:  Kungliga Biblioteket, 2000), 

[3]  Mary-Ann Stouck, “Saints and Rebels:  Hagiography and Opposition to the King in Late Fourteenth-Century England, Medievalia et Humanistica  24 (1997): 83. 

[4]  Lynn Staley Johnson, “Chaucer’s Tale of the Second Nun and Strategies of Dissent, Studies in Philology 89 (1990): 315. 

[5] Herbert Grundemann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, trans., Steven Rowan (Notre Dame:  University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 192-3. 

[6] E.D. Hirsch, “Cultural Literacy,” National Adult Literacy Conference Washington D. C. (Jan 19-20, 1984), 1-10.

Posted by gsutherland at 8:13 pm

Venturing Forth & What’s in a Name?

Brainstorming No Responses »
May 242010

Life’s Journey:  we determine the path and embark.  We ponder where our path will lead.  Who will we meet and Who will we be when we get There (wherever “there” is)?  We often think we know where “There” is, but like Petrarch in his Ascent of Mt. Ventoux, in our folly we sometimes imagine that we can ascend a summit unchanged by the journey.  Maybe we want to arrive at some faraway peak without the hard work it takes to get there, avoiding the risk of failure and the inevitable bumps we’ll encounter along the way.  We might consider the hard work—even relish the heroic thought, but don’t imagine how it might change us, unable to fathom the heights and depths to which our journey will lead. How can we anticipate the valleys and vistas; road blocks and epiphanies; the stretch marks and laugh lines; disillusionment and ridiculousness; disappointment and hilarity; sorrow and delight; spills and upsets; yet also the approval of old women, children’s kisses, dandelions, ice cream, and the ever-changing nighttime sky, imagined up-close while we gaze in wonder at the cosmos.  How can we predict our individual experience of life and the part we’ll play? Here’s to the age-old question of being vs. becoming: will it matter more Who we are or What we are?  Will we be able to separate the two?  I wonder How we’ll name ourselves along the way . . . 

 Many of these issues come alive in the story of Rumpelstiltskin.* A poor miller presents his daughter to the king, hoping to entice the monarch with an outrageous (and false) claim that his daughter can spin straw into gold.  The miller is probably motivated partly by intentions to do his best for his daughter.  Should we blame him for her predicament when she’s locked in a cell, crying inconsolably due to her inability to perform?  If her father had been a rich man, he could have presented her at court actually wearing all the gold he claimed she could spin.  Arrayed in costly attire and jewels, with her makeup perfectly in place and hair just right; would that have been a better representation of who/what she was?  Would it have been any different if she were placed in some kind of gilded cage due to her appearance, than the cell of the story?  Would her imprisonment have been less intolerable that way? 

We are familiar with this teaching tale:  to extricate herself from a seemingly impossible dilemma, the miller’s daughter  sits crying, when a little gnome-like creature appears.  In exchange for her necklace, he spins enormous piles of straw into gold. ** When the king requires further proof, and the maiden returns to the refuge of her tears, the same creature appears.  Again, she turns to magic, and pays the little gnome with a ring. 

In true epic tradition, gracious princesses give gifts that ennoble heroes–especially rings–but in this tale it is clear that she offers no gift.  Her ring is part of an exchange for services rendered.  The gnome is not GIVING gold, but manufacturing it, as he spins the straw that saves her life, or at least her reputation.  What does this say about the path we take to reach our goal, or rather the actions we take to become who we are going to be when we arrive at the summit of our existence?  We might also consider the link between the ability to bestow a gift and the desire for gain.   The notion of gift-giving might be an important question, having something to do with both who and what we are.  What do we have to offer and then choose to give, and to whom, and what do we accept (or demand) of others? 

The tale of Rumpelstiltskin is redolent with magic, and it’s interesting that the maiden doesn’t seem to consider her choices.  When she’s asked for payment (by the creature) the third time she’s required to prove her worth to the king, she demands the magic man perform!  It never seems to occur to her that she has any part in where she is; it’s as if she imagines she is still the same person she was when the story began.  “You MUST help me,” she tells the little gnome.  I wonder why she thinks that way?  Where did she get this idea of entitlement?  Had her value increased in some way that changed who or what she was, necessitating a change in others’ responses to her needs/desires/wants/ requests?  Would it be others’ actions that would propel her forward on her Journey, or her own decisions and deeds? 

Another thought:  In reading this tale, are we getting a sense of the maiden’s feelings, or is this rather, a societal reflection on the inability of women (or certain people) and their relative ability to choose to “be.”    Tolkein offers a startling perspective on this idea, showing the reader that virtue and strength can come from the most unlikely or unexpected places.  Frodo offers a clear example.  When placed in a dangerous and life-altering situation through no fault of his own, he reveals who he is through his choices, followed by action.  In possession of a ring not meant for him, he actively seeks to right the wrong that has been perpetrated—even to the point of continuing the journey alone if necessary. 

In another tale, the Epic of Gilgamesh, we are confronted with a king who is deeply concerned with the legacy of his name.  The narrator claims that great buildings and monuments speak to the monarch’s accomplishments.  The king’s subjects think that prosperity and peace speak to what their ruler has given  them. Thousands of years later, however, we know that the reason we still read about this time and call this king by name has nothing to do with either of these kinglike accomplishments.  Yes, Gilgamesh is a GREAT king:  he feeds and protects his people, and does it well.  That’s not why we know him though.  We know him—and want to know him—because he embarked on a quest and lived through real hardship.  He suffered, loved, lost, and prevailed.  We understand the pain and the sorrow along with the feelings of duty and commitment.  We revel in the lesson he learns about friendship and about life.  Like Gilgamesh, we rejoice in those glorious and wonderful moments, relishing all that is good and great, unwilling sometimes to accept the other parts.  When Siduri says to him, “Gilgamesh, why are you in such a hurry?  Don’t you know that man is born to die?” we are like him; we want to rage at the easy acquiescience.  

Gilgamesh grieving over the death of Enkidu

When he shouts “Noooo!!!!”  his voice reverberates down through the ages, and we raise our fists with him.  Life and the living of it can feel cruel in any millennium, or century, or decade.   Surely we are not meant to traverse this path alone!?!? 

It is ironic that the narrator of the epic points to walls that no longer remain.  In the end, what lasts is who trekked the path with us, who gained our trust, who carried our bags, who let us hear their stories, who told us about their greatest joys and deepest fears, and who really knew our name.  Gilgamesh and the bond of friendship he formed with Enkidu mattered.  The power of his love evidenced by the depth of his very real grief can be felt across the gulf of time.  It provided meaning for the rest of his life and emphasizes the need for meaning in ours.  It gave him a sense of purpose in the building of community.  This is rich, and worth far more than any  monuments or piles of gold.   

In a different time and in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, the strange little man asks the maiden what she’ll offer in exchange for spinning a third time, and then makes the inevitable request for her firstborn babe.  With no hesitation, she accepts the deal.  This is not about relationships or ties that bind.  A year later, when she gives birth to a beautiful baby boy, however, her imagined future suddenly becomes all too real.  She is faced with a new dilemma.  How can she fulfill her NEW role as queen without the the product she is supposed to produce:  a son and heir?  She reneges on the deal with the gnome-like man, and claims she didn’t know the terms.  She didn’t mean it.  If she had realized what it meant, she never would have/could have. . . .  

How do we anticipate where we’re going to be when we have not yet arrived, especially when we aim to get there instantly, magically, or using the work of others?  How do we move forward when decisions keep us mired in the past?  What happens when WHO I am is unable to offer the gifts normally associated with WHAT I am?  How can I change the parameters and how will I lay claim to the ability to bestow when I’ve concentrated only on gain?  So very many layers to work through. . . . whew!!!   Can I claim a summit when I cannot tell anyone else how to get there, or if I don’t know the names of all the roads I traversed to reach the top?  

So. . . . .now what?  Having arrived at the top of a summit, the queen finds herself in a brand new dilemma.  Reminded of the paths SHE traversed, she cannot reconcile them as paths that led her to this place.  This is interesting.  Not only will we never learn her name, but we wonder about this time in every new mother’s life when she would normally be thinking about all possible names for her newborn son.  Instead, her present and her past have become inextricably intertwined to become one and the same and it appears she has no future, or at least not one that matches what she is as a queen!  Obviously, someone will have to pay.  What will be the currency of exchange?  She wants to re-negotiate, and the gnome says, ok, if you can guess my name, you win:  you keep the baby.  Can she name him?  She has three days.  On the first day, she guesses every name ever named in the history of the kingdom– with no luck.  On the second day, she guesses every name ever thought or dreamed– with no luck.  On the third day, one of her spies reports having found a dancing creaturely-man in the woods, singing out his name:  “Rumpelstiltskin”!  Just in time she is able to guess her tormentor’s name and wins the bet.  In his fury, Rumpelstiltskin stomps a hole in the ground through which he disappears, down into the bowels of the Earth.  Has justice been served?  Order preserved? 

When we think about it further, we wonder about the names.  Rumpelstiltskin is the only named individual in the entire story:  a story about greed and deception.  A story about shortcuts.  A story about people in identifiable roles, who do not know WHO they are.  Magic is about illusion, and once the glamour is cast aside, nothing remains.  Shortcuts ignore the daily exigencies which form the paths of life.  The dynamic process that we call LIFE is not dependent of whether we are a miller’s daughter or a queen, a strange little gnome, or a king.  We certainly don’t want to end up in some version of a cell, attempting to prove our worth based on what we can do in order to be valued as a person!  But do we want to be at a pinnacle ignorant of the path?  Do we want to inhabit a role, or be worth remembering for who we are?  Does that circle back to the original question of the possible inability to separate the Who and the What? 

Perhaps the question is How.  How do we venture forth, without being placed in someone else’s version of a cell or cage?  How do we pay attention to the path, mindful of the view, being careful not to Hurry past our own life?   t.s. eliot provides one answer in the Dry Salvages: 

Fare forward, travellers! Not escaping from the past
Into indifferent lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think ‘the past is finished’
Or ‘the future is before us’.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language) 

Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: “on whatever sphere of being
The mind of man may be intent
At the time of death” – that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which will fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare Forward. 

O voyagers, O seamen,
You who came to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination.”
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers. 

———————————————————————————————————————————-

* Rumpelstiltskin is a tale of spinning and weaving, and probably initially came from the Chansons d’ toile or Working Women’s Songs.  These songs are particularly interesting because the one place in a castle, chateau, or villa where no barrier between classes existed was in the spinning and weaving.  All women sewed, spun, embroidered, etc., so these stories and songs are especially significant for our knowledge of previous times.  By the time the Brothers Grimm get hold of the tale and simplify it/ alter it, of course, it takes on a much different pattern and tone, so it is our task to get underneath it.   

** This tale comes from a time period when the idea of “money” was something new.  This was a startling discovery, and changed everything in the lives of workers, because now their WORTH could be quantified.  This idea was both good and bad as society adjusted, and much of the underlying message can be seen here, almost screaming off the pages.  Maybe that should be what this blog is about?  The relative worth of an individual worth of an individual human being in changing times?

Posted by gsutherland at 3:30 pm Tagged with: , , ,

The Uncertain Journey

Brainstorming 5 Responses »
May 022010

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty intrigues us.  She is romantic and beautiful and we sigh at the thought . . . .ahhhhhh, how lovely she is!    

 What will wake her up and when?  Not only Walt Disney provides an eager Prince Charming, anxious to come save the maiden with a kiss.  And then what?  Apparently, it doesn’t matter because that’s not part of the story.  Beauty lies at the threshold of her life, waiting to step through the doorway into What-is-Next.  Instead, she sleeps.  Questions should be asked:  How responsible is she for STAYING AWAKE?  It’s an important part of the tale that when Beauty sleeps, everyone else in the castle–EVERYONE ELSE–also sleeps.  Is she responsible for their slumber, too?  How much difference can one Hero -Princess make?  If I wait for a Prince to come along and kiss me awake, then what?    What happens next. . . . Happily Ever After????? 

Prince Charming kisses Beauty awake

  Is this how I want my life story to be written/family identity to be formed/the legacy of my people group to have an impact on History?  How long will I wait for a Hero-Prince to arrive, and will it matter what kind of kiss he has planned, or will it only matter if he successfully  climbs the fence, chops his way through the brambles, kills the dragon (or other monster/evil/natural disaster, etc.), finds me in the labyrinthine castle and then kisses me awake?  WAIT A MINUTE!!  Why would a hero-prince be interested in a companion-for-life who is asleep?  What will happen when the princess wakes up and starts talking/having opinions?  Or, maybe she won’t have any REAL opinions, having been asleep for so long.  In the story, the doorway to the rest-of-her-life beckoned, but instead she climbed into a tower and chose an activity that led to slumber.  What-was-next for Beauty?    

Angelus Novus by Klee

 In his writing on the Concept of History, Walter Benjamin used the term Stillestehen, or Zero Hour.  The idea surrounding the term–which was Benjamin’s own unique invention–was of a giant dramatic pause, as when the   audience holds its collective breath in anticipation of What-is-Next.  The Imagined Future:  what will it hold?   Benjamin was  fascinated with the Angel of History.  He wrote:     

  A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating.  His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.  This is how one pictures the angel of history.  His face is turned toward the past.  Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.  The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed.  But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them.  This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.  This storm is what we call progress.  

 Indeed, the history of humankind seems to speak of a Destiny of Doom but What If?  What if standing in that wonderful moment of Stillestehen as the product of all that has brought us to this moment and looking forward to the Imagined Future, we actively move FORWARD, considering the direction.      

The Cheshire Cat gives directions

When Alice comes upon the Cheshire Cat, she asks him for directions, but he responds ambiguously, telling her that directions are linked to the desired goal:  “That depends on where you want to get to.”  In other words, the path we take will determine where we arrive.  How often do we embark on Life’s Journey as if the Destination and the Path are conflated?  Like Alice, we can be confused at the suggestion of there being a possible separation between the two. Wishing myself in a particular place does not make it happen.  Phrases like “Everything happens for a reason,” or the presumption that “History Repeats Itself” as if History is an entity independent of human action binding us to actions with which we can then excuse ourselves from the responsibility of the consequences might be a little bit like sleeping through events that pass us by.  If I’m asleep in my castle, then I’m not responsible, right?  If I never know anything other than what happens within my own safe walls, am I accountable?  As long as everyone around me sleeps with me, is everything alright?      

 Perhaps we sleep because of the awful conditions in the world!  How many imaginations are doomsday predictions of destiny comfortable with Walter Benjamin’s view of Angelus Novus?      

 I love the scene from The Princess Bride, between Wesley The Dread Pirate Roberts and the Amazing Frazzini: The battle of wits.  Because Frazzini can only conceive of the world in his own twisted way, he Imagines a grim future which indeed comes to pass. Thank heavens Life’s Journey is not a Scantron test with only one set of answers. Rather, life is an Uncertain Journey, best undertaken one step at a time.     

Thank heavens that Life is an Uncertain Journey! 

An unusual mountain "summit"

  Renaissance Humanist Petrarch  writes about this very thing in his lovely essay, The Ascent of Mont Ventoux.  He tells us of his confusion  in thinking that his goal was the summit.  Repeated attempts to gain the ridge led him everywhere else, however, and he eventually discovered that he could only “go” to a place he could imagine.  How awful to limit oneself at the beginning of one’s Journey to only that destination that is envisioned early on, rather than leaving oneself open to the possibility of greater heights found along the way, as new understanding and deeper insight is gained.  How much higher, broader, further, or deeper can we travel if we make allowances in our initial travel plans for rest- stops and reconnoitering?  What if Petrarch hadn’t gained additional strength and skills from the many obstacles he encountered on the tortuous path UP the mountain which enabled him to at long last arrive at the glorious pinnacle?  What if our particular mountaintop is not the traditional peak?  Will we know this in the beginning, or is this something we might discover over time and maybe with the help of others?  

 What if somewhere along the way we come to desire something more than climb a mountain for a beautiful view . . . and perhaps stay for awhile?  Mahatma Gandhi wrote and practiced the concept of Satyagraha, or the art of making oneself Zero.  Gandhi taught of Love and of the elimination of enemies through unique methods. 

Tolkein's conception of the idea

 Francis and Clare of Assisi wrote and practiced something similar, and we can also look at Gandalf for a beautiful portrayal of this simple yet subtle ideal.  Gandalf practices this concept well, for he knows something, understanding that “magic” is a shortcut that leads nowhere real.  True Life is about something much more important and requires a depth that only comes from really living and loving.  Light can only exist where power is unexercised.  When we meet an enemy (as an enemy) we have immediately limited our self. If, like Frazzini, I have defined my boundaries by determining my response I usually—at this point—limit myself to my enemy’s strength.  In reality I’m fighting myself because:     

  • I’m actually meeting what I perceive to be my enemy’s strength.
  • I’m then limiting it to myself and my own conceptions based on the Other.
  • When we fight or engage an enemy we imbue him/her/it with perceived power–limited by our imagination and personal experience filtered through our perceptions.
  •  The very way we fight or approach “the enemy” gives it the power we think it has.
  •  What happens when the FUTURE is perceived as “the enemy”????

PRAXIS  

 

To live life–to not have it lived  . . . . it is to stand and to be.  “Winning” or to be strong has nothing to do with sprouting muscles.  Rather, it has something to do with meeting one’s own liminality without fleeing or going in the other direction.  When we look into the complexities of History, including the Memories that make up our own Identity, hopefully we are looking with Light:  shining a light in dark places for better clarity into the Human Condition.  The vision we see is better served if we also stand, facing the Mirror of True Seeing, actively living with our True Self in ways that make a difference in the World.  Establishing a sense of the self in History is about finding meaning which means being able to learn and then being able to stand with what we know.      

What is next?

Light is important.  When we journey with light, we can not only Stand, but see enough to take a step forward into the  light.  Yes, often there is darkness beyond, but we will be able to see enough of the path to take a step.  We can also hold the hands of those who travel with us.  Once we take that step, carrying our light with us, light will once again illuminate the Path, and we can once again decide the Direction.  If our Path leads through a Doorway and beyond, all the better.  Life begins anew.      

 It is not about Happily Ever After.   It is about WAKING UP, Staying Awake, and LIVING , and then helping others to do the same.

Posted by gsutherland at 5:54 pm

Being Taken for a Ride….

Education, Ethics 5 Responses »
Apr 132010

The Emperor's New Clothes

His name was Gene, and he was one of those old, grizzled guys wearing overalls with the perennial  dirty rag sticking out of  the back pocket.  When I worked in historic preservation in a colorful small town in Texas, Gene would often come by my office to chat.  He was full of stories of how things “used to be.”  Sometimes he told me secrets.  On those days, he would suddenly appear inside the door frame looking quickly side-to-side and over his shoulder, then hunch forward with his finger at his lips motioning me quiet:  “Shhhhh!”   Apparently the best secrets required more than privacy; they also required oaths and even covert maneuvers.  One day Gene came bursting through the door and flattened himself against the wall, and leaned over, whispering, “ya wanna come see it?”  I didn’t know what he was talking about.  “My time machine of course!”  He’d hinted at a major invention, but I was a bit slow on the uptake.   I agreed with alacrity.  He told me with quiet seriousness that he would have to blindfold me.  I told him that was fine.  I understood.  We drove out to his farm in his old truck, and when we got close to the barn he tied a large bandanna-like scarf around my forehead, tight across my eyes.  He parked, and then led me over to what felt like shade.  I heard the barn doors drag across the ground, and the combined smell of hay and gasoline poured out and over me.  Then. . . .he pulled off the blindfold and closed the doors, turned around, and said “Well, how do ya feel?”  I smiled at him.  What did he mean?  He told me that he had to “bring me back to BEFORE” the trip in order to keep the specs of the time machine safe, but he wanted me to know that I had enjoyed the trip!  

Interesting, still, after all these years. 

Was Gene a liar or was he delusional and somehow needing to bring me into his world of magical thinking in order to call me “friend”?  Or was he just taking me for a ride? 

 I miss those conversations with Gene.  Sometimes we discussed politics, the human condition, or other typically taboo subjects. . .and you might imagine how far-ranging our discussions ran.  He was nothing if not passionate, and his head was filled with an amazing assortment of interesting tidbits that somehow fit together, yet also were uniquely his.    But did I go anywhere?  After my abduction into his world of dis-reality….where could I “go” with Gene that would ever hold any validity or link to another person or any other element of everyday-ness where other people think and interact? 

The child points out the Truth!

What is it about passion?  I think I can listen to anyone who has a passion about “something” even when I know nothing about that particular “thing.”  Show me someone who is enthralled with fruit loops, and if they can speak about it in an interesting way….I’ll probably be there, front row, listening.  Will you be sitting next to me?  On a similar note, isn’t one of our primary motivations in daily life to associate with other people who have similar passions and dreams so that we can experience that wonderful sense of shared energy or synergy?  I think so.  Gene had something going on that was close to passion, but he lost his way.  Was it because he could not find a way to share it or discuss it legitimately?  Did his ideas cease to become grounded within ….dare I say it:  reality?  

In the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, a child who knows no better than to speak the truth finally and simply points out the obvious:  the Emperor is actually wearing NOTHING.  How shocking!   The Emperor was delusional, but how did it happen?  What fed the lie?  You know the story….was it the emperor’s fault, or the system of bureacracy surrounding him and is that the same question?   How do we know when we are in the midst of a system that is rife with bureacracy and that despite our very best efforts to be “real”/ to be authentic and valid we are only in the grips of something NOT.  What if to survive and even thrive the tools we utilize or draw upon only exist within the  corridors manned by magical-thinking, rubber-stamp wielding bureacrats who know only the dis-reality of “the system,” and these tools are not creations or art, but actually perpetuations of a dis-reality deisgned to keep us in a hamster wheel or staring at the wall of the Cave? 

Bureaucracy Nightmare

I think we’re well familiar with the need to dis-believe the Shadow Puppets in Plato’s Cave, but how often do we accept the de-humanization of bureacracy by allowing it to dictate the rules of our existence rather than aid various daily practical needs?   Ivan Illich writes about this process in his masterful work Tools for Conviviality, which describes the process of “the System” becoming the supreme entity that must be fed, rather than paying attention to individual and communal needs.  I’ve written before about the Technology Seminar I’ve been participating in, and in that seminar, we talked about Illich this past week.  We watched a terrific video on Youtube:  Pinky’s Scary School Nightmare.  We’ve discussed this off & on in the seminar, and I don’t think we’ve come to any conclusions because of vast differences in the frames of references amongst the faculty and staff that are members of this seminar.  Maybe this is part of the construct involved?  As far as the seminar was represented in the beginning, we have gathered to discuss the theory underlying technology, and more than any other subject we have discussed TOOLS.  What is a tool; what is its purpose; how do we think of it; and where does its use end?  These are only some of the questions we ask.  The idea that tools also need the necessary support and coordination for proper functioning has been an impossible idea for rational discussion.  Lately, the debate has become heated, and we have had to set it aside as thoughts or ideas are spoken or aired, but no resolve has been available through discourse.  It might be because we, too, are part of a system much like what Illich describes in the article we read this past week, and that makes it difficult.  Should we point this out, or should we accept our lot?  

I believe we owe  it to ourselves to reason it out.  I believe that it’s always ok to ask the tough questions. 

Whether this is Plato’s Cave, Kafka’s Castle, or Illich’s System, does not matter:  it’s ALWAYS time to take a stand and point a finger ANY time the Emperor is Naked!  

Last week 110 wonderful students from my History classes—110 students!—presented their work for the semester  in a public forum.  It is an understatement to say they outdid themselves.  I asked a LOT of these students, and I am pleased and encouraged that they come through.  I am pleased for THEM because they not only have the satisfaction of a job well done along with some great (& interesting memories) but they also now possess the well-deserved confidence that comes from knowing “stuff” and a lot more than just “stuff.”  (More in future blogs!!)  I did not put this project together for them.  I gave minimal instructions and set them free to figure it out, because part of the assignment was indeed to FIGURE IT OUT FOR THEMSELVES.  They worked together in groups, and that, too, was part of the assignment.  I did not give them extra time due to busy schedules or activities.  I asked for excellence, with a belief that the pursuit of excellence is its own reward.  This was difficult.  The evidence of their abilities and their capabilities rested not just in their presence & passion, but in the work that they put into their presentation.   These students were (are) not media or technology majors.  They represented a cross section of the university, since the Project derived from a General Education class.  (See the wonderful group TWITTER-fest from the presentation: @#ets2010) 

In our class, I divide the students into regions and later countries.  For instance, in the History up to 1500 Class, we start in the River Valley Civilizations that will eventually become China, India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt.  The students stay in these regions/countries all semester and learn to live/interact/trade/conduct war, etc. from within the constraints of history and everything else that comes with a geographical ‘boundary.’  Instead of asking them to read a textbook and memorize then regurgitate facts, I ask them to actively engage history as if they are living it each week.  Since History itself does not occur in a single moment of time all neat & tidy on a defineable timeline, but rather occurs or “happens” in a myriad of ways & means via multiple layers as real people live their lives and then leave a legacy, these students were challenged to find a way to express that.  They took the challenge and excelled.  They encountered events and engaged in a dialogue with various people who left an imprint on history.  They were confident.  They were strong.  

Plato's Cave

But they were taken for a ride!

When it came time to present their material, despite the Imagined Future they had envisioned and put together, the TOOLS at hand were not ready for their use.  This was an interesting (crazy?) meeting/colliding of two worlds, similar to the discussions that also ended in frustration and disconnect in the faculty seminar I mentioned above.  Perhaps we are at a moment in time where the tools exist and can be thought of.  We even use many of those tools in a variety of ways in everyday life, but they have not yet become part of our academic existence.   Maybe this has been at the heart of the disconnect in the seminar:  the faculty and staff participants not only speak two different langagues from different frames of reference, but fundamentally USE tools and think of tools in everyday life differently.  When it comes time, then, to implement them, the “idea” or “notion” of TOOL (of “toolness”) is so very different in our minds, that we are not even speaking the same language.  One side wants to point at a naked Emperor, and the other is delighted with gadgets as ends in themselves.  There seems to be no bridge between the two.   Is it as simple as Means and Ends? 

For their wonderful presentation, 110 bright (& bright-eyed) students proposed a future not only as an Imagined Future, but one they replicated in the classroom repeatedly!  They ALSO imagined a presentation with many of those same tools at-hand.  The tools the students were proposing exist, yes.  Maybe they can’t be imagined in exactly the same way by all groups of people.  Maybe the Imagined Future looks different for different groups of people BECAUSE it completely depends on the moment in time in which we exist in the present.   

Whether it’s passive behavior that fuels the status quo,  an inability to move forward TOGETHER with vision, I beleive we are in danger of falling into old traps.  Just because we’re dealing with so-called “modern” technology, this is not a new construct.  In The Republic, Plato explains the wisdom and even the power that is to be gained from each person understanding and doing [his] own part, for therein lies justice.  Wow.  Justice: 

“Justice, I think, is exactly what we said must be established throughout the city when we were founding it—either that or some form of it. We stated, and often repeated, if you remember, that everyone must practice one of the occupations in the city for which he is naturally best suited. . . . Moreover, we’ve heard many people say and have often said ourselves that justice is doing one’s own work and not meddling with what isn’t one’s own. . . . Then, it turns out that this doing one’s own work—provided that it comes to be in a certain way—is justice (433a-b). . . . Therefore, from this point of view also, the having and doing of one’s own would be accepted as justice.” (433e-434a).

How do we move forward in the teaching & learning experience offering to our students the best of what we have to offer without falling prey to the Shadow Puppet mentality of ages past?  Maybe we invest in the texts we teach and with integrity look in that Mirror-of-True-Seeing that is so often written about in the literature that has been passed down to us.  Forcing others to accept a reality which we ourselves cannot deliver or verify but only imagine, will keep us forever chained in the cave.  

"Make it so."

I write about Adventuremental teaching, and I LOVE what I do!  What does this mean for teachers, trying to keep the integrity of classical pedagogy intact while utilizing and understanding the Brave New World of technology?  How do we avoid making claims of what is possible before the technological support is there to assist, and as Capt. Jean Luc Picard says:  “Make it So”?  To truly prepare students for the future, I believe we need to utilize the tools they will be using in the boardroom, their future meetings of all sorts, the conference room, & the world-at-large, but but but, if we cannot provide this experience in a meaningful way, then are we doing them any favors?  If it doesn’t “happen” is it like going for a ride in Gene’s time machine?  Or, could it be like a group of “helpers” who surround an emperor, telling him what they guess he wants to hear?  Or both?  We could even be in danger of Aldous Huxley’s horrific scenario, where a “Brave New World” is engineered to the point where we have to justify our existence to the TOOLS rather than using the tools as extensions of what we are about:  LIVING.  

 This is nothing new, of course:  these questions will probably ALSO be part of the Imagined Future *sigh* because technology is not just a piece of analog or digital equipment!  Bureacracy, alas, is also nothing new.  

What do we do, then, when we realize we are in the cave:  Plato tells us we break free of the chains and, with help, emerge from the cave.  Not only that, but according to ancient philosophy revered ever since and taught by US:  it is our bounden duty to GO BACK INTO the cave and free our fellow brothers and sisters.  

Does Kafka tell us how to free ourselves from the bureacratic nightmare of The Castle?  Maybe knowing it exists is enough.  Illich definitely tells us how to embrace Conviviality:  through the proper use of TOOLS.  How interesting.   

 The disconnect is bigger perhaps, than just a dialogue between professions.  Again, nothing new.  Apparently this generation is already “there” wherever “there” is.  When we bring new media resources into the classroom, we are not acting as great benefactors “giving” them something they don’t already “have.”  This is their world and will absolutely be part of the world they will enter and govern.  We can help guide them into an active and engaged use of the tools that will better their lives in ways that professors always have….making sense of the world and utilizing the available tools in relevant ways.  BUT, something is wrong when we expect our students to exist ALSO as tools to justify our existence.  They will not.  The world is too big and too accessible.  They know what’s out there.  When we claim expertise we need to deliver, and if we cannot, the best thing we can do is admit that we are all, all of us, also students of something.  If Gene wanted to bring me into his world to help justify his reality, that might be something else.  I don’t know.  I do know that it says more about Gene than it says anything about actual reality. 

When I worked in historic preservation and fell prey to the delusions of a a nice old man named Gene, where did he take me?  For a ride, that’s for sure.  Where will we choose to go?

Posted by gsutherland at 2:10 pm Tagged with:

Hansel & Gretel Part II: On Being Cooked

Brainstorming No Responses »
Mar 312010

Part I- click here

So the Brother and Sister make their way through the woods and finally stumble into a clearing with a house made of bread and sugar.  Famished, Hansel and Gretel rush to the feast before their eyes and begin to indulge themselves.  They hear a voice:

“Nibble, nibble, Little Mouse

Who is nibbling on my house?”

 

The children answer:

“The wind, the wind; it’s very mild,
            blowing like the Heavenly Child.”

 . .  .and they continue to eat.  What were the siblings thinking?  Acting impulsively according to supposed ‘need’ they pushed thought aside.  Of course they could have satisfied need with any number of available nuts, roots, berries or other items that take time and patience to satisfy desire, but once presented with a fantasy, they forgot to weigh the difference between their wants & needs. 

Suddenly a door in the cottage opens and an old woman steps out.  She is old, like a grandmother, and Hansel and Gretel, feeling at ease with her appearance, accept her invitation to enter the cottage. So ensues the well-known  process of entering Baba Yaga’s cottage in the woods!  Like Little Red Riding Hood and any number of other well-known tales, we HAVE to go to the woods and find the crone.  For one, we’ll never make it out of the woods if we don’t!

When Daniel-san visits Mr. Myagi, his teacher never seems to teach him karate!  How frustrating is that for Daniel?  Instead, Mr. Myagi insists he “wax on; wax off” and “sand the floor.”  Daniel does not understand, but he does as his teacher commands.   This is because Daniel is quite different than Hansel.  He is both worthy & willing.  He follows the teacher’s commands even when he doesn’t see the end from the beginning.  Daniel has no inkling that “wax-on; wax-off” has anything to do with the “The Crane” position he will ultimately take in the ring when he faces-off against his enemy.  He also does not realize (in the beginning) that he has so many OTHER things to learn along the way that are so much more important.  Is the reason for Mr. Myagi’s commands the Crane position?  Is it so Daniel can catch flies with chopsticks?  Or is it so he can make choices about life and when he does, have the ability to carry through on the desires of his heart?  When he enters the ring, the crane position is inside him.  When the monsoon hits, it is Daniel-san who has the confidence and fortitude to rescue and persevere even against the forces of nature.  He is not just training his body when he endlessly performs “sand-the-floor”; rather he is forming his character.  He is also finding out who he is and what he can expect from himself. 

What a marvelous thing that is! It’s something Hansel & Gretel don’t yet know.  They tell “the witch” they are not anything, and maybe they don’t yet know either?

What does Baba Yaga demand?  We know the #1 rule when encountering Baba Yaga in the woods:  Feed the Crone!  But what does that mean?  How will I know when I meet the crone, and what do I feed “her?”  First, know this:  you cannot go looking for the crone; the Crone comes looking for you.  There’s a well-known saying: 

When the student is ready                                             the teacher appears. 

What does this mean?  It means that the burden is on each of us to seek and find our self in the woods, searching.  Once there, Really&Truly there…searching out the nooks and crannies, walking the byways:  the Crone appears.  If & when we feed the crone, the path appears. 

Like Daniel-san, Hansel & Gretel are lulled by the mild appearance of the Crone: the grand-fatherly/grand-motherly demeanor of the teacher.  The Crone is not a Nursemaid, though.  If we are looking for a Nursemaid, that is a sure sign that we don’t belong in the woods!   If we want/need a Nursemaid, we must still be in the castle.

            When the princes s discovers the truth about her existence:  that her very birth coincided with a horrible curse, the doom for her brothers who became swans by day, she knows that she has found her quest.  The hero princess emerges.  However, she lives in a castle, and leaving a castle is not as easy as it seems, for the heroine, like all of us, lives in a complex structure of a multitude of duties, traditions, ideologies, desires, wants and needs, all pulling at her in various ways.  These form the rooms that make up her existence, and can even be a labyrinth of sorts.  How does one find the way out?  Even recognizing the need to leave the castle is an amazing feat, but needing to leave the castle (and go to the woods) and wanting to leave the castle to embark on a quest is not the same as actually finding the map to the door and attaining the key to the portcullis that bars the way. 

Like Hansel, Harry must face the lure of the past . . .

In traditional lore, the hero or heroine must find the old retainer or the Nursemaid to receive the knowledge that provides the clue to leaving the castle.  It is always arduous.    It often requires a Mirror of True Seeing.  Even Harry Potter finds it difficult to process looking in the Mirror of True Seeing, and he’s a “true” hero! 

Bread is Basic

Bread is Important

Bread is Precious

 In the story of the Twelve Wild Swans, the Princess Hero finds her Nursemaid in the dungeon, though, discovers the story of her birth, hears about her brothers, and  this gives her not only the courage to leave, but also the means to do so.  She enters the woods and we would think she  is now ready for her quest, but NO!  What does one do in the woods, and how does a hero[ine] find his or her way?  She is ready, and the Crone appears.  Fortunately, the Princess feeds the crone a loaf of bread.  As Red Riding Hood’s mother stresses, she must take the basket of food to “grandmother.”

In the old tales emanating out of medieval times bread represents what is most basic and simultaneously most precious.  There are times when famine and devastation last so long that city documents do not record a date, but instead just list an event “in the time of the Great Famine” because that is enough explanation.  Bread is the staff of life.  It is also the most basic of foods.  It is foundational and precious at the same time.  Much like “wax-on; wax-off” or “sand-the-floor,” or “paint-the-fence.”  Whatever the Crone asks, it will be basic.  It will be difficult to give, because it will be hard to do, and therefore a sacrifice and precious.   Is it useful?  Yes.  DOes the Crone need it?  No.  The student must give everything.  Ultimately, once given, the student gains all that is necessary for the next step. 

 Baba Yaga puts Gretel to work, learning how to be a woman of confidence.  Gretel learns and learns well.  How do we know this?  We know, because when it comes time, Gretel is capable of the fire; she can be cooked / refined.  She is “finished.”  Complete.  She passes the test.  What about Hansel?  He does not pass the test.  His actions place him in a cage.  He cannot be himself; instead he uses a fake bone that he passes off as a measure of his worth, and it is puny indeed.  He will not be cooked because he cannot face the fire.  He will never understand who/what the Crone is.  To Hansel, and to the Brothers Grimm also, the Crone is a witch.  How interesting is that?  Does that mean Hansel never left home?

Posted by gsutherland at 8:21 am Tagged with: , , , ,

Hansel & Gretel, part I: Passing on Communal Memory

Brainstorming 2 Responses »
Mar 242010

Brother and Sister

It begins with a boy and a girl.  They are brother and sister, so this is not a romantic tale.  The important fact that the story begins with two siblings means that this is a teaching tale, and that we—each of us, male and female–have something to learn.  This has something to do with communal memories and a shared past that is meant to be passed on in the oldest manner known: through story.  As the listeners, we are drawn into the dark and forbidding forest as Hansel and Gretel[1] embark on the quest that will determine their future.  We make a mistake if we think they are fleeing the past; in that liminal moment when the hero and/or heroine decides to take that momentous step forward into the Uncertain Future the Self is formed, along with all the interstitial power of Possibility inherent to this process.  Before that pivotal first step, any direction is possible, and thus, a myriad of potential outcomes await.  Ahead, both danger and wonder lurk in potentially equal measure.  This is partly why we say what qualifies a person as a hero or a heroine is that that the hero is both willing and worthy.  Choice is involved from the first moments, even when the outcome is uncertain or unknown.  

The wonderful story of Hansel and Gretel also reveals to us how important is that aspect of worthiness, though this 

Hansel as each of us

 might be measured differently depending on who and when.  Folk tales are  simultaneously universal and particular.  Common virtues bind all people generally throughout time, so we find similar tales throughout history.  We could almost say there are no new stories, just versions adapted for the particulars of each region, if we understand that the stories of each group of people were passed on orally and then adapted according to the living conditions and the needs of the people who “owned” the tales.   

My Gramma Bea was a master storyteller.  She lived in the northern-most tip of Maine, so every winter she came to stay with us in California where it was warm.  My childhood is full of laptime with my grandmother reading to me, wisdom imparted from across the room via the comfort of a wise woman in sturdy shoes –even at 6am–who spoke in that matter-of-fact way of a downeaster  of “the way things are” while she simultaneoulsy concocted applesauce cake or poured “real” maple syrup on my pancakes.  I will forever be the product of her efforts to pass on what it is to be human.  It is difficult to imagine the me without the memory of her deep inside, including snuggle time with Gramma Bea, because she stayed in my room, lucky me, and at night when I was scared, she would climb in bed with me, wrapping her warm, flannel-nightgown-covered arms around me:  “What’s wrong, Little Gabrielle?” she would ask, and I would tell her about my fears and night horrors.  “Really?” she would say, and even though it was dark, even now, I vividly picture her face, solemnly pondering my dilemma as if it were the most serious of considerations.  “Well, let me tell you about. . . .” she would begin, and then she would embark on one of the old stories of long ago.  I  never questioned the amazing coincidence of the heroine. . . “Once there was a girl named Gabrielle.”  I would ask “How old was she?”  and she would answer, “Oh, I believe she was just about your age, oh my…isn’t that interesting?”  I was enthralled and soothed.  I was formed early in my youth and well into adulthood.  When I later encountered these tales of long ago, they felt like old friends; I recognized my sisters and mothers from the many histories of communal memory that shaped their world and mine.       

The Dark & Scary Forest

Those aspects of folk and fairy tale are the pieces of communal memory that link us together, and must be shared as we affirm our humanity and attempt to bridge the gap of generations, fears & joys, miscommunications, calamities, differences, defeats, jubilations, and other commonalities that bind & separate us equally.   The particulars of a story that have existed time-out-of-mind restore the memory banks of what needs to be passed on to the next generation. . . and the next:  all those “things” that have been forgotten:  just as two children who are lost in the woods might need to recall macro & micro knowledge in order to survive a new and potentially hostile environment.  We KNOW the woods exist, but can we go there and find our way there too?  

 All who set out on the quest do not discover the wherewithal required for the self individuation that will allow them to become who they feel they are called to be.  Wishing doesn’t make it so.  ‘Should’ is not a concrete concept.  Like Hansel & Gretel, we do not always know why we feel called or from where the call originates.  Sometimes we just know we have to GO!  Maybe our parents are the ones pushing, knowing something we do not!!  So the Little Brother and the Little Sister venture forth. . .or do they? 

It is interesting that Hansel and Gretel know this is their time to go and their parents are very involved in ensuring that their son and daughter move on to the next phase in life.  In some versions the mother is more vehement and even has to convince the father.  In the middle of the night, Mother and Father talk about their children’s new lives, and how they must go live on their own.  And that’s just it, isn’t it?  No one else can be the “self” for us!  All the teaching and learning in the world is only worth what we make of it individually.  Unfortunately, what Hansel and Gretel overhear makes them anxious—even afraid.   Hansel gathers the means to return back home in the form of little white rocks, which he puts in his pockets.  The pebbles anchor him to his childhood home, and Gretel stays close to Hansel.  Despite Mother’s and Father’s efforts to leave them in the big, wide world, the trail they leave leads them right back home even without the presence of their parents.

What happened?  And what about those little pebbles in Hansel’s pockets; what do they signify?  How difficult is it to leave a place when we don’t really leave; when we take it with us in pieces and fragments in our pockets or other places of our minds and hearts that serve to forge a path that pulls us backwards rather than a beacon of strength to guide or impel us forward?  

Sometimes it seems too difficult to make it on our own in the cold, dark woods without the creature comforts to which we’ve grown accustomed.  This is a familiar phenomenon.  In modern day, the trend has become so common that it has a name:  Boomerang Kids.  The phenomenon of college students who graduate only to return home to live with their parents is on the rise.  Many do not find work, and even more simply decide to continue living at home, in fact: 40% of 2006 graduates remain or have returned to their parent’s homes.    

Back to the woods with Hansel and Gretel and their parents’ sending them away, again!  The particulars of this tale (once it is codified by the Brothers Grimm) tell us the context of this version of the story:  certainly this is a time of scarcity and perhaps even fear.  The ubiquitous and dangerous woods were omnipresent.  If the tale had been written in today’s modern world with the current economic fears and obsession with Wall Stree figures along with inner city crime, could a parallel be drawn?  How do parents send their children off into the jungle that is the great big, wide, scary world to fend for themselves?

Through the Woods . . .to Grandmother's House

The next time Hansel and Gretel leave, there will be no pebbles; no mementos.  Mother and Father leave them in the woods with only a bit of bread. 

 We have to go to the woods; all fairy tales suggest this universal truth.  Even Little Red Riding Hood’s mother warns her daughter of the dangers lurking in the woods, yet nevertheless sends Red Riding Hood with the crucial bread to meet the old woman in the forest!   

What do Hansel and Gretel do?  They can think of only one thing:  we need to go home!  So they squander their bread on laying a trail, but there is no going home of course, and they soon become lost in the woods.  Apparently even heaven conspires against them for birds eat the bread crumb trail.  If we have not already realized it, now we know that something beyond our own understanding is happening here, because the gods do not want the children to return home.  We know this, because the presence of birds in the story always speaks of a heavenly presence.  

Even so, we feel for these poor, pitiful children left all alone in the forest.  We might even be outraged at this seeming abandonment.  Leaving one’s child to fend for him or her self:  is this right?  Fair? Natural?  Did Mother and Father provide enough training & teaching before they left them in the woods?  Were they given enough food?  Did they absorb enough hugs & kisses?   Is it EVER enough and how do we know?  Hansel & Gretel, alone in the woods, bereft and hungry, abandoned by those who were supposed to “love” them most of all people in the whole wide world….and now, they will experience “the world” as it is exemplified by the scariest, most mysterious, dark version of it:  the deep, dark, woods! 

The tale is ambiguous enough that it applies to everyone.  The children are left alone as are all of us once it is time to grow up.  Decisions must be made.  Whatever was learned in childhood or young adulthood (whosever fault that is or is not) will now be part of the path they tread.  They must make the most of it.  Hansel hears what sounds like a chopping axe, and he thinks of his father, but he is not sure how to make the sound himself.  He runs after the chopping sound thinking to find his father, never once imagining that it might be HIS responsibility to duplicate it here, in the woods, where trees mean shelter and warmth.  Soon the children are hopelessly lost, and they will have to find another way to learn how to become who they are called to be.    

The next stage of the Journey

Some people never find the path through the woods, but because this is a teaching tale,   Hansel & Gretel are about to encounter one of the oldest figures of fairy tale: the crone.  Will they pass the test and emerge triumphant?  They find the path and come to a clearing with a fantastical cottage.  It seems as though it has been waiting just for them . . . and perhaps it has?  Is this what they’ve been taught to do/how to be?  Remember, this is a Teaching Tale.  

Once again, the Little Brother and the Little Sister venture forth. . . 

[1] The original tales in the German region referred only to “the Little Sister” and “the Little Brother” but the Brothers Grimm popularized the story using the German version of John and Jane Doe:  Hansel and Gretel, which codified what was a universal tale into that particular version ever since.

Posted by gsutherland at 10:31 pm Tagged with: ,

Do ut Des, Again

Brainstorming 4 Responses »
Mar 172010

Damon & Pythias

The semester seems to be a cycle of I-love-this-part-of-the-semester moments.  How do I choose the best one?  Apparently, they’re all my favorite!  The story of Damon and Pythias Is short but incredibly rich.  Is it more important to have a friend like this or to be such a friend?  When King Dionysius reacts to the example the two young men set in their willingness to sacrifice for each other AND in the trust they display, what is it that he desires?  We come back once again to that wonderful phrase Do ut Des, and the idea that we must give in order to receive.  No one who is already full can receive, and it is the giving itself that makes us receivable.  Dionysius, of course, clearly wants to receive, but he also obviously doesn’t get the “giving” part.  He seems to think that he can order friendship as if he can declare something is so by his command. 

How superficial (& boring!) would that be, if all the relationships in our life came about because and in the way that we decided that they should?  I love the slow learning about a person that happens over time, like peeling back paper thin layers of an onion, one-at-a-time.  To look at an onion is to see a large white or yellow, round vegetable, but each layer is sooo transparent and smooth….wow:  it seems as if we ought to be able to look through them to the very center of onion-ness!  But no, the only way to discover the layers is to patiently allow each one to peel.  If we cut into it suddenly, all we’ll ever discover is a cut up onion.  The transparency disappears, not because it’s gone, but because it’s unavailable to us, the impatient ones!  People are like that too, I think.  If we push for instant knowing, we may think we’ve been given a response, but all we’re seeing is the structure of the person, and not the inner reality that can only be known over time, one layer at a time.  I’m wondering if friendship is like this too?  Perhaps the layers that make up a coupleship (of any kind)  are many layers deep, each one obviously part of the whole once discovered and recognized, but only transparent when recognized through insight, understanding, and knowing. 

Maybe a more important question arises:  how do I know when my “giving” is actually a gift, and not a roundabout way to enable receiving?  That’s really Dionysius’ problem, right?  He’s trying to figure out how to “have” a friendship, so he wants to know what to DO to get it.  We could ask ourselves this question in the larger, global construct, as with Haiti.  It’s probably good to travel to Haiti and “help,” but I find it fascinating how our brand of “help” looks so very American and Christian-imperialistic.  I’m not Haitian, but I know that I don’t particularly like it when someone who thinks they are better, bigger, stronger, richer, or whater “er” we could name comes along and decides to “help” me… placing me in his/her/their debt.  In my experience, he/she/they don’t typically know what I need and certainly aren’t going to stick around long enough to find out… We could also think of it on a more personal level.  I have many times struggled with the question of Gift Giving.  Is it better to give a gift that I will enjoy giving to a person I care for, thus sharing something of myself with him or her, something I think that person needs, or something that person wants, even if it’s something I do not care for?  What if it’s something that person REALLY likes and I REALLY don’t like?  What if I have a passion for something I think is wonderful and want to share it, but the person I’m giving to really does NOT like it?  These might seem like simple questions, but when real names and items are applied to the concepts, it becomes more difficult. 

My daughter Amanda is the best gift giver I know of.  She is creative and intuitive.  For Valentines Day this year she sent me a little stuffed animal Panda Bear so that I would think of her (Amanda-Panda) and a little children’s picture book called “I love my Mommy” and it was page after page of Mommy and Baby animals.  Before you say awwwwwwww . . . it gets better.  On each of the pages, she placed sticky notes and scribbled little messages to me like “This reminds me of me and you when I was little.”  I don’t know if that was the perfect gift for everyone, or just the perfect gift for ME.  I know she did it with me in mind.  It also makes the layers in the heartstrings between us stronger, deeper, richer.  She gave and I was filled.  When I am filled, I am better able to give.

Posted by gsutherland at 11:27 pm Tagged with: , ,

Homework Tools?

Brainstorming 2 Responses »
Mar 122010

Perhaps the best reason to work at home?

I was joking with my friend Amy the other night about how much we each must have liked homework when we were in school, because we chose a profession that guaranteed we’d never be without it!  We were talking on the phone instead of meeting for dinner because we both had a stack of papers to grade—not to mention monographs to read if we finished the grading.  Did we know when we started on this path that we would always & forever be doing homework?  It seems that the more tools we add to our arsenal, the more work we do!  I’m thinking that something needs to be re-evaluated!

I’m in this New Media seminar facilitated by Gardner Campbell, and I don’t think he actually told us [up front] how much homework he would be assigning. . .   Hmmmmm.  The “homework” he assigns is not onerous; nevertheless it takes up time.  It makes me think about the tasks I assign my students and about what is necessary vs. what is pleasurable and the value of either or both. I’m stewing over this question, searching for meaning beyond the surface, perhaps  because this has an application to what we are reading in the New Media seminar.   Do new gadgets and tools make the burden lighter or perhaps even change the focus or even the the nature of our work?  There could be a danger in that.   I don’t want to start on a discussion of I-am-what-I-do. . . but this sort of begs the question, doesn’t it?  I’m headed into deep waters here, and so I want to back up to gadgets and tools:  they hold such an appeal because they add value to our work and play.  They both simplify AND complicate our lives. 

Do you remember the earliest e-mail programs?  As I read “Personal Dynamic Media,”  and thought about the seeming prescience of Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg in 1977 regarding electronic tools of the Imagined Future, envisioning the “small talk”  and “dynabook” that would someday be the laptop, I recalled those early word processing programs we all used, and then my first experiences with e-mail when the owner of a brand new home town internet company drove to my house in his little beatup car to give me a floppy disk so I could install Eudora on my A drive.   If only we could have envisioned THEN where all that would lead, huh?

Do you remember your old computer?

 “I think this will work,” he said.  “If it doesn’t, let me know, and we’ll figure something out.”  I wondered if that meant I was his first actual customer.  (Now his company is a multi-million dollar entity covering half a state and beyond!)  Nevermind.  I couldn’t wait to get started!  I asked if you remembered, and wow—I sometimes remind myself about those days of continuous waiting between commands, constant computer crashing due to who-knows-what, and no questions asked….we all just booted up again and told whoever might be on the ‘other end’ “sorry, computer crashed,” and continued on.  No worries.  ASCII and ms-dos were a way of life.  Now, when I call my nationally-based ISP it’s not so hometown-ey, and I try to laugh about all this when the well-meaning computer tech on the ‘other end’ insists on spelling ping and ipconfig one letter at a time with identifying alpha-mnemonics.  They are “teaching” me in ways I don’t even need; helping me traverse a different kind of language barrier.  What is that about?  I no longer accept computer crashing, and I want to know why the internet is slow or absent.  There are certain tools I NEED and then…. I think about why I need it.  Is my sense of urgency so I can grade papers online till all hours?  That seems like perhaps the internet is controlling MY life, rather than existing as a tool to make life somehow better.  What happened to efficiency and pleasure being the reason I wanted these tools?  Do the tools I have helped create and shape own me?

Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game  might be my favorite book series of all time.  (It’s always at least in my top 5.)  Far and away, my favorite character is Jane.  I like to say that I identify with Jane, although my daughter says, “No Mom, you’re not Jane; you’re the Hive Queen.”  That, I suppose is a different story for another day….  Anyway, Jane is an anomaly, much like the internet, who exists existentially as she is accessed by those who utilize her.  She is as powerful as they want her to be, and her sense of her “self” (if we can call it that) is relative to their use.  Interestingly, Card wrote the story and developed the character before the internet was “born,”  so in some ways his envisioning of the character “Jane” is similar to what we have encountered in the dynamics posed by J.C.R. Licklider in his article “Man-Computer Simbiosis” and Doug Engelbart in “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework.”  Much of the drama in Card’s universe surrounds the idea of the bond between Ender, the main character, and Jane.  As with the question posed by Licklider and Engelbert: whether or not a tool is an extension of our self or whether a tool replicates human action and perhaps becomes something else.  This is, of course, often the “stuff” of science fiction, but it’s an important question.  How important our tools become in the way we Imagine our individual worlds and the Universe shapes the way we live our lives and direct the course of the future.  If we cannot function in any meaningful way without the present configuration of our tools, then I wonder what that means about our self qua self?  When Ender turns Jane “off” he irrevocably alters his life—and Jane’s, but she does not die.  Jane has by that time become so pervasive throughout the entire world and exists in so many places/in so many ways that she exists elsewhere and elsehow.  In a combination of ultimate grief and rage at the rejection from Ender, Jane actually goes on to control the entire Universe, like a goddess with ultimate power. 

Demeter

Just as ancient Greeks had to learn the lessons Demeter taught in order to assuage the goddess’ rage so they could enjoy the fruits of the land, the people in Card’s world have to follow the rules Jane establishes in order to access the power she holds (which they need/want).

In our New Media Seminar, we talk about this same process.  Many participants have talked about the so-called rules & protocols that exist for the privilege of talking and dealing with machines.  Tools, by their nature exist in a world of rules.  It doesn’t seem to matter if they are created in our image, or if they exist as extensions or as replications.  We as human beings have to follow certain protocols in order to utilize their power.  And we want to. 

There are lots of tricky new media gadgets, toys, & tools to play with, and many of them make our classrooms better learning environments, but I wonder how many of them serve as extensions of who we really are and which of them turn us into the tool itself.  I don’t really want to BE Jane.  I would like to be partnered with “her” in some way that makes my classroom richer.  I can benefit from Jane’s access to the Universe beyond my reach.  She can probably help me traverse the places where the language barrier still exists.  The key is probably to find the on/off button, and to determine which tools fit the individual circumstances and identifying markers that would truly enrich life and add depth and meaning to my students’ experiences.  Is that why I keep assigning myself homework?

Posted by gsutherland at 10:12 am Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Equipoise & Counterpoise

Brainstorming 1 Response »
Feb 282010
Sainte-Chapelle

Sainte-Chapelle

I love this part of the semester, taking my students on a virtual pilgrimage, starting with the Road to Santiago de Compostela and culminating in Paris at Sainte Chapelle.  Yesterday, I was lecturing on the architecture of the Romanesque and Gothic periods, all the while thinking how fortunate I am to have a job that requires me to regularly take note of the grand endeavors in human history.  (Thankfully there is so much more that is glorious and mighty to report from our collective past than the wars and deprivation that yes, must also be told.)   Even as I moved through the photos (that are simultaneously memories) with my students, detailing the advancements and innovations, I tried to explain how each new breathtaking innovation and technique representing marvelous technological advancements and skills were simultaneously correctives and adjustments for the previous innovations and improvements, and would cause additional, necessary inventions to counterbalance the weight and pressure of added grandeur.  All the while as I was pointing out various architectural elements, I was thinking about the virtual/visual path, anticipating the last pictures of  Sainte Chapelle.  I recalled standing in the open jewel box of an upper gallery, basking in the reflected light of a thousand pieces of beautiful stained glass.  I’m wondering as I lecture, “Will I be able to convey the beauty of this and other sacred destinations?   Is it important for them to understand how each innovation and advancement made it possible for the next.  Is standing in a particular locus, reveling  in human achievement that somehow transcends the here&now what I really want to focus on?  Is that what I’m trying to teach, or is it more about instilling in them a desire to reach for more and then  go and do?” 

 Towards the end of my gothic architecture lecture, I talked about gargoyles, typically threatening-looking, but alsogargoyles3 carrying out the necessary task of diverting the accumulation of water from off the roof and joints lest the weight of the water crush the monumental structure.  Equipoise and counterpoise: a series of adjustments in order to distribute the weight of the workload or balance the stress and tension of the time and place.

 The idea of the journey goes nicely with thoughts of pilgrimage and what that means.  I love thinking about that path, and the way folks gathered to make a statement about themselves both individually and as a group and then declare themselves before God.  Will I sound too trite if I say that I don’t think it was only about the sacred destination, but the dialogical relationship they found along the way?  It might be that the craftsmen who built the cathedrals were also not always as concerned with the finished product as they were individually involved in the processes that made up the greater whole. 

 I love that “thing” that occurs in close community where there is movement.  It’s something singular and unique–almost indescribably–involving inside jokes; quick smiles, teasing; easy camaraderie; and shared joys and pains.  We notice the ups and downs of those we’re close to—in proximity or otherwise—and sometimes even cause the suffering.  The joint endeavor is partly about pain and suffering, don’t you think?  Is it because my community has seen my pain that makes me trust them, or because they smile when I join them and I feel a sense of belonging?  Cicero tells us that in true friendship pain is diminished and joy multiplied because of the process of sharing.  I’m fascinated by the thought, and I think I’m like most people:  I’m actually on a journey to find my true friend.  Forget EVERYTHING else:  this is my true purpose in life.

Rosie Lopez, a creative and spirited young woman in the Imagined Future Project challenged the group to write about “Community” this week.  I’m looking forward to reading their posts.  They have set a demanding path for themselves, and I believe their level of success will be in direct proportion to their ability to practice communitas.  But then, I believe that about every endeavor and all groups of people.  The ability to place “it” together in some kind of balance shapes & directs the path. 

 I’m thinking that life consists of a series of balancing acts. . . of equipoise and counterpoise.   . . .and the ability to choose.  Perhaps we also need diversions to relieve the tension or redirect the stress that accumulates.  Like the great craftsmen of the medieval cathedrals, at this moment in time I am a product of many corrections and adjustments along the way.  I’m thinking (hoping?) that my beautiful friends who make up what I would call communitas distribute the weight of the burden I carry, and I hope I sometimes do the same for them.

Posted by gsutherland at 12:39 am Tagged with: , ,
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