“The plot is simple: two friends under a sycamore tree, thinking about where they are going and how to get there.”
—Walker Allen, NBS .06
We read two stories, both about war and friendship. The two stories were by each of the combatants in the friendship war. Both of the boys wanted to be friends. Both boys tried to be friends, but somehow missed their chances for solidifying their connection. Both boys, without understanding why, found themselves and their actions being dictated by inner insecurities, fears, and anxieties. Both boys saw in the other strange reflections of their own weaknesses, and perceived each action and response from the other as direct criticism and aggression. In order to protect from the aggression, in order to preserve some sense of “safety,” each of the boys put up barriers to the other from which they launched grenades, which, if they had somehow been able to decipher truly, would have carried messages which read, “I still want to be friends, and I am willing to fight for it.”
In the end both boys found a way to remove the barriers, to seek a path to the golden glow of friendship. They both found the relief in unfolding the fist, the pride in finally creating the thing they had wanted all along. “Two dark islands, with the golden sun setting between them;" the ability to say, “I know he is my friend, and I am proud to say it.”
It reminded me of Blake’s poem, “The Poison Tree,” which begins with the idea that negative feelings, once expressed, will diminish. Feelings of anger that go unexpressed eventually become internalized, where they intensify and deepen.
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
The purpose of the writing of autobiographical narrative, of the purpose behind scrutinizing social relationships at this age, of spending some much time on it, is that the kids are beginning to learn how to move forward into what is difficult and to not shy from it. They are learning what a story is, how to tell it, and they are deciding what characters they are going to be. As is written on our school gavel, in a poem that Walker Allen wrote about Of Mice and Men, “The plot is simple: two friends under a sycamore tree, thinking about where they are going and how to get there.” It’s not enough, as in the beginning of To Kill a Mockingbird, to only talk about the rumors of what is inside the Radley house. It’s not enough to only go up and slap the side of the house, as if that was somehow a brave excursion into the soul of another story or person.
As Scout and Jem learn, understanding, compassion and ultimately freedom derive from being willing to go inside, to get inside the skin, to move past walls of fear that bookend our lives. As Jem and Scout discover, there are knot-hole openings in the world into which we must pass if we want to see. Otherwise we all end up behind our own closed doors. But in the stories, when two boys begin to talk to each other and begin to see that loving each other is all they ever wanted, whole other worlds begin to open up.
There was skiing going on after school. There was a clean-up election and new clean-up checkers chosen. We wrote 9000 words on the play together. We worked through the middle chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird. We began writing Ye Olde Middle of the year Self-Evaluations, new story ideas and mandalas. We worked on stained glass and pizzas in the oven. We discussed relationships between boys and girls, the earthquake in Haiti, and how to engage in literature class instead of being passive. Rose packed four trash cans full of saw-dust, sticks, manure, fertilizer and copper shards in order to make a saw-dust firing for our clay objects. The trashcans were set up in the snowy field in perfect alignment with the four directions. The Ninths Grade boys were given the task of pyro-maniacally lighting the fires, but since Nathan was absent Bryn was duly deputized as a Ninety boy and got to light the fourth can. Rose read an Ethiopian folktale about truth and untruth on a journey to the mountain, and Hannah and Isabel did a dance in the softening snow, and we set it ablaze.
Bryn gave her project on The Dust Bowl, The Great Depression, The Crash, Westward Movement, Woody Guthrie, Herbert Hoover, FDR, WPA; Hoover-Villes, Dorothea Lange; Eleanor Roosevelt, the New Deal, CCC, FSA, FDA, NYA, SEC, SS, Migrant workers, “okies”, Woody Guthrie’s guitar—“this machine kills fascists.” The wheat region of Kansas and OK as “paradise”—“heaven on earth” “–the Great Plowing.” Disruption of natural and native growth cycles, Black Sunday, the paradise of California, the lure of the Orange, the burning of food, Weedpatch Camp, The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, a million people hungry. She played us “Big Rock Candy Mountain” and “Pastures of Plenty” by Woody Guthrie. The she gave us a single boiled potato at the end of class to give us the feeling of what it was like to be a hungry migrant worker. We did not have breakfast, so we were very hungry. Before she let us have our boiled potato she showed us some oranges, sliced and juicy. When members of the class asked her if they could have some, she would not let us, as it was true that the oranges were beyond the reach of the migrants and the hungry migrant farmers of California has to eat boiled potatoes while acres and tons of oranges burned. This made us feel angry and wrathful towards Bryn, who represented the Big Farm growers, as she as taught us tons about an important time in history.
Miles presented Wolves in the second installment of his project on elements of Utopia and Dystopia in Animal Communities—(before he did Bees, next to come is Meerkats and Whales). He told us about social hierarchies in wolf packs and Alpha and Omega wolves. The omega wolf is the one beaten on so that the aggressions of the pack are channeled away from the pack tearing itself up and only focusing on Omega. A comment was made that this was similar to how the Nazis chose "Omega" groups to focus their hatred and aggression on (against Jews and other groups in their communities ) as a way of organizing and solidifying their own group feeling. He told us about communication by and between wolves: howling, barking, and growling, through body language of ears, lips, eyes, tail, and stance, and fur movements. Essentially they show emotions this way. He showed us videos of how wolves work together to hunt, and how caribou feed the wolves while the wolves thin out weaker caribou—a kind of caribou eugenics inflicted by the wolves. He told us wolves do not waste, they eat everything, working in teams to find weak prey. They like it when prey is on the run and they back down if prey takes a stand against them. They also play with Ravens, and work symbiotically with ravens to locate food and provide it for the birds.
Then Miles asked us: So how are they Utopian (or dystopian)? We answered: They strategize and work together, respectful of boundaries and each other; body language is respected and understood, actions are based of direct and accurate observation of the other being. They have a clear understanding of each other, and directly communicate. They mourn the dead, and care about the pack. They like to play, in peaceful interaction with other animals such as crows. They don’t kill each other, or waste their own species without purpose, whereas we will kill each other out of anger (see earlier part of this article about the two boys!)
Isabel read Ahkmatova: “I taught myself to live simply and wisely,/to look at the sky and pray to God,/and to wander long before evening/to tire my superfluous worries.” Cassie read a poem by Bukowski, part of which is follows.
But they’ve left is a bit of music
And a spiked show in the corner,
A jigger of scotch, a blue necktie,
A small volume of Rimbaud,
Horse running as if the devil were
Twisting his tail
Over bluegrass and screaming, and then,
Love again
Like a streetcar turning the corner
On time...
Each week we try to live well and consider what it is that we have before us. Power chords. Soft snow. Longer light, reddish and gold, in evening. Lavender shadows on the field. A soft voice finally reading a poem. A nuthatch hopping headfirst down the tree. Two guitars chiming a blues. There are so many things, and we are keeping our eyes open to all of it.
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