MONDAY Meeting
Claire Watched Into the void, a movie about two people climbing in Peru, and one of them slips and falls into a crevasse. The other one has to cut him loose, because otherwise both of them would die. The one who fell survives, but it still got Claire thinking about how difficult it would be to cut the rope.
“If it was me and my mom, I don’t know what I would do,” said Claire.
Over vacation Patrick said he was always with relatives and never alone. One day he saw some bugs all bunched together, and realized they were safer in a pack. He later saw a dead deer in someone’s trunk, and thought about how that deer was alone, and it had been unsafe. It made him think about how there is safety in numbers. He concluded by saying that from this he knows that he doesn’t want to be alone.
Tate Watched The Deer Hunter over break and it was awesome. At this proclamation Tal gasped, and told us how great that movie is, going as far as to tell us the plot.
Aylee told us that her Grandmother just came back from India, where people live in extreme poverty, but their religion tells them that they need to be happy with what they have. There they have virtually nothing, but are very happy.
It seems that sometimes we don’t appreciate how lucky we are, to have a house, food, and above all many people who love us. We seem to take love for granted, but it is not something that is granted at birth.
Eric told us that this morning he was raging with the projector, complaining that we had all screwed it up, and tangled the lines, and was stressing himself out ridiculously. At that Sarah came down and said, “You stress too much Eric.” And before his incredulous eyes, she set it all up for him, reducing his stress level.
This vacation Anna went to Washington DC, and was excited to go visit a church that she had gone to when she was younger. She would go, it would all be silent, and she would think, and it would be perfect. She got there…. And there were a bunch of people taking pictures and talking in very loud voices.
She later went to the national gallery and saw a Picasso, and sat there staring at it a long time and thinking.
“So I realized you can’t really decide how things are going to turn out but you have to let them happen,” she said.
Sophie and Anna get hard-core points for jumping in a pond in Vermont in November.
Tal announced that it was HOLIDAY TIME!!! "DON’T FORGET TO BRING YOU TEACHERS EXPNSIVE ELECTRONICES or quality wines from Chile. Preferably whole wooden crates.No, not the wine in the cardboard boxes, but in bottles in a case."
"Any student knowing of restaurants serving marvelous French cuisine in would do well with a half dozen or so a gift certificates, but of course no one has that!” Tal said looking at Kamille.
Tal is a corrupt and sad little man.
Anna read Still I Rise by Maya Angelou, warning us not to get too distracted about it mentioning sex but focusing on the deeper meaning.
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries. Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard 'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin' in my own back yard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise. |
Events from 8/9 science
As we settle down into the class some people run outside for some last-minute living pattern collecting (which we should have got over break). When we are all here Claire declares she deserves extra points because she’s bleeding. Eric is not impressed.
“YOU HAD ALL WEEK!!!!!!!
After a brief introduction to class (in which Eric says that all living things have patterns for a reason) Eric starts to talk about the strange contraption that Donna got on EBay. After some Very deductive reasoning, Eric theorizes that it is a projector of some sort, judging from the fan, and tilted mirror at the bottom.
After that we go downstairs and start to watch Micro cosmos, a movie about bugs. While starting Claire leaves food lying around. Calder confronts her by saying, “You should treat your school like your house.
“I DO treat school like my house!” says Claire.
As the movie begins, it inspires various Awwwws (referring to how cute the bug are) and ewwws (to how nasty).Claire at one point joins in the awwws, and takes big steps forward from her campaign to kill all bugs. Then two snails start to “kiss” and mate. This is too much for the class, the entire sequence with the snails is filled with OOOs and AAAHs and EWWWWs and “WOW, SNAILS GETTING FRESH!”
ALL TAL
Tal reviews special lit assignments, Hands Back 3rd character sketches. On Luke’s he stops, and asks why he wrote it,
“Well, I love Rose,” comes the answer.
“Why?”
“Well, she is so calm under pressure.”
At this Tal tells us about his thesis, which is that anything you love in someone else you want to love in yourself, or you don’t’ have in yourself but want. Being calm under pressure is something Luke wants to be able to do. Tal asks how to be calm under pressure. The answer is to STOP AND THINK! Take time, be patient, have faith.
Tal says that partly it is our age that we are looking at everything around us and wanting it, just like a large mouth bass is voracious and wants to catch all the fish it can. After an awkward silence Tal says, “Sorry, that was a terrible analogy.”
Tal wants to know if Luke feels like he is leaving his mother (growing up), and if some of those motherly feelings are going to Rose. Luke says probably. We all speculate that maybe males are looking for love, for a motherly figure. Tal tells us that that Character sketch has a story in it. Then he reads a Character sketch that has a story in it. It is Luke's, on his dad and how he doesn’t connect when he can, and that he loves him, and doesn’t want him to die, and will make the most of the time he has with him.
To get us into story mode Tal reads us a story written by an old student, Vladimir. It is about Vladimir leaving his home in Russia, and coming to the United States never to see Russia, or his friends, again.
We then decide this story is about leaving things, but not loosing them. This is how I think Luke wants to be with his dad.
Tuesday Meeting.
From amongst the usual early morning squealing (people yelling the names of random fruits, saying somewhat inappropriate things, and talking very loud about what they did last night) Tal quietly asks if anyone has anything, and all the same talking stops, and Rose raises her hand.
She noticed Sarah in math really trying, and how Rose enjoyed watching her face light up when she understood.
“And even though she is going through hard times, she is still trying really hard and doing really well,” Rose finishes
Tal then makes fun of Yared, who appears to be talking to his zipper.
Yared tells us that his brother just got his drivers license and now is not driving with Yared and his dad because he can drive himself. And from this Yared feels very separate from Yib, and lonely.
Jesse tells that for school her sister had to bring an ad, and was looking through a fashion magazine, but chose an ad for Smile Train, that helps children with cleft lips and palates, instead of something about Clairol hair color.
Tal then tells us that the things we choose tell a lot about us. He uses the cubist art we are doing in math. The image we chose tells a whole lot about us. Even if we didn’t pick an image really important to us, and just chose the first image we came across, that tells something too.
Anna then tells us that she was talking to Tate about the movie Gandhi, and she could tell that he really listens. Tal then reflects that of the three Vietnam War movies he mentioned to Tate, Tate had remembered and watched one, and tried to rent another.
Then Evan says that he went to sign up for basketball at Otter Valley, and when he saw the schedule, he realized how much his mother does for him, driving him around helping him do he things he wants.
Tal asks if he will have “snap off” warm up pants, that he can snap right off like a whip to get off when he goes into the game.
Then Tal goes on a little tangent on how dumb the name “Frost Heaves” is for Vermont's basketball team… “That name means that the team is a cold shooting team that throws frozen bricks at the basket!” he says. He gets even sadder when he finds out that their mascot is named “Bump."
Sophie reads the poem what I’ve learned so far by Marry Oliver.
What I Have Learned So Far
Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.
All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of -- indolence, or action.
Be ignited, or be gone.
Tal are told that when he told his friend that we would be going out into the woods in the rain and wind in December in Vermont to clear trails that she was happy and that it will “MAKE US TOUGHER!”
Tal tells us to invite people to the contra dance so we can get money and have more fun.
All Tal
We read a Place description with a story in it by a boy from Paideia, about playing basketball with his dad.
From details in it we decided that the story was about his growing up and following his dad, but also doing his own thing and having the boy teach his dad.
We then were told to write a story idea in five minutes. Not a definitive one, but just to get an idea.
Rider’s was about his Family, and loving them, but sometimes feeling like they aren’t as close as they could be.
We later discuss an idea Tal suggested at morning meeting, about restricting one freedom for us, and expanding another.
Ideas vary from being blind folded all day, to running the school like a jail.
“It’s already like a jail,” he hollers. “You have to do what I tell you, and you can’t leave until a certain time.”
In the end we settle on the idea of being tied to someone who you usually aren’t with, and having one be blind folded, and one not.
Tal says he will deliberate and perfect the idea for us.
Wednesday Meeting
People settle down from disappointment that the trail-clearing trip was canceled.
Tal is yelling random pieces of knowledge like “WE ARE ALL IN PRISON!” and “FEEL THE WALLS CLOSING IN! WHEN THE DOOR SLAMS BEHIND YOU, YOU KNOW IT”S REAL, BROTHER! CLANG!”
Finally we get to meeting and Rowan is the first called on.
“So I was lying in bed last night thinking about the idea of being tied to someone all day and I thought that last year I would be all worried about who I would be with but this year I realized that I would be happy with being with anyone.”
“Can we all be someone anyone would want to be with?” asks Tal. “Can we all be a person others would take pleasure in being with?”
Sophie asks why he is always looking at her. Tal says that he likes to look at someone who reacts, like Sopie, who smiles and and listens, and sometimes others of us look catatonic.
Now Eric tells us that instead of taking the Ripton bus home Rowan came home with the Lincoln people, and that when he got home, they all got out and left all the doors open to the car and that the dogs got inside the car and that it was total chaos until they finally just dragged the dogs inside.
Eric than says that they considered moving to Lincoln where it was all hippie but instead he moved to Ripton and became old and stodgy.
Mia then enters to tell us about wreath orders and that they have to be in Monday. It comes to light that Kiley and Rowan may beat Rider’s record from last year. We are debriefed about the contra dance by both Mia and Tal, the latter of whom says we are sissies if we don’t dance.
“Don’t stand out there being a tool, DANCE!”
Yared and Luke and Tal then demonstrate how to ask a girl to dance. And then Tal decides it’s time to go on with meeting.
Finn’s mom came home last night stressed and Finn saw her dad helping her calm down. Finn thought about other school systems, and the videos Simon had sent out about it, and how her mom couldn’t get one-on-one aides for her kids unless they can’t function with the other kids.
But she was also watching her dad calm her mom, and saw him helping her. Tal says her seeing that might be a story idea.
Claire then reads The Czar’s Last Christmas Letter: A Barn in the Urals by Norman Dubie.
You were never told, Mother, how old Illya was drunk That last holiday, for five days and nights He stumbled through Petersburg forming A choir of mutes, he dressed them in pink ascension gowns And, then, sold Father's Tirietz stallion so to rent A hall for his Christmas recital: the audience Was rowdy but Illya in his black robes turned on them And gave them that look of his; the hall fell silent And violently he threw his hair to the side and up Went the baton, the recital ended exactly one hour Later when Illya suddenly turned and bowed And his mutes bowed, and what applause and hollering Followed. All of his cronies were there! Illya told us later that he thought the voices Of mutes combine in a sound Like wind passing through big, winter pines. Mother, if for no other reason I regret the war With Japan for, you must now be told, It took the servant, Illya, from us. It was confirmed. He would sit on the rocks by the water and with his stiletto Open clams and pop the raw meats into his mouth And drool and laugh at us children. We hear guns often, now, down near the village. Don't think me a coward, Mother, but it is comfortable Now that I am no longer Czar. I can take pleasure From just a cup of clear water. I hear Illya's choir often. I teach the children about decreasing fractions, that is A lesson best taught by the father. Alexandra conducts the French and singing lessons. Mother, we are again a physical couple. I brush out her hair for her at night. She thinks that we'll be rowing outside Geneva By the spring. I hope she won't be disappointed. Yesterday morning while bread was frying In one corner, she in another washed all of her legs Right in front of the children. I think We became sad at her beauty. She has a purple bruise On an ankle. Like Illya I made her chew on mint. Our Christmas will be in this excellent barn. The guards flirt with your granddaughters and I see... I see nothing wrong with it. Your little one, who is Now a woman, made one soldier pose for her, she did Him in charcoal, but as a bold nude. He was Such an obvious virgin about it; he was wonderful! Today, that same young man found us an enormous azure And pearl samovar. Once, he called me Great Father And got confused. He refused to let me touch him. I know they keep your letters from us. But, Mother, The day they finally put them in my hands I'll know that possessing them I am condemned And possibly even my wife, and my children. We will drink mint tea this evening. Will each of us be increased by death? With fractions as the bottom integer gets bigger, Mother, it Represents less. That's the feeling I have about This letter. I am at your request, The Czar. And I am Nicholas. Jesse then makes the announcement about the Wulfmans annual Holiday party, telling us that it is a potluck and we should bring something, and that parents and siblings can come to. All Tal We come inside from playing with tarps out in the wind to find Rick Skogsberg, come for his second lesson on poetry. On the board is a poem by him. |
POETRY
Is a nasty critic
Wet and snapping
Biting itself
On the page
Teeth like razors
Tongue of pearl
Rick gives us a brief review of things from last time, “but let’s start before I turn this into a lecture.” He says.
“When you become a poet you have your first poet love, and Norman Dubie was mine,” says Rick.
He gives us a packet of some of his poems. We spend the rest of the time reading through them and discussing them.
Here is one.
A Day Like Any Other
broke across my disappearing body
dawn was on my knees when I jumped
up and began waving my arms in the air
trying to raise the gaze
of that far off figure of
a man fading into the near distance.
About half way though the poems the power went out, and we finished he lesson with only the extra lights (that automatically come on and cast two yellow jets of light and nothing more). We were left with the assignment to read the last poem Power and figure out what is wrong with it.
The lights being out caused quite a frenzy in the pitch dark basement, as people hurried to get their things, and after shrieks, stumbling and several repeatings of the words, “Oh my god who is that!?” we got out, and through.
Thursday Meeting
We arrive at school and there is no power. The lights are off, the printer doesn’t work, and (again) the basement is pitch black.
“GET IN HERE, YOU NEGATIVE CREEPS!” hollers Tal.
Tal starts us off with a very encouraging remark, telling us all that the people who make checklists for them selves usually do the best work, still getting it in on time and doing a quality job.
“THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS!” says Oliver.
“Maybe, but my example is Yared,” says Tal. “last night he wanted to get ahead. Did you?”
“Yeah, I got ahead,” says Yared.
Then Tal says that throughout Rick’s talk yesterday Rio was taking notes, and lots of them. And that if anyone has an image of him (Rio) as lazy, they have the wrong image, and he is probably better than a lot of us. Tal also added that Rio looked very scholarly, with his books under his arm.
“Okay who's got anything?”
Reed raises her hands, and says that she noticed Kiley taking part and commenting on Rick’s talk yesterday, and that she knows that that kind of thing was hard for Kiley last year, and that she has come a long way.
Claire then tells us that yesterday she was on the phone with Bryn and was talking to her about her story. And she realized that the ninth graders from when she was in seventh grade always stand out, and the next ones never seem as real as the ones before.
At that point Sarah and Anneke walk in, the Anneke wearing a VERY large red sweatshirt. “What the heck are you wearing?” asks Tal. “It’s my dads and I'm sorry if it offends you,” She says to Tal. We all laugh.
Tal then says how last night, around the same time Claire must have been talking to Bryn, that he remembered Bryn reading the last words of the play last year, and that she was perfect to read them. How amazing she was. Then Tal worries that he is getting too spiritual.
He then recounts how he did a letter of recommendation for an ex-student, and was paid with a sack of garlic. But inside the sack of Garlic he found a thank-you $120, and at first felt guilty because when he had asked for payment it had been a joke. He told his friend about his guilty feeling, and she said that he was being crazy and that now he will simply be ready to give someone else something when they do something nice for him—in other words—he will pass on the niceness. When she explained this to him he felt better. Calder asked him if he would use the money to buy Calder a new pair of football boots, and Tal said absoulutely not, he has already used the money to buy gas and milk.
Tate said he’d came home the day before and the power was out and he thought that he and his mother would have to do all the work, but when he got home his younger brother had come home on the bus before, and instead of jumping on the trampoline, or running around outside, he had come home, set out candles, and brought in wood for a fire. Tate had always thought of him as little, but he realized he could do everything Tate and his mom could do.
Then Luke tells us that in Middlebury he saw a college student in town that was just happy, and Luke wants to be able to be just happy, not for any reason, but just happy.
Then Anneke tells us that her parents had a party with these important legislature people and they invited Sarah’s dad to. They ended up roasting flatbreads over the fire, and then they realized the party was scheduled for tomorrow night. And then Anneke’s sister got home and complained that she didn’t have any food.
Jesse came down the stairs this morning and she saw one of their sheep staring at her, and they were just there staring at each other for a long time. And Jesse thought about how the only creatures capable of destroying the planet are humans, but all animals have to pay for it. Tal asked how she felt about standing there staring at her sheep, and she said, “I thought he was dead!” We all laughed.
Then a discussion erupts on how it’s two sheep and one “shoop,” and we decide to move on.
Yared then reads Remembered Music by Rumi
Tis said, the pipe and lute that charm our ears
Derive their melody from rolling spheres;
But Faith, o'erpassing speculation's bound,
Can see what sweetens every jangled sound.
We, who are parts of Adam, heard with him
The song of angels and of seraphim.
Out memory, though dull and sad, retains
Some echo still of those unearthly strains.
Oh, music is the meat of all who love,
Music uplifts the soul to realms above.
The ashes glow, the latent fires increase:
We listen and are fed with joy and peace.
All Tal
Tal reads a poem that was written by Chase.
Sleeping next to the red warm fire,
From the day’s work I retire.
Until the cold winter morning comes,
I wake to find myself on cracker crumbs.
I get up and go to school,
Later I am solving problems on a math room stool.
Two hours after at 10 o’clock,
I go to science and get a smock.
I find myself in the big room with all my peers,
And we sit with open ears.
When I am home I throw a ball
When my brothers start to brawl.
When the day comes to an end,
I watch the sunset slowly descend.
We talk about it, and marvel on it’s simplicity, but ingenuity.
From it we get Chase’s story idea, about his brothers.
We discuss other story ideas. Sophie takes steps forward in hers. We discuss Sarah’s, and how it relates to her current mental state and thoughts. Then Tal tells us how to write one. Simply figure out one thing you know for sure and from there figure out how you figured it out. Tal says we should have fifteen pages by Christmas break. Story ideas MUST be in Friday! Tal says.
Friday Morning
We meet at the skating rink. We immediately divide into two groups. People who want to play the fast hockey game, and the slower game. There are also those people who just want to skate around.
People play their games as music from Sophie's iPod play throughout the rink, songs such as I Like It by Enrique Iglesias, and Bad Romance by Lady Gaga.
At the beginning of the game there were some college students practicing on one end of the rink, so players from the faster game kept flying through the middle of the slower game, saying “sorry!” as they flew through the crowd.
After our time was up, we returned to the sweat-smelling locker rooms. All except for Rider, who adoringly watched the Zamboni start on the ice.
We then left the rink to go to the college building Johnson, where we were going to look at the projects that John McLeod’s architectue students had made.
When we arrived, we were given a brief overview of what the project was by the students that were there (not all of them were). They were all ideas on how to construct a bread oven/gathering place in the College organic gardens. Every student had made a design, floor plan, and model, which we spent about half an hour looking at\
We then went to the studio, where the Flatbread pizzas (our lunch) were going to arrive.
Then the pizza’s arrived. About Twenty-four of them. Apparently the person who had ordered them had calculated for the entire of John’s class to be there.
However, we are NBSers. In a feeding frenzy the first seven went. We kept on eating until there were only about ten left.
Then we made our way to the community gardens to see what the gardens looked like, and where certain projects would go.
On the walk back certain sevie boys ran ahead and attempted to scare people by hiding in the reeds and jumping out. To no success what so ever.
When we arrived back at school we had Rider’s project on the American Revolution. The amazing thing was that he didn’t have slides to show us. He drew on the board, and moved his hands, and talked. I usually take pages upon pages of notes, but here I found that I could listen, jot down the occasional date or person, but I retained the information just as well.
We ran out of time and decided to finish it on Monday.
7) Last Week:
Rider’s Project…
American Revolution: The Colonial Era (1600-1773); Prelude to the Revolution (1763-1776); The Revolution (1775-1783); The New Nation (1784-1800); Puritans, religious freedom, colonists, French Indian War, Taxation, East India Tea Company, the Quartering Act, Stamp Act, the Sons of Liberty, King George, repeal of Stamp Act, Merchants Boycotts in Boston, the Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, Patriots and Loyalists, Militias; Declaration of Independence, the War, Bunker Hill, Yorktown, Ticonderoga, Valley Forge, Saratoga, George Washington, The Treaty of Paris; Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.
Before moving on to One Flew over of the Cuckoo’s Nest, we finished “Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row, by Jarvis Jay Masters. Masters is still in San Quentin on death row, so as the final writing assignment all the 8th and 9th graders wrote a letter to him. Here is a selection of the letters we sent.
Dear Mr. Masters
Dear Jarvis, your book has given me something I will carry for the rest of my life. It has taught me how to be and to believe in my own religion. Your book was like a mirror. You have shown me what it is like to be in jail. I feel all of us in the world go through fazes where we think were in hell, but were not. This book has taught me to love my life. To love every single second of it. I know that you think where you are right now is a kind of hell, but in a way you have made it into a better place. You know everyone, there are people that love you, care about you. In the book it shows how you guys show your love for each other. And out here we show our love the same way. You are not missing anything other then the crappy things getting build. The way you showed the guys suffering, how they wanted to be free and how some killed themselves because they thought that was a kind of freedom, to me that shows a lot of power. I want to ask you, how did you pull yourself together when you were surrounded with all the guys begging for life, and begging for something to come love them and comfort them? You seem like you are in your own state. If someone asks you a question you answer, if someone tells you something you listen you don't argue. And how did you cope with the guys yelling in the morning while you were trying to meditate? Even though your in a square place with nothing interesting, you seem like you have brought life to all things that are dead. The jail cells, the people, the place. You are in peace with everything and for most people even out here it is hard to be happy and enjoy the things there around. You have taught me to look around and love the things I am seeing. The way you described your mom getting beat and hurt. That got me closer to my mom and love her more. The book showed me something, a guide in life, something I can fallow. I love everything in life although sometimes I don't think so. I love the way you wrote the book, and the book has more power in it because you wrote in in jail. It shows how we can still live life where ever we are.
Thank You,Your brother and Friend Yared
Dear Jarvis,
When I read the first paragraph on page 149, which said:
“I’ve realized that everything is a continual process of coming and going. I don’t hold happiness or anger for a long time. It just come and goes.”
It reminded me of a book that my class read in Literature last month. The book was called “Of Mice and Men”. One of the main characters is named Lennie. He loves to pet mice in his pocket, but he always pets them to hard and they die. The problem for him was not that he didn’t have enough love; it was that he had too much love and he didn’t know how to control himself. Freedom, in my opinion is just that. It is learning how to use your love. It is overcoming the fear that your love is not enough, and it is being able to let go of what you love in order to grow. To grow up and change, we must allow ourselves to leave the things we are attached to in order to move forward and make room for new things. It is like a child. The child has a blanket or a stuffed animal when they are younger. But as they grow, they find themselves still having this attachment. But the truth is, the only way they can grow up, is to enable themselves to not hold on so tightly. It was like when Freddie found that his last relative had died. At first, he was trying to hold it in. But all at once it came out in a flood of violence and raw confusion. If he were to stay in that state, to be permanently trapped in the feeling of utter rage, then he would not be able to live, to move forward, to go on with the little freedom he had and expand his mind. Once we are at a place where we are willing to give away all positions and to let go of those who we love, only then can we free ourselves from the illusion that life is what we have. If we can press forward, keep moving toward what we want, we will be just a little closer to freedom.
When you told the inmates to flood the tier, you took a risk, to save your enemies and those that mistreated you. The rest of the people wanted to kill them, wanted to make the them pay for how they acted. But you found a way to let the rage go, to simply thing through the situation and understand what risk must be run. You put yourself on the line, to protect the guards that had treated you like dirt. And yet, I think that is what we all should do. When we are slapped, we should turn the other cheek. We should kiss the feet of those how steal from us, and walk along side those who have lied to our faces. This is one of the hardest tasks. When we are hurt, we want to hurt back. When we are cheated, we want to cheat back, and when we are slapped, we naturally want to slap back. But we are all brothers and sister. We are all struggling to survive in this world that we have turned into a living hell. And only when we accept that others may be feeling the same way, can we help others to help themselves. Would you slap your sister if she wouldn’t get you toilet paper? Would you kill you brother for not giving you a spoon? When I observe the actions of the people around me, I realize how inhuman we can sometimes be. We say we are right, that we are always right, but yet can everyone be right? Proof is just a cover for instability. When we are put in a place of discomfort, like when you were telling Alex to kill himself, I find that we unconsciously defend ourselves. We put up a wall so we wont get hurt. But every once and awhile, someone finds a way to penetrate that wall. When you were talking to Alex, something got through; you found a way for him to realize that any life is worth living, even if we are unfree. You helped him help himself, you let go of the comfort of being kind, and it turned out that that bluntness was what Alex really needed.
To walk away is one of the hardest things in the world. To love something but leave it is like being stabbed in the back. I often find myself wondering why things must leave. Why we can surround ourselves with everything and everyone we love. I think that if we focus too much on external joy, we will not be able to find happiness within ourselves. When we focus on what we like, we can’t get to know what we don’t like. When we play safe and don’t risk anything, we become slaves to our own desires. Only when we know ourselves and who we want to be, better then external pleasures, can we teach ourselves to hold on, but not to tightly.
I have a dream. When we are free, we will be floating, gently visiting different places and holding our weight with our own wings. We will be willing to drift, higher and higher, watching the landscape shrinking below. We will give those who have holes in their wings a hand, pulling them along only until they have patched the hole, then letting go and moving forward. We may attach to a passing figure, holding hands as we rise and rise, but we will let go and know it’s okay. We will simply be without forcing ourselves among others. We won’t join groups, but will dance with the shadows. We may fall at one time or another, but we will trust, that others will care enough to hold us in our time of weakness and release us when we are strong.
Thank you for sharing your wisdom with me. I can see from your book that you are finding freedom. I once heard a quote saying: “Jump off a cliff and build your winds on the way down.” I think you have jumped and I can see you are building you wings. All though you are on death row, I think you are learning how to live.
Best wishes in the creation of your wings,
Yours truly, Jesse Marie Wulfman
Dear Mr. Masters,
My name is Kiley, and I am writing to you after reading your book, Finding Freedom. We read it in school for our literature class, and I really liked it. I think that it is really cool that you published a book and became a Buddhist and did something with your life, even though you were in jail. That, to me, seems like it would be a really hard thing to do.
I liked the scene about the dream you had, where you were watching yourself die. I don’t know why I loved this scene so much, but maybe it had something to do with the fact that the entire story I read, the one you told through your book, your life story, feels like a dream, existing in another world that wasn’t the one I am living in now. So it was like reading about a dimension within a dimension. It also was just showing death, from an onlooker’s perspective as well as your own. And death isn’t something pretty, that’s also what I saw. Another one of the scenes I liked was when you talked to Alex as well about suicide, and about how you wanted his TV. I thought that was really cool of you to do and great that you could speak in a language he could understand. It makes me think that if everyone spoke the same language and understood one another, people would stop fighting, you know?
Anyway, death was also really present in some parts of your book, like in the scene with Bryan or really in any of the scenes. But my favorite scene about death was Maxism. I think he’s got it right, Max does, about how we should look at death. He knows he is going to die soon, and he knows nothing he does or says can stop it. But he accepts it. He hasn’t gone crazy like some of the other people in San Quentin, to spend the rest of his life lost inside himself. He accepts what is going to come, and he even comes up with a philosophy for it. Emerson once said that we are always passing through an infinite amount of circle toward a horizon we will never reach. I think that when you get that feeling, of happiness or realization or just something that you can’t understand, you have passed through one of those circles. And even though bad feelings may come later, you have this new knowledge that will always be part of you as you continued towards the next horizon (by you I mean people in general). But I think that Max passed through one of the circles as he read the poem. Maybe people finally reach the horizon when they die. Maybe the horizon is heaven, an end to the journey through circles.
I also liked the part about the ants and the sugar water, because sometimes bugs seems like little rocks or robots that have no feelings, are just there to be a nuisance, and that they don’t really matter. And we’ve all killed bugs. But when you think about it, the bugs aren’t that different from ourselves really, in that they are just one big part of the whole picture, like our earth, which is completely small and tiny compared to what’s out there. Humans love compassion and feeling loved, so why shouldn’t ants? And I think that everyone should take some time out of their busy lives to notice or help a bug instead of swatting it away. Maybe we can learn from them.
Thank you so much for reading my letter. I really enjoyed your book, and I hope that my letter finds you doing well.
Sincerely,
Kiley Pratt,
Dear Mr. Masters,
In school this year, we read your book, “Finding Freedom: Letters from Death Row.” I was very moved by many of the sections pertaining to your home life when you were a kid. I guess it is because I have a fear of abandonment. I have never actually been abandoned or alone, I suppose that I am fairly privileged, but it’s the fear that haunts me. When I was three my parents split up and I was a bit confused, I didn’t really know what to think. When all that you know is your parents, you become attached, which is natural because you are absolutely dependent on them for everything, food, clothes, love. But when you find that they are not perfect, you become confused. These people, who were like gods to me when me I was young, now seem like average imperfect mere mortals. That is what I am facing as a teenager; I am learning new things about myself and the people around me every day. While I see the imperfections in my parents I also need to see the good qualities that they possess. These past two years, my seventh and eighth grade years, I have been seeing new things about myself that I never would have seen when I was younger. Recently I have started running. I think I’m running to get to myself. Or maybe to get to a part of myself that can sometimes be hard to reach when I’m with people. I think that that is something that you attained through Buddhism. Although the methods are different, they result is similar. By running I can be at peace with my own thoughts. I sometimes run down to a graveyard to think, talk to the graves and just sit on the cold grass gazing up at the sky, wondering what is out beyond my slice of the world.
“I came across a tree growing in the pavement of a parking lot between cars. My first reaction was “how can this be possible?” But I wasn’t in school, I’d never learn these things. I smashed the little tree because I knew I’d never go to school. There was no room for wonder in my life.”
When you are young, everything seems so magnified. It seems huge in your mind, and you can’t really see past your own life to anything else. Someone could call you a vandal for this action, they could say that you were a misguided kid and you didn’t deserve anything more than what you had but I wholeheartedly disagree. The people who would say that are refusing to look past their own lives into the life of somebody else. I don’t think that you smashed the tree out of anger and hate but out of desperation. Out of wanting something more but not quite knowing how to get that, or knowing that you couldn’t. You didn’t want to give up, to let it go, but you had to. I see you as a person who is strong enough to make the best out of absolutely any situation he’s put in. The first scene in the book is proof of that. You walked into your cell that first day and cleaned it top to bottom before you did anything else. That to me says determination. I know that you can and will overcome this prison sentence I have faith in you and in that in the end, all that matters is staying true to yourself and your beliefs. Thank you so much for giving me a slice of your wisdom.
Sincerely,
Claire Skogsberg
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