Yes for the new year

Tis the season for New Years resolutions, a tradition I firmly support but feel a bit flummoxed by this year. Maybe it's because the timing is off. As a teacher, my new year started in August and was duly accompanied by a flurry of heartfelt goal-setting in the January 1 vein, such as exercising regularly, eating right and not working all the damn time. And, now that it's the official new year, I can look back on said resolutions with a sense of accomplishment. I'm doing Bikram yoga 4-5 times a week every week I'm in town, have been eating reasonably well (excellently, if you don't count the frozen burritos for lunch almost every day) and have arrived at a work-life balance that might strike non-teachers as pitiful, but has me throwing myself a metaphorical party every time I think about it. Not that my life isn't in constant need of the kind of renewal things like resolutions inspire, but I'm humming along fairly well with the ones I have.

This is new for me. This year is definitely the first time in my life I've worked on my resolutions well into the equivalent of May (since I set my goals in August rather than January). Something major has shifted since returning from the desert, and being able to fulfill personal objectives is only one of the benefits. I was thinking about this today while Facebooking with a friend, a teacher at another charter school in our network. This friend, let's call her Superstar, spent last semester working on her masters thesis, TAing a graduate class and teaching full time. Her TA job has ended, but she was bemoaning the fact that the time ("time") she now has was already being filled with other commitments at her school. "There always seems to be something, and it's so hard to say no," she reported grimly--and I heard an echo of my own voice across the years. I knew Superstar was right: there will always be something. When your job involves serving others in an environment of scarcity and great need (ie: urban education), there will always be demands--and not just any demands: worthy, necessary, pressing demands. Demands that keep you awake at 2 a.m. and cause you not so much to say yes alot as to become a living, breathing yes to all comers. Which actually works for awhile and makes a lot of worthy, wonderful people happy. Until it becomes all you are. Then you're more like a not-breathing, living-dead yes zombie. Not surprisingly, that's when the problems start.

I realized as I read Superstar's message that I knew one of the ways out of this trap. You might know, too. You might be sitting at your computer, talking to the screen, as people do while watching horror movies. But instead of, "Don't walk into the dark, creepy room, you dumbass!" you might instead be saying, "Are you serious? Just tell those people no already!" The comparison to a horror movie is apt, given what can happen to a person who turns into a living-dead yes zombie, but--just like in the movies--it's not that simple. I could have told Superstar to buck up, say no, put your foot down, etc. But I suspected that wouldn't work. It didn't work on me in the slightest. I thought saying no was for people who didn't care enough to say yes.

So instead of telling Superstar to say no, I told her what worked for me (finally...it only took a year on anti-depressants and two years on the other side of the world). It's the same thing that's helped me keep my New (school) Years resolutions. She shouldn't start saying no; she should keep saying yes. Saying no is like standing still--the vacuum of unoccupied free time (as small as it is) remains, and nature abhors a vacuum. Saying yes always fills the vacuum. But Superstar shouldn't say yes to more demands on her time. Instead, she should say yes to ways that will help her feel more like herself and less like a living-dead yes zombie. That's what Bikram yoga did for me. My New Years resolutions were the right kind of yeses. At last. And once you start saying yes, as we all know, it's hard to stop.

When you think about it, that's what having a work-life balance is all about. It's not about having "time for me" cause, really, what does that mean? It's about achieving a balance between yeses to others and yeses to myself.

This is hardly breaking news. The self-help section at Borders is surely full of books that all say the same thing. But the emphasis on yes rather than no made a huge difference in making my new year happy, and it might for you, too. Here's to saying the right kind of yes in 2011!

Odds on Christmas

Q. How do you know it's officially a White Christmas?

A. Ask an Irish bookie.

Here on the frigid Emerald Isle, where the green rolling hills have been buried under several feet of unseasonable snow, whether or not it will be a White Christmas is not determined by the icicles dangling from every tree, but rather by the booking office. It states, in no uncertain terms that it will be White Christmas only if it snows on the actual day, regardless of the fact that the country is experiencing the lowest temperatures in 70 years. The odds currently stand at 4/1 of a single snowflake falling from the skies over Dublin on Christmas Eve (one assumes within the direct line of sight of a booking agent). The odds extend to 5/1 for Christmas Day itself.

The odds of my making it from Austin, Texas to Belfast, Northern Ireland felt considerably higher as I started off early Monday morning. I shudder to think what bookies would have made of my attempt to land at both Heathrow and Belfast City, as my itinerary boldly stated, when the latter was closed outright, and the former was operating at about 30% when I started out. By the time I got to Newark, the flights to London both before and after had been cancelled, but mine was still on the board, flashing "on time."

It was there that I met my Boston sister and brother-in-law (also making their way to Ireland for the family Christmas, though flying direct to Dublin) who got me into the Continental Presidents Club thanks to their status as people who fly a ridiculous amount and only on Continental. Have you ever been in one of these special club rooms in airports? I was amazed. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't the parallel-universe airport I experienced upon entering the unassuming sliding doors right off Gate 120. Here I was, thinking I was a sophisticated world traveler and had no idea that if you had enough money and/or traveled enough on the same airline, you could bypass the long line at Starbucks and the drafty chill of the terminal and instead settle into a comfy chair in a well-heated lounge, surf the Internet (free), while sipping on wine (free) and nibbling cheese, crackers, fruit and chips (free, and I hear some club rooms have a much more interesting spread). Maybe I should have cynically expected as much. But until Monday night at Newark Airport, I was a total innocent in the ways of elite airline travel.

The glass of wine surely did wonders for the flight across the Atlantic. We landed in the eerie dark of a northern European morning. (Seriously...it's weird when it's full dark and 8 a.m. Weird in a primal, visceral sense that makes me empathize with pagan sun rituals.) Heathrow was not the bustling crush of humanity it so often is. In fact, as I made my way to Terminal 1, more and more of my fellow travelers veered off until I was literally the only one winding through the security line switchbacks to get to the guy who takes your in-transit picture and checks on the infrared camera to make sure you don't have a raging fever.

• Him: Where are you going, then?
• Me: Belfast
• Him: Good luck with that.

The odds were steadily climbing as I rolled my bag to the other side of the barrier and joined a short line of other Terminal 1 hopefuls. The lady at the desk took one look at my ticket and waved me through. Two steps later, a guy asked my destination and sent me back. "Belfast City is closed." Sighing, I rolled back, only to be sent on by the lady again. "bmi 84 is going--and it's Belfast International that's closed, not City. Not yet." I tried not to feel the envious eyes of the other people in line as I, and I alone, wheeled my way into the terminal.

Heathrow Terminal 1 is a place I have spent some time. United flies out of there along with all flights to the British Isles and Ireland. So, between visits to family and and my two years in the Middle East, I have become somewhat familiar with Terminal 1, especially the Pret a Manger and the Giraffe Cafe. Let me tell you, on Tuesday morning, Dec. 22, it was a mere shell of its former self. A few pitiful forms stretched out on chairs (who knows how long they'd been waiting?) Some dads and kids browsed in the shops. There was no line at the Pret a Manger (a miracle in and of itself) and the departures board had a long list of red "cancelled" notices with just a sprinkling of "on times" or "delayed" in Christmas green.

bmi 84 was most definitely going out, a fact I hardly counted on until I was actually walking down the jetway. I had a window seat and a prime view of the few planes landing (mostly big 777s from faraway places) and even fewer taking off. So I was hardly surprised when the pilot came over the intercom and announced that, right as he was about to start the plane, he was told that Belfast City had closed (this was shortly after an announcement that we would be taking off, but he wasn't sure if we'd be able to land once we got there. None of us knew if this was a joke or not, though he assured us we had plenty of fuel...) The whole plane groaned in unison, but no one suggested we de-plane. bmi 84 was most definitely going. How long we had to sit on the runway was another question entirely.

Turned out to be only about 45 minutes--the best 45 minutes I've ever spent grounded. There's nothing like the prospect of spending multiple days in the confines of Terminal 1 to put a delay in perspective. Belfast City re-opened; we took off amid merry cheers, and landed into a startling red sunset over an arctic Ireland buried under at least two feet of snow. There were TV cameras waiting for us in the arrivals area, and a lot of families, like mine, relief warring with disbelief on their happy, holiday faces. I got interviewed by a radio reporter who asked me if I minded the delay.

• Me: Mind?! I feel like I've won the lottery!
• Reporter (somewhat taken aback): Oh? And why is that?

Because, dour British person, that's how it feels when you beat the odds, thread a very narrow needle of international air travel and slip into a country on the only plane that's landed in three days. Driving back to my sister's house in the suburb of Ballynure, the fat full moon looked especially stunning rising over the snow-blanketed hillside. I don't care what the bookies say, it looks like a White Christmas to me.

This Train's Year in Books 2010

Not that this will come as any kind of huge shock, but there are few things more enjoyable than recommending books to people. I've recently had occasion to do this for two friends, one who was traveling to Italy and my Secret Santa from school. The experience left me aglow for days and hungry for more.

Then, as if life couldn't get any better, my family has been coming through recently with the Amazon gift cards (really, the only thing I want for Christmas, ever), thus swelling my account balance and prompting mad book-buying sprees. While on Amazon, I read through their 2010 book recommendations, then flipped to the NY Times Book Review to do the same.

And thought to myself...why can't I also release a Best of 2010 book list? The answer, of course, is there is no reason in the world. It's also a great way to re-cap the year in a way that makes sense for me. I'll leave the Christmas letters and pictures to my more-organized relatives with cute kids. Consider this my year in review through the lens of the best books I've read in 2010.

January: No Logo by Naomi Klein

I spent half of 2010 in Abu Dhabi, and in January had just returned from Christmas with my sister, brother-in-law and K in Morocco and Spain. K recommended Naomi Klein's No Logo after we'd both finished The Shock Doctrine (also highly recommended). In No Logo, Klein writes about the endless and destructive cycle of corporate advertising and the effects of selling image (as companies do these days) as opposed to actual products. It's a brilliantly written wake-up call and an important reminder of the dehumanizing forces that perpetuate sweatshops in Asia, the loss of blue-collar jobs here and the bankrupt illusion that we can buy peace of mind.

February: The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of 'Proper' English from Shakespeare to South Park by Jack Lynch

I bought this book for my birthday, and rarely have I given myself such a cool gift! I know I've mentioned it before, either in this blog or RR of Arabia, but Lynch's book is by far the best in a long string about the English language I read this past winter. The best part is his obvious enthusiasm for our language as an ever-evolving wonder as opposed something that should be set in stone. One of the ways he does this is by exposing most of these supposed set-in-stone rules as 19th century impositions by Latin grammar teachers (including the split infinitive and whether anyone should end a sentence with a preposition). Of course, I share Lynch's fascination with English's free-wheeling, anything-goes vibe, but his take is far from hippie-dippie. Here is a lucid writer with a lot to say about what is fast becoming the language of the world.

March: The Weed the Strings the Hangman's Bag--Alan Bradley

If you haven't already discovered this amazing mystery series, go out right now and pick up the first installment Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. It stars Flavia de Luce, a scarily precocious 11 year old and budding chemistry genius growing up in her family's rapidly decaying manor house in rural post-war England. These deeply real, often stark novels are anything but twee Brit kid-lit. In fact, they are most definitely are not for kids. Only adults can truly appreciate Flavia's intellectual brilliance combined with her very child-like emotional vulnerability as she struggles to be seen as the youngest in a family of three (all brilliant) girls and an emotionally distant father still reeling from his wife's (and the girls' mother) recent death. As someone who interacts with 11 and 12 year olds on a daily basis, I respect what Bradley does with Flavia as a character, which is both respectful and captivating.

April: An Anti-Cancer Life by David Servan-Schreiber.

My mother, as most of you know, is recovering from lung cancer, having never smoked a day in her life. During the first year of her recovery, she read this book and spent the next months 1) putting it into practice in her own life and 2) recommending it ceaselessly to my sisters and me. When I finally picked it up, I wasn't sure what to expect. I knew it contained lists of anti-cancer foods, along with explanations from Servan-Schreiber, a doctor who applied the rigors of science to the study of how changing one's lifestyle and eating habits can truly keep cancer at bay. He himself has inoperable brain cancer, which he has lived with for more than seven years by taking his own advice. His honest and clearly written account of both his own struggles (medical and personal) and the science behind his claims is more about how to live than what to eat (though the aforementioned food lists are also there).

The bottom line is this book changed the way I look at food and exercise and helped anchor the sense of "balance" I wanted to bring to my post-Abu Dhabi life. So far, so good! Even if you don't have cancer or know anyone who does, this is an excellent book about staying healthy in mind as well as body.

May: Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plot Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory AND The Big Short by Michael Lewis

You may have seen both of these books on other "best of" lists (including at least one of the reviewers from the NY Times). I'll add my voice to the hype. Although about vastly different time periods, they both are the kind of nonfiction that read like the best kind of page-turning fiction. They are also both about audacity in action, written by masters who know as much about plot, character development and suspense as any novelist. In the case of Operation Mincemeat, the audacity lead to the success of D-Day and the defeat of fascism. In the case of The Big Short, it nearly led to the collapse of the financial system as we know it. Pick your dose of audacity and enjoy!

June: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

As I was leaving Abu Dhabi, I found a copy of this book (which wasn't released in the States until July), so I'm going to count it as a June book. It was the perfect companion for the transition from the Middle East back to urban teaching in the States. It's all about living in a foreign culture and the ways it becomes home, as well as the ways it never can be, and the implications this has for relationships, politics and daily life. Mitchell is my favorite living author (who wrote my favorite book of all time Cloud Atlas) and this book has everything I love about his work, including a perfect balance of history, character, plot and deeper themes. It takes place in 17th century Japan, on a tiny Dutch colony--the only Western point of contact with Japan at that time. Jacob de Zoet is a clerk with a deep moral center who finds himself adrift in more ways than one. My explanation doesn't even begin to cover it. Read it. If you like it, read Cloud Atlas, Mitchell's less linear true masterpiece.

July: Tongues of Serpents: A Novel of Temeraire by Naomi Novik

This is the seventh installment of Novik's alternate-reality history set during the Napoleonic Wars, which imagines the world exactly how we know it except with the addition of sentient dragons to the political and military mix. As with most books that involve dragons, Novik's Temeraire selected and bonded with his captain, the surprised naval commander Lawrence, shortly after emerging from the egg. The relationship between the two is thoroughly wonderful, as is Novik's familiar-not-familiar world. (Napoleon also has a dragon corps, of course.) Start with His Majesty's Dragon, the first in the series. If you like historical novels and fantasy, you cannot go wrong with this series.

August: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (Also, The Professor and Other Writings by Terry Castle, which I reviewed already on this blog.)

This book came out on the second day of school in Austin, where I'm now teaching 6th grade nonfiction studies. It's only appropriate that after spending all day with 105 12 year olds, I would stay up until midnight reading the last of the best Young Adult series to come out in recent years. Collins's dystopian, sometime-in-the-near-future America is divided into 12 districts where a vastly reduced population work in near-slave conditions for the benefit of the Capital. To keep the districts in line, the powers-that-be stage an annual Hunger Games, a gladiatorial battle to the death using two children randomly selected from each district. Our heroine Katniss is the strongest and most genuinely written girl character I've ever read. She and her district partner in the Hunger Games unwittingly put in motion a series of events that threatens to topple the Captial's hold on the population. Collins brings it all together in the final pages of Mockingjay. If you are just discovering this series, be glad you don't have to wait for all the books to come out. Buy them all at once, starting with The Hunger Games. You won't want to stop reading even long enough to get the next installment after you finish the first.

September: Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach

Never one to pass up a book about outer space, I picked up this nonfiction look at how NASA and other space programs throughout the world prepare human beings to live and work in space (with an eye on an eventual human mission to Mars). Roach is a hilarious and brilliant writer who somehow gains entry into the weird world of weightless experiments, space food taste tests and many other riveting and decidedly unsexy aspects of space travel they never show on Star Trek. This book is laugh-out-loud funny and full of information, an excellent combination.

October: Bury Your Dead: An Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny and The Rhetoric of Death by Judith Rock

I bought only two books in October and have to recommend both of them. October is a rough month in the education world. The school year is in full swing, and there is very little time to surface. But I made time to read these new novels by two of the best mystery novelists writing today. The Rhetoric of Death is the first novel by my godmother Judith Rock. Though I'm hardly an unbiased source, I would enthusiastically recommend this book even if I had no personal connection. Set in a Jesuit college in Paris during the Counter-Reformation, it stars Charles du Luc, a young rhetorics teacher who gets caught up in court drama and international politics while trying also to help stage a ballet for the king (Jesuit ballet was a big thing in those days!). The historical details, compelling characters and several exciting scenes set in the Louvre when it was still a run-down palace and home to squatters definitely separate this book from your run-of-the-mill mystery/thrillers.

Louise Penny's newest Gamache novel is not to be missed. Though start with Still Life, the first in the series, if you've haven't read any before. Penny sets most of her books in Three Pines, a Quebec village she goes to great lengths to idealize in a way that contrasts strikingly with the very real characters that populate it. Gamache, the chief inspector of the Surete, is one of the most appealing detective out there today. Though this new installment is only partially set in Three Pines, it features many of the characters from the previous books.

November: At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson

What's not to love about Bill Bryson? His latest is about the history of the home, centered around his old historic vicarage in Norfolk, England. It's full of facts you never thought you even wanted to know about the various rooms in the house and how they evolved through the years. I especially liked the chapter on the hall (how that has changed!) and the whole concept of private space. I love my light-filled apartment here in Austin, and had even more occasion to be grateful after reading Bryson's book that I have such a wonderful space to myself, given the ways our ancestors lived in the not-so-distant past. Anything by Bryson is worth your time. I especially love A Short History of Nearly Everything and The Mother Tongue, my second favorite book about English.

Which brings us to...

December and my recent book-buying sprees! Rather than recommend any of these (most of which I haven't started), I'll leave you with a list of what I have recently downloaded. If you've read them, or are planning to, I'd love to hear what you think!

• The Passage --Justin Cronin
• How to Live--a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
• The Sherlockian--Graham Moore
• The Disappearing Spoon: And other Tales of Madness, Love and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements
• Songs of a Dying Earth--various authors (sci-fi, not environmental nonfiction)
• Body Work--Sara Paretsky
• Atlantic--Simon Winchester

On Monday, I'm off to a white Christmas in Ireland with the family. I will be taking these books (and maybe a few others) along for the ride. Overall, 2010 was an excellent year--for books and in so many other ways. The peace of the desert has lasted, and though I'm working nearly as hard as I ever did, it has not sent me reeling and rootless. I remain anchored in what feels like a safe harbor and am able to keep the worst of the storms at bay. These books have helped.

Onward to 2011!

Glimpses of a further shore or On being asked to help with a college essay

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

--the last line of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, my favorite book and one you should read immediately if you haven't already.

As the above quote shows, I'm an incurable optimist of the Don Quixote school who will gladly tilt windmills or dedicate my life to drop-hood if it means that maybe, just maybe, I can help fill the ocean. This also explains my love of our root myths like the journey of Prince Siddhartha or the resurrection. Although my cultural home is Christianity, it is the underlining narrative arc of all faiths that I truly believe in. I care less about theological particulars or what happens after we die than I do about the promise that light will eventually defeat darkness, that striving for justice or peace or renewal will bear fruit, that forgiveness is possible, that the ocean will fill with drops, slowly and surely, until the tide changes forever. Never in my lifetime, of course. But in that future Someday. And that my microscopic butterfly-wing-flapping over however many years I'm alotted on the planet will somehow contribute.

When you think about it, this is probably just as outlandish as believing that a 1st century prophet was the result of a virgin birth and the biological son of God who bodily rose from the dead, hung out for a few weeks then was whisked up to heaven through the clouds. But it's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I've been thinking a lot more than usual about these questions since my first class of students have become seniors in high school. In a world where examples of failure, greed and darkness constantly parade before us, I have been treated to brilliant shafts of light in the form of these teenagers. You will be glad to know that there are members of the up-and-coming generation who have tilted and run over real monsters like poverty and homelessness and yet remain on the path to academic and personal success. One even asked me for help with her college essay. As a middle school writing teacher, this is immensely satisfying, even dreamed-of--the equivalent of actually giving the "I'd like to thank the Academy" speech aspiring actors practice in front of the mirror. More than that, though, it bolsters the kind of hope that is only possible if you believe that little victories add up to big ones. This particular student's life is a dramatic case in point, but certainly not the only one. She lost both of her parents and lived in shelters for most of her life until being adopted by a couple from her church, who sent her to a private Christian school in Oakland. She is now applying to college and will no doubt be accepted. She is a senior in high school, a typical teenager who hates chores and a blinding beacon of what is possible.

Naysayers will point to all the not-beacons out there, the kids without a kindly couple from church, without an email list of editors-in-waiting or whatever other advantages that came the way of my former student or those like her. It's true. There are so many of them. And some are also my former students: girls who are now pregnant, young men (and women) who haven't been able to slip the bonds of addiction or crime or whatever else ails life these days. What to do in response to this wildly contrasting reality? Some will throw up their hands; some will batten the hatches and get as much for themselves and those like them as possible. Some will continue to work to squeeze a few more drops into the ocean. It's no secret whose team I'm on, and all of my students make it possible to stay here, hopeful and even happy, that the changing of the tide is coming.

So hope for a great sea-change

on the far side of revenge.

Believe that a further shoreis reachable from here.

Believe in miracles

and cures and healing wells.

--Seamus Heaney, "The Cure at Troy (excerpt)"

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!)