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The calendar page turned, we all collectively aged another day. The types of indisputable facts that make for rock-solid writing of not-the-necessarily entertaining kind. But, as they say, we don't just don't write to entertain; we leave that to the BeeGees. I also, notably, do not just talk to entertain, a fact that will this Tuesday fall on the collective heads of the Statistics-taking Walnuts like a normally distributed bag of bricks. Ouch. That's right, the children are done helping their parents with the harvest and accordingly, school is back in session. The new students arrived yesterday on campus, and though their faces beam with brilliant desire for all things art class, the Nutgeist deflates considerably when terms like "Math Placement Tests" and "Statistics & Probability" work their way into the reality-check vernacular. That's not a complaint, more a statement of fact; and upon further reflection, as my friend Ian once noted, I shouldn't be surprised because, really, school sucks. I say that with sincerity - if the students categorize something as a burden, then a big boring one I hope I will keep it from becoming. All of this, natch, furthering my efforts towards self-effacing good action and enlightenment.
On a total side note, I've been thinking about sincerity, and how it sits at the root of a lot of my struggles. In that I find it very hard to believe that people are really being sincere - my comments on the meta pertaining exactly to this, that how can people be so brain dead enthusiastic about any one thing in light of its place as one idea among many? I don't get it. I don't think I necessarily have a problem with being sincere myself. Wait for it, wait for it... okay, now that everyone has gotten the joke, yeah, I don't buy it always. You know, feel myself smiling and nodding on correct upbeats and calling it the feeling of music when really it's just exact facsimile, Memorex if you will. Take my advisor meetings the past couple of days - sometimes I can't help but think that I am just saying that which is appropriate to be said rather than anything that springs from the eternal well of me. Maybe it's enough that I say all the right things, but it doesn't always feel that way. Meaning - I know the correct thing to do is put parents at ease by saying the proper things, the types of things that put parents at ease - and then so I say them. I have a nagging suspicion that all of this is designed to make my life easier rather than theirs, meaning that I say these things so that they'll go away and leave me alone on schedule. Really I guess I question my own sincerity constantly, sitting as I do in the realm as a script-reader and not an actor. Make sense? I'm trying to convey that sense that I jump into roles readily with the idea of me left behind. The counter being that "me" is just the type of "me" that likes to leave "me" behind; it's just a self-anulling personality trait. A veritable shiny red button. A candy-like button. And having a chameleon-personality is on the one hand hyper lame, on the other hand efficient. And this chameleon knows he's a chameleon, am cognizant of the fact, so much that I answer the charge "just be yourself" with "Which one?" Authenticity and sincerity, it all bogs down into this, and all you armchair behavioral psychologists out there can jump on it and scream something about displacement or externalization, something about thinking that the rest of the world is highly insincere or inauthentic when really, at base, it's the "I" who is all of things. Hmmm... don't know. Still will reflect on this sincerity concept, that most people come at me beaming with it and I just can't stomach it, can't believe that they can't see the box they're filling. Man, the end of this paragraph is echoing as all the audience has by this point, I'm sure, left the room. But it rolls on, regardless. So, the topic was insincerity v. sincerity, and how I find it hard to be really truly sincere when you have any kind of bigger picture in mind. All my statements have goals whether I know them or not, including that one, and that one, and that one...
So what kind of week begets hard examinations of inner sincerity? Orientation Week, of course! Monday, 2-4, was day one, all of us "new" folk arriving at Walnut Hill for the first of three repetitions of welcome to Walnut Hill speeches (though, to be fair, at that point it wasn't a repetition yet). There are 7 total new staff / faculty of which 3 are actually new; Ellie is an art history / English teacher who is basically in the same boat that I was last year and is now teaching 3 courses, and Jon is the full-time math teacher who replaced my bud Win (who left for NYC to pursue his opera career and, a moment of reflection here - I'm gonna miss Win, he was a great part of last year, just conversations and having another sports-abled dude around). Jon's a good guy; a fellow Anth / Philosophy type who likes to teach math. Tereza is another new-but-not new; she is the head of the Fitness Center and teaches health courses as well. The other characters include Meredith, the new Learning Resources Specialist (she replaces the wonderful Fran, who was my main contact and good friend last year and has moved to NYC to be closer to family) who I'll be working with on the tutoring end, and Antonio, the new Spanish teacher (which means that Wendy, another dear friend and sharer of laughs in the faculty lounge, will not be here either - boo-urns to the max) who is an interesting dude as humans go - he owned his own factory supply company for 20 years, is originally from Spain and does crazy ass Spanish stuff like fight bulls and poo-poo our cuisine. Just kidding; he really is a cool kid. As 40 some odd year old kids go. Evan, the new music director, rounds out the group, and seems like a good guy as well.
So the people are great, and Monday naturally consisted of ice-breaking games and revealing of our innermost hopes and fears. I then found out that Corin, another teacher in the Math / Science depts., is my "mentor" for the year. The prospects of ninja training, however, remain non-existent. But she rescued me from the meeting, so that's awesome. We goofed awhile and then headed up to the dean's house for a welcome back dinner - good times, and got to see the other returning faculty, Ben and Annes and etc. Tuesday featured the return of the entire faculty and a long morning faculty meeting, where we heard rep #2, and then Convocation, rep #3. So we were by that point thoroughly welcomed back and reoriented, plus we had heard the same bad Red Sox joke 3 times. Huzzah. Dept. meetings in the afternoon, good times, and back to home. Wednesday, oh Wednesday, was 6 hours of corporate-esque team building activity where we extensively defined terms and offered no solutions to real world problems. Awesome! On the plus side, that silly day ended with a fun softball game and a delicious barbecue at the dean's house. Thursday the new students rolled in, so we had tea and meetings with the parents, and then this morning (Friday) we had the first Assembly plus meetings with our advisees - I've got 6 all of whom remain well-adjusted thus far, but we'll see once school starts how intact their cerebra remain.
Other exciting features of the week that kinda was - I lifted weights twice and ran or ellipted at least 3 miles every day, 5 days in a row, without my foot exploding. Excellent. On Wednesday I called into 96.9, the first time to my knowledge my voice has been broadcast over radio airwaves, to contest the host's notion that 9/11 was a more important historical event than Pearl Harbor, and 'twas an interesting experience. I basically got two ideas across, one that the magnitude of WWII dwarfs that of "WW III" thus far to such an extent that the comparison is a tad absurd, and two, that given that the war for by America thus far has been one fought with professional rather than conscripted soldiers, and the level of disruption of our lives is also orders of magnitude difference. He more or less hung up on me without counter argument after that, other than a quick babble about the 3000 who died on 9/11 and the everywhere-potential danger of this was, like the nightclub bombings in Bali. And the fact that WMD's are now in the equation, blah blah blah. He seemed to be speculating on some outcome of 9/11 that hasn't occurred yet, in which case I wondered (after he hung up on me, natch) whether it's really the Cuban Missile Crisis is the the thing that's biggest of all, since we are apparently only concerned about potentialities and not actualities.
Several things struck me about the experience - one, it's a conservative talk show, and despite all my best efforts to remain open-minded, I do get an impression that the host is trying to generate the hysteria of "holy shit, this is the worst thing ever!" rather than any kind of detached view of that which is going on. Two, I realized that beyond being conservative, for whatever that label is work, that the radio talk show format is not something that lends itself to debate - the fact that I wasn't about to spout in the same soundbyte medium that the news thrives upon these days, some kind of catchy, singular and non-elaborated point, made me a non-viable candidate for extended interview. Bummer. But I also wonder how much of it is anti-intellectualism - that any reasonable, thoughtful debate is just incompatible with the station's concept of their listeners. I don't know, but it was thing seventeen that left me feeling alienated by the contemporary conversation. Anyhoo...
Oh, Friday night the IPMM and IPJ rolled into WOOSTA! (I got you all in check) and took us out to an excellent dinner at Willy's Steak House, where I had my first Beef Wellington which I enjoyed insanely much. Lots of good food, drinks and conversation, including an extended riff on "is it possible to be original, or at least innovative, or is everyone's thoughts and actions a "product of their times?" The extended ideas being whether you are therefore entrapped by your time and place and/or is it really that the populace at large, the "times," serve as a filter, so that non "with the times" work / concepts don't make it off the production floor. And then I started blah-blahing about how too broad a definition of "defined by the times" renders the whole discussion ridiculous, that of course at some level you are always extending what has gone on before or rebelling against it, or in several cases just responding to problems with solutions. I don't know if there's any kind of real endpoint to the argument, other than to say in these (post)modern times, when opinions are so thoroughly fractionated and springing up from every conceivable corner, that our response is to say (rather circularly, I think) that the times themselves are fractionated - could it not be that the independent voice, its ability to pierce through the populace in the form of, say, an internet blog, has gotten to the point where it has transcended the confines of the times? I guess I take umbrage with the idea that the non-dictated-ness of my thoughts is itself dictated, as though there were no escape from influences, that nothing exists independently outside. I guess I think it's a silly lexical trap. We are all, in actuality, independent.
I'm Nyet!
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