i was going to title this new diary "grape tampons" [UPDATED]
Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 10:34:35 AM PDT
but since this diary has absolutely nothing to do with grapes, tampons, or any intentional or unintentional combination of those two words I’ll just by-pass the title thing.
Oh but first, props to KateCrashes, another kossmopolitan, who came up with the title grape tampons for a post of hers in an April 2006 diary written by righteousbabe.
So, we're clear now. No grapes. No grape tampons. No tampons. I just thought it made for one hell of a great title.
With that addressed, let's move on to the business at hand. Since today is Wednesday, I thought it was as good as any day to be dadanation's penultimate haiku diary day.
Penultimate? There were others?
No.
I just like that word. And it has four syllables. Almost enough for a first or third line of a haiku.
Yes, haiku! Well, in-between remembering the year I taught 3rd graders how to write haiku. The year changed my life.
5 - 7 - 5
Below the fold please...
Update [2006-12-22 2:10:35 by dadanation]: because of a post i received (on thursday around 10pm pst) i am taking out the two hyperlinks in the diary. the post suggested that i had -- maybe -- sent a virus and/or a link to some porn site in my diary. FWIW, i checked out the links before the diary (wednesday around 10 in the morning) and then again after this person's post came. no porn, no virus. but nevertheless, even if it is far-fetched, i will do whatever it takes to guarantee that folks are safe from a virus or stupid porn site. but i a more than a bit bugged by the manner in which this info came to me ("some suggest" language feels so nasty) and the late-ness of it. oh well... the edited text is paragraph 2 of the intro, demarcated in italics...Update [2006-12-22 2:10:35 by dadanation]:
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I graduated from college early in the bleak second term of Ronald Reagan. No med school, no graduate school, no, instead I took a year off and participated in what was basically a domestic Peace Corps program. In this program, six recent college grads lived as a sort of "lay" community (for a year) in one of four domestic "houses" across the states. Of the 24 of us in my year, I ended up winning the daily double, so to speak -- I got both my first choice of sites (northern California) and my first choice of job/volunteer placement (teaching). I actually was luckier than that -- my other 5 house mates were quite cool. We fought a good deal, laughed a lot more, threw a hell of a birthday party and thought we could in fact change part of the world.
The real deal – the six of us lived in a very small house in Hayward, California. And while each of us worked in some type of social change agency none of us shared similar jobs. Even my two housemates who worked with developmentally disabled adults – their jobs and the respective programs (as well as functioning levels of their clients) were very much unique to each job.
As I said, I wanted to teach and that’s what I was going to get to do. My placement? St. Patrick’s Catholic Grade School, in West Oakland, California. My job required the longest commute (by BART train) which made me the earliest riser in the house every day to catch the train from Hayward to West Oakland. It was a 45 minute train ride each way. I think you get the basic picture – six college grads, one very small house in Hayward, three guys in triple-bunked beds in one bedroom, three women in the other triple-bunked beds in the other bedroom, just a mere two blocks from the South Hayward BART Station on Mission Boulevard.
OK, now indulge me for a moment. a random, written-today haiku, haiku #1:
it's my a.d.d.
that keeps me from focusing.
wow. that paint is wet!
St. Patrick’s Catholic School is located at the corner of 9th Street and Peralta Avenue, in West Oakland. The school itself is overshadowed, some even say "boxed in" on two sides by housing projects, on another side by a major freeway and finally on its last side basically by the shipyards of Oakland. There is not a speck of grass on the school "play" yard (all asphalt). My job, officially, was to be the physical education instructor for all eight grades. Additionally, I asked and was given permission to teach a creative writing class for grades 3 through 8. Oh yeah, I got to be the stand-in substitute "last minute" person as well as the unofficial dean of discipline (if you knew me you would know how much of a joke THAT was, booth in title as well as in practice).
Across the street from the school (a two-storey building with a little "gym" adjacent to it on the fenced-in school grounds) was the convent where the nuns lived – well, that is when the school was staffed by a convent of nuns – when I was there, there were four nuns in the convent, and one was not even of the same religious order as the other three. But that is an entirely other story. Oh yeah, a few houses down from both the convent and "house of ill-repute" was purported to be the original Black Panther house.
For those unfamiliar with West Oakland circa 1980 - 90, it was very much in disrepair, very rough, with occasional patches of some vibrancy. However, these were the years of the drought in Northern California, and the lack of water seemed especially acute in West Oakland. Truth of the matter was (and is) that it was poor. Most of the students received some form of a meager "subsidized" -- or something akin to that -- addition to their lunch (if they had one that is). A few innovative minds however figured out how to get free lunches for pretty much any student who needed it/wanted it/was hungry. Across the street from the school was a public school where we’d go and pick up – literally in the janitor’s red wagon – these lunches.
BTW, this wasn’t just the era of ketchup as a vegetable; these were the lunches that showcased this sublime thinking–in-action.
haiku#2
subtle permanence
now time whispers a secret
the blooms may not last
The other teachers used to refer to my "P.E. classes" as organized anarchy. Given the physical constraints, the lack of a yard, etc. etc. etc., for 45 minutes a day, each grade’s opportunity staggered throughout the week, I knew one of my jobs was to just let these kids blow off steam, nervous energy, everything. And so I did. West Oakland was poor. The students at St. Patrick’s were also. We played a lot of dodge ball. I learned how to jump rope pretty expertly and was constantly reminded that not only was I the only white male over the age of ten in the school, I was also reminded of the fact that adult bones and body parts do not rebound as quickly or as effortlessly as do those of someone much younger... I still have a few scrapes on my legs from the asphalt yard.
I loved that part of the job; however, it paled compared to the creative writing classes. At one point in the school year, I had the 3rd graders writing haiku, the 4th graders making written collages, the 5th graders were writing quatrains, the 6th graders writing short stories, the 7th graders writing free verse poems and the 8th graders doing projective verse (a la Robert Creeley/Ed Dorn). Some of the work these kids did was spellbinding; other stuff was just great.
My challenge, and it was hardest with the 3rd graders, was to explain not just "what" a haiku was (equally "why bother?") but also then, how to actually write a haiku. The latter proved easier than the former.
haiku #3 for today
You were standing there
I could taste sweat on your neck
These dreams still haunt me
With the 3rd graders, the creative writing almost didn’t happen. I was feeling so out of my element with them and just floundering. One last shot, by way of haiku was my private agreement.
How – in retrospect – weird was that? Using haiku as the "last try?" Folly, foolishness, stubbornness, and basically no clue what I was really doing until I was doing it allowed me a lot of leeway that year, especially here. That and some amazing faculty who believed in me. So, for haiku, we ended up back-tracking from haiku to birthday cards, etc. Those little messages, those were poems (more or less...). Even lines from a favorite song – poems. And a haiku, just a very cool, but tight, way to write a poem. A haiku, we eventually agreed, was just a little poem with a lot of rules and a lot of claps.
Claps? Syllables.
When we were finally ready to write our haikus, the "5 – 7 – 5" rule was in place, unchangeable, the law. To make it so, it therefore had to be both explained and practiced. So, we focused first on writing a whole lot of 5 syllable lines. Period. Nonsensical, sensical, whatever, just five syllables. Over and over. Then a bunch of 7 syllable lines. Etc. Etc. Etc. It was not that hard once we got the clap thing down.
I’d like to say that the "clap" idea" (to actually measure out a syllable, one syllable, one clap) was mine. As I said, I’d like to, but I can’t. It was one of the students who finally piped up by literally clapping his 5 syllable line. Of course, for some of the 3rd graders, metric beat and clapping do not automatically go hand in hand. For a good number of my family they still do not.
But when the one student (Jerry, btw) finally piped up with "Coach" (I was "Coach...) –
"Coach -- It’s like this..." and then proceeded to say his line clapping with each syllable "one" (word), ...clap..."five" (word),... clap.
That was a watershed moment.
5
7
5
I kept not one poem, not one story, not one anything from that year. It ruined me, teaching there. Nothing before, nothing since has rivaled how difficult, angering, gut-ripping, fun, alien, magical and transforming of a year it was. Not because I hold any illusions about the stark contrasts, the utter power of poverty and race and privilege and my escape or anything in-between. No martyr, no messiah complex, no "urban plunge"/"temporarily downwardly mobile to see what it was like," just a guy who got to teach some awesome kids creative writing for a year.
So, care to indulge in some haiku?
5
7
5
And, finally, the last haiku of mine before I close
The escalator
Will usher you up and out
You get to go home
This Christmas marks my 20th anniversary of doing this program. I hope Jerry is still writing. And Shawna too.
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