The REAL Adversary

My school’s middle school has a Word of the Week, which is posted on bulletin boards all around campus, and is up on our website and in various other places.  In World Languages classes, we’re supposed to teach the word, and translate it, so that kids can add it to their larger vocabulary.

Our first week, the word is “Adversary”, which defined as “opponent or enemy in a conflict, contest, or dispute.” And that’s fine, as far as it goes.

This year, I’ll be teaching Latin, and that means I looked up the word “Adversarius” in the dictionary.  Much to my surprise, I found the parallel word Adversāria.  The meaning was quite surprising, but makes perfect sense when you consider how the ancient Romans thought about work, virtue, and will.

It turns out that the original adversary isn’t some devil or demon. 

An Adversāria is a day-planner or a journal.  A to-do list.  

This makes perfect sense, really. The Romans thought that a human being’s natural tendency was toward laziness. They didn’t believe we were somehow naturally gifted.  We were naturally indolent, and it took virtue and virility — manliness, even in a woman — to make sure you got yourself moving and got things done.  The modern management gurus like Stephen Covey and David Allen and Merlin Mann had nothing on Cicero, who ran an empire, squashed rivals, murdered his political enemies, and still had time to write political speeches, carry on a successful law career and manage an elaborate and complex estate including several farms.  All that energy and forward momentum took a lot of work.

So I say to you, in Latin, “Scribite in Adversāriam tuam!” Write in your day-book.  Plan your days — you won’t get nearly as many of them as you’d like.  Recognize that your Roman-alleged “natural indolence” is holding you back from the things you want to accomplish.  The real adversary isn’t some red-skinned monster — it’s you.  Set yourself against the “to-do” list, and get it done.

Orientation

Orientation for new students was today.

The word Orientation comes from the Latin word Orient, meaning “East”.  For the Romans, who lived in a landscape and with a mindset infused with symbolism, the East was the place where the Sun rose, where light began, and where the messages of ancient days came from.  The very phrase, “message of ancient days,” was Cicero’s poetic phrasing that best described why he thought the study of history was valuable.

If you wanted light, if you wanted awareness, if you wanted knowledge, if you wanted valuable messages from ancient times… you looked to the East.  It was a tradition that continued into the Middle Ages, when the Church oriented cathedrals and parish churches so that their altars were at the east end.  Freemasons also look to the East, but that’s all I’ll say about that.  Yet even that clue is enough to state that the Founding Fathers of our nation looked to the East, and oriented themselves with regard to what Europe had done right — and wrong — before them.

Today, we asked students to look to the East, metaphorically speaking, by asking them to envision their hopes and dreams for the future.  They wrote their desires on paper airplanes, and launched them into the Air (let the wise among you take note).  Then we  gathered them up, each one of us a plane we had not thrown, and opened it to read the message scribed there.   Some were hopes for new friends.  Some were pleas to do well in school.  Some were wishes for new sports experiences, or new skills in math or music.  Whatever the plea, each of us wrote out a piece of advice to answer the question… and a new wish.  And then we launched the airplanes again.

I am not one to throw around the word “magical thinking” lightly.  I think, with J.M.G., that it can do dishonor to honest sorcerers.  Yet it was a beautiful thing watching our hopes and dreams and prayers fall to earth, only to watch them launched again by our new friends in this wonderful school.

This is the second time I’ve seen this exercise, and I find it deeply moving.  I think my colleague M., who came up with it, is brilliant.

Textbook ownership

Textbook ownership

Originally uploaded by anselm23

This form always weirded me out, before. I knew it was there. I was never asked to fill it out by any of my teachers: I went to a private school where we had to buy our own books. The last fifteen years of my school career, I always had kids write their name in the textbook, but that was about it. The other information was extraneous.

This year, I’ve spent about an hour filling out the information in the top part, and giving a number to every book. State, County, School District, and Other (the School’s name). It was kind of a lot of work, but given that I have new textbooks for two different subjects (American history and Latin), I’m thinking it’s necessary.

See, these books represent a substantial investment by my school in the education of our students. But the books are expensive enough that we shouldn’t want to replace them every few years. And kids (and their attached adults) should know that.

I should know it too. I’ve now added some critical data to these books. To whom they belong, and where they belong in space, and when in time. I’m hoping that the books will be more than a weight in the kids’ book bags. I’m hoping they’ll see them as a way to find themselves in history. And over the next six or eight years as we use these books, maybe there will be a little social lesson here too, and a collection of histories around each textbook.

Faculty meetings

Our school has started up our faculty meetings for the coming year.  Have you?

The building is in a bit of disorder, but getting better day-by-day.  We had a major renovation this summer — replacing the entire roof of the middle school — and re-covering the walls with insulation and stucco.  It’s all part of an effort to get ready for our 50th anniversary this year (founded 1961).

I’ll be teaching Latin and 7th grade history (American history) this year, as well as working on the design program we began last year.   Part of me is unsure about teaching Latin after a long time away from it, but another part of me, the larger part, is excited to be returning to the language of ancient Rome.  It has a formal structure to it, and a logic, which I’ll find refreshing and orderly when I need it.

Last year was my first year teaching American history, and I enjoyed it.  I always mocked my American history colleagues, though, because after 15 years of teaching world history, there was one thing I was certain of — civilizations rise. Then then have a time of greatness.  Then they fall.  I don’t believe in “American exceptionalism”, this notion that America will always be great and always be a leader in the world.  I believe, instead, that we tend to be a great nation when we walk our talk around the freedom and dignity of our citizens… and less of a great nation when our leadership and citizenry forget our founding ideals in the name of safety and security.  It will be an interesting year, walking the balance between the bright message of progress in an American history textbook, and my own sense that history beats down any civilization a little bit at a time.

My tarot art kit

My tarot art kit
Originally uploaded by anselm23

Via Flickr:
Here’s my art kit. I think it’s worthwhile to note what isn’t in it. There’s no ruler in here, no eraser (mostly because I lost it, actually), no geometry tools. I think I feel the lack of geometry tools pretty keenly, but it’s not a bad kit, as is.

I’m minded, as I look at this set of tools, about what we ask kids to bring to class. Are your students mostly burdened with pens and pencils, books and notebooks?

I’m conscious, as I look at these tools, at how far I’ve come by duplicating about 26 cards. You may not like the style of the cards, or what they represent, but there’s no question that my abilities as an artist have grown.

I’m also aware, on another level, that this set of tools represents an investment in my own education as an artist. I didn’t know how to use most of these tools when I began. Working with them required a precision that I had more or less lost since the last time I had any education as an artist. I still don’t feel like I’m a master or even an apprentice with the brush pens.

Gianbattista Vico, the 17th entry Italian philosopher, wrote that “we only know what we make.” Drawing the analogy of the cards and the tools necessary to produce them back to student tool kits… What tools are missing from a student’s tool kit that prevents them from thinking as deeply and as clearly as they could?

The cards so far

The cards so far

Originally uploaded by anselm23

As I’ve posted here, I’m working on improving my drawing skills by making ‘copies’ of the Rider-Waite tarot deck. It’s not a strict copying, in that I’m actually reducing the card’s area by 50% or so. And I’m not slavishly reproducing every card.

Yet a curious thing happens when I show them to folks. The non-artists greet the effort with… not contempt, exactly, but a degree of boredom, puzzlement, and — to be frank about it, mild distaste. “You should be creating your own deck,” they say. “Designing your own cards will teach you so much about the process of learning the cards.”

The artists, on the other hand, see the effort with excitement and interest. “Of COURSE this is benefitting you,” they say. “You’re learning to match hand and eye, and imprinting the skills of the artist in question into your own work, and developing a sense of how line and shadow work together. You’re taking in the capabilities of the artist. You’re learning how to manage the skills of reproducing specific images, whether from photographs or live images.”

The disconnect between the professionals and the observers can’t be any wider, and it draws me into an awareness of the challenges we face as teachers.

When you look at this other recent painting (done in Brushes, a digital app for fingerpainting on an iPad or iPhone or similar device), it becomes clear that my skills as an observer have improved from doing the cards. The cards serve as a kind of triple-curriculum: how to draw certain kinds of shapes, and how to improve one’s observational skills, and the symbolic information encoded by generations of occultists in the cards. Color, line, shadow, symbol, visuals like cities and horses and feathers and pomegranates, all have deep meaning in these cards, readable to those who study them.

It’s hard to beat that kind of centuries-long curriculum development, and it’s something that we’ve either ignored, or only just begun to explore in American teaching. How could we make color, line and symbol mean so much, and make our classrooms and our learning projects have that kind of deep relevance — one that teaches drawing, meaning, symbolism, history, mathematics, and other skills on so many different levels?

Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, and other members of the 20th century pantheon of American authors, made a point of writing out the words of James Joyce or Ernest Hemingway by hand, or typing them on their typewriters. They wanted to know the sense of their chosen exemplars in their hands, in the click of the keys. Once they’d copied a few stories, they absorbed some of the lessons of those writers they admired — and were able to write their own masterpieces.

There’s an idea here of how to make a lot of critical data available to a student or students, and provide them with a way to explore certain concepts or structures on a daily basis. I’m not sure I can do it myself. I’m not sure it’s the work of one person, either, or even one whole generation. But it could be done — the evidence is here that it’s been done at least once already.

Travel

For a variety of reasons, this entry became lost shortly after being written last August. It’s kind of a cool story though, so it’s provided now.

I’m currently at SFO airport just outside San Francisco, drinking a Peet’s coffee and contemplating lessons learned today. In exchange for about three hours’ of extra waiting, I just scored about $700 in travel vouchers for the next year.

A lot of it rested on my willingness to be flexible, my willingness to wait until the moment was right to jump in the line to volunteer to give up my seat, and — and this was important — realizing that the passenger who was going to get bumped was a single young man, traveling with a young young woman on a last-minute vacation together. Now, it’s easy for me to make all sorts of possible assumptions about their relationship, any one of which could be wrong, but I was doing them a romantic favor. The economy is in turmoil, the political frame of our country is under severe stress, and anyone who decides to go away for a weekend under such circumstances deserves a break — which includes not stranding a couple hundreds of miles apart in two different airports. Plus, I’m a firm believer in recognizing that Friday is symbolically the day of Venus, and of love. Giving space for that when you see it — especially when the Universe is going to provide an instant symbolic reward in the form of a $700 travel credit — is, perhaps, meritorious.

I contrast this with the man who arrived just after the loving couple — the couple who took the last two seats on the place — arrived and demanded his seat. Who spoke in a loud and demanding voice for his right to board the plane. Who berated the gate manager for Southwest’s audacity in overbooking the plane. Who was almost belligerent with me when I interrupted his tirade with the gate manager. Who was boastful about his importance, even though he was dressed in casual clothes, and going to Las Vegas. Who only quieted when I said she was changing MY flight information. Who promptly got on his cellphone to complain loudly to his friend. Who may have been drinking. Who is, even now, sitting with the glazed look of a lost soul on his face, in the airport lounge just across from the dull waiting area where I sit, with a glass of some golden-amber liquid in front of him. Who, for his trouble and anger and lateness to the gate, got nothing but a wait in a bar and separation from his buddy who made the plane. He looks miserable.

Grace is a funny thing.

Someone had to experience delay on this trip. There were three people traveling, and one seat. Two were going to sit and wait for the next flight.

The Lover’s heart aches to be with the Beloved. Waiting, for them, would be an agony.The Warrior cares only for himself. Waiting is a slight to his honor and a strike to his strength that he cannot abide, yet he must. And the fury must be calmed with a bitter medicine. But the Sage acts from enlightened self-interest, greets delay with equanimity, and grows richer by strange ways. The Lover’s name is Billy, and he knows my name. His parting words? “I will remember you the rest of my days.”

It’s a fleeting form of legacy, this reckless promise of the Lover reunited with the Beloved. But that, plus $700? Very well… I accept.

Happy Friday.

The Bridge

The Bridge

Originally uploaded by Matthew Watkins

This was painted on an iPad. Not by me… By Matthew Watkins.

I don’t have anything particular to say about it, just that I think more folks should see it. Y

Advice to an Artist: The Hanged Man

Advice to an Artist: The Hanged ManOriginally uploaded by anselm23

Via Flickr:
I wrote a great deal about the Hanged Man in my process photos, so I don’t wish to bore you very much with further detail. As I’m sure you notice, the errors in my original sketch are magnified in the final, inked version of this card. And in the process of erasing my original sketch once the ink was laid down… I slightly bent the card. Oops.

Insight comes from challenge. Even though I’ve gained insight — preliminary sketches are valuable — I still have to achieve mastery. Practice, willingness to accept challenge, and risking failure where it really counts… These thongs matter to the artist. We are judged on our final products, but our final products achieve fame only on the merits of our insights from the practice of our art. Therefore, begin. The Tree is waiting.

Advice to an Artist: Knight of Wands

Advice to an Artist: Knight of Wands

Originally uploaded by anselm23

Via Flickr:
The Knight of Wands (and the related process photos) is the projection of the power of fire. We sometimes have trouble letting go of home and giving ourselves to our passion: home is comfy and easy, but ultimately self-limiting. The journey is critical for the artist — get out of the house! Find things that excite your passion, and give yourself to the passion of your artistry.

But…

Do not go unarmed. Your armor is the skill of your technique and your knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. Your horse is the speed with which you execute new work. Be like the salamanders which are the coat of arms of this knight: abandon home when it becomes too constraining, and be swift when the rotting log is engulfed in flames.

Your destination is Egypt. Not literally, of course. Egypt is the land of alchemy in the language of Tarot, where lead is transformed to the other metals, and eventually to pure gold. Learn copper’s flexibility, and tin’s malleability, and silver’s mirrored gleam, and iron’s rigidity. But recognize that you don’t learn these things at home — you learn them on the journey, when your passion is for the art.