Truth v. Fact

Chalkboard from Marquette class

When I go as long as I have - almost a month - without blogging, it isn't because I have had nothing to say. It's most often because I have had TOO much to say, and also, perhaps, too much time on my hands in which to not say it.


But the thing that arises this morning, that I keep coming back to, is a conversation I had with my Marquette writing students about the difference between Truth and Fact.

Topics from my Marquette University students

Each week I cull new writing topics from the writing that they share aloud.

We also make a bunch up ourselves, freely. They have endless options, in other words.
I wanted to share their wisdom and inquiries with a larger audience. So here you go! Just try a few of these on for size next time you write...

2000 miles from my front door
When I freak out...
Swore we would never speak of it
From my dad's insane need to...
My favorite things I own
Unfortunate parallel parking
My ridiculous inability to...
Plenty of science
Some people show intelligence in other ways
Don't forget...
Why we put ourselves through stress and pressure
Does society know what's best for...
I saw it before plenty of times, but...
Knees weak
When I feel/felt most alive...
Noise and silence
Maybe we're/I'm not good enough
The billions of other people who have stood in this very spot
When God somehow seems realer than ever
Taking a job/life way too seriously
Being our/yourself all the time
The only things to take seriously are death, true love and illness (or find your own three)
Social acceptability
I hate...
When I live by the walls society puts up...
Maybe I talk too much
100 shades of red
I'm a hungry sophomore in college
Something I wrote in Elementary school or day care
I'm not an asshole, I'm just...
What I don't like is...
It's nobody's fault
I didn't mean to get...
My God
Obey obey obey
Artsy stuff
How does art fit in to life/career/family?
Not certain enough
The words employers/parents/teachers love to hear

Mothers

Abstract calligraphy made by participants in the LA Shambhala Art intensive I just attended.

"Ok," I start our writing practice, "Let's work on topics. What are some good things to write about - personal things, things you know and experience directly?"
"Relationships," the first student answers, without hesitation.
"Ok, good, but get more specific..."
"Close relationships, people you are close to," she guesses.
"Getting warmer, keep going, more specific..."
"Family relationships," she tries out, but then a light bulb goes off as I say:
"Ok, yup, keep going..."
And she practically screams out: "Your Mom."
The air goes out of the room. Everyone smiles or grimaces, all pens hit notebooks. I smile.

Elimination

Emails
Weight
Allergens
Digestion issues
Money issues
Dust
Weeds
Books
Magazines

I've spent the last week or so working through piles of things, of excess, as they say, in all of these areas. So much time eliminating, in fact, that I forgot to catch up on doing, building, adding: preparing for a teacher training I am teaching this weekend, preparing for my weekly college course that starts next week - Next Week! How Did That Happen?! Of course I have been writing, but I also am not as close to getting my manuscript - proposal for Bermuda Triangles memoir - out the door to the press I want to buy it up. August 31st was my internal deadline - get it gone, out the door, before I begin teaching another course.
Another course.

I always forget until fall comes how hard it is to teach just one more day. With my weekly classes, which began 3 weeks ago, I push hard Monday through Wednesday until late, then Thursday I feel a bit liberated. If I go out of town to teach over the weekend, which I do usually every other week, or even teach over the weekend in town, like this weekend, then Thursday and Friday are my weekend. But once I start at Marquette, I lose Thursday to commute time, prep and teaching. When I do the online courses in the spring for Junior High kids, my time is more flexible - I can log on whenever, and the bulk of my work fades into the early week, as their online deadline is always Monday.

Fall is my favorite season, but this fall, I feel like I am falling into it. The summer was overloaded with big harvests in many ways, and I am wading through the excess, plucking out what I need. Can one have too much dharma, too much goodness, too much support? I suppose I need to pace myself, let it all last into the long, cold winter. Right now I want to push it all out the door and have a simpler situation so I can get done with some work, and have some down time. That sounds ironic, of course, but as a very wise friend said recently to me in a letter "You love your work, but even your work that you love can strangle you if you're not careful." Indeed.

So while it is true that I am rich, the richness needs niches, needs places to be stored for a bit. I can't eat all of it right now, can't wade through all of it - I need it to rest, I need to rest, so I can move forward out of the absorption stage of summer and into the working world of fall and winter and spring. Oh Academic schedule! How I was raised on you as a student, and a daughter of a father who taught. The gluttony of summer turns over in my mind and slims down into the follies of fall; rosters, schedules, grades, emails, readings, classes.

Save Me From What I Want

(With thanks to St. Vincent and her awesome album "Actor")

I vividly remember the second to last class of my fall at Marquette, just over a month ago now. We did a show, as we started doing the class before, of final pictures selected by the students, on slide at the museum on campus. The year before, the very eager students invited family, friends, professors, and the place was packed to the hilt the whole time. This reception was smaller and quieter - very few family members, no other instructors, just a smattering of friends.

In the very beginning of the 1.5 hour reception, I discovered that a friend of mine who is also a Marquette student (who, due to her being a year too old, had been unable to take my class at Marquette, came all the way to Madison to take it with me full price with adult students) was "working" the reception that night, making sure everything was going fine. She and I began to talk and quickly fell deeply into profound discussion - talking about a Psychology of Death class she was loving, how Miksang has affected her life (and that of her mother, who also took the class with her) and all kinds of deep and fascinating issues around Buddhist philosophy.

I'd have to literally come up for air and realize where I was, and connect with the students a bit, my "actual" students, only to find they had little to say to me and didn't wish to join in on my banter with this friend/student.

I didn't feel as connected to the students this semester as I have the other two, it's true. I tried hard to find ways to make the personal connection stronger, as I believe very much that this is how one's actual experience of contemplation - as a person-to-person transmission - is really made strong. Of course there's a part of me, and it is not little, that also likes to be liked. But this went further than that - I feel committed to ensure that the actual teachings are transmitted, and if there is no connection - positive or negative or neutral - between me and them, that limits what can pass through me (note: not from me, through me) to them. Doesn't stop it, but limits it.

So I finally, this afternoon, got back to my emails to find my reviews posted from the students. I took a deep breath and opened them. Mostly, a bit to my surprise I have to say, as the students didn't seem very enthusiastic about the class often, I got on average a 5-5.5 out of 6. But when the specifics rose up, students said all kinds of things - mostly helpful feedback ("wrote on chalkboard more than necessary," "spent too much time lecturing and not enough time in discussion.") Some I can do (face them more and my writing less) and some I can't (uh, teach yoga, too?!). Then of course I could tell just by tone those students who, though they weren't in love with the class, really dug it and respected me "Professor (sic) Hall is unconventional, but so is the topic," "She kept us interested an explained everything really well."

Then there was this one, all the way at the bottom. I know who it is, and in his distance the whole class I tried not to read judgment, though I suspected it was there. His ending statement confirmed my suspicions. His completely dismissive tone surprised me, though:

She was kind of crazy. She wrote on the chalkboard far more than was necessary. However, her presence helped the members of the class bond further as none of us could relate to her, but all of us could relate to each other.

Really? Surely that kind of zing is "far more than necessary"? I suppose this tells me more about that student than about me. Still. Was there really some kind of on-going thing against me the whole class? Did everyone see me that way? No, of that I am certain.

But being called "kind of crazy" triggers all kinds of things deep in me - especially as I am writing memoir pieces about my strange socialization during my childhood and teen years. It's good to say that out loud, as it helps me to realize these feelings are old, and beyond the reach even of this student, who enjoyed himself despite himself (and apparently despite me). Despite is not the same as "in spite of." He could care less. At some level, so could I. In fact, it was probably more my trying-too-hard efforts to "fit in" and "be liked" or "connect" that revealed a sense of craziness to this students (and any other of the students). Isn't that ironic.

And yet, when I told Dylan about it, I realized part of what I still want out there is to somehow blend in (that's right, laugh all you want, because I am laughing pretty hard about it now, which is a relief). Uh. Blend in. Airplane conversations with me are awkward to say the least (not because I can't speak clearly but because I never know how to tell someone I teach "Buddhist Art - not art with Buddhas in it, but art based on Buddhism"). I have an unconventional marriage which gets less conventional by the day. I am unabashedly queer and always have been. I proudly wore clashing plaid shirts and Indian print batik skirts to school when I was 12 and still don't bat an eye at wearing all black ("sophisticated pajamas," I call them) in the middle of a summer day.

Oh someone please save me from still, at 32, this wanting to somehow fit in.

When I was 12, I just wanted to be me and didn't care about fitting in. When I was 21 I wanted to just fit in and not be me. Now I am pretty close to being back to just wanting to be me. Adolescence and my twenties rended me from that freedom, and apparently a couple of disrepectfully stated opinions are here to remind me that I am still attached, maybe always will be, on some level, to fitting in, no matter how much I love my life and am pretty happy "with myself".

Definitely worth a laugh. Somewhere out there I like to think that Mary Karr (author of Cherry and The Liar's Club, both of which I am currently reading) - who writes a great deal about the suffering so many of us do go through, from so many of these same issues, is laughing with me.

Magic at Marquette

Last night I met with my Marquette University students again. I had to miss last week, because of a nasty head cold, and this week I am still sniffling and hacking out phlegm. But I didn't want to miss this week - germless as I am - because we were talking about Magic.

It's clear from their response papers that some of them read the chapter on Magic from Shambhala, Sacred Path of the Warrior, with skepticism, and some read it with joy. That's natural. All semester I have been toying with the edges of the believable with them - giving them somewhat concrete assignments like "Color" or even "People" and when they come back, insisting that they experienced more than just a moment of "getting the assignment right" - in fact, that that wasn't what they were doing at all, rather, experiencing direct perception, which is, ultimately, experiencing reality directly. At first they were confounded - even the joyful ones - but after a semester of reading John Daido Loori (RIP) and Freeman Patterson and Chogyam Trungpa, and putting up with my weird chalkboard renditions of reality, they are becoming a bit more malleable.

And all of those things would mean nothing if it weren't for the practice. The practice of photographing, this tiny (most of them have little low-power point and shoots) miracle that allows them to share what they see with all of us in a dark room and discuss it. They have become "processed" as Chogyam Trungpa puts it, and like in cooking, you wait until the food softens, then add the spices. Now's when they are ready to absorb the most radical, and also simplest, teachings of them all.

In the chapter, Chogyam Trungpa says that not only is the space we can experience (if we allow ourselves - of course it is always there) spacious, relaxing and nifty, it is also charged with energy. Potential. Spontenaity. In the reading, he actually names it - Drala (above aggression or beyond the enemy in Tibetan) and then goes on to say that in fact there are, in a manner of speaking, Dralas - entities which exist in this space, of this space, which are this space. Even the wildly awake, in love students who accept most of what I or the readings say, took this one with a hard swallow. What? Is this guy talking about faeries here?! He sort of plunks this on at the end of the chapter, and doesn't leave much explanation.

So that's mostly what we talked about last night. After talking about what was mysterious in their lives (The Future, one woman said - these are college sophomores - another mentioned The Origins of Everything - Both Cosmic and Personal - and another, Relationships With Other Humans) I asked them if the cosmic - how the universe began - is really so different from how, say, they arrived in this class. There's an answer for the class - "I signed up for it" - or is there?

"In my Poli Sci class, we talk about this a lot," one student said, very excited. "How can you separate the origin of the universe from your own life?" We reference the Carl Sagan quote Loori used in our readings a few weeks ago - that you can't truly make an apple pie from scratch unless you go back to the beginning of the Universe. Another mentions in German class how they are reading a text which says we don't truly know anything at all, that science is actually less informed or answered than, say, religion.

Ok. Good. We've established space. They've learned a lot in the last 12 weeks - and certainly not just from me or the class or their experiences from this class. So then I drop the bomb.

"What does this idea of Drala entities mean, then? Are they faeries?" All the students shrug, one then shakes his head and raises his hand. "It's more like - well, we can't see it, but we experience it, right? Like the tuning fork example you gave, that we make contact with something, we know it, we have all felt it here, right?" and the rest of the students nod "So it's worth naming, but it sort of doesn't exist. I dunno. Something like that."

This from the student who's an RA in a dorm where a freshman just committed suicide over the last weekend, throwing the whole campus into shock.

"Thank you," I say to him. He's delivered it - or maybe the student's death delivered it - right to our doors. Naming the unnameable, the unknowable. I don't say it's a bit like naming God - these are Catholic, Christian or Atheist students still questioning a lot in religion - but they all toy with this as I wait a bit to speak.

"What about this idea of "beyond the enemy" though? What if we call it "beyond aggression?" They all look at me, dumbfounded. That's understandable. I bring it down to earth.

"See this table?" I sit on the same table every week. I like it - just the right height, swinging my long-skirted legs. I can see all of them, all their heads, and the whole chalkboard from here.
"I like this table. What if I were to go to the department head and say 'I really like this table. Please let me take it home,' and he says to me 'You know we are having a shortfall this year, Miriam, we really can't give up any table,' and we fight about it. Is the aggression only between me and the head of the department, or somewhere else?"

They squint at me, some giggle a bit. Really? Man she's a weirdo. What weird examples.
"What are some things like this in your life?"
"Grades," one pipes in.
"Getting good grades is good, right?"
They are Honors students. They all nod vigorously.
"But sometimes do you hurt others or yourself to get them?"
They keep nodding, some smirk, some look sad.
"Where's the aggression?"
"We're too attached to getting the good grades, just like you are too attached to getting the table."
I nod.
"And in that same German text," the student who mentioned it earlier rushes forward without raising her hand, eager, "it says that if things are too tight, there's no room to move."
"Right. Does hurting yourself over getting good grades mean you will get them?"
They frown, some look sadder. "No," one student answers.
"Why?"
"Because we miss out on the world, we miss out on joy, spontenaity, trying too hard. And we hurt ourselves, and sometimes others." You can feel the loss in the room. It's palpable.
"So if we let some space in, some not knowing, some doubt even, what happens?"
"There's room for change, for joy, even for pain, but also for --- (she gulps) Magic."
Ah. Yes.

The silence in the room is deep. This is not ordinary, is class over yet silence. The students are struck dumb, literally. Which is a good thing. Beginner's mind penetrates the darkened room.
"So when I am fighting with the department head, and I have aggression with him, where else is there aggression?"
"With the table. You're being aggressive toward the table."
"Is the table aggressive toward me?"
They laugh and shake their heads no.
"Ok. So you know how I told you to watch your energy photographing people? How that was really hard because - as he said - relationships are hard and mysterious?"
They nod.
"Guess what. You have had relationships this whole time. With color, with light, with a chair or table or oak leaf."
They nod.
"You have a relationship with everything, and everything relates to you. There is always energy there, and that energy - when it is open, without aggression and totally aware? That's beyond aggression. That's Drala. That's what we are naming."
"And when it's not Drala?" someone asks, frowning.
The German student answers her "There's no room for anything."
Right.

There are no class bells at Marquette. The class ends when we end it. I am remiss to do the normal closing up stuff - remind them of our show coming up, wish them a good Thanksgiving break.
"When you are shooting the next couple of weeks, don't forget about this. Heck, try to remember it even as you eat cafeteria food. (some groan) It's up to you. You are the gateway."

They get the hint. It's the end. Three out of the seven smile as they stand up, looking right at me. The rest don't chat like usual, deep in thought. I catch them up on what's due and wish them a good holiday. When they leave, I cry for a moment, spontaneous tears, totally unexpected, and completely without aggression.