Get a little closer

If you aren't already friends with NPR on Facebook, you may have missed this post. Even if you are, you may have skipped it, thinking, 'what does being gay and abstract expressionism have to do with me?'

Quite a bit, it turns out. Go on and read it now...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/11/18/131431877/on-being-gay-being-out-and-being-art

The concept of thinking, consciously, about the ways we bring all of the world into focus is just too cool not to share. It happens naturally with art, as Alva Noe (author of the NPR post) points out and is part of the profound appeal of spending time in a museum. The interaction between art, viewer and our own perception is one I've felt many times, but haven't really thought about as such. Maybe you know what I mean. It happens every time you stand in front of a stunning example of how an artist has brought the human experience into focus, and you become inescapably part of it. Taking this same museum mindset and applying it other aspects of life is fascinating in its implications.

The question of how close you bring yourself into that experience--how much you embrace it and make it your own varies from person to person. However, this act of looking into or moving closer is also absolutely necessary because there are instances when keeping your distance is damaging. This is where Bishop Swilley comes in--or comes out, as he did recently in an act so brave it became art, according to Noe. Because it forced people to look and bring an aspect of the human experience into focus--and become inescapably part of it.

I love the thought of creating art--or at least an artistic moment--through asking others to step closer and/or stepping closer to them, whether that be emotionally, ideologically or even physically. I love that Noe has equated this interaction with creativity in both senses of that word. Stepping closer to someone/asking others to step closer is always original and innovative. It also creates something irreplaceable. As she suggests, it allows us to learn more about ourselves and our world.

Recently, I've found myself dealing a lot with the tension that exists when I disagree profoundly with something but want to resist turning away completely. I feel this way when I'm listening to the news or despairing the results of the mid-term elections. Other times, I'm in a meeting and trying to find a way to a compromise when all I can really do is lean in closer and hear the person out. Sometimes I feel this way just because I'm in Texas, where the world runs differently than I'm used to. It makes me feel better--and more inclined to put out the effort--after reading Noe's piece. Rather than stifling a long-suffering sigh, I can imagine stretching my creative muscles, making them more pliant, moving toward that place of courage and immediacy where true human art can happen.

Nothing but time

Dear Santa,

For Christmas, I would like one more hour in each day and two on the weekend. At least. I've been very good all year at using the time I've been given, which is why I'd like more.

Your eternal friend, rr

Even though (sadly) Santa cannot grant my wish, I've felt aglow all day with the gift of time, as if that jolly spirit had, in fact, bent the laws of physics and wrapped me up a personal allotment of hours and minutes. In this case, it wasn't Santa but the powers-that-be at my current school. These enlightened folks came up with something called a content day. During a content day, all the teachers from a certain subject get together for a couple hours in the morning, then have the rest of the day to plan as they see fit. Time. Like all precious gifts, the day has left me feeling warm and grateful, free and mellow. That the day involved six solid hours of work (after the meetings) is beside the point. Or rather it is the point. The six hours I worked this afternoon are six hours I will not have to work this weekend. Six whole hours. The mind boggles, then does a happy dance.

Perhaps you, too, have experienced the warm rush of a free afternoon or hour, the easing of tension, the sudden ability to breathe deeply. Time must surely be our most valuable commodity here in the developed world, surrounded as we are by so many other less fleeting goods (at least for the moment). It isn't that way everywhere. Time in other places is much more fluid. It runs like water through the culture and is impossible to grasp, horde or give away to delighted recipients in six-hour chunks. During the two years I lived in Cameroon, I dealt with a long list of cultural differences. I learned elaborate greetings, how to bargain in French and ways to smoosh myself into half (or a third) of the front seat of a car. I tried every single dish set in front of me, including porcupine and deep-fried crickets. The one thing I never could shake was my Western sense of time. It got me up at 6 a.m. on the "first day of school," and out the door even though I knew...I knew no one would show up and that classes wouldn't start for another week. I simply could not stay in bed when school was supposed to be starting. I had to go see the shuttered classrooms and the abandoned, wind-swept yard for myself. (I like this hourglass because it is full of sand on both sides!)

On a more serious note, it also got me, nine teachers and 45 students arrested on a field trip. Due to bus problems, we arrived late at the school we were visiting in an English-speaking province that was under a strict curfew. Rather than spend the night with our hosts (as all my Cameroonian colleagues suggested), I insisted (strenuously) we return, as planned, because there was no way of alerting the parents that their children would not be home on time. On the road after dark, we were stopped and taken "downtown" to the police station where we were interrogated and forced to spend the night. The next morning, at first light, we returned to our village. The lynch mob of parents I expected never came for me. A mom told me later that they only would have worried had we been a few days overdue.

So, time moves differently other places. This is neither good nor bad (though, given my experience on the wrong side of the law, being able to adjust helps a lot). It is interesting to think about, though, given the degree of happiness and peace a half-day of flexibility inspired. It's made me think about the gift-giving that's coming up and ways I can give the gift of time to others. This will, of course, involve spending my own time--something that, I'll admit, makes my heart flutter with anxiety. But the warm glow wins out because, 'tis the season, after all. If Santa can't come through with a whole day, I should be able to spread around a few hours.

Here is the same clock that walked quietly
Through those enormous years I half recall,
When between one blue summer and another
Time seemed as many miles as round the world,
And world a day, a moment or a mile,
Or a sweet slope of grass edged with the sea,
Or a new song to sing, or a tree dressed in gold

--Judith Wright

We are what we speak

Today in Spanish class we learned about the verbs "to be." Yes, there are two. One, ser, describes permanent states of being, things like character, nationality, professions, personhood. Estar, on the other hand, represents life's more fleeting moments: moods, feelings, the weather, and, interestingly, all locations. You may remember this confusing you in high school Spanish. Native speakers, of course, don't make ser/estar errors, even as young children, just as they never mistake the gender of a noun or adjective. To them, a table is feminine, an arm is masculine, and describing the weather naturally evokes a temporary sense of being. Hispanic kindergartens may misconjugate verbs or mess up pronunciations like kindergartners everywhere, but deeper concepts like gender and ser/estar are burned into their minds in a different way. (At least according to my Spanish teacher.) Noam Chomsky and his linguistic ilk love to talk about how our mother tongue shapes the way we think (rather than vice versa), burrowing passages into our physical brains, so that the neural pathways of, say, a native Chinese speaker are actually different than the neural pathways of a German or Peruvian. It's one of the most fascinating concepts in the world, when you think about it. Language as a universal human trait but the languages themselves making us all fundamentally different. Such a small step from the concrete reality of nouns and verbs into the metaphysical realm of what makes us tick--and the lengths we may have to go to ever truly understand one another.

I love the thought of native Spanish speakers existing in a reality where there is an unmistakable linguistic difference between the permanent and the temporary. When I learned about it today in class, I immediately wanted to translate it into English. It's impossible. If it's sunny outside, I can only say: It is sunny today. I can't imply with my verb choice that it is sunny now but may not be tomorrow. Or later. Or even in the next minute. I could use a lot of words to describe the weather's temporary nature. I could say: It's sunny right now, but who knows, really? Or I could say something that sounds either obvious or depressing, but might be the closest translation of estar by remarking: It won't be sunny forever. This may be why some languages (or people who speak certain languages) are sometimes accused of being dour or fatalistic. In English, the present just is. In other languages, like Spanish, negotiating the present requires a bit more analysis.

English is very concrete. We have so many words--way more than any other language in the world. I still think this is very cool, but I used to think it was cooler. As I learn more about other languages, I realize how much we Anglophones depend on our vocabulary. We need a lot of words to say what we really mean, words that other languages slip into other parts of speech. One of my favorite French words is meme, which is both an adjective and an adverb. It is a damn useful word, one with no English equivalent, or at least none as elegant. Meme means same. But it also can mean self. It can also mean the actual or center of something, a way to emphasize an essential characteristic. If I said something was Texas-meme, I'd mean it was the very essence of Texas-ness. In English, I'd have to explain (That was so Texas. I mean, totally and completely a reflection of the whole state. Seriously.) In French, I'd just say it was Texas-meme, and the implied meaning would be there, built into those four letters. It's just as cool as having the world's most robust thesaurus (as English does) or two verbs that mean to be.

You may think, given my enthusiasm for linguistics, that I'm someone who learns languages easily and with unmitigated pleasure. This is actually not the case. I live so steeped in my own language that learning another is deeply unsettling, like being in another dimension where none of the rules apply. But the traveler in me likes the voyage, in theory: the understanding that can be gained by visiting, even temporarily (go estar!) someone else's world view.

(If you have any cool linguistics elements of a language you speak, please share!)