At the Theatre

From a short story “Paul’s Case”, by Willa Cather:

"It was at the theatre and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived; the rest was but a sleep and a forgetting. This was Paul's fairy tale... When Paul went down to dinner, the music of the orchestra came floating up the elevator shaft to greet him. His head whirled as he stepped into the thronged corridor, and he sank back into one of the chairs against the wall to get his breath. The lights, the chatter, the perfumes, the bewildering medley of color…”

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Dear Alex,

Of all my high school dramas and agendas, I seem to remember my English classes most vividly and in particular, this short story.

It was the second or third piece of required reading by my English 12 teacher, Mr. Brown. The classroom was immaculately sorted in crisp lines and stacks, not a paper or pupil out of order. Mr. Brown simply would not have tolerated any misalignment. Oddly enough, he didn’t need to demand our attention. A mystical hush in deference suppressed our adolescent volatility.

Even more oddly, the brownness of him somehow steeped into our consciousness like the aroma of American dark roasted coffee with maple syrup on a sluggish mid-afternoon. His espresso hair and mustache were cautiously clipped, dark plunging hazel eyes commanded silence and walnut-colored wool blazer and trousers fell on tawny taut skin of a long bony frame. My every hour in his class wheeled into an exotic brewing of vicarious escapades through literature.

In disbelief of his virtual perfection, I routinely inspected the room to see whether something or someone might have been less compliant. Surely among Newton’s forces of clutter and chatter in this school, such tidy composition and composure along our rows of student desks hedged in by jaundiced wallpaper could not have been sustained. Entropy should trump. I learned that in Chemistry though it did not look relevant within these perimeters that housed us as a unit of being and belonging. In fact the only apparent disorder was our imagination in this strange space with Mr. Brown.

For many fantastical moments in English class, I and my peers together with Mr. Brown became one family, discovering and exploring foreign migrations across sea, desert, cave, summit and sky in storied second lives. In these world travels over a 50-minute period, I forgot about tracking my GPA for college admission or weighing my part-time wages or leveraging my assets to optimize and outperform in idolatry. Mr. Brown had turned into my human savior.

As I think back about this short story tonight, I find myself reincarnated as Paul loitering at Carnegie Hall in New York, a place I have neither seen nor touched in person. And I begin to return to Mr. Brown’s English 12 classroom where I once roamed freely, spirited away without aim. I come “down to dinner, the music of the orchestra… floating up the elevator shaft to greet" me. My head spins and my heart sinks and splits on “one of the chairs against the wall to get… breath”. And the strain of night in symphony will soon wane to a morning less melancholy.

Yours, Kate

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Dear Kate,

What a morning!

First my dog Sumi threw up, but not before killing a precious half morning hour of mine trying.  Then I made a mess fitting spaghetti into my kids' cylindrical thermos. Now Sumi is not eating, and I'm leaving home with this sad thought, worrying and wondering.

Life feels like high drama when you're experiencing its "necessities," but it's really just lowbrow comedy.

Yesterday I wrote about scientism.  Interesting how the story you shared with me today is an answer to that too, only more, and more powerful.

I often wondered how English teacher can talk about literature with a straight face.  Science, I can understand: These are the facts.  Take them, don't leave them.  Make good use of them.  Sound smart talking about them.  Find your career in them.

But stories?

They aren't "true" first of all.  So it's kind of a waste of time to begin with reading them, more so studying and writing about them.  Much ado about nothing, Shakespeare would agree with my son.  Coles Notes are great, telling us what the rumpus is, the impersonal Whats so that we can escape the dangerous summoning of the personal Hows.

And what are these stories about anyway?

Subversive stuffs, always.  Question this.  Protest that.  F it all.  (Don't be offended, it's just a Sesame Street lesson on an alphabet.  Trust me the n-word is more incendiary, but to learn how to make a Nuclear Bomb you will need to stay for the next class, one that tells you about "mere facts" and "hardcore truths.")

Stories are dangerous.  They beckon us to live into them.  So the teacher of literature is in a very thankless position: Listen to me but please don't.  Question too the question I am questioning you now.

Dostoevsky suggests that Christ the Truth is a Word that once spoken in human language becomes a lie.  Dylan says we become our own enemies in the instant that we preach.  The heart of truth-speaking is a paradox; any speaking that purports itself to be about truth but with no such built-in self-defeating mechanism is going to defeat itself anyway but with self-deception and not honesty.  

We don't feel what we feel about the words "Grammar School" for no reason.  Latin and Greek, commas and adjectives, comedies and tragedies, what can they do for us?  To ask questions, including this very last one, maybe?  We build with demolition in mind and rebirth in heart.

There are rules and structures, and we will need to learn them and use them, observe them and obey them, before we can toy with them and humor them.  A child knows how to play in a sandbox and does so beautifully, but it's a grown-up who knows how to play in ten thousand places.

I called home just now and my daughter told me Sumi is eating again. I am still walking to work but it's not dark anymore.

Yours, Alex