“Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another circle can be drawn; that there us no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens…This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the unattainable, the flying Perfect, around which the hands of man can never meet, at once the inspirer and the condemner of every success, may conveniently serve us to connect many illustrations of human power in every department.”
—Emerson, “Circles”
Bryn wrote:
Monday morning; the last eight weeks of school, as Eric, our science teacher, reminded us with a smile. He has them all planned, he told us as plainly, with a wink, which made me think that it wouldn’t finish all of the weeks. All in now, no turning back, don’t stop, keep going, “It’s the last stretch.” Looking closely at each other’s faces and wanting to hold that vision forever, not to forget what we have seen in each other all year.
****
Third stories, the goal is to read all 27 stories, and to make them great. Working through stories to get to the heart of it. This is what we have to show to each other, the hopes and fears, dreams and pains and the hardest things to say. We sat around the table facing smiling, red and rosy with running on the sweet-smelling grass outside. Waiting for the voices to dissipate, waiting for the noise to die slowly away. Tal sat in his chair, looking at us, the ceiling, his hands.
****
Third stories, the goal is to read all 27 stories, and to make them great. Working through stories to get to the heart of it. This is what we have to show to each other, the hopes and fears, dreams and pains and the hardest things to say. We sat around the table facing smiling, red and rosy with running on the sweet-smelling grass outside. Waiting for the voices to dissipate, waiting for the noise to die slowly away. Tal sat in his chair, looking at us, the ceiling, his hands.
“3500 words”, he said, “that’s what you should have.”
“I don’t know how to do parts of my story,” said a concerned looking boy with his hand in the air.
Tal asked, leaning his chair back looking right at back at him. “What it your story about?”
“How I want to be great.”
“List the ways you saw people being or doing great things.”
“Well, Cassie’s story and Henry’s speech and all the 9th graders.”
“Okay, Henry’s speech, write a scene about that.”
“And you saw all these people working hard and you wanted to be like them?”
“Yes.”
“Pick out little examples or big ones. Let’s put some flesh on the bone.”
“Okay Tal.”
“Alright, good.”
Sunlight shone in our heads and golden glints almost blinded me and made the light scratches stand out in my eyes, on the rich and warm golden browns of the round table. It was easy to see imperfections in the sunlight, to see through things to the pure things, to the wonderful and insurmountable things that none of us understand until they are glaring at us right in the face. Not until we know how much they make up our souls.
Tuesday By Rider:
Anneke did her project on the Shakers, Tuesday. She started out by asking us if we could define a utopian community. We all took some wild shots at what might be a description of a utopian community. Then she had us take something that we had that was sentimentally valuable to us and put it on the table. She then carried on to tell us that when you joined a Shaker village, you had to give all your possessions to the community. She finished her project with some information on Shaker development, beliefs and philosophy. Her project was very thorough. She did a very good job teaching us.
At the end of her project, she had some people read from the Shaker covenant, Which to me sounded like a religious copyright law. So after reading the Shakers laws and ways, we had to right our own individual laws and ways. It was our own individual NBS™ covenant. We may be able to publish this soon.
(editor’s note: Tal made us use the words “appurtenances”, “aforesaid” and “hereunto”)
During lunch, on that same day of Anneke’s outstanding presentation, a new game was introduced to the NBS playing field. We called it Red Rover. Now you might be thinking of a game where people run from one side to another and try not to get tagged. Well we played a different kind of Red Rover. We played the kind where there are two teams. Lined up facing each other, with all team members holding hands. One team member is chosen by the other team to run at the opposing team and try to break through the wall of clasped hands.
If they break the wall they go back to their team. If they are stopped by the wall, then they join the team. First team to loose all its members loses. We played this game for 45 minutes straight. It was a form a war, but it was friendly war. It was more than a game, or a war for the faint-hearted. It was a direct analogy for the way we relate to one another, in school and anywhere. The common social disease that is spread all over teenagers. The disease of metaphorically running at a person or a group you want to connect with and thrusting yourself at them, throwing your entire self out to the world. Either you break through the wall and are rejected by the group, and you feel terrible; or you are stopped by the group and you are accepted and you are happy and become another person, just waiting to catch or drop someone.
What seems to be is that we need to learn to be able to control our own acceptance or refusal from or by others. Or we need to believe so strongly in ourselves that we don’t care if we are dropped or caught, because we love who we are. Because we love doing what we do on this earth.
****
Bryn wrote about Wednesday:
Evan read this on Wednesday morning:
As I Walked Out One Evening
By W.H Auden
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.
'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.
'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.
'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.
'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Rarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.
'O look, look in the mirror?
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
On Wednesday at lunch as the sun shone blindly outside and after many long weeks, our four groups were ready to try to boil water. The four teams were The Tipsy Olives, Big Marmalade, The Not So Little Miss Sunshine’s, and The Yakking Bombardiers. The goal was to get the water to 100 degrees Celsius and to boil in 60 minutes. Every 5 minutes we measured from the thermometers that were sitting in our warming water.
After 100s of pieces of cardboard to make parabolas and many hours cutting the cardboard. After cutting shiny Mylar, spread out over the cardboard to reflect the sun, then having to take it off again, to make it become perfect, to make it smoother. We had to boil water with our solar concentrators set up on the patio, the sun baking on all our heads.
“55 minutes, write the temperature down, now!”
“Get out of the way of the sun, hey, you’re in the way!”
“Okay, we’ve got to adjust this, move the stool a little bit more, it’s falling, careful!”
“How much time do we have?”
“It’s a cloud, oh no it’s a cloud.”
“The temperature is going down.”
“Where’s the sun?”
“We’re at 77 degrees. We’re beating you!”
“The plastic wrap is melting.”
“You’re letting out all the hot air.”
“We’re to 100!”
The sun shone down everything making warmer and we tumbled, laughed and baked after the pursuit of much more then winning.
****
In the afternoon, as the table was covered in containers, binders, broken pencils, half eaten apples, we all settled down to watch a movie about the Shakers for the second part of Anneke’s project the day before. Shakers- Hands to work and Heart to God.” Ann Lee discovered and founded Shakerism in England. She saw and felt God come to her. “Worship God under your vine and fig tree.”
They believed in perfection, they believed in giving up everything, working for the Gospel, making the most beautiful things and most perfect things. Men and women have god’s equal affection. “Live your life as though you have 1,000 years to live, or as though you would die tomorrow.”
There are only two Shakers left in the world now, but the truth of God runs strong in the veins and hearts of the ones left; they still have faith that their religion will hold as strong as it ever has. “I don’t think it will ever die, the work of God will never die.”
We then listened to Shaker music and people singing with a true passion, showing how much they meant the world, how much they cared and understood their faith. They sung with such love and hope for knowing and understanding that what you believe lives longer then what anyone else thinks. There is only so much someone can tell you before you have to look back in yourself and understand what you believe.
****
From Thursday (recorded by Sarah from morning class with Tal)
During All Tal this morning Rider talked about the power of Asher Lev, about how his art is a balance between his religion and his art, the tension and power behind his lines. Tal talked about how teenagers run on two cylinders normally, and at North Branch we run on five. When we are on all 12 cylinders, like a Ferrari, is when we write a piece of work with power, and tension, and structure, and care, and it will be amazing. Henry spoke about writing his literary response, and how he was thinking about how Jacob Kahn teaches Asher, and how he, Asher, is going to eventually learn all the rules so he can throw them away, and how Henry’s guitar teacher had said the same thing, and how Henry was thinking about his lesson that night, and how learning the guitar gave him a structure and vocabulary to say things. Tal asked him about musical theory, and Calder talked about how he couldn't understand musical theory that but he knew all about the process of soccer, and Henry commented again about how every little window of expertise is a part of the whole of greater knowledge.
“I don’t know how to do parts of my story,” said a concerned looking boy with his hand in the air.
Tal asked, leaning his chair back looking right at back at him. “What it your story about?”
“How I want to be great.”
“List the ways you saw people being or doing great things.”
“Well, Cassie’s story and Henry’s speech and all the 9th graders.”
“Okay, Henry’s speech, write a scene about that.”
“And you saw all these people working hard and you wanted to be like them?”
“Yes.”
“Pick out little examples or big ones. Let’s put some flesh on the bone.”
“Okay Tal.”
“Alright, good.”
Sunlight shone in our heads and golden glints almost blinded me and made the light scratches stand out in my eyes, on the rich and warm golden browns of the round table. It was easy to see imperfections in the sunlight, to see through things to the pure things, to the wonderful and insurmountable things that none of us understand until they are glaring at us right in the face. Not until we know how much they make up our souls.
Tuesday By Rider:
Anneke did her project on the Shakers, Tuesday. She started out by asking us if we could define a utopian community. We all took some wild shots at what might be a description of a utopian community. Then she had us take something that we had that was sentimentally valuable to us and put it on the table. She then carried on to tell us that when you joined a Shaker village, you had to give all your possessions to the community. She finished her project with some information on Shaker development, beliefs and philosophy. Her project was very thorough. She did a very good job teaching us.
At the end of her project, she had some people read from the Shaker covenant, Which to me sounded like a religious copyright law. So after reading the Shakers laws and ways, we had to right our own individual laws and ways. It was our own individual NBS™ covenant. We may be able to publish this soon.
(editor’s note: Tal made us use the words “appurtenances”, “aforesaid” and “hereunto”)
During lunch, on that same day of Anneke’s outstanding presentation, a new game was introduced to the NBS playing field. We called it Red Rover. Now you might be thinking of a game where people run from one side to another and try not to get tagged. Well we played a different kind of Red Rover. We played the kind where there are two teams. Lined up facing each other, with all team members holding hands. One team member is chosen by the other team to run at the opposing team and try to break through the wall of clasped hands.
If they break the wall they go back to their team. If they are stopped by the wall, then they join the team. First team to loose all its members loses. We played this game for 45 minutes straight. It was a form a war, but it was friendly war. It was more than a game, or a war for the faint-hearted. It was a direct analogy for the way we relate to one another, in school and anywhere. The common social disease that is spread all over teenagers. The disease of metaphorically running at a person or a group you want to connect with and thrusting yourself at them, throwing your entire self out to the world. Either you break through the wall and are rejected by the group, and you feel terrible; or you are stopped by the group and you are accepted and you are happy and become another person, just waiting to catch or drop someone.
What seems to be is that we need to learn to be able to control our own acceptance or refusal from or by others. Or we need to believe so strongly in ourselves that we don’t care if we are dropped or caught, because we love who we are. Because we love doing what we do on this earth.
****
Bryn wrote about Wednesday:
Evan read this on Wednesday morning:
As I Walked Out One Evening
By W.H Auden
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.
'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.
'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.
'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.
'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Rarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.
'O look, look in the mirror?
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
On Wednesday at lunch as the sun shone blindly outside and after many long weeks, our four groups were ready to try to boil water. The four teams were The Tipsy Olives, Big Marmalade, The Not So Little Miss Sunshine’s, and The Yakking Bombardiers. The goal was to get the water to 100 degrees Celsius and to boil in 60 minutes. Every 5 minutes we measured from the thermometers that were sitting in our warming water.
After 100s of pieces of cardboard to make parabolas and many hours cutting the cardboard. After cutting shiny Mylar, spread out over the cardboard to reflect the sun, then having to take it off again, to make it become perfect, to make it smoother. We had to boil water with our solar concentrators set up on the patio, the sun baking on all our heads.
“55 minutes, write the temperature down, now!”
“Get out of the way of the sun, hey, you’re in the way!”
“Okay, we’ve got to adjust this, move the stool a little bit more, it’s falling, careful!”
“How much time do we have?”
“It’s a cloud, oh no it’s a cloud.”
“The temperature is going down.”
“Where’s the sun?”
“We’re at 77 degrees. We’re beating you!”
“The plastic wrap is melting.”
“You’re letting out all the hot air.”
“We’re to 100!”
The sun shone down everything making warmer and we tumbled, laughed and baked after the pursuit of much more then winning.
****
In the afternoon, as the table was covered in containers, binders, broken pencils, half eaten apples, we all settled down to watch a movie about the Shakers for the second part of Anneke’s project the day before. Shakers- Hands to work and Heart to God.” Ann Lee discovered and founded Shakerism in England. She saw and felt God come to her. “Worship God under your vine and fig tree.”
They believed in perfection, they believed in giving up everything, working for the Gospel, making the most beautiful things and most perfect things. Men and women have god’s equal affection. “Live your life as though you have 1,000 years to live, or as though you would die tomorrow.”
There are only two Shakers left in the world now, but the truth of God runs strong in the veins and hearts of the ones left; they still have faith that their religion will hold as strong as it ever has. “I don’t think it will ever die, the work of God will never die.”
We then listened to Shaker music and people singing with a true passion, showing how much they meant the world, how much they cared and understood their faith. They sung with such love and hope for knowing and understanding that what you believe lives longer then what anyone else thinks. There is only so much someone can tell you before you have to look back in yourself and understand what you believe.
****
From Thursday (recorded by Sarah from morning class with Tal)
During All Tal this morning Rider talked about the power of Asher Lev, about how his art is a balance between his religion and his art, the tension and power behind his lines. Tal talked about how teenagers run on two cylinders normally, and at North Branch we run on five. When we are on all 12 cylinders, like a Ferrari, is when we write a piece of work with power, and tension, and structure, and care, and it will be amazing. Henry spoke about writing his literary response, and how he was thinking about how Jacob Kahn teaches Asher, and how he, Asher, is going to eventually learn all the rules so he can throw them away, and how Henry’s guitar teacher had said the same thing, and how Henry was thinking about his lesson that night, and how learning the guitar gave him a structure and vocabulary to say things. Tal asked him about musical theory, and Calder talked about how he couldn't understand musical theory that but he knew all about the process of soccer, and Henry commented again about how every little window of expertise is a part of the whole of greater knowledge.
Tal talked about how any refined expertise contains worlds of learning inside of it, say, how an artist shapes light on a face, how Calder approaches a soccer ball played at him at the right time, speed, angle and body positioning, or how a dance shaped his or her body. Tal talked about how Emerson had once said that an average person thought there was only one horizon, and so they went towards that one horizon, and stayed within it, while an intelligent person, a caring person, and alive soul, knows that there is an unlimited amount of horizons, and if we work at one thing and move on to the next thing we go past the horizons like filling ice cube trays, working at one thing but eventually filling everything.
Sarah talked about going to a concert the night before, and how the opening band was good, the drummer was fantastic, but when the main act, Kaki King got on stage it was amazing. She played ridiculously complicated strings of notes, descended into amplification and the screechy making thing, and then rose to play her guitar like it was an extension of herself. While she was picking out notes she had an almost frightening look of concentration on her face, and each time she stopped playing she seemed to surface and she was like the Picasso of guitar, going through each stage of music, playing songs that sounded childishly simple but were truly impossible, so you couldn't tell where she left off and her guitar began. Yared said he didn't have a thought.
Sarah talked about going to a concert the night before, and how the opening band was good, the drummer was fantastic, but when the main act, Kaki King got on stage it was amazing. She played ridiculously complicated strings of notes, descended into amplification and the screechy making thing, and then rose to play her guitar like it was an extension of herself. While she was picking out notes she had an almost frightening look of concentration on her face, and each time she stopped playing she seemed to surface and she was like the Picasso of guitar, going through each stage of music, playing songs that sounded childishly simple but were truly impossible, so you couldn't tell where she left off and her guitar began. Yared said he didn't have a thought.
Anna talked about reading Kiley's story the night before, and how she was really proud of how far she had come in her writing from the beginning of the year. Hannah talked about how she had been watching TV when he was sick, and her grandfather called, and normally her grandfather talks longwindedly, but that day they talked about Hannah's story, which was about science, and her grandfather talked about how when he had taught math the boys were being loud in class while the girls were being silent, and Tal went into an aside about frontal cortexes, and how girls have highly developed ones earlier, and so it makes them perhaps more often worried and timid about being wrong, so they become quiet in places where there might be a definitive right answer, while boys, with generally undeveloped frontal cortexes, tend to blurt things out and not think about the consequences of being wrong, and so are active and blurty in science (though Tal noted that boys sometimes blurt out ill-considered things in science as a way of covering up their lack of understanding and so try to project a false image of understanding) and Hannah had an great time talking to him (her grandfather).
Anneke talked about babysitting Wesley, and Phoebe, and Thomas, and how Carrie had warned her that Phoebe got freaked out easily at random parts, and Anneke was remembering when she was like that, and she would sit on her mom's lap. Tal said there was a story in that if she could pull the pieces together. Lydia talked about how her and her mother had been discussing the high school, and how Mia had registered Lydia for classes. and then that was when it (leaving NBS, going to the high school) started feeling real, and she could see herself going there, and it was kind of frightening.
Rose talked about the parallels between the Shakers and the honeybees, and she was thinking about what Rider and Tal had said earlier, about how anything creative comes out of something spiritual, and the spirituality gives you tools to create. Miles mentioned that he had been on face-book talking to his friend Michael, and they were talking about parents, and school, and about how Miles had told him he, Michael, didn't need to go to NBS to be smart, and Miles said he realized the things he was saying to Michael he probably couldn't say to Michael's face.
Anneke talked about babysitting Wesley, and Phoebe, and Thomas, and how Carrie had warned her that Phoebe got freaked out easily at random parts, and Anneke was remembering when she was like that, and she would sit on her mom's lap. Tal said there was a story in that if she could pull the pieces together. Lydia talked about how her and her mother had been discussing the high school, and how Mia had registered Lydia for classes. and then that was when it (leaving NBS, going to the high school) started feeling real, and she could see herself going there, and it was kind of frightening.
Rose talked about the parallels between the Shakers and the honeybees, and she was thinking about what Rider and Tal had said earlier, about how anything creative comes out of something spiritual, and the spirituality gives you tools to create. Miles mentioned that he had been on face-book talking to his friend Michael, and they were talking about parents, and school, and about how Miles had told him he, Michael, didn't need to go to NBS to be smart, and Miles said he realized the things he was saying to Michael he probably couldn't say to Michael's face.
Claire talked about doing homework while her mother read the New York Review of Books, and about how she asked her mom to help her learn how to tie up a hair-bun with a pencil, and Claire was thinking about opportunities, and how she was grateful her mom had done that for her, and Tal mentioned that Claire had given her mom an opportunity, and an invitation, and her mom was listening, and heard this invitation, and took the chance to give Claire new knowledge. But, Tal noted, Claire had to ask, and her mom had to be ready to listen, which she obviously was, because she is a good mom. And when that happens, good happens.
Kiley talked about how when she was babysitting one of the kids she was babysitting was running around crazily, whacking into walls, and Kiley was thinking about the two parts of ourselves, the part that wants to do that, and the part that needs to stop the other part from hurting themselves, and how one part of us can be jealous of the other part, or the two parts of us are sometimes in conflict, the wild pat and the safe part. Jesse talked about how she was at “The Sound of Music,” and she was thinking about how many people are behind one thing, and how many people work on something, like a play.
Sophie talked about “How the flowers are coming out at her house and she was thinking about her grandmother, and she was just feeling a bit sad because she doesn't remember everything about her, only faintly.” We talked briefly about flowers, and Tal determined that we were hopelessly ignorant about dicots and monocots and we would be studying botany next year.
Kiley talked about how when she was babysitting one of the kids she was babysitting was running around crazily, whacking into walls, and Kiley was thinking about the two parts of ourselves, the part that wants to do that, and the part that needs to stop the other part from hurting themselves, and how one part of us can be jealous of the other part, or the two parts of us are sometimes in conflict, the wild pat and the safe part. Jesse talked about how she was at “The Sound of Music,” and she was thinking about how many people are behind one thing, and how many people work on something, like a play.
Sophie talked about “How the flowers are coming out at her house and she was thinking about her grandmother, and she was just feeling a bit sad because she doesn't remember everything about her, only faintly.” We talked briefly about flowers, and Tal determined that we were hopelessly ignorant about dicots and monocots and we would be studying botany next year.
Yared talked about how Yibekal hasn't been at home at night lately, and how he was home the previous night, and they ate dinner together, and it was nice to have him home, and how Yibekal came up behind him to show him his tough guy holds, and how you could escape from a robber, and Yared laughed because Yibie was telling him how to be the robber, and we all realized that a real robber would not ask for cooperation. And then we noted that this was Yibie’s way of reconnecting with his brother. Anneke talked about how over vacation she went to Virginia beach and she could see everything the way it was before, when she was nine, and she missed it, but she still had it, in the shape of the windows, and the same shape of the house. Edgar talked about how he had been doing graphic art with Zander for an article about Tal and the North Branch School while his mother and father were on a trip, and how his aunt might not have cancer anymore. Tal mention, rather shocked, that he could not believe that Edgar had not told him about his (Edgars’ aunt) getting rid of her cancer, and, further, Tal’s shock and pride and awesome feeling that Edgar, Tal’s student, had done the graphic work in the article. Tal then told us a few stories about how he was not a very good student in Middlebury College sometimes, but that now he felt redeemed.
Rider then read a poem called “Invictus” by William Ernest Hewly.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning' of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
looms but the horror of the shade,
and yet the menace of the years
finds, and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
how charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Five minute break then back to studies. Tal talked about how we should not have automatic signatures on our emails, so we can have a new emotion each time, a new quote, a new poem, so we are always giving something fully. So that even in an email, there is always the chance to have a new expression and give a new thing to the world, and hence a new becoming for us. Tal then read the introduction to “The Undercurrent,” written by Rick Skogsberg. His writing demonstrated what we take for granted, our writing, and that our writing makes others see and feel. It is something others marvel over, and yet we let it be as something we need to have, but that we don't feel is ever perfect. Yet we are so lucky that everyone in our school can do the same thing, this writing, and when we are doing it, we are truly rare.
Edgar read this on Friday morning, called “Perspective,” in the thought of perspective drawings which the 9th graders have been working on for weeks now.
In the words of wisdom; “Know Yourself.”
My reality is always my experience of myself.
All that I see, touch, taste, hear or smell
are perceptions in my mind to believe, or dispell.
Therefore, my reality is created by me.
Heaven or hell, which will it be?
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning' of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
looms but the horror of the shade,
and yet the menace of the years
finds, and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
how charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Five minute break then back to studies. Tal talked about how we should not have automatic signatures on our emails, so we can have a new emotion each time, a new quote, a new poem, so we are always giving something fully. So that even in an email, there is always the chance to have a new expression and give a new thing to the world, and hence a new becoming for us. Tal then read the introduction to “The Undercurrent,” written by Rick Skogsberg. His writing demonstrated what we take for granted, our writing, and that our writing makes others see and feel. It is something others marvel over, and yet we let it be as something we need to have, but that we don't feel is ever perfect. Yet we are so lucky that everyone in our school can do the same thing, this writing, and when we are doing it, we are truly rare.
Edgar read this on Friday morning, called “Perspective,” in the thought of perspective drawings which the 9th graders have been working on for weeks now.
In the words of wisdom; “Know Yourself.”
My reality is always my experience of myself.
All that I see, touch, taste, hear or smell
are perceptions in my mind to believe, or dispell.
Therefore, my reality is created by me.
Heaven or hell, which will it be?
