8:30, Tuesday A.M. I told them: "Stand up and open your arms, stretch them out till they hurt. Really wide, until your fingers are dihydral, like a vulture. Now open yours eyes and don’t blink. Open them wide until they hurt. What are you? Where are you? Those are rhetorical questions. Don’t answer. Just listen to the question. What are you, where are you? Open your arms wider. Your eyeballs are watering because they are so wide open. Stay that way all morning, all day, all year, and for the rest of your life until you die. Can you do that, can you stay like that until you die? Until you perish from this earth?”
Then:
“I’m going to read you a poem. It’s a sonnet, which is fourteen lines, a kind of love poem to the world, or what is going to die in the world. How many of you have heard of Frederick Douglass?
Six hands go up.
“Fair enough…This is by Robert Hayden, called, ‘Frederick Douglass.’”
I read the poem.
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.
“Responses?”
No answer. No one is ready to be the first.
“What could we ask?”
No answer.
“We could ask, ‘What is diastole?’ Does anyone know what diastole is?”
No hands up.
"Systole?"
No hands up.
“So that would be an easy way to respond: Ask a question. Diastole and Systole are the in and out mechanisms of the heart. Contraction and dialation.”
I clench my fist a couple of times.
“Or you could ask, ‘what is “mumbo jumbo?’”
Hands go up.
“We could ask who Frederick Douglass is.”
“Absolutely.”
“We could ask, how do we become so great that someone writes a poem about us.”
“Yes.”
“What is “terrible” about freedom?
“Yes.”
“Why was he able to live through what he lived through and still become great?”
“Yes.”
“Or, why are poems and statues not enough?”
“Yes.
“What does ‘fleshing the dream’ mean?”
“Yes.”
I read the poem again.
“He wrote a sonnet about freedom called Frederick Douglass. What is your love poem to freedom called. What is the freedom that you know that you can write about? What is the freedom that you would like to know? What will the poem be called? What will be the flesh of that dream. If I say you will be visioning a world, what will your vision be? Visioning the world. That’s what our speeches are going to do.”
I waited for a moment.
“So. What is the freedom you need? What do you need to be free to do? What do you need to be free from? Is freedom taken? Given? Earned. Who gives it to you? Yourself? Others? What will it look like in this room with these 30 people?”
“But to get there, we need to hear a story. So tell us a story about how you came to know what you know. Tell us a story about how you came to realize what you don’t know that you will come to know?”
***
They are all beautiful, I know that when I walk in and lean against the door-frame to say all this. Beautiful faces, some laughing, some talking, some silent, some stone faced. They are all raggedly, nervous, sloppily put together, wearing new clothes, maybe, or the same old raggedy ones from last year, or a new hat, one thing that gives them the feeling they need. A new shirt, something that announces where they have been, the first tendering of the self they want to become, the self they are passing though as they become.
I haven’t sat down yet. And I won’t until they start talking.
“Yared, go ahead. You want to introduce yourself? Wait. Yared, what’s your name?
“Yared Tekle Bedlu Ezana Lacey.”
“Why do you have that long name?”
“Tal, do we need to get into this?
Yeah man, we are going to get into this. This is what we do. You know what I’m saying?”
“Well, in Ethiopia, it is tradiotn to get your father’s name…So that’s my name.”
“Why do you have the name “Lacey?” that doesn’t sound Ethiopian.”
“Because I was adopted and that is my adoptive family’s name.”
“Okay. Yared, that is a beautiful name. Proceed. Freedom. Talk to us.”
“Freedom is to be great, like the people I see who are great,” says Yared Tekle Bedlu Ezana Lacey.
“Who is great to you?
“You mean list them?”
“Yeah man. We need to know who is great so we can study them and learn how to be great.”
“Well, my mom, my dad, my brothers, my family in Ethiopia, my uncles.”
“What about me, your old teacher?”
“Yeah, okay, you can be on the list.”
“But is it true you are not always great like the way you want to be, yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“Is it true that something holds you back, you hold you back, the world holds you back, from always being and becoming these great people.”
“Yes.”
Then maybe your speech will be about how you will shake off those chains that hold you back. When you shake off those chains you will be free to become the person your see before you, or inside you, waiting to be born? What do you think?”
****
“I know when I have not felt free,” says Rio. “In the locker room at hockey. Everyone was calling everyone gay. Nobody said anything with meaning. I didn’t want to be friends with some people who seemed to always were making fun of people.”
“Why didn’t you stand up on the bench in your hockey helmet and read them a poem.”
“Because they would say it was gay.”
“So did you have any power to change anything?”
“Not much.”
“And is there ever a place where you feel you are in control of how you feel and think?”
“Laying on my back at the pond by myself. At night.”
“Beautiful. And there you have what? A clear feeling. No boundaries? Safety? Freedom?”
“Peace.”
“And here? What is it here? It’s not the concrete cubicle of the locker room. But it is not a calm pond at night. It’s got to be something in between.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have some power to change things here. To alter the shape of things?”
“Yeah.”
“When things got bad last year with you and your mates, what did you say?”
“I want the shit to stop.”
“So what happens when the shit stops?”
“Good stuff happens.”
“What else?”
Well, there is this song by Trevor Hall. He talks about how we are all under the same sky, at the same table. Even when things are bad in the world, we are all at the table together.”
“What does this have to do with freedom?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, start writing and find out and then tell us.”
***
“Freedom is learning how to move, and not get stuck, to live and love without fear or caution,” says Anneke. “Understanding that the world isn’t always perfect, and living with that with become stuck. Knowing what to do when the road you were on goes the wrong way or a way you didn’t plan.”
“What’s the story, Anneke?”
“I can’t say.”
“Because.”
‘Because someone will get mad.”
“Somebody in here?”
“Yes.”
“So you can’t tell the source of your knowledge or the story behind it because you are afraid?”
She nods.
“That there is a definition of “not-freedom.” Fear to speak the truth you feel. To not be able to say how you came to know something.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s see if we can break through to being true.”
“I’m not sure.’
“You have your story. The other person has their story. If you can’t say your story, we have no freedom at all. We all imprisoned here.
“It’s okay, Anneke,” says Luke. “You can say it.”
I know, now, that Luke wants her to bring it out. He’s giving her permission. After all, he is probably as afraid as she is. HE wants something to change. If he cares about her, and I think he does, he will want her to speak. Her speaking the truth will help her, him, and everyone. Faith in that equation will take us where we need to go.
“Anneke, he’s giving you permission. Go for it. The truth is always interesting, to quote my mentor. Anything else is boring. But the truth, whatever it is, will make us see. Don’t live afraid. Hope is a risk that must be run.”
‘What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you are afraid to even hope it, it cannot ever be born. You must be visioning the world. You must be fleshing the dream. You must risk hoping that saying the truth will make you bigger, not smaller.”
“But I don’t know how.”
“You know the story of WHY you want to vision another world, where you can move forward with purpose and without debilitating caution…But challenge that is in front of you is HOW you will imagine yourself in that future world. You have a hope of what your friendships could be, the way you want to love and be loved. But you have to make a picture of it. You can’t let the world into you if your arms are crossed. You can’t give yourself to the world if your arms are folded in. That bird will not fly like that. Hope is a risk that must be run. You must risk visioning that world, arms open, in the faith that it will become you and you will become it.”
The tears are still streaming down her face. She nods. She knows there is work to be done.
***
A boy is standing in front of me, holding a scalding boiled potato drenched in melted butter with a pair of bacon tongs, telling me that he saw Magritte’s “Sky Bird” in Brussels.
“Should I write my speech about this?”
“About that buttery potato or the Sky Bird?”
“The SKY bird!”
“Does sky bird have anything to do with freedom?”
“In the painting the bird was formed into its shape as clouds.”
“A bird as a cloud. Sounds like freedom to me.”
****
On Wednesday night I recieve an email.
"Tal, can I read the poem tomorrow morning. I was looking at a book by Whitman and I found something that related to what we talked about."
"Absolutely!" I write back. "You rock!"
The next morning she before class, before all her classmates, she reads:
Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! for you must justify me. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness. I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face, Leaving it to you to prove and define it, Expecting the main things from you.
****
“All year I was going to build a telescope. I wanted to do something that had never been done. Everyone said I couldn’t do it. And I got so sick of them. But the problem was, it was really hard. And I couldn’t do it. And so I started believing I couldn’t do, that I was the kind of person who couldn’t do it. I don’t want to feel that.”
“Well, they weren’t making it so you couldn’t do it, were they? They weren’t stopping you.”
“I know, but I don’t’ want to be seen as someone who can’t, who gives up.”
“Hope is a risk that must be run. You got to move. You decide if you give up.”
****
It’s lunch time.
“Hey Tal,” a ninth grader shouts as she careens into the classroom. “Would you like to know a fact about my life?”
“Um, well—“
“When we went to the fair, my father bought a skunk pelt!”
“How does he feel about his skunk pelt?”
“He shoved it into our faces. Isn’t that disgusting?”
“What’d he say to you about this skunk pelt?”
“He rubbed it into our faces and said, ‘Look what I got,,, ahhh!’”
***
There is a large poster rolled up on my table. It sits before me all morning as we sit around the table. There is a card next to it, a collage, with a fragment of a poem by Mary Oliver scribbled on it.
In the middle of the morning discussions and introductions, I slip the rubber-band off and unfurl it. It is “Icarus,” by Henri Matisse, a print form the Museum of Modern Art. It’s one of Matisse’s paper cut-outs, a black figure falling in a night-blue sky, with explosive stars behind and around him. On the figure’s chest is a bright red spot, his heart.
“Does this have anything to do with what we are talking about?” I ask,.
“Icarus reached. He went to far and fell into the sea,” someone offers.
“What is shown here?”
“He’s falling. Even though he is falling, he flew.”
“What about this here? What is it?”
“His heart.”
“What about it?”
“He had a heart. He HAS a heart. Even if he is falling, you can see it above everything else.”
“A red beating heart in all the darkness.”
There will be much to say about Matisse’s Icarus. It will be part of our conversation over and over during the year.
Later, after school, standing in the sun in the driveway. Sophie walks over.
“What did you think of the poster I got?”
“Icarus?”
“Icarus is up on the wall next to the white-board. Front and center. HE’s awesome. I thought about cutting a slit in his leg so the light switch could protrude through.”
“Tal, that would be sacreligious.”
“I know, you are absolutely right.”
****
“Tal, I worked on my speech. But I don’t know where to go.”
“Tal, I have no idea what I am writing my speech about.”
“Tal, I wrote seven pages last night. I ROCKED.”
“Tal, I think what I wrote isn’t really my speech.”
“Tal, did you read my speech?”
“Tal, can I read my speech.”
****
“What’s your speech about?”
“I don’t’ know. The part of me that loathes parts of me? How I over think everything I do wrong. If I am snappish with my mom, I feel terrible, and I apologize a minute later but I can’t stop thinking about it and I can’t sleep.”
“If you feel terrible about being snappish, and you want to apologize and you do, maybe that means you love your mom and you want to be good.”
“I know, but I still can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Well, what else…”
“I sometimes want to be small, little so I don’t have to do anything. Then I sometimes want my heart to be bigger but I don’t’ know if it can be bigger.
She’s crying now.
“You want to your heart to be bigger, but you’re not sure if it can be bigger.”
She nods.
“Are you kidding, you guys. I have this unbelievable soreness in my left rib cage. Do you know why it is there? Because in the last few weeks my heart has gotten so freaking big that it is breaking out of its cage. It is GROWING like a giant pumpkin! It’s breaking OUT, pushing against the ribs…My heart is as big as a mountain!”
They are looking at me with wide eyes, some of them are shaking their heads in pity.
“I’m serious, my heart is colonizing itself. It wants to grow and love more things. That’s all it wants. So to make more room, I am having a Rib implant, to make a little space.”
“Tal, you are an idiot.”
“No, I am not. I am man with a huge heart. It lets love in, it gives love out. The heart wants to love and be loved. That’s what drives everything, all day long, from your first breath to the last. I believe that. That’s why you guys can trust me and what we are doing here, because you can see my heart is big and it carries things and I am trying to do what you want to do. Death carries us in his broken back, but we carry each other in our hearts, if we will let each other. So Sophie, I think your heart wants to be big. It already IS big. It is hungry to feed itself and be bigger. But you haven’t figured out to feel how let it grow, and maybe sometimes you aren’t sure WHY it should grow.”
“Maybe, Sophie,” someone offerss, “You just have to love yourself completely, all of you, even your mistakes and keep loving yourself, and say your mistakes are okay, and then you will feel it. Say you are good, believe it, and you will feel and you will fill up.”
“Right on, Sister!” I say. “Sophie we are going to be here for the next two years. Year one was realizing how much you could take in, come to know, and realize how big you are, how much your mind and heart can grow. The rest of the time we are going to fill it, you are going to fill yourself with you.
She nods, wipes tears away.
But I am worried that we are always talking about my problems.”
“What?! This is a school. You are learning, We are learning from you. This is what is supposed to happen. You learn how to become big, you learn how to become yourself.. If you already knew how, you wouldn’t be hear. And I am learning from you. That’s why I am asking all these damn questions. I want to see who you are.”
But I feel like it never ends. I just keep going through these thoughts.”
It never ends, and I am not going to go anywhere. We are not going anywhere. WE are all here. This is where want to be. If we talk about you and with you every damn day, I don’t care. If we are working on making your mind and heart bigger, if something is happening, if there is electicity in this room because that is what we are talking about, then we will keep having this conversation until my teeth fall out of my skull. And I am very happy to do that. I will be a toothless, wise, sad old man who is finally beginning to understand what is what.”
She nods again, smiling.
“It is okay to have a speech that says: freedom for me is to believe that my heart can be bigger. I want to be free of the part of me that tells me I am small. I want to be free to love myself so my heart will get freaking huge and I will need a rib-implant like Tal. How’s that for a speech topic?”
“It’s pretty good, Tal.” She says.
“As Good as MLK?”
“Yup, If you say so.”
“I say so.”
****
Hope is a risk that must be run. There will be tension in the room. Risks taken in the hope and faith that the words we write and say will become the visioning of the the world we want to live in. Risks run in the belief that we can construct something better than anyone ever imagined, a place where poetry is in the air we breathe, not only in books. Hope that we can empty ourselves and fill ourselves with ourselves and the best of each other. We want it all, because all is what we are given to work with. Tears will come and be given space to run and flow. Anger? Doubt? Confusion? Mystery? Disgust? Wonder? Emptiness? Fullness…All of it, we want all of it, because that is the flesh of the dream. I will urge them to walk to the edge and trust that if we go together, we will all land together someplace unimaginably beautiful. When we do that with open, hopeful hearts, in the knowledge that our hearts can grow bigger, knowing that what we are and will become will be embraced, we will find a glorious kind of freedom.
