"How the Light Gets In"

A student brought in the Leonard Cohen song "I'm Your Man" today, and then we had left over time and someone else hummed "Hallelujah," so I played that too and taught it.  I've gotta run now though, so this is a short one today.

MANdela

Wednesday I was teaching my students about this song in the textbook called "Follow the Drinking Gourd to Freedom."  It was about an old slave song that they would sing to get clues for how to follow the Underground Railroad on the way up North to the free states where slavery was illegal.  The idea was that you looked up at the Big Dipper in the sky, which they referred to as a "gourd," and then could find the North Star from there.  Then we learned that the story behind the song might not be true, but escaped slaves definitely did use the North Star to find their way north at night, which was the best time to travel when you were a runaway.

Before listening to the song and reading the story behind it, I had to explain to all the students a summary of the Civil War and slavery in America, which is always a difficult subject to explain in 25 minutes.  Then we listened to the song, which was performed by Richie Havens, who also happened to be the first act at Woodstock '69.

Today we learned another story related to the freedom theme of the song.  It was about two families who escaped East Berlin to West Germany by building a hot-air balloon and flying over the wall.  They didn't make it on their first attempt, but they did on their second.  Of course, I had to explain the Cold War, which meant I had to explain World War II, which meant I had to explain World War I, although I drew the line there.

There's been a whole lot of freedom talk in class lately.

A few days ago I talked about a book by Stephen Alcorn that quoted inspiring heroes on a 365 day calendar.  Each day had a different hero quoted on their birthday.  When I received A Gift of Days as a gift days before embarking on my first journey, to India, I of course looked up my birthday first.

My birthday is July 18th.  According to the artist, the most famous and inspiring person with whom I shared a birthday was Nelson Mandela.

He died today.

He freed South Africa while in prison.  He is one of the most inspiring and celebrated humans in the world.

Not everybody thinks so.

One of my fellow kindergarten teachers in Japan was from South Africa.  I was telling him how it was so cool that I lived in a house with people from all over the world, but when I mentioned that one of the girls was African-American, he said, "Black people?  Oh, I couldn't live there!  I'm South African!" as if that explained everything.  I had recently heard gossip that he was racist from my boss, with the obvious irony that we were teaching a foreign language while we were minority guests in another land.  I asked what he thought of Nelson Mandela.  "Criminal!" he said.  "No, I can't stand black people at all."  I had never heard someone so openly and unashamedly admitting that they were a racist.  Most people I've met with racist tendencies tend to be Americans who want to prove they aren't racists because it's frowned upon here, what with all the history of slavery, civil rights fights and bombastic boasts of equality.  But this guy seemed to think I would obviously understand his hatred of an entire people who simply had a different skin color than he did.  It wasn't just based on black citizens of his country who may have wronged him or people he knew during the widespread violence that preceded and surrounded the transition of power while Mandela peacefully negotiated African rights to be involved in the governing of a nation which consisted of a population 80% African.  He somehow thought this justified hating everyone of that color skin wherever they were from.

The most natural and honest response I could think of was, "Some of the best and most inspiring friends I've had are black."  Which is true.  I don't have a lot, but the few I have had are amazing people who have made me a better person and helped me to succeed in life.

[Today the Wu-Tang Clan posted a Nelson Mandela quote:  "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion.  People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart."]

That was a year before I moved to San Francisco where I lived in a house that turned out to be occupied by five black residents and five white residents.  The landlord was the son of one of the athletes who won first and third place medals at the 1968 Olympics and put their fists in the air during the National Anthem.  Many people thought it was a Black Power salute, but it was actually a human rights salute, and the second place guy from Australia did it too.  I learned this because the manager of the house, the mother of the landlord who lived in the attic, told me all of this.  She was an amazing woman who always cheered me up by sharing her own experiences of travel, spirituality and synchronicity.  Her best friend was a poet and a writer who gave me courage and confidence and continually blessed me as I moved out of the house, telling me that my mind was a space ship and if I would simply choose where I wanted to go, I would be there before I knew it.  I visited a few months later to drop off a stereo my dread locked Black Panther Party-t-shirt-wearing roommate had kindly loaned to me, and she kept asking if I was doing okay (I was staying in hostels, camping and looking for housing at the time) and saying, "God bless you."  After that I moved to Berkeley for a month, and then I visited New York and New York City for a few weeks.  I took this picture my first day in New York City:

When I got back I moved to Oakland.  Every day I went to work to teach English and had to walk along a road named after Nelson Mandela for about twenty minutes, each way.  There was a mural of the men who had taken the podium at the '68 Olympics giving the human rights fist.  I have a picture of it somewhere, but I can't find it right now.  But I do have a picture of a Mandela quote that was at the head of the street:

The other side of the street had a similar artwork that said the following:

"Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world."

That helped inspire me on the way to work.  But I want to do more than teach English.  Luckily, Mandela also said:

"There is no passion to be found in playing small--in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living."

I like this man the more I read his words.  Let's share some more:

"It always seems impossible until it's done."

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.  The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers the fear." 

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."

"Let freedom reign.  The sun never set on so glorious an achievement."

Amen.

All You Need is the Meaning of Life

(The setting: a corporate boardroom in a metropolitan skyscraper)

Chairman:  …which brings us once again to the urgent realization of just how much there is still left to own.  Item six on the agenda: the meaning of life.  Now, uh, Harry, you’ve had some thoughts on this.

Harry:  That’s right.  Yeah, I’ve had a team working on this over the past few weeks, and, uh, what we’ve come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts.  One: people are not wearing enough hats.  Two: matter is energy.  In the universe, there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive.  Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person’s soul.  However, this soul does not exist ab initio, as orthodox Christianity teaches.  It has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation.  However, this is rarely achieved, owing to man’s unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.

Board Member: What was that about hats, again?

Monty Python's Meaning of Life

"Raise the Exhilaration Content of the Universe"

“We outlaws, however, live beyond the law.  We don’t merely live beyond the letter of the law—many businessmen, most politicians, and all cops do that—we live beyond the spirit of the law.  Have we a common goal, that goal is to turn the tables on the nature of society.  When we succeed, we raise the exhilaration content of the universe.  We even raise it a little bit when we fail.

Yes, and I love the trite mythos of the outlaw.  I love the self-conscious romanticism of the outlaw.  I love the black wardrobe of the outlaw.  I love the fey smile of the outlaw.  I love the tequila of the outlaw and the beans of the outlaw.  I love the way respectable men sneer and say ‘outlaw.’  I love the way young women palpitate and say ‘outlaw.’  The outlaw boat sails against the flow, and I love it.   Outlaws toilet where badgers toilet, and  I love it.  All outlaws are photogenic, and I love that.  “When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free”: that’s a graffito seen in Anacortes, and I love that.  There are outlaw maps that lead to outlaw treasures, and I love those maps especially.  Unwilling to wait for mankind to improve, the outlaw lives as if that day were here, and I love that most of all.”

-Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins

Solitude on the Path

"But everything that once perhaps will be possible to many, the solitary man can already prepare for and build now with his hands, which go less astray.  Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and bear the pain which it has caused you with fair-sounding lament.  For those that are near you are far, you say, and this shews that distance begins to grow around you.  And when your nearness is far, then your distance is already among the stars and very great; be glad of your growing, into which you can take no one else with you, and be good to those that remain behind, and be self-possessed and quiet with them and do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten them with your confidence or joy, which they could not comprehend.  Seek some unpretending and honest communion with them, which you are under no necessity to alter when you yourself become more and more different; love life in a strange guise in them, and make allowance for those aging people who fear the solitude in which you trust.  Avoid furnishing material for the drama which is always impending between parents and children; it uses up much of the children’s strength and wastes away the love of their elders, which is operative and warm even when it does not comprehend.  Demand no advice from them and reckon with no understanding; but believe in a love that is preserved for you like a heritage, and trust that in this love there is a strength and a blessing which you are not bound to leave behind you though you may travel far!"

"It is good that you are entering first of all upon a profession which makes you independent and places you on your own in every sense.  Wait patiently to see whether your innermost life feels constrained by the form of this profession.  I consider it a very difficult one and a hard taskmaster, as it is burdened with much convention and gives hardly any scope to a personal interpretation of its tasks.  But your solitude will be your home and haven even in the midst of very strange conditions, and from there you will discover all your paths.  All my wishes are ready to accompany you, and my trust is with you."

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

206 +1

This is the 207th post on this site, which means the previous one was #206.

I was just in Williamsburg having dinner with the same friends who hosted me on their couch a few nights in San Francisco when I was preparing to move back East, and it turned out that my first ever NYC apartment was only a few blocks away.  So I wandered over to Bushwick Avenue and took a trip down memory lane.

Technically it wasn't my first apartment, as I had lived on Ten Eyck Street for five weeks previous to signing a lease near the Montrose Avenue station.  Even so, it was my first true home as an adult out of college.  And when my roommate left after 8 months, it became my first ever home that I had all to myself as a young bachelor in Brooklyn.  That only lasted 4 months before I moved up to Queens to join some friends who had just moved to the city, but I'll never forget the experience of freedom in my own place.

A lot of memories flooded my mind as I stared up at the third floor of 206 Bushwick Avenue.  Since living there I have learned that there are 206 countries in the world.

I liked having my own gritty dirty apartment where I could do whatever I wanted.  Then again, I didn't like the neighborhood after a while, and there was a really annoying evangelist church next door that was always blaring Spanish religious music on the street to get people to come in.  And the superintendents dealt drugs and sometimes had fights with people screaming and things crashing and breaking.  I also had my first laptop stolen the end of my first month living there.  Not to mention the insanity of my 8 month one-on-one experience with a platonic roommate of the opposite sex.  And working at that law firm the whole time.  And that other woman who found me online just as soon as the first one left, and I eventually fell for.

I learned a lot that year.  2006-07.

I am happier now.

Awakening

"The awakening of awe is the key here, what Leo Frobenius, the wonderful student of African cultures, called Ergriffenheit, being seized by something so that you are pulled out.

Now, it’s not always easy or possible to know by what it is that you are seized.  You find yourself doing silly things, and you have been seized but you don’t know what the dynamics are.  You have been struck by that awakening of awe, of fascination, of the experience of mystery—the awareness of your bliss.  With that, you have the awakening of your mind in its own service.  The brain can enable you to found a business in order to maintain your family and get you prestige in the community; given the right mind, it can do these things very well.  But the brain can also impel you to give all that up because you become fascinated with some kind of mystery."

                                -Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss