Connection: The Eyes Have It

As the school year winds down, I find my creative impulses as a writer growing.  One of the best parts about being a writer is observing the world around me and finding patterns and connections.  It often happens without warning -- I am not trying to make connections -- they are simply presenting themselves to me, and it is my job to notice.

Such was the case yesterday.  I read an article in the New York Times that really stuck with me.  It was about how something as innocuous as a cartoon rabbit looking at your from a box of cereal or an emoticon of a smiley face can bring a powerful feeling of connection.  The research referred to in the article said that even blind people's brains light up when someone looks at them. (Click here to read "Psst. Look Over Here")

One of my favorite parts of the article is this:

“A richer mode of communication is possible right after making eye contact,” Dr. Senju said. “It amplifies your ability to compute all the signals so you are able to read the other person’s brain.”

In other words, eye contact makes us more socially aware and empathetic. It allows us to make sense of our relationships and social orientation. So avoiding eye contact out of fear or insecurity, or breaking eye contact to read a text, check email or play Candy Crush degrades your social facility and emotional intelligence."

I know I have sometimes felt a strong degree of anger when someone looks away to their phone, instead of staying involved in our conversation.  Now I know where the anger comes from: it breaks a connection that has been made.

The article immediately made me think of a book I had read almost twenty years ago, one whose title and author totally escapes me. But what I remember is that it stated that around middle school age, parents and other people stop looking at young people. This is a change from when they are babies, toddlers, and younger children.  By preteen stage or later, the eye turns more critical to the young person.  It is something I try to remember with my own students (although, admittedly, it is very hard!) and I try to employ what that author recommended: Stop. Look. Love.

I also thought that this research on someone's eyes looking upon us might be the reason "selfies" are so popular. When we are needing a feeling of connection, taking a picture of ourselves looking at ourselves may be filling a real emotional need.

Must have needed someone to look at me.

And third, I thought of the growing dis-ease educators feel having to administer the somewhat cruel standardized tests.  It is we who have to look in the eyes of the children and tell they they have to do this -- not the politicians, not Arne Duncan, not the people making millions from these tests.  I bet if there had been a video camera in my room when I was administering the test, you would have seen that I couldn't look at the kids.  I knew I was betraying them.  My discomfort affected me physically, mentally, and emotionally for over two weeks; it disconnected me from my students in a seriously painful way.

Okay, so there is that.

Then later, on Facebook, my dear friend and sister educator Annmarie Ferry posted this video.  It was brought to her attention by a student.  I was extremely moved by this.  Again -- it has to do with how we see or don't see people.  It has to do with where we look.

Have the Homeless Become Invisible?

 I know. It is easier not to look.  Guilty.

So...what is the point of all of this?  What conclusion have I drawn?  Probably nothing terribly new. Just a reminder that it is more important than we know to actually use eye contact with each other.  It strengthens us in ways we are not even aware. Being able to honestly look into the eyes of our significant others, children, students, the elderly, the homeless -- it can be a challenge.  It may even make us feel uncomfortable.  But if there is a conclusion to be drawn, it is this -- we will never have a better world without it.  

Here is a hopeful observation.  Lately I have been spending more time walking out in nature -- the beaches, Lakes Park, and my neighborhood.  What I notice is that it is almost a rule to say "hi" to the people you pass, even if you are walking and they are on a bike, even if they are running with an iPod plugged in.  Whenever someone doesn't make eye contact and at least nod, it feels like they are being rude.  And there is always the awkward moment when the runner or biker passes you the second time (since I'm always walking.)  Do we say "hi" again?  It is funny, but I think this level of eye communication is growing, not receding.  I think that is a good thing.

Finally, Annmarie also posted this Sylvia Path quote:

So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if you only were interested in them.

 I don't know the context of this quote, if it was in a poem, novel, or just a conversation with her.  Knowing Plath suicided at a young age makes this very poignant to me. It is a gentle reminder that it doesn't take much to help another person feel acknowledged, visible, and maybe even understood. All we have to do is look.

Book Title Poem

Recently, a friend posted an idea called the Book Shelf poem -- lining up your book titles to create a poem.

It has taken me a couple of weeks to get on it, and finally I have.  I collected over 60 book titles -- just writing down ones that stood out to me, not necessarily my favorites.

I thought a lot about whether I would add extra words.  There are not rules for this kind of thing, so I knew I could if I wanted to.  But somehow, I didn't want to.

Then I hit on an idea of using something else to tie the book titles together -- categorizing them as I often have my students do with words and phrases.  I decided to use song titles that asked questions -- and I allowed that sometimes I would be using questions in the songs themselves, not necessarily the titles, if that worked.

I set out about 16 different song title categories, and began matching up the book titles.  I discarded quite a few book titles and a couple of the song titles that didn't seem to work.  Then I considered what kind of theme this whole collection represented and, of course, it has to do with the journey we travel in this life.  It gave it a frame, anyway, however loosely.

I numbered the categories.  Here is a portion of the layout:

 

 So now...the poem!

***

Krik! Krak!

Hot Damn!

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

Good Times/Bad Times

Living Juicy

Trout Fishing in America

Just a Couple of Days...

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Dreaming of Babylon

Archeology of a Circle

Notes from the Underground

Interrogations at Noon...

How's It Going to Be?

The Force of Spirit

Finding What You Didn't Lose

Writing for Your Life

Krik! Krak!

Hot Damn!

Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?

The Road

Far from Home

A Separate Peace

Chasing Down the Dawn...

Do You Remember?

Finding Florida

Florida Stories

Florida Poems

The Wild Heart of Florida

Forever Island

Krik! Krak!

Hot Damn!

What's Love Got to Do With It?

The Root of This Longing

Warriors of the Heart

Small Wonder...

Who'll Stop the Rain?

The Metamorphosis

Fate and Destiny

Mist

Heart of Darkness...

Do You Know?

The Language of Life

Colors of Freedom

The Rebel

You Can't Catch Death...

Where is the Love?

A Lamp in the Darkness

Catching Fire

A Circle of Quiet

Sailing Home

Krik! Krak!

Hot Damn!

Can You Hear Me Knockin'?

Calling Me Home

By the Light of My Father's Smile

I Thought My Father Was God...

What is Love?

Being Peace

The Red Tent

The Color Purple

A Stone for a Pillow...

How Will I Know?

Sacred Contracts

The Glance

Grace (Eventually)

Couldn't Keep It to Myself

Krik! Krak!

Hot Damn!

Is This the Real Life...?

Things Seen and Unseen

The Path

A Wrinkle in Time

News from the Universe

God Never Blinks

...Is This Just Fantasy?

Above the River

A Woman's Path

Joyful Noise

Riverwalking

Ceremony...

Remembering the God to Come

***

Honoring the Past, Re-imagining the Present

Once far away from Fort Myers, it becomes apparent that where I now live is "new."  It isn't until I travel a distance that I begin to get a chance to appreciate "the old"-- and to see how others appreciate the past and bring their imaginative present to a place.  Here are four I found that were interesting or inviting or both:

Hard Rock Cafe Gift Shop, Nashville

This is the oldest free standing building in Nashville, and was once called the Silver Dollar Saloon (1897).  It is close to the riverfront in Nashville, and now houses the gift shop for the Hard Rock Cafe.  It still has some of the original flooring. The first floor, where the gift shop is now located, was a saloon, the second floor a gambling hall, and the third floor a brothel.  In addition, there is an tunnel under Broadway (the street pictured here) for smuggling liquor during Prohibition.  This truly was the building with the most character in all of Nashville.

Mark Twain Room, Village Lights Bookstore

The Village Lights bookstore in downtown Madison, Indiana is not your ordinary bookstore.  Inviting, well-lit, and friendly service makes a person never want to buy books on amazon again!  A combination of new and used books, and some pretty nifty gifts, are presented in the front part of the store.  In the back is the gem -- the Mark Twain Room. I apologize that the picture of Twain over the fireplace is full of glare -- I simply could not find a place to stand where that wasn't the case. The Twain room is used for customer reading space, as well as book signings.  A full collection of Twain's books is on the mantle under the framed portrait. Nathan, the owner of Village Lights, recommended the next spot to us.  I purchased some books from this shop -- it was impossible not to!  

Gallery 115 in Madison, Indiana

I am glad we took Nathan's advice and had lunch at the cafe here in Gallery 115.  The gallery of painting and sculptures are all by a local young man -- Erich Phagan -- and his family was involved in converting this space to the most charming art gallery and cafe I have ever seen.  Hardwood floors, original pasty cases, and stunning art -- mostly of the Madison area -- contributed to a unique dining experience.  I spoke with the artist for a while, as I waited for my pulled pork sandwich to be prepared. He makes an attempt to have his paintings look like they are old.  He sculpts little animals and distorted faces and had a whole line of little birdhouses.  This space was originally a butcher shop -- the name still in concrete outside on the sidewalk -- and then was a JC Penney's.  The Phagan family has won many awards for the work they did in this space, and I am glad we had a chance to spend some time with them.

The Courtyard Inn & Cafe and Underground Pub  Rising Sun, Indiana

Built in 1857, this building originally served the community as a general store, and served a larger cause by being part of the Underground Railroad -- it is right on the Ohio River.  The large basement room now houses the Underground Pub.  We had dinner our last night in Indiana in the cafe -- filet mignon with a delicious mushroom/wine/tarragon sauce and the best dessert ever!

Almond Coconut Brownie

I took the dessert to go, and when we got back to the hotel, I decided to take just one bite. Well, it was gone before I knew it.  

Dining at the Courtyard Cafe. Booth seats were old church pews.

Today we leave Indiana and head to Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  Our plans from here are still up in the air, but we know we will be slowly making our way back to Florida.  Once we are in the mountains, I am not sure how internet reception will be.  It has been terrible at our current location, which delayed this blog.  I had to get up before 6 a.m. today to attempt to get this done, because once everyone starts getting on the internet here, it becomes an impossible task.  

Enjoying every minute of our trip and will update again soon!

Setting Fire: My Reading Life with Brautigan

One of the most engaging books I read over the past couple of years was My Reading Life by Pat Conroy -- his personal tribute to the writers and the books that made an impression on him and helped him become the radiant writer he is.  I was so impressed with his book, I immediately gifted two people I knew with copies.

Writing tributes to pieces of writing appears to be a trend. This year I read one called My Poets, in which Maureen N. McLane goes into depth about a variety of poets whom made an impression on her -- Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore among them.

Thinking about these volumes caused me to begin making lists of books from My Reading Life (fiction and nonfiction), as well as My Songwriters, My Poets, My Short Stories, and My Best Books to Teach.  I have enough to keep me going for a while.  I just didn't know where to start.

Then today I spun for a poem on my Poetry Foundation app and came up with a poem called "So It Goes" by W.S. Di Piero.  The title caught my eye because it is the catch phrase in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five, which I will write about one of these days.  But the poem itself is about a couple watching a marsh hawk beating its wings over the Pacific Coast, which causes them to stop arguing temporarily. 

Read the poem here -- it is a worthy read!

This poem brought to mind my favorite short story: "Pacific Radio Fire" by Richard Brautigan.

In my early teenage years I had a notebook I used to keep listings of things that interested me, mostly about music, and occasionally a cut-out cartoon or article.  One of the things in the notebook was a story I found in one of my mother's magazines.  It was called "Pacific Radio Fire" and I do not know exactly why I kept this story. Something about it caught my attention, probably because it mentioned music, and I am sure that a part of me was intrigued by the way the author used language and the pure mystery of exactly what was happening in the story.

Fast forward seven years.  I have read all of Kurt Vonnegut's novels and was looking for a new writer to take his place in my reading life. I was wandering around B. Dalton bookstore at Great Northern Mall when I saw this book sitting on the shelf, facing out:

Just the title alone intrigued me.  But the quote from the book, the opening line, was the selling point: In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar.  I purchased the book (a whopping $1.25 in 1979) and brought it home.

That is when I fell in love with Richard Brautigan.

In Watermelon Sugar had a prose style I had never encountered before in my life.  Not only that, there were magical qualities in the world he created for his characters -- in this case a world where the sun shines a different color every day.  And the fact that he lets the reader make their own decision on just what watermelon sugar is made it all the more abstract.  I was hooked.

I started returning to B. Dalton and scooping up every book by this author.  There were other novels (Trout Fishing in America, The Abortion:An Historical Romance 1966), poetry collections (The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, Rommel Drives Deep Into Egypt), and short story collections, most notably this one:

So I plunged into reading the stories, each with its own weird title like "1/3,1/3,1/3" and "1692 Cotton Mather Newsreel" -- I'll be the first to admit I very often read these stories not really understanding a word of them.  Nevertheless, the use of language was intriguing and I was really just looking for the "thing" that would draw me in.  I knew I didn't have to love every single story: I was on fire with the language.

When I arrived at the fifth story (the collection has over fifty stories, the shortest just being two sentences), there was something I immediately recognized about it. I went and pulled out my notebook from high school and sure enough, here was the story I had cut out and pasted into my book all those years ago.

As it turned out, I had loved Brautigan for a very long time.  This strange connection to the past fascinated me -- but not more than that story itself, which I still find to be the finest ever written. Some of the lines from the story still delight me today, just as they did originally (dare I say, 41 years ago?)  I don't want to give anything away, because I am including the story here, but my favorite line from my first read until now is still, "His eyes were wet wounded rugs."

 I have had minimal success teaching this story -- it is deceptively simple and every carefully chosen word is loaded with meaning.  It is extremely hard to grasp, for as concrete as it may appear, it is still obscure.  Just try to write like this -- it is beyond difficult, but if I could ever craft such a story, I think my writing life would be complete. That is how strongly I feel about the language, the action, the setting, the characters, and the poetic and metaphoric language of "Pacific Radio Fire."

 

"PACIFIC RADIO FIRE"

The largest ocean in the world starts or ends at Monterey, California. It depends on what language you are speaking. My friend's wife had just left him. She walked right out the door and didn't even say good-bye. We went and got two fifths of port and headed for the Pacific.

It's an old song that's been played on all the jukeboxes in America. The song has been around so long that it's been recorded on the very dust of America and it has settled on everything and changed chairs and cars and toys and lamps and windows into billions of phonographs to play that song back into the ear of our broken heart.

We sat down on a small corner-like beach surrounded by big granite rocks and the hugeness of the Pacific Ocean with all its vocabularies.

We were listening to rock and roll on his transistor radio and somberly drinking port. We were both in despair. I didn't know what he was going to do with the rest of his life either.

I took another sip of port. The Beach Boys were singing a song about California girls on the radio. They liked them.

His eyes were wet wounded rugs.

Like some kind of strange vacuum cleaner I tried to console him. I recited the same old litanies that you say to people when you try to help their broken hearts, but words can't help at all.

It's just the sound of another human voice that makes the only difference. There's nothing you're ever going to say that's going to make anybody happy when they're feeling shitty about losing somebody that they love.

Finally he set fire to the radio. He piled some paper around it. He struck a match to the paper. We sat there watching it. I had never seen anybody set fire to a radio before.

As the radio gently burned away, the flames began to affect the songs that we were listening to. A record that was #1 on the Top-40 suddenly dropped to #13 inside of itself. A song that was #9 became #27 in the middle of a chorus about loving somebody. They tumbled in popularity like broken birds. Then it was too late for all of them. 

In searching for the text, I discovered that someone has named their blog after this story (I wish I had thought of that; but then, I guess it was already taken!)  And I also found this video some young women made of this story -- they changed the gender, and left out some of the best prose from the story, but I think their rendering of the ending is quite good.  It is great to see that this story lives on in popularity. And even as I reread it today, I thought again of the brillance of the wording, the richness of emotion, and the many layers of inference about music and its place in our lives.

video based on "Pacific Radio Fire"

More on Brautigan tomorrow.

"Pacific Radio Fire" copyright Richard Brautigan, 1971