Monday- I sat at the table, turning sometimes from person to person to say Good Morning or to have a conversation with them. I crossed my legs, and uncrossed them, and fidgeted as I always did, in anticipation for class to begin. Finally class began, and we all stopped talking.
“Does anyone have anything?” Tal asked, as he always did, his hair sticking up haphazardly, sounding exceptionally bored but everyone knew that he wasn’t. “Sarah.”. Everyone’s eyes moved to Sarah, who opened her mouth to speak.
“Okay so yesterday I didn’t go down to the sauna because I was making cookies, but then Anneke and Eklutna walked up to my house and started making the cookies with me.” She sounded delighted and awestruck at the same time. “And I felt really good to be with the two of them, because the last time that I had been with the two of them I had ended upstairs crying in the Bathroom during a Christmas Party. So we made cookies, and listened to Bob Marley, and I really, really enjoyed that.” She said with sincerity. A few more people raised their hands. Ollie had a good time at the Trevor Hall concert with Rio. Then, when prompted, added in saying that he had fun with Sophie and Anna as well. Finn talked about how this weekend she was at home for the majority of the time, and she played cards with her brother. She said that she felt really good doing this because it doesn’t happen very often.
Jesse talked about how she had had a Birthday Gathering. She had started feeling excluded from the other people there, and then she started acting as if she were someone who she was not. Then later that night, they were all sitting around, and her friends started talking to her about this and making her feel better. Yes, the very same ones who she felt excluded from.
Rider went biking with his Dad, and it felt good to do something that they both loved, just the two of them.
“Y’all guess what?” Asked Tal excitedly. A few people said what.
“I tried to see how long I could go this weekend without cussing, and I went 14 minutes!” He said excitedly. We applauded his efforts, which clearly were extremely deep- hearted. Apparently saying Crud Muffins is just not the same…Then someone read "If a Tree Could Wander," by Rumi
Oh, if a tree could wander
and move with foot and wings!
It would not suffer the axe blows
and not the pain of saws!
For would the sun not wander
away in every night ?
How could at ev'ry morning
the world be lighted up?
And if the ocean's water
would not rise to the sky,
How would the plants be quickened
by streams and gentle rain?
The drop that left its homeland,
the sea, and then returned ?
It found an oyster waiting
and grew into a pearl.
Did Yusaf not leave his father,
in grief and tears and despair?
Did he not, by such a journey,
gain kingdom and fortune wide?
Did not the Prophet travel
to far Medina, friend?
And there he found a new kingdom
and ruled a hundred lands.
You lack a foot to travel?
Then journey into yourself!
And like a mine of rubies
receive the sunbeams? print!
Out of yourself ? such a journey
will lead you to your self,
It leads to transformation
of dust into pure gold!
A woman staying with Jesse and her family who is training to become a doctor came to talk to us about Lyme Disease. It was very interesting, and obviously beneficial, because I left in the fear that I had a tick crawling on me.
In the afternoon Reed read her speech. Reed’s speech was about her sister, Bryn, who has been sick since January, and hasn’t been able to move. Reed would go running in the golden light, and try to run not only for herself, but for Bryn as well. She felt that she could only attain freedom, or at least come close, understand it until she could free her sister, who she loves dearly. An instinct inside of her said to run for Bryn. She felt sometimes as if she were running from Bryn- running from all the bad feelings that her sister was having that affected her as well. But she realized that it was not running from her that was important, but running for her.
Then Ollie read his speech. It was about his feelings about love. Sometimes he has trouble loving people, sometimes he cant see that it’s real. He would get frustrated at seventh grade girls who would sign their emails with hearts next to their names. He didn’t like it when people would love him- he didn’t try to be good, he didn’t try to be some loveable person. Because he felt that if someone said that they loved him, he had to return the love.
I thought about maybe it’s not that he is afraid of love, but that those four letters mean more to him. He doesn’t want those pale imitations, the hugs to give the illusion that you are warm and welcome, and the hearts in the signatures of emails to serve the same purpose. He doesn’t want anything that’s fake. He wants the real thing, nothing less. Perhaps that is what we all should want.
It is the second week of our Wiffleball League, and it is just as fun as ever. It’s a competitive thing- we all really, really want to win, we dearly want to rise up and push everyone else down. Actually, this is the exact opposite of what we want. We don’t play to win, or at least most of us don’t. We play to get to know each other. We play to laugh, to learn what it feels like to run even if you don’t make it to the base. Sometimes I have trouble with trying, I have trouble completely throwing myself into something in the fear that all of me will not be good enough. I’m learning something from playing Wiffleball, we all are. It’s okay to swing tremendously hard at the ball and for the bat not even to make contact. It’s okay if you can’t make it to the base before you get tagged. It’s okay if you are not great, what matters is that you try. In a way, wiffleball is just a smaller version of what we are as a school- we want to keep on trying, even if we fail. It’s all right if we fail sometimes, what matters is that we are trying, and through that we begin to free ourselves.
Tuesday: We sat down for another day at North Branch, and Morgan, a new seventh grader raised her hand.
“Fairchild?” Tal asked, calling on her. He always called her Fairchild; I think that her middle name is Fairchild. Tal has a theory that when we tell the person who we love what our middle name is, that we will just drive the person crazy with love. Morgan, or Fairchild to some, talked about how the afternoon before, her mom had been driving to her new Piano Teacher’s house. But on the way they got lost, and ended up driving around lost for a long time, never actually making it to the lesson. But that was okay, what is important is that Morgan ended up talking to her Mom for a long time about school, and it was really nice to do that with her.
Rider did the best job on his job for Science Class, so he was appointed the new checker for Science Jobs. He was looking through the prize bin for winning, and was looking at all of the prizes in the prize jar, that said things like “you’re in charge!” (For a class) or you get a plate of hot cookies. Rider was thinking about, and felt really grateful to have a teacher who was so dedicated to making everything good for his students.
Luke’s mom told him to go outside to pick Raspberries, so Luke went outside to go pick the raspberries. When he stood up to go inside, a soft, golden light filled the area around him, as the sun set into the distance, and he felt so happy with what he had.
“And do you get this same feeling when you are on the Facebook?” Asked Tal, skeptically.
“Uh, well no I guess not.” He paused. “I mean not unless I’m talking to someone who I really care about.” Tal looked as if he had gotten the answer that he had wanted.
A girl named Jesse sat, her back to the glass door that opened up into the hallway, raised her hand.
“Jesse.” Tal said.
“So last night, I was talking to my brother, who is Spain, and I felt really good talking to him.” She paused. “And then at the end, he said that he loved me.
“Did you say that you loved him?”
“Yes.” Said Jesse. But tears had begun to roll down her cheeks.
“Why are you crying?” Asked Tal.
“Well,” She said, and I was shocked at how collected she was and how even her voice was even though she was crying. “I guess that sometimes I just don’t feel like he loves me.” We talked about this some, and by the end Jesse had a smile spread across her face.
We exclaimed over various expressions:
“Push the Envelope!”
“Think outside the box!”
"And what exactly does “Push the envelope mean????!!!!" Tal cried out in despair.
Claire read "The Second Coming," by W.B. Yeats. This poem was described by her dad to be the best poem ever written. We were reading a very good poem about W.B. Yeats in Lit Class, written by WH Auden.
"The Second Coming"
W.B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spirtus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving it’s slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again, but now I know
That twenty centuries of my stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, it’s hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
We started Place Descriptions, and Tal read two previously written ones to help us start on our own. First he read Henry’s, which was about his former Hockey Locker room. It was mostly dialogue, with only a few descriptions of the physical place itself. He was clearly disgusted by what was said in the locker room. We knew that, partially because the eighth and ninth graders had heard Henry talk about it the year before, and we knew of his unsatisfaction, but it was still apparent in the place description how he wished that things there were very different.
Then Tal read Rider’s place description, about once when he was trying to think of a place to write about for a Place Description, and then he had looked down at his hands and the place description unfolded from there. We talked about how his hands were sort of his way of getting to a place, of getting to a feeling. He talked about his hands were there- to hold something- to hold someone. Looking at his hands, his worn hands was his way of holding onto what had happened. It was his way of seeing more clearly into himself.
Then Rider read his speech. It was about once when he was a seventh grader, he had sat crying in a conference, and then a girl sitting next to him had reached out briefly to touch his leg, to let him know that she was there, that she was not alone, and that she loved him. He had felt this thing, just where they cared about each other, they loved each other, not romantically but platonically, he felt like there was something interwoven.
Then he wrote about how recently, he would sit in class- he would sit in class, listening to someone talk about something true, and he could process everything, he could analyze it, but he couldn’t feel it- there was something missing in-between, there was some kind of gap. He wrote about how he wants us all, the people of the school to have something, some kind of love that is interwoven- for us to be able to reach out to someone else, to let them know that it is okay, it will be all right, they are not alone, and that he loves them.
Then Calder read his speech. It was about how when he was younger, he would play with his older brother, Henry. Henry was who was always there, his brother and his friend. Then Henry started to grow up, and Calder didn’t have someone who was always there to play with anymore, and he felt like he had to grow up as well. He couldn’t be a free little kid anymore, or at least something was telling that it wouldn’t be right if he were.
Then his family adopted a new sister, Dalia, and now Dalia was someone to play with, someone to take care of and build legos with. His speech was about growing up, but not forgetting his childhood, bringing everything with him, not forgetting a thing.
In his speech, Calder described how he used to design the perfect boat. I thought about this. Metaphorically, we are on a boat since we are born, and it is going to sail no matter what. But what we need to do is to learn how to sail that boat properly, for Calder, he needs to sail that boat just right so that he embraces everything, uses everything that comes at him, but doesn’t leave anything forever. I think that we all need to learn how to sail our own boats, we all need to understand what we need to find in order to pursue that freedom, what we desire forever.
Wednesday: Meeting started out with Tal making fun of one girl’s Ray Ban Sunglasses. “We need to strip down to the core- no hiding, no fake plastic, just what is true.”
Tal talked about how when Paideia had been a hippie school, someone decided to come out at the graduation as a Transvestite. He said that we need to come out of our little places where we are comfortable. We need to stop covering ourselves up.
“That doesn’t mean that I want you all to come to school tomorrow Nekkid. Just stop covering up who you are.” He said, staring pointedly at a few certain individuals. “ARE YOU GETTING ALL OF THIS, ANNA????” he barked at me.
“Yep, I’m getting it,” I said, smiling.
“Get the Nekkid part. It’s not Naked. It’s Nekkid. N-E-K-K-I-D. You got that?”
“Yes Tal,” I said, laughing a little.
Eric said that that morning, Simon had burst into the science room excitedly, and was eager to show Eric his rock that he had brought in. We had a homework assignment to bring in a rock that was changed somehow by water. He said that people have not been bringing in good rocks, they have just been finding rocks to have that coveted red check next to their name on Eric’s checking off clip board.
We had an assignment to do a freedom poster/sculpture/mobile/ or whatever we wanted it to be so long as it was about freedom. Now we have an array of freedom creations in the school. Tal talked about how he liked giving relatively vague assignments, because then there is more room for originality and creativity, so things always end up better that way.
Anneke talked about how the night before, she had been trying to get nails to stick to her beer bottles for her sculpture. Then she sort of gave up, and was just sitting in the middle of a lot of beer bottles feeling sad about her work Then her dad came home and saw her feeling bad about her work, then spent a long time helping her with it so that it would work.
Our school has hit… well I’m not exactly sure what to call it… But I will say that now we have our Headmaster yelling, “I’M A DONKEY ON THE EDGE!” Every so often. He is quoting the Donkey, from the movie, Shrek. Not only is he yelling this, he also started yelling “SHUN THE NON-BELIEVERS!”
Then Ollie read a poem.
"The Window, at the Moment of Flame?
Alicia Ostriker
And all this while I have been playing with toys
A toy power station a toy automobile a house of blocks
And all this while far off in other lands
Thousands and thousands, millions and millions—
You know—you see the pictures
Women carrying their bony infants
Men sobbing over graves
Buildings sculpted by explosion
Earth wasted bare and rotten—
And all this while I have been shopping, I have
Been let us say free
And do they hate me for it
Do they hate me
In the afternoon, I read my speech. I wrote it about how I have trouble with letting people know me, because I live wanting to be perfect, to create absolute perfection. So in that, I become less perfect. I wrote about Bruce Springsteen, and how I loved the music because there didn’t seem to be any barriers, there wasn’t anything that wasn’t true; it was perfect to me because it was free. It was just open, and that was how I want to live, and love, and how I want to be free.
Then Anneke read her speech. It was about how she had a friend named Luke, who she started to like romantically, and he started to feel that for her too. She kept on liking him, and they started to “go out”. Shortly after the “going out” began, it ended, and Anneke felt relieved, because things had been awkward between them and it hadn’t felt good and this way they could go back to just being good friends, but she was also mad that it had happened. She kept on liking him, and they still were friends but things weren’t the same. Luke asked her to come to the Fair with him and his friends, so she did, but then she found out that Luke had another Girlfriend. And she was hurt and rejected again.
We talked about how freedom was to live without the fear of rejection, to keep trying even when there is a chance of rejection. That is what Anneke did, by writing this speech; she wrote what was true even when Luke could have rejected her.
We live either in the fear of failure, rejection, or death. We talked about the fear of death. It’s not that failure or rejection will lead to death. It is we live with the constant awareness that death will happen, it will come. We live subconsciously knowing that we only have so long, so each thing has to be precious. Wednesday Morning, Tsering had come up with a Breakfast Tutorial on the spot, that was hilarious. This was her living without fear of rejection, just doing what she wanted to do.
I thought about how this is our only way to be free- living beyond fear of rejection and failure, because that is the only way to live. Because if we live just where it is safe, where we can never fail, we won’t really do much of anything. We’ll just live in a box our entire life, and that really doesn’t sound like freedom to me.
Thursday: Rowan talked about how he went out and played football with his brother, and it was really fun to do that with him and he felt really good. Finn talked about trying to work on her Place Description the night before. Then she went outside to try to bring her dog inside, and just ended up lying on the grass for a long time, just noticing everything. Simon talked about how he is having fun with Evan on his Fractal project for math. Calder talked about how he went to soccer practice the day before, then he went home and got his homework done very quickly. And it just felt really good. Tal talked about how he doesn’t want to just look at life- he doesn’t want to be taking a picture of life; he doesn’t want to be someone driving by looking at a beautiful leaf. He wants to be in the vein, in the vein of the leaf and in the vein of life. He wants to be pulsing throughout it, not just a “peeper”, he wants to be in it.
Rose talked about how Anneke lived beyond the fear of Rejection, and kept on trying to make things between her and Luke work even if she could fail again. She talked about how if you always live in the fear of Rejection, you may die- meaning that quitting doing something kills your desire to keep going, to keep trying. Rose said that you die if you stop doing the things that you reject you, a part of yourself does, not you physically but you lose a large piece of yourself when you stop trying.
We have to drink life up, we have to jump on it, or else we may miss something true, we may miss something good in the mix of chaos and confusion. Simon read his speech. He wrote about how he always tried so hard, he always tried so hard to make something great. Then when people would say something good about a piece of writing, he would exclaim “BUT IT HAD A TYPO!” He always focused on what he hadn’t done right, as opposed to what he had, and so he ended up not being able to see good in what he did. Simon wrote about Mozart, about Socrates, people who he looked up to and admired. I thought about Simon as a person. I am in the same carpool as him, and he is always thinking of some new question, he is always thinking and asking. I don’t usually have an answer. I thought about how Simon, in a way is a little bit like a Philosopher, he always wants to know more and to understand more. He is always thinking about the next thing that he wants. He is trying to get to something higher, even if it’s hard; he wants the best thing, the highest thing.
Then Aylee read her speech. It was about how she hated winter. She didn’t like the cold; she didn’t like the lack of sun. She would go to places like Maho Bay, which she thought was like Paradise. She would want to stay there forever and not go back home to where it was dark and wintery. She wrote about how she started to notice the details- she started to notice a caterpillar turning into a crysallis, turning into a Butterfly. She started seeing the world, she started experiencing it. She had all these glimpses of Freedom that was how she could hold at least a part of it.
Then Tsering read her speech. It was about how when she got into North Branch, she knew that she wanted to go, there was no question about it. But she would always wonder if what she decided was right- if she should have traveled a different road. People at her old school would tell her that she could come to MUMS with them, but she didn’t want to, she wanted to go to North Branch. She knows that what North Branch is good, she is glad that she is here. It was about wanting to know that what she was doing is right, what she should be doing.
Then Kamille read her speech. It was about a girl at her old school, Beamen Academy, and how the girl was always bullied. She didn’t have any friends. Kamille saw the girl, and felt sad for her. Kamille wanted to go be with the girl, to be friends with her, but she was afraid of being judged by her other friends, so she didn’t, she stayed where she was safe. She didn’t feel free this way- she didn’t feel free to go and be with the girl, and she wanted to feel free to be with her. She wrote about how she wanted war to end, she wanted the world to be happy and to be free. She had her own kind of freedom, she had freedom when she would read quietly, when she was with her friends or her family, she had happiness and freedom. She wants this for everyone, she wants freedom not only for herself, but for the world. She had that opportunity to give that girl at her old school happiness and more freedom, but she didn’t take it. But she can try to free people when there is a chance now, she can do what she can. We all learned that Kamille is a very big-hearted, caring person.
In lit class, we are reading Of Mice and Men. It is about George, a strong, smart man, and his companion, Lenny, a man with some sort of mental disability. George is always thinking, but not feeling, he is always being logical and analytical. He thinks about when water is safe to drink and when it is not. Lenny is more emotional, he acts off of impulses. He carries around a dead mouse with him that he can stroke. When he sees something soft or that looks like it would feel nice beneath his fingers, he reaches out to touch it. We talked about how Lenny and George are sort of each other’s opposites, but yet they complete each other because they are so different.
I thought about how since Lenny has some sort of mental problem, he can’t really grasp the world. He doesn’t know where he is going, he doesn’t really know what is socially acceptable and what is not. He doesn’t understand the world. He reached out to touch a girl’s dress once, and she yanked that away because that would be seen as not right by most people, but Lenny just wanted to touch it. Lenny carries around a Dead Mouse, instead of a real mouse. A real mouse would run away, just as the dress was yanked away from him. I compared the mouse to the world. Lenny can’t grasp the world, but he can hold onto a mouse. That is his way of holding onto the world, even if he can’t understand it. It’s something that won’t keep on slipping away from him, like the world does.
FRIDAY: Jesse wrote a Place Description called “In the arms of an Angle.” No, she couldn’t have been in the arms of an angel, it had to be in the arms of an ANGLE. Miles talked about going outside to look at the sky after Aylee’s speech. And he just was there, thinking about how beautiful it was. Jesse talked about how she had gone to Mike Hussey’s house the night before and played with Phoebe and Tom. She was remembering when she used to do that with all of her siblings.
Rose talked about how she was glad that Bryn, Reed’s older sister who graduated from North Branch last year came to the Parent meeting. She was lying on the floor because she’s been very sick, but she was still there. Rose said that she was really glad that Bryn was still trying. Sophie talked about how she had gone home and laid down on her bed for a really long time. She just laid there, and thought about everything that she had been needing to think about, and she felt really good doing that.
Yared read a poem by Robert Frost
Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From Contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.
Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who’s to say where
The harvest shall stop?
Then Morgan read her speech. She talked about her sister, Kiley, and how it was hard for them to get along. About how they were always competing, always trying to dominate the other one. After her speech, we talked about how the both need to stop trying to always dominate the other one, and then they will be happy. We talked about how the thought “I want to love this person” has to be the thought that they act off of, and then they will be happy. I think that that is universal, if we could all just live by the thought “I want to love this person”, than maybe we’d all be at peace with each other, maybe we would all have freedom and happiness.
We walked down to the river, and made sculptures in the silence. For a long time there were no voices, and the deafening sound of the river rushing and people’s feet moving across rocks and placing them carefully was what filled the air. I worked steadily, trying to make something good, trying to make it be the kind of thing that someone would think was amazing. I was trying to make a cavern out of rocks, and it would work well, I’d start to feel proud of my work, but then I’d place another stone in just the wrong place and it would all fall down. But I didn’t feel angry. I’d just keep working. I didn’t feel like I had to be the best, I wasn’t letting that desire to make something be better than everyone else’s rule me. I was just trying, and that felt amazing.
We were put into groups, and then we had to go find a spot on the river with our group. I was in a group with Finn and Rowan. Our team was named “Team Awesome”. And we were quite awesome. What we did was we found a place that was relatively shallow, but where there was still a good current. One person would hold up screen I the water, and another person would mix up the dirt and rocks on the bottom of the river, and then the screen would catch the debris flowing in the river. Then we would search through all of the debris to find little bugs. Then someone would have to draw the bug. I had fun, I thought that it was interesting until a large bug fell into my boot. But I was still having fun, I was still having fun working with them.
We walked back to the school, and more people read their speeches. First, Sarah read her speech. She wrote the speech about love. She wrote it about how she found that she liked a boy, but also didn’t know why. It caused her some confusion, as she didn’t really know the boy that well. But then when she started going to school with him, this feeling only grew. And she started to let it grow. She started letting herself love him, and she had once been so hesitant and unsure of this.
I was amazed by the speech, because of how much wisdom it had in it. She let herself love, she finally found a place where she could love, and through that she began to find her freedom. She wrote about how it used to just be something abstract, never a concrete thing, but then as she started feeling love it grew into something more, and she knew what love was, and she knew what freedom was.
Patrick raised his hand. He said that "if you find freedom, you find love. And if you find love, you will find freedom."
Then Evan read his speech. It was about his parents, and how sometimes, like all parents, when they didn’t get along, it made Evan feel bad. But he started to find a place where he could be, where he could be free beyond fear and beyond worry. He played Basketball, he felt good then. Once he sat sitting, looking into a water tank, and saw his own reflection, twisted and stretched from how it actually was. He thought about how that was how he was with his parents, sometimes it didn’t look quite right, but it was always there.
Then Miles read his speech. It was about his parents going through a divorce and his sister not being there all the time. It was about how sometimes he was lazy, sometimes he didn’t do much. But during a hard time, when his family was going through changes, he started growing more, he still found happiness. We talked about this a lot. We talked about how it’s sort of the worst age for a divorce to happen, when the son is a teenager. It could have brought Miles down, but in a way it actually brought him up. It started making him stronger.
Then Sophie read her speech. It was about how she wanted to be beautiful. When she was little and she was going to her first skating show, she imagined herself looking beautiful, like a fairy. She imagined herself wearing a beautiful costume and skating across the ice looking beautiful. But then she had to wear a hideous costume, and she started to cry because she didn’t want there to be something that was not beautiful.
Then Sophie started to question herself, she started to question her own beauty. She was critical of herself, she was always comparing herself to other people who she thought were more beautiful.
I thought about how this makes her a little stronger. She is so able to see her own faults that she just keeps on trying, tries to make the faults go away, and that is good. I think that what she needs is to find a balance, between self criticism and loving herself, where she isn’t vain, and where she isn’t insecure, so that she can see herself as beautiful, but also see the beauty around her, to step away from her own beauty and see everything fully.
Tal talked about how he wants to be in the vein. He wants to be pulsing throughout life, not just looking at it. I thought about that a lot this week. I want to go fully into something, to give all of myself without my eternal fear of rejection. I want to be at the heart of myself, but also to go through, to beat throughout life, and throughout myself. That is what we are all trying to do. We are writing these speeches, we are giving the best of ourselves, but also what is hard to say. But we are doing that, and perhaps, since we are moving beyond our fear of failure, we are a tiny bit closer to being free, to being in the vein.
