Category Archives: other words

June 23, 2012 · 4:06 pm

cor·re·spond·ence

photo by Mary Lynn Richard

 

cor·re·spond·ence /ˌkôrəˈspändəns/  n.  1. a close similarity, connection, or equivalence. 2.  communication by exchanging letters with someone.

 

Note: I wrote this post on May 22, 2012 . I set it aside, thinking I would add to it and neglected it it for awhile. Posting it now, in its May form. If you don’t know of The Rumpus or Letters in the Mail, you should check both out (links below)!

 

What is it about letter writing that allows for such closeness and intimacy?

Last year, The Rumpus started a “Letters in the Mail” program, wherein authors would scribe letters and The Rumpus would send them to subscribers through the mail. I signed up immediately.

And then this past April, they invited subscribers to participate in “Letters to Each Other,” where subscribers would send in a letter (no more than one page, front and back) with a SASE envelope. Then their letters would be sent to six people and they would receive six letters in return.

I received my letter last Thursday, and I cannot tell you how exciting it was to open my mailbox and find that thick envelope.

I think what I love most about letters is their real vulnerability. Letters are not theoretical, they are meant to be a container for one’s thoughts and ideas, a place for truth to be relayed. Even letters between artists that involve philosophy and intellectual spiralings typically also involve a moment of doubt. These are not set in stone, they are inked on paper. In that way they are ephemeral. They are meant to be recordings of a moment. I love this too, their in-the-momentness, their sheerness, their see-through nature.

I wrote my first reply today, and what I was amazed at was not only my ability to but my desire to share intimate details of my life with someone who is an almost complete stranger. Is it the anonymity? Maybe that’s part of it, but we do know each others’ names, at least she will have mine now. I think it is also because she shared intimate details with me, ones that although differing from my experience, I could relate to, and I valued so much that emotional honesty.

Letters are drawings of our names in the sand. They reveal who we are in this precise time of being, a being that is unstable, a self that will change. They are a place that, beyond beautiful prose or constructed narrative or clarity of thought or firm declarations, simply demand honest reflection and an attempt at connection. And we all have the ability to offer that. And isn’t that at the end of the day what we most need from one another? what we most need to offer of ourselves?

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February 14, 2012 · 2:24 pm

sug·ar

 

1sug·ar     noun     \ˈSHo͝ogər\

1: a : a sweet crystallizable material that consists wholly or essentially of sucrose, is colorless or white when pure tending to brown when less refined, is obtained commercially from sugarcane or sugar beet and less extensively from sorghum, maples, and palms, and is important as a source of dietary carbohydrate and as a sweetener and preservative of other foods b : any of various water-soluble compounds that vary widely in sweetness, include the monosaccharides and oligosaccharides, and typically are optically active

2 : a unit (as a spoonful, cube, or lump) of sugar

3: a sugar bowl

 

2sugar     verb     sug·ared     sug·ar·ing

transitive verb

1: to make palatable or attractive : sweeten <a story sugared with romance>

2: to sprinkle or mix with sugar

intransitive verb

1: to form or be converted into sugar

2: to become granular

3: to make maple syrup or maple sugar

 

 

I found Sugar at a time in my life when I was mourning severed connections, reflecting deeply on myself and my life and my choices and experiencing raw loneliness. My life was by no means in shambles, but I still was struggling with boundless uncertainties and deep self-doubt.

An advice columnist for The Rumpus, Sugar’s columns are exactly the opposite of what repels me from other columns. They are not didactic. They do not pretend to solve someone’s complicated problem or deep question in one neatly wrapped up answer. They are not formal or impersonal. They do not have an imbalanced or hierarchical relationship between advice seeker and advice giver. There is no air of superiority.

Instead, Sugar is a cartographer of the heart; she reaches into the map of her personal history, pulling out threads of her journeys and struggles and celebrations and weaving them through readers’ questions. Here, she says, look at this. And this. And this. In authentically crafting stories that navigate their way to an answer of sorts, she offers words that resonate with all readers, no matter whether they have been in the same situation as the advice seeker or not.

It isn’t that Sugar is telling us things that we don’t already know. Sugar taps into the deep register, the inaudible murmur resting below the words being said and she echoes back this thrumming in the truths she tells and the way she tells them: with honesty, with compassion, with love. Often those writing in don’t only need to address the current situation in need of attention and healing but the deep wounds that lie beneath it. And these wounds—of not feeling worthy or of being ashamed or of being scared to love or to be vulnerable or take risks because of our past hurts—these are ones we can all relate to.

Tonight, Sugar is having a coming out party in San Francisco, to tell the world who she really is. But as she said in one of her columns, we already know who she is: “…I quickly realized that telling stories about my life was often the only way I knew how to communicate the complexity of my advice. Your story spilled into mine and then I spilled it back into you, with hopes that we’d all find ourselves somewhere in the big story that belongs to all of us in a place we made up called Sugarland, where you know me already, even though you don’t know me at all.”

 

 

Researcher and storyteller Brene Brown has a brilliant TED talk about vulnerability. One of the things she discusses is that there is only one major difference between whole-hearted people, those who live with their whole heart, and those who don’t, and that is that whole-hearted people view vulnerability as a necessary part of life. And they see that vulnerability involves risk (to say “I love you” first, to do something they’ve never done before, to ask for help) and they choose to be vulnerable anyway. Sugar’s columns are built with vulnerability and they encourage this sort of way of being and living in her readers.

I brought Sugar’s columns into my freshman composition classroom this past fall to show them examples of how to use personal narrative to make a strong and clear point. We read one of her columns aloud and discussed how she went about telling her story and for what effect. Then, students had to answer one of her letter writers using their own personal experience. They talked about loss and grief and insecurities. Their words spilled over with hope and fear and love and disappointment. And when they were finished writing, one of my students asked: Can we see her answer? What did Sugar say?

I never know how students will respond to lesson plans and had hopes for this one. But it was about something more than craft or pedagogical goals: I wanted to expose them to the rhetoric of love. One of the things I love most about Sugar is that she writes her column because the letters she receives need to be read and these stories need to be told. We all need tending to. And in reading and in responding, she has created and held a space for us, where we all can feel less alone, where we all belong, where we have the opportunity to be whole-hearted people, together.

 

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January 1, 2012 · 5:40 pm

plot

 

1plot \`plat\ n.  1 :  a small area of ground  2 :  a ground plan (as of an area)  3 :  the main story (as of a book or movie)  4 :  a secret scheme : INTRIGUE

 

I have been going by the house for years now, every time I am home for a visit. It was just a shell of where we lived but I felt compelled to visit every time I was back in New Orleans in the years following Katrina. A few months ago, my mom sent me an email to tell me that the house had been razed. It’s just river sand now, she wrote. She said she picked up three pieces of brick (one for her, one for my dad, one for me), a small piece of wood, a small piece of latticework—the traces that were left behind. She said she wanted to lie in the sand and make a sand angel, to place her body on the earth itself, but a truck drove up so she just pretended.

I knew, then, what to expect when I went by 3324 Vincennes Place, and yet, I was surprised all the same. I was taken aback by the shock of green grass usurping the plot. I had expected river sand, but since my mom visited, there had been time for old seeds to sprout up. To fill this hole, this gap, this absent space.

I thought: how odd to witness so clearly an absent place that is so full, this place that occupies so much space in my in my memory. The lot looks enormous without our house on it (hadn’t my mom mentioned that in her email as well?). Just one small block of green. It was hard to imagine all those rooms, all that our house contained.

I pulled out my journal and tore out a perforated page. On it I wrote: THIS WAS HOME. This (space). Was (past tense of “to be,” as in is no longer). Home (a place where families are born, where dreams are dreamed, where mornings break and evenings are put to bed). I took pictures of the sign resting in the grass in front of the plot. I took portraits of myself with my arm extended, holding the sign. I walked around the perimeter and traced the word HOME with my finger in the river sand. Then I took a stray stick and signed my name in the corner of the plot before tucking the stick in the back pocket of my jeans. Three trees stood as sentries at the back of the land and then there was just the span of grass and sand and the neighboring fences on either side.

 

 

The sidewalk had 3324 spray-painted in orange, over a version painted in white. This now marks the address since there is no longer a house to mark the space. Addresses are random numbers and letters we assign to places to make them ours, to make them home, to tell people where to find us. While I was sitting in the car across from the plot where our house was, a mail carrier, mail in one hand and a bag crossing her body, walked by the empty lot on her route.

I scanned my body. I felt tears behind the lids of my eyes—held, not held back. There was a sort of soft gnawing in my belly. I didn’t feel sad really but rather vaguely numbed out.

This was a place I had been saying goodbye to for years. A place I came to visit as one does a deceased family member in a cemetery, over and over again. Our home died to us and now the traces of it, save a long thin piece of wood with blue paint that I found and took, are gone as well.

And although this moment felt like it should be the natural point of closure, the final goodbye, I couldn’t imagine stopping my visits: even if there was a new house there, even if there was a new family in it. In the movie version of my life, we might end here as the protagonist bids farewell to her childhood memories and her childhood home and steps off into her very bright future. Maybe there would even be a flash-forward to her home-to-be, complete with husband in the doorframe and children eating breakfast at the kitchen table. So why do I feel its not over for me and this land?

It’s not a compulsion, this desire to visit. It’s more like coming to sit in silence with an old friend. There’s a kind of peace that comes from being there—from remembering what was and seeing what is real now. I can sit with all the fond memories and the painful loss of this place. It feels real. It feels authentic—this mix of beauty and joy with grief and sorrow. This house taught me how to live life and bear it all: how to grow, how to be nurtured and to nurture, how to love and also how to unexpectedly and without warning, let it all go. To say goodbye. To unhand expectations of what the space you rest your life in looks like.

 

 

I feel I owe this land so much—the place I was born into, where I took my first steps and read and wrote my first words, where I learned how to embrace and be enclosed in the arms of somebody who loved me. I learned to cry, to mourn and to go on, still and always, with the movement of life. I learned about the richness that lies in details—in the shape of a sill, in nicks, slants, the flaws we perceive as such or the ones we find charming. I learned how to observe and how to write those observations down.

It occurred to me as I sat across the street from my childhood home that while I thought I had been coming back to grieve and let go, I was also coming back to honor and pay tribute to the home that held the space for me to become who I am, to the sacred spot where my mom, dad and I became a family. I realized I have continued to come back, all these months, all these years later, because I am so deeply grateful.

 

 

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August 7, 2011 · 1:38 pm

port·ance

Photo by Johnny Mobasher

 

port·ance  (pôr/t’ns), n. [Early Mod. Eng. <Fr. portance < porter, to bear, carry; cf. –ANCE], [Archaic], conduct; bearing; carriage; demeanor

 

Today is the second anniversary of the dictionary project! I want to take a moment to thank you for reading this project and for the many ways in which you have offered your support for the project and have inserted your own stories, meaning, words. I am so grateful.

Our tradition at the dictionary project is to celebrate each anniversary by having a visiting author offer their own take on the first word that I ever chose by closing my eyes and running my finger through the pages of my dictionary. That word is portance. Please enjoy the evocative prose and storytelling of writer Elizabeth Frankie Rollins.

 

A Meal and a Dream

 

Once I had a meal and a dream that told me everything I ever needed to know about how to conduct myself, how to carry myself in the world.

Here’s the thing about that meal:  it was Tuscany night at the little restaurant out in a village, a limited menu, everything fresh, much of it from the garden right outside the windows where tall lilies waved orange in every single pane.

The salad was panzanella, tomatoes truthfully ripe, hunks of airy, vinegar-soaked bread, basil sparked oil.  There was red wine.  Summer’s dusk light hung bright around the table.  Stories floated over the silverware and glasses.

Not long after the panzanella, I saw Joyce Carol Oates arrive and sit at a long table with a bunch of professorial, writer-looking people.  It was August.  It looked like a departmental meeting.   Oates is unmistakable, with those rather awful glasses, but here’s the thing about her: I had just been staring at four shelves of her books in the library that very morning.  So many published books, a good teaching job.  I was writing my second book, my first novel.  Occasionally, I had to clean attics to supplement the money I made teaching.  I stared at her with jealousy.

Still, we were there.  The lilies waved at her, too.  We were eating from the same limited menu.

At our table of friends, my novel came up.  It’s a monster, I told them, scales and teeth and claws.  I reach into an abyss every day and I don’t know what will come out, or if it will bite, or be dead, or what.  We all laughed.  They had questions about writing a book.  I was relieved to be asked, and I answered them.  It felt good to make the private, difficult life of sentences tangible.

The main course arrived and it was a braised lamb stew, succulent with carrots and glimmering dark.  Earth and cosmos and dirt and sun.  Beneath the stew, a secret loam of tender mashed potatoes.  I ate.  I sipped wine. I closed my eyes over the last few bites.  My husband squeezed my leg because he loves when I am that rapturous.

After I finished, I noticed that Joyce Carol Oates was being served the fish, and I gloated over my own choice.   Also, she wore old lady pants, white with elastic at the waist.  Things evened out a bit between us.

For dessert, half a globe of buxom peach arrived, seared and dolloped with sweet cream.  I felt as though the garden, in sating me, had granted me a new body.  Even my bones felt light.

That night, we slept at our friends’ house in the country, on a white square bed with a woolen-colored dog at our feet and a breeze blowing white curtains over us.

As I fell asleep, I was aware of my husband murmuring, and the dog at our feet.  I saw how each of us was a continent, separate and yet sharing the world.

I began to dream.  I dreamt a procession of canvasses passing by.  Large and small, marked and unmarked. Black lines and white space emerging and vanishing.  A small woolen-colored canvas spun by.  A rectangle with gray blurred lines, a square with interlocking circles.  I watched these blank or marked canvasses emerge and pass by and thought: this is the beginning of creativity, a molecular illustration of how it happens. The marks of ideas in their origins, on their way to becoming other, real things in the world.   I became aware of the world around the canvases, a space filled with brilliant, suffused and loving light, a shimmering brightness so good and strong that it was unmistakable.  All decay and sorrow fell from me.

I believe that the light and the warmth and the goodness I saw that night is all around us, in and thick with everything. The connections and disconnections and inventions and sheddings.  It witnesses the marks made upon us, the marks we make on the world.  How one thing grows into another thing and another.  And when we die, we simply fold back into that light.  We come from it and carry it, and it awaits us.

Once I had this meal.  Once I had this dream.  I learned everything I need to know about how to conduct myself.  And yet.  There are days I forget.

 

 

Elizabeth Frankie Rollins has published work in Conjunctions, Green Mountains Review, Trickhouse, The New England Review, and The Cincinnati Review, among others.  An excerpt from her novel, Origin, will soon appear in Drunken Boat. Author of The Sin Eater, Corvid Press, she’s previously received a New Jersey Prose Fellowship and a Special Mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She teaches writing at Pima Community College and the University of Arizona Poetry Center.  Installments of Origin and short fiction can be found here:

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July 24, 2011 · 11:02 pm

for & out·build·ing

From artist Joanna Crichlow's "Blueprint" series

Things have been a little quiet over here at the dictionary project, and I want to thank you for your support and your patience. The resident logophile (AKA: me) has been teaching two intensive writing courses which means lots of reading, editing and supporting others’ writing and much less time to do my own. But tonight, it feels really important that I take a break from being a writing teacher and do some writing. So thank you for your attention.

Last year, I decided to randomly select two words for my birthday. I saw it as a way of marking the day and perhaps contemplating what might be in store. I picked two words because I was housesitting at the time and the dictionary available to me was in two volumes. Since I’m deciding to honor this tradition as an annual ritual, I again picked two words on my birthday (July 5th), this time from two different dictionaries (my Webster’s from 2004 and my Webster’s from 1955). I’ve written many versions of this post but I didn’t really feel enthused about what I came up with so I scrapped them all. Here is the one that, so far, feels most true.

 

1for \fər, ˈfȯr\ prep. 1 :  as a preparation toward <dress ~ dinner>  2 :  toward the purpose or goal of  <need time ~ study>  <money ~ trip>  3 :  so as to reach or attain <run ~ cover>  4 :  as being <took him ~ a fool>  5 :  because of <cry ~ joy>  6 — used to indicate a recipient <a letter ~ for>  7 :  in support of <fought ~ his country>  8 :  directed at: AFFECTING <a cure ~ what ails you> 9 —used with a noun or pronoun followed by an infinitive to form the equivalent of a noun clause <~ you to go would be silly>  10 :  in exchange as equal to: so as to return the value of <a lot of trouble ~ nothing> <pay $10 ~ hat>  11 :  CONCERNING <a sticker ~ detail>  12 :  CONSIDERING <tall ~ her age>  13 :  through the period of <served ~ three years>  14 :  in honor of <named ~ her grandmother>       (from Webster’s, 2004)

out·build·ing (out`bil`diŋ), n. a structure, as a garage or barn, separate from the house or main building.  (Webster’s, 1955)

After much thought and consideration, I have found that within these two words lies the import of our lives. We are where we are from and we are what we are constantly outbuilding for ourselves so that our lives can be what we want them to be. We are what is in us. We are what we create around us.

First, we are what is in us. This means the place of our birth, the landscapes we grew up in. We are our parents and ancestors, our communities, our ethnicities, our experience of gender, our hometowns, our accents, our languages. We are oak trees covered in Spanish moss. We are the smell of pine in the winter. We are darlin’ and mi carina. We are that time we fell from the monkeybars in second grade and we are the time we won the spelling bee and got to take our picture for the school yearbook. We are pizza and crank calls. We are songs we still remember all the words to because we couldn’t stop listening to them when we were thirteen. We are school plays and school concerts and school games. We are our first loves and our first and continuing heartbreaks. We are looseleaf and ballpoint pens and passing notes in class. We are talking on the phone for hours. We are trying to find the time to write, to email, to schedule a phone conversation when we are many miles away. We are the first time we got tipsy. We are the first time we flew on a plane alone. We are the first time we said “I love you.” We meant it. We are cartographers, drawing our destinies across the country, across the world. We are rivers we kayaked and mountains we climbed. We are movies so spot on that seemed as if the director had peered right into our souls. We are bad and good television. We are bad and good conversation. We are sacrifice and generosity. We are gossip and good neighbors. We are books and instruments. We are cookware and tools. We are the embraces that feel as if they will never end, and we don’t want them to. We are lovers and loving. We are dreams of children and babies we bear. We are holding hands when we lose something, when we lose someone. We are the moments when we know that we are, that we will always be okay, and we are the moments we feel broken beyond repair. We are the sky when it breaks open. We are the way the ground is both solid and yielding. Where we are from rests at our core, and we know that ultimately each of our cores is no different from the others because we are made of the same matter, carbon and water, stardust.

And we are also our own outbuilding, the additions we build, the structures we add on, the tangible and intangible beliefs and dreams and skills and networks that we create for ourselves, these things that are both separate from and a part of us and our lives.  We build for ourselves places to live, nooks to crawl into. We build an identity that feels true; we hold it inside our chests, sometimes rehanging pictures, sometimes adding new bookshelves and furniture. We build cars out of tiny scraps of confidence and trust and big panels of adventure, of myth, of risk, and we hope that these vehicles will take us to our next destination. We think we know what it is but we may not. We build something resembling home in every place we set up shop. We look for people who feel like family, and we build them guest rooms and treehouses and porches to sit on at night. We build propellers made of what we already know about ourselves and when they don’t spin right, we figure out where the cracks are, so that we can fly. We build dreams and we hope that the boats we have built to carry our dreams will not flood with water, will not sink.

Knowing where we are from, we outbuild. We are the cornerstone, the hearth of the house. We are the barn outside, stable but always leaning. We are the human heart. We are the body that contains it. We remember who we are (and how that is always changing) and we remember what we love (and how that is always changing) and we continue to be and we continue to build. Because that is, we know, the way this thing goes.


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May 17, 2011 · 9:30 pm

free·dom

Dove release ritural at Freedom Riders Reception in New Orleans. All photos for this post by Lisa O'Neill

free·dom \ˈfrē-dəm\  1: the quality or state of being free: as a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence c : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous <freedom from care> d : ease, facility <spoke the language with freedom> e : the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken <answered with freedom> f : improper familiarity g : boldness of conception or execution h : unrestricted use <gave him the freedom of their home> 2 a : a political right b : franchise, privilege

(from http://www.merriam-webster.com)

 

Monday night, I had the honor and privilege to bear witness to some of the original Freedom Riders as they “finished the ride” they began in May of 1961. These riders were joined by forty student riders, college students who were selected from over a thousand applicants to be part of this historic reenactment of the 1961 Freedom Rides.

In 1961, a group of riders–a mix of young men and women, black and white–gathered in Washington D.C. to undergo training for the ride they would take together on Trailways and Greyhound public buses through the Deep South. The training was so they would be able to remain nonviolent even when met with violence. They expected the ride to take two weeks and to arrive in New Orleans on May 16, 1961. Met with brutal violence in Alabama, the riders found themselves beaten and stranded in Montgomery, with no drivers willing to continue. The group was at an impasse and forced to abandon their journey. But unbeknownst to them, other groups had already begun to follow their lead. These groups got as far as Jackson, Mississippi before they were met with arrests and jailtime. No group ever made it the full way to New Orleans. But it was these riders, their insistence on traveling together and integrating public buses that led to the ICC ruling that segregation on interstate buses and facilities was illegal.

I arrived when the bus had already pulled up and the Freedom Riders were recounting stories from their time riding. After, doves were released in honor of the riders and in memory of those who had passed on. The number of stitches required after beatings were recalled (in one case, 57). As were the words spoken by those who rode. The names of cities infamous for tear gas, for burning buses, for beatings delivered with iron pipes, baseball bats, crowbars. Anniston. Birmingham. Montgomery.

Before heading off, these young people, in their teens and twenties, had written goodbye letters to their parents, had signed their last will and testaments. They understood that to get on those buses together was to put their lives on the line, and they did it anyway. They did it because the stakes were that high; the riders knew the stakes were that high because injustices were being done, over and over again. Black people being told they weren’t allowed. They weren’t good enough. These young people knew that lunch counters and bus rides were just individual, smaller deaths: a slow, lifelong version of hanging from a rope in an oak tree.

Their strength, their tenacity, the grace and integrity with which they conducted themselves and their action reminds me of the young students in Tucson, Arizona today who are fighting relentlessly to save their ethnic studies classes, classes that study the history of where they come from and that flesh out a holistic picture of the people who make up this country of ours. These students are insistent. They refuse to be ignored. But they too are committed to nonviolent resistance. They use the power of their words and their bodies but they do so in ways that do not harm others. Their actions are underwritten with the same mindset as the Freedom Riders: we understand the harm that has already been inflicted over and over again. We will fight for our rights, but we will not continue the violence, will not continue to be part of this cycle of harm.

Brass Band plays at the 2011 Student Freedom Ride

The doves were released and a brass band made of young New Orleanians played as the Freedom Riders, old and new, crossed arms, joined hands, and made their way inside the Ashe Cultural Arts Center. Inside, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said a few words. Then, folks from WYES, where the documentary will air, spoke. Then, the director of Ashe. One of the riders from New Orleans Doratha “Dodie” Smith-Simmons spoke and as she did, she called out to the young people present, those who rode and those others present in the room, to work, to put themselves in positions that would be uncomfortable, to be willing to do so to work for change. “Find something to get pissed about,” she said. “And then do something about it. Because the struggle is not over.”

Student Freedom Riders Sing "A Change Is Gonna Come"

After a blessing, the room scattered to eat from the buffet: gumbo and red beans, salad, fried chicken. A singer came to the podium and the keyboardist began to play. Immediately I recognized the bars I knew from the beginning my favorite Sam Cooke song. “I was born by the river, in a little tent.” And when she got to the end, and she got to the last “long time comin’,” she held the ‘long’. She held it for what felt like forever. The room held its breath. Then it cheered. Because she held that note a long time, because she made us feel what a long time comin’ felt like. That moment times a thousand, times a million. A long time feels like forever when oppression is involved, when you are under the thumb and the thumb weighs down like iron. A long time feels like forever when you are the oppressor and have to work so hard to forget you are human to be able to oppress.

She kept singing: This Little Light of Mine, I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free. During Woke Up This Mornin’ (With My Mind Set on Freedom), some of the Freedom Riders joined the singer on stage and sang. I was particularly impressed by Ernest “Rip” Patton, Jr. who solidly held down the bass line. Then, Smith-Simmons talked about We Will Overcome as the soundtrack of the movement.

Freedom Riders Lead the Crowd in We Shall Overcome. May 16, 2011

And the riders on stage crossed their arms across their bodies and joined hands. There was such an ease about this joining, a sort of familiarity with each other and with that gesture, their bodies slipping into muscle memory. I could imagine the eighteen-year-old versions of themselves doing the same gesture, over and over again. I joined hands with a middle-aged African-American woman to my left and a middle-aged African-American man to my right. During different points in the song, we squeezed each other’s hands. I let myself sing and really listen to the words. I let myself feel the passion in the voices of those around me. This wasn’t a Hallmark moment. This was a moment born from grit and determination and struggle. This was a moment in which everyone in the room was aware of the struggle, the struggle that is not finished, and yet was able to celebrate and able to say: despite the racism that still exists, the injustice that still abides within our communities, the prejudice we harbor in our own minds and hearts, we shall, we shall, we will overcome someday.

I grew up in a city that was sixty percent black, but the city I grew up in always appeared to be white. The textbooks I read told me the history of white people in Louisiana. The people in my neighborhood were all white. Most of the children at my school were white. Despite being surrounded in my hometown by black people, by black culture, I knew almost nothing about the history of black people in my state, and in the South period. I remember the time in high school spent memorizing the names of dead presidents more than I remember learning about the Civil Rights Movement.

It wasn’t until I lived other places that I was able to fully understand the reality of segregation in New Orleans. I always had this feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was not right, the black neighborhoods and the white neighborhoods, the way some of my friends’ parents discussed certain streets or blocks in hushed tones, the locking of car doors when a dark-skinned man was standing at a stoplight. But I had to go outside of my city to realize the way in which its people are divided and to realize the role I myself play in that division.

When I worked at a community center serving a largely African-American community in the Lower Garden District in my twenties, I remember having a conversation with one of the patrons who came in. He asked me where I was from. I told him I was from here, I grew up Uptown. And he laughed and replied, Oh, you’re not from New Orleans. He was right. My New Orleans wasn’t his. His New Orleans wasn’t mine. Since my early twenties, I have worked hard to try to really see my city and all its people, to fill in the gaps and better understand my hometown as it truly wholly is.

And I will admit that night, even as I was surrounded by the New Orleans community, I felt alone, out of place. I had gone by myself after not finding someone to come with me. I haven’t lived in New Orleans for seven years now so don’t have the same network I used to. But the real discomfort, the real feeling of being alone, came from the fact that I was back in my divided hometown and I was among a few white people there, maybe twenty to thirty of the hundreds. My discomfort came from feeling that although this historic event held significance for all Americans, all Southerners, all New Orleanians, it belonged less to me, and I needed to be respectful and conscious of this. I found it hard to navigate my place in this room. I still struggle, whenever I am home, to navigate my place in the city, now that I know its history better.

I had expected this sort of low  turnout from white New Orleanians. Just as I was not surprised, even if disturbed when, years ago, my white 70-year-old neighbor in New Orleans said that his office would not be having the day off for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday because “we don’t have that many black people in the office.” While there could be other reasons for low turnout by white New Orleanians, its hard to not come away feeling that many did not recognize the significance of the Freedom Rides on their own lives and on their own liberation. I am reminded of the Mayan Greeting that students in Tucson Ethnic Studies classes recite at the beginning of each class: “You are my other me. If I do harm to you, I do harm to myself. If I love and respect you, I love and respect myself.”

The discomfort and dissonance I felt is a necessary part of the process. That’s what I constantly ask of my students, to feel the cognitive dissonance with the texts we read, the films we watch, the conversations we have, and to engage anyway. The only way we will learn to understand each other as individuals is to stay through the anxiety and discomfort. To stand respectfully, with an intent to listen and engage, and to stay.

Original Riders Sing "Woke Up This Mornin'"at 2011 Freedom Ride.

I am embarrassed at how little I knew about the Freedom Riders before I watched the documentary (which is amazing and artfully done. You can watch it here: Freedom Riders). I knew there were buses. I knew there were people, both black and white, on them. I knew they came through the South and were confronted with terrible violence. But the details of the movement, of the ride, I knew nothing of these.

The documentary Freedom Riders  recounts history and retells the stories of the Freedom Riders a half a century later. The film contextualizes the rides within the movement and spends time documenting each day of the trip, each group of riders, each mob that attacked them. Along with footage of the ride and the riots, the film spends the majority of time telling the stories of the riders, officials, and local residents, people who were personally affected by the rides. What I was struck by in watching the documentary even more than the violence endured by the riders was their undeniable spirit, their belief that they would overcome and that they needed to be a part of this process of overcoming.

Photo from Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Freedom Riders, who were all part of the New Orleans's Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) group and were arrested were arrested in Jackson, Miss., in their efforts to desegregate bus terminals. From clockwise top left: Julia Aaron, Dave Dennis, Jean Thompson and Jerome Smith all

One of my favorite moments in the documentary comes when the first group of many Freedom Riders have been sent to prison in Parchment, Mississippi. Rather than pay fines for their crime of “Disturbing the Peace,” the riders chose to go to jail. They decided that if that’s what officials wanted to do, jail the riders, then the movement would just fill up the jail. They would keep sending buses, keep sending riders to Jackson. A group of eight riders were staying in a cell built for two. One of the riders is discussing how they made up a song and sung it to the jailers: “The buses are coming, oh yes. The buses are coming, oh yes. The buses are coming. The buses are coming. The buses are coming, oh yes.”

That transformed into: “You better get ready, oh yes. You better get ready, oh yes,” and when the jailers, fed up, told them to stop, they thought amongst themselves, What are they going to do, put us in jail?

The riders kept singing.

When the guards threatened to take away their mattress if they didn’t stop, the song became: “You can have our mattress, oh yes. You can have our mattress, oh yes…” Then it was the toothbrush, and after some deliberation, they kept on singing: “You can have our toothbrush, oh yes.” One rider joked that they learned to sing with their mouths closed to protect each other from their foul breath.

I was inspired by their levity, by their sense of humor even in the midst of such a dour situation, being imprisoned merely for trying to take public transportation, being denied basic rights because of the color of their skin. And in the face of all of this, continuing to defy authorities who were wrong and doing so with humor.

I was inspired by the Freedom Riders, many of them the first of their families to go to college, who left Fisk University at the end of the semester, dropping out because this ride was more important. I was inspired at the way the riders talked about Parchment Jail becoming a sort of university of nonviolence, where they engaged with each other in discourse about the movement, about how to make change nonviolently.

It was powerful to watch this documentary amongst my fellow New Orleanians, to engage in this part of history together.

I am humbled by the bravery of these young men and women who, despite the danger, despite criticism even initially from many within the movement itself, put their bodies and their lives on the line for justice, for freedom. I cannot even imagine what they must have been feeling as they sat on buses and watched mobs of people outside, who cursed them. People who were holding weapons and were set on killing them. The feeling of being left with no protection, abandoned by their own country. This is a reminder to me to never forget those who have made sacrifices in the name of justice. It reminds me to aspire to be more like them, to harness their example as a way to inspire bravery and action in myself to continue the ongoing work for justice in my communities and my world. It reminds me that this is work I need to pay attention to, that I need to engage in every day of my life.

One of the student riders in the Freedom Rider renactment of 2011.

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January 12, 2011 · 11:29 pm

thrive

Obama Speaks At Memorial for Victims of Shooting, http://www.huffingtonpost.com

thrive* \ˈthrīv\ verb

1. To make steady progress; prosper.

2. To grow vigorously; flourish

*The title of tonight’s memorial was “Together We Thrive: Tucson & America”

I was there tonight in Tucson. I stood in line with the thousands to be able to participate in the memorial for the victims of Saturday’s tragic shooting, to be able to pray for healing of those who are still in the hospital and for all those impacted by this tragedy.

I went because I wanted to stand up with my community and remember those we have lost. I went because I wanted to pray for the healing of those who suffer. I went because I wanted to hear what our leaders had to say.

As a college instructor, I have decided to spend some of my rhetoric class time examining and discussing texts about the shooting. It not only feels relevant to talk about words and their meaning at times like this, it feels necessary to give students a space in which they can wrestle with their feelings about an act of violence taking place in their adopted town, at a grocery store that could be their grocery store.

As we discuss in class, the words we say and the way that we say them matters. We each need to take responsibility for our own words and we need to call those we listen to, particularly our media and our political leaders, to be responsible for theirs and to speak in a way that invites rather than discourages open and thoughtful conversation. Obama said it the best last night when he said: “It’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.”

One of the moments I valued most about tonight was when President Obama spoke about the importance of not making this an opportunity to hate one another. He said: “But what we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other. That we cannot do. That we cannot do.”

I myself am guilty of this. When 19 people, including a congresswoman I deeply respect, were shot on Saturday, I immediately thought of the rhetoric surrounding her reelection campaign. I thought of Jesse Kelly and his screaming campaign strategies. I thought of the tea party and how often their language includes words that insinuate violence, and how whether these words are figurative or literal is often hard to tell. And on top of the enormous sadness I felt, I became really angry.

We need to listen critically to all points of view we are exposed to. But being angry and blaming those who invoke this kind of language is not ultimately the solution. The solution is not to return anger with anger, hate with hate. It seems to me that the only real solution is to move towards a society in which kindness, respect and empathy are woven into the fabric of our institutions, our neighborhoods, our daily lives. And while I do think it is important to hold our leaders and media personalities accountable for their language and encourage speech that is inclusive to understand different points of view (as Obama talked about when he emphasized the need for civil discourse), it seems to me that the most important step that each of us can take individually is to model in our day to day lives what we want our world to look like.

Meaning: we choose to be kind, to be empathetic, to be respectful, to be generous. We weigh carefully the words we use when we speak to one another. This sounds simple, but I believe it is one of most difficult things we can commit ourselves to doing. I think of how many times per day I allow myself to become annoyed with other people: because they are not moving quick enough, because they should have used their blinker, because they are being too loud. Sometimes I merely note this to myself, but sometimes this annoyance comes out in my speech or my body language, to my perceived offenders or to other people.

One of the things I have heard multiple people say about Gabby is that she is someone who genuinely loves people, someone who tries to find the good in each person she meets.

Our responsibility is not only to be kind to the people we know and love (and let’s be honest, we aren’t always even able to muster that), our responsibility is to be kind and loving to people we don’t know and yes, to people that to us, for whatever reason, feel the hardest to love.

Underneath vitriolic political rhetoric, underneath cuts to mental healthcare, underneath lax gun control laws—all of which are valid and important things to discuss and sort through together—is a society has become sick from a severe lack of connection. We don’t realize how much we need each other or how our choices and interactions impact each other. We don’t try to understand each other. We don’t love each other in the way that we need to love and be loved. This denial of our interconnectedness is a wound we all carry and it is something that we can begin to change with every interaction we have.

Tonight, as President Obama shared stories about each of the victims, we laughed and smiled and cried as we, as a community, celebrated their lives and, in turn, grieved for their loss. When the President told us that Gabby Giffords had opened her eyes for the first time, the stadium erupted in joy, people jumping out of their seats, tears streaming down cheeks.

I think of a young man I saw at the University Medical Center on Sunday night who had a piece of fabric safety pinned to the back of his hoodie with these words: Love is stronger.

Love is stronger.

The actions we take tomorrow, next month, next year will not undo the tragedy that has been inflicted on these individual souls, on their families, on our community and our nation. There will be many more tears. There will be years of recovery and struggle. There will be much sorrow and much need. And, by saying what I say here, I in no way mean to minimize the gravity and sadness that permeates all of this.

But, it seems to me that loving each other better, caring about each other more is the only answer. This will come out not only in our daily interactions but in the decisions we make collectively as a community and as a nation. I believe this kind of love is possible. I believe in its possibility because I have known too many stories, seen too many miracles, known too many people who demonstrate in their own way the decency and compassion and beauty and endurance of the human spirit.

For now, we can pray for the strength to love each other and that the ways we can do so will be shown to us all.

Sunday 1.9.11 at UMC, Tucson

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January 9, 2011 · 10:51 pm

peace

peace noun \ˈpēs\  1 : a state of tranquillity or quiet: as a : freedom from civil disturbance b : a state of security or order within a community provided for by law or custom <a breach of the peace> 2 : freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions 3: harmony in personal relations 4 a : a state or period of mutual concord between governments b : a pact or agreement to end hostilities between those who have been at war or in a state of enmity 5 —used interjectionally to ask for silence or calm or as a greeting or farewell — at peace : in a state of concord or tranquillity

 

what we need now

in our hearts

in our communities

in our words and actions towards one another

in our world

I took this outside UMC in Tucson this evening, 1/9/11

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December 31, 2010 · 2:55 pm

auld lang syne

auld lang syne

auld (ôld) Scots adj. Old.

lang·syne also lang syne (lăng zīnˈ) Scots. adv. long ago; long since.  n. time long past; times past.

 

For times gone by. For old times. The song that no one knows*, that everyone mumbles while exchanging kisses on the striking of the New Year seems to be really all about what we all do at the end of the year. We remember. We reflect. We think back on what has happened since our last December 31st. We wonder about what the year to come will bring, and we also consider the experiences that have changed our lives in those twelve months. For me, from year to year, I seem to have polarizing reactions. Either it is “Amen, this year is over. Good riddance!” or it is “How will next year ever compare?” So this year, I challenge myself to remember all of the happenings of this past year and to move forward with a spirit of adventure, acknowledging and letting go of this past year, the joys and the sorrows, as I head forward into the next.

 

Happy New Year!

 

*The original song was written by Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1788, and, for the record, here are the original lyrics and the English translation:

Burns’ Version English Translation
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?CHORUS:

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp !
and surely I’ll be mine !
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae run about the braes,
and pu’d the gowans fine ;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae paidl’d i’ the burn,
frae morning sun till dine ;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere !
and gie’s a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

 Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and old lang syne?CHORUS:

For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And surely you’ll buy your pint cup !
and surely I’ll buy mine !
And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We two have run about the slopes,
and picked the daisies fine ;
But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,
since auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We two have paddled in the stream,
from morning sun till dine† ;
But seas between us broad have roared
since auld lang syne.

CHORUS

And there’s a hand my trusty friend !
And give us a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

 

And here’s a clip from one of my favorite movies of all time:

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August 7, 2010 · 7:58 pm

an·ni·ver·sa·ry

an·ni·ver·sa·ry (ænɪˈvɜːsərɪ) adj. [L. anniversaries < annus, year + versum, pp. of veriere, to turn],  1. recurring at the same date every year; occurring annually.  2. of or connected with an anniversary.  n. [pl. ANNIVERSARIES (-iz)], 1. the yearly return of the monthly date of some event  2. the celebration of this.

Today is the one-year anniversary of The Dictionary Project. Thanks to all of you for reading and being a part of this experience. Anniversaries are times to reflect and be grateful. This project has been a wonderful way for me to explore different ideas and thoughts. The constraint of blindly selecting each week’s word has forced me to think about words and definitions I might have never considered otherwise. This has been a challenging and enriching experience. Beyond that, I have become even more sensitive than I was before about the use of language, how we imbue words with meaning and how we bring our own experiences, ideology, and environment to each word we use and consider.

Throughout this week, I will be posting writing from guest contributors who are writing on the first random word selected when I began The Dictionary Project last year. The word is portance.

Thank you again for being part of this journey.

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