Making children wild

Ok. There's something that has been bothering me a lot, but I'm not really allowed to tell you the whole story because of a blood oath that I made to my ten year old daughter. I don't think she'd mind if I told you this much though: a few days ago, I was in the middle of one of those jaunty free-wheeling conversations that you can only have with a confident, only slightly prepubescent, well-read and well-informed young woman. It was late at night. We were somewhere we had no business being on a school night. We were having fun in a large parking lot under some unfriendly sodium lighting. We were making fun of the people we saw wheeling into the parking lot with their monstrous great SUVs and pickup trucks and then driving away with such essentials of life as mini-Milkbones for their terriers, or colourful bags of "organic" corn chips (containing negative calories too, no doubt) to munch while they sucked down their Evian and watched the latest episode of Survivor. We know we don't have all the answers, pre-teen and I, but we have a few more clues than most people we encounter in an average day and sometimes, when we're feeling a bit cocky, a bit giddy with fatigue, and very much in love with one another, we like to poke a little fun at the world and have a few chuckles. That's what we were doing when she dropped the bombshell. I've already said more than she would want me to, so I'll just say this. This wonderful young woman, who has more talent and potential in one small bit of her little finger than I had in my entire body at her age doesn't have any faith at all that she will be given the chance to live out a normal life. You can probably fill in a few dots yourselves from this point with no help from me, so I'll move on to the general question.

It's one thing for me to sit here and to bleat and moan about global warming and peak oil and food made of chemicals and cellulose and stupidity and greed and all of the things that are poised to do us in over the next several decades. It's another thing for me to tap out poetic little ditties here about how, on reflection, perhaps it wasn't the wisest thing in the world for me to have helped place a big bunch of delicate little souls on a planet about to catch fire. But it's something else again to try to look your kids in the eye and give them a reasonable accounting of all you believe and to not send them shrieking in fear to their rooms, heads stuffed under pillows, waiting for the sky to fall. I give my daughters complete credit for not doing this, but also feel they'd be completely within their rights to look back into my eye and say:

"Ok Dad. You're a pretty smart guy. You saw what was coming. You weren't all that optimistic about our chances. So WHAT THE FUCK? Broadway Boogie Woogie? That's really why you brought me here? And we did agree that you're smart? Didn't we?"

I like watching my kids sleep. Their little features unwrinkle. They look like lovely porcelain angels hovering above their pillows. They're light, airy, perfect. Provided they don't wake up, they seem so safe tucked up in their little turrets in their rooms, surrounded by artwork they've made, rocks they've collected, leaves and feathers they've somehow spirited into their beds. More and more, as I stand in their doorways and watch their chests rise and fall amid all of this wonderful chaos, I find it difficult to push out worrisome thoughts about how their lives will be when they are 20, 30, 40.

As bad as all of that is, it doesn't compare to what happens when their eyes open, they fixate you with a deep, knowing stare and they ask for an answer or two.

I only have one answer for them. Be wild. Be wild with anger. Be wild with impatience. Be wild with energy. Most important of all, though, is for them to recognize what they love and stand to lose. Children have a natural affinity for wild places. They love the forest. They love lakes and streams and oceans. My children try to fill their rooms and even their beds with wildness. It's great, in a way, for schoolteachers to talk about carbon dioxide and melting icecaps and energy alternatives and recycling. There's a place for that. But, for a child, this all seems like hard work. It makes Nature a problem to be solved, a chore to add to a long, boring list of chores. Kids hate chores. Kids love Nature. Make them wild enough and I think they'll know what needs to be done.

Agism

I've been thinking a lot about age lately. The triggers seem to be everywhere. Part of this is probably caused by my recent revelations that I may have embarked on my life's dream a bit too late to have the success that might have been mine (and given the deafening silence from editors south of the border, my odds of career change have dropped a titch this week). Part of it comes from discussions with people much younger than me (and you know who you are) who are approaching birthdays with some trepidation. Part comes from having had a fairly elderly but bright and interesting man appear on my office doorstep looking for a job in my lab. Age just came into my mind as I wrapped up a long meeting with a clever young student who was trying to explain some interesting perceptual effects to me by suggesting that people of my generation had had fairly limited exposure to technology compared to his generation. I resisted the temptation to swat him on the ear, but only because I couldn't afford the lawsuit.

In lots of ways, I don't mind getting older. I don't mind knowing that I'm more than halfway through my life. I've done a helluva lot with those years. I don't mind that I don't really have to go through the high trauma of finding a mate, planning a family, plotting a career. I don't mind that the worst of my midlife crises are behind me (I hope!). I don't mind that some things that used to be very mysterious (like my own reactions to things) now seem fairly straightforward and obvious.

There are other things I do mind. I mind that my sense of taste and smell are not quite what they once were. I remember a line from a John Updike novel (I think it was a Rabbit Angstrom book) about how older people ate more because nothing tasted quite as good as they felt that it should. I mind that no matter how long I stay in bed, I get out of bed feeling less than rested. I mind that there is not a day that goes by when some part of my body doesn't ache. I don't mind that my sexual performance is as reliable as ever, but I do mind that I leave such 'performances' feeling somehow less satisifed. I mind that the world seems smaller and less surprising. I mind that I'm not as patient as I once was. I mind that I become confused more easily. I mind that I give up on hard mental challenges more quickly than I used to.

To me, late middle age seems to consist of a slight detachment from sensual pleasure -- it's there but you can't feel it quite as well so you have to rely more on memory. It's a bit like making love while wearing a condom. It still feels good and you know it is but the searing, screaming edge of sensation is a wee bit blunted.

I'm waiting (with whatever patience I can muster) for the wisdom part to begin.

Ambition

It's a funny thing. Up until a few weeks ago, I had never really considered myself to be an ambitious man. My professional career is in a satisfactory way, and nothing more. I will never be a famous scientist, nor make a breakthrough discovery that will outlive me. My work is reasonably good, trustworthy, reliable, but never earth-shaking. Over the long course of years, the harsh environs of academia have ground down much of my enthusiasm for scientific progress, and have slowly convinced me that there are only ever about six good ideas going on in any scientific discipline, and they are simply reshuffled, dressed in different uniforms, and generally buffed up from generation to generation. Good work using those ideas can sometimes result in useful stuff that helps us to understand who we are or that can sometimes even help us build new things. On occasion, those new things are even things that we should be building. But more often they're not. I don't mean that to sound particularly bleak or pointless, but reading over these words suggests to me that they're a bit jaded, perhaps. I also don't mean to sound as though I'm unhappy with any of it. I'm content with what I do, know my limits, and feel sorry for those who are a bit younger than me and who seem to take all this stuff far too seriously. But, other than the occasional insomniac set of thoughts that make me wonder how things could have been if I'd done things a little differently, put my work more to the front of my priorities, worked a bit harder in the years immediately following tenure (those years are the most risky in some ways -- there's just such a big rush of relaxation that you have to push hard to get anything done at all for a year or two), I'm pretty happy with my lot. I have a better life than almost anyone that I know well and, when I contemplate all of the horrible things that could happen to me, I marvel that none of them have happened yet (though I know that in time they will. It's inevitable that I will know future horror. So will everyone else).

What I find funny about all of this is that I'm now teetering on the brink of having gone from being a smug, self-satisfied sonofabitch to something else that may be better or worse than that. I can't even decide. From the moment that I discovered that I might be able to publish my book (oh, here he goes again....book book book), my self-concept has undergone seismic change. There are long parts of days when I can think of nothing else. My mind becomes absorbed with the job of trying to understand how the book industry works, of reminiscences of the amazing people I've met over the past few weeks and of the things I've learned. I find myself worrying about the second book. I find myself wondering whether I will ever be in a position to cut myself adrift from this job, this geographic location (which has everything going for it other than the lack of mountains and oceans). It makes me sad in so many different ways. It makes me sad to discover that I seem to be 'good enough' to write professionally, and that I waited until near the end of my fifth decade of life to find this out. It makes me sad to watch my visceral reactions to every little bit of good and bad fortune and, to recognize in those twisting guts, pulsing veins, and cerebral lightning storms that this is what I've always wanted. Always. Since I was a teenager. The massive lost opportunities inherent in all of that make me sad. And then I get sad because I think of all of the profound life lessons I drank in last year while living in our ocean paradise, and I feel as though I have many days where I've completely thrown them out the window. Just when I think I've made some progress, that I may have some faint glimmering of who I am and what I want, everything explodes again and I'm reconstituted. The happy carefree beach dwelling buddhaboy becomes the ulcerated pathetic would-be public intellectual who knows, deep down, that if he really gets what he's asking for. And I mean really gets it, it will probably kill him. Or, if not, then at least it will make him deeply unhappy.

It's a complicated little existence I've made for myself. Without really intending to, I've left the deep pool of calm happiness that floated me away last year. I've scrabbled about halfway up the cratered walls of this pool. I know what's at the bottom -- those cool, cleansing waters. But I'm too far up the wall to let go now. I'm looking up into some kind of mysterious light up there. I don't even know what it is. I find myself pulled to it, but I'm having some heavy moth thoughts here. I'm halfway. Going back down will be hard and might break my heart. Going up will be harder and might break my soul. I think I'm stuck.

8% done

One week down. 11 more to go until term is finished. Now I need to go find a glass of something. Sorry nothing more profound.

Kate Winslet's bum

I'm back from New York. I've been back for many fewer hours than I would have liked, thanks to a horrendously late return caused by bad weather. The high point of my return trip was the moment, sitting in the departure lounge, absorbed in a book about how our brains are not like computers, when a woman brushed past my knees. I looked up, watched her bum recede as she walked away. The woman sitting beside me leaned over and told me that it was Kate Winslet's bum that I was fixating. And that it was Forest Whitaker who was ambling along beside her.

My meetings ranged from the bizarre to the unexpected. The meeting that I had been most excited about was postponed because the editor had torn her retina and was in a waiting room awaiting laser repair. The meeting I was more worried about than excited about was terrific. There's no feeling like being shut in a small room with an extraordinarily intelligent, perceptive, and energetic editor who 'gets' your book. There was a great connection between us. I left hoping that this publisher would buy my book. I don't know yet if they will.

My second meeting was rescheduled for later in the day. Here are a few little warning signs that perhaps you have not found the editor you want for your book. When she says things like:

"Why do you have so many children? Was that on purpose or did you feel that, because you've done experiments with gerbils you should breed like one?"

Or when, in response to a statement you've made about why children should be taught how to understand spatial extent she says:

"Yes. And they should also be taught to taste and smell."

Or when she says:

"You've listed this book (X) as a competing book. It's one of ours. Is it any good? "

Or when she says:

"Your book is a bit like this other book we did. We didn't do anything to promote this book and it has done very well."

In the words of Dave Barry, I'm not making this up. I left the meeting wondering whether this editor had been given some powerful drugs for her laser surgery, but I'm told not. I'm told she's always like that. I left the meeting thinking that this woman must have decided (or been told) long before I got there that she would not be buying my book. But I'm told not. I'm told that she will probably offer. I can't believe a decision to give an author money could be based on what came to pass in that room. I'll believe it when I see it. Mostly, though, I left the meeting thinking that unless this woman offered me about a zillion dollars for it, I would not let her anywhere near any of my work. In fact, what I really wanted to do was to snatch my proposal from her desk and run for it. Back to Greenwich Village, to Washington Square Park, where a giant of a man, a huge, friendly, black Vietnam vet sat at a chessboard waiting for a return match so he could whip my ass again.

New York is a crazy place. Full of surprises. Full of crazy people. I miss it already.

The eye of the storm

I'm not sure what I'm missing, but I suddenly seem to have the next six days of my life completely under control. Two courses starting, experiments crackling into life in my lab, two day trip to the Big Apple to meet editors planned and scheduled. AND I'm going to hear Les Paul play guitar with whatever non-arthritic digits he's got left, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, at the Iridium Jazz Club in Manhattan. Life is just too weird.

Too early to go home. Time to go drink some beer. Or read a book. There must be a book around here somewhere....

Pressure builds

I've barely had a chance to look up from work for the past few days, with the serious countdown now beginning before my classroom floods with students next Monday morning. But it didn't escape me that the Crocodile Hunter died tragically (no link needed here, I suspect). I haven't owned a television for a couple of years, but I remember that, when I did, I'd snuggle up with my (then) six year old daughter to watch him. We liked that guy. He was far too young to die but I suspect if he'd been 84 rather than 44 he'd have been pleased with the way things ended for him.

I also noticed that our national newspaper got hold of a report suggesting that our illustrious prime minister has not only pulled us out of our Kyoto commitments but now thinks that it will take a good five years of brooding and consultations to decide how best to respond to global warming. I suppose I could dwell on the good news that there will be a response, but I can't help thinking it might not be the wisest thing to spend what probably amounts to about 50% of the time we've got left before there are no options left to consider, considering our options.

On not being jaded

I just re-read that last post. Two things strike me. First, I'm jaded. Some might even say lacking respect for my students. I wonder. Second, I think this is at least the third posting in this blog that suggests a new beginning ("a fresh start", "a new life", etc. Please don't make me find the links.). Does this suggest I have a twitchy reset button? Or just that I'm an optimistic fool? Maybe I just have a bad memory.

Beginning again

First day of term is coming here. Though I've spent the last few weeks furiously putting together websites and powerpoint presentations, things didn't really sink in for me until yesterday when I picked up the keys for one of the electronic classrooms I'll be using. I stood at the front of the room reading through dense pages of instructions explaining exactly where all of the buttons and knobs resided ("the power bar that controls the monitor is just below your right knee"). Standing in front of a class has become a bit of a dog and pony show these days. Students have different expectations. We're not just scholars now. We're also delivering a product to our students for which they have paid handsomely. With daily reminders in the press that we live in a service economy (because we expect to be paid much more than those in other parts of the world who are content -- for now -- to make the ridiculous plastic trappings we think we need to live), professors are servers of a sort. Open up your head and I'll pour in some knowledge. When Socrates said "Education is the kindling of a flame not the filling of a vessel," there was no Microsoft, there were no electronic classrooms and there were no Powerpoint slides. Things have changed so much since I began teaching in universities about 20 years ago. Even 10 years ago, it was not unusual to walk into a classroom with nothing more than a headful of exciting ideas and a piece of chalk. If I wanted to be fancy, I'd bring in an overhead or two for the projector. Now I'm wired for sound and video. The electric professor. Like one of those new Japanese robots, I dance to my inner Ipod.

I'm not always sure what I'm doing up there, in front of that room full of children (every year they seem more like children. This year, my oldest daughter's friends could be in my class). It isn't as if my courses really teach them anything about how to make a living, build a career, or solve a life problem. My job is to help them see the bigger picture of things, to help them avoid the unexamined life, to make them understand who they are. I think that's pretty important, but, more and more, I feel a little old-fashioned. A few years ago, on the first day of class, I reeled off the course requirements, squirmed through the usual questions about what would be required to get a good grade, etc. etc. and then, at the end of all of this, I reminded them that their job in the classroom was not to get a good grade. They stopped writing and looked up. No, I said, their job was not to get a good grade but to actually learn something. They laughed. They thought this was funny. I was depressed for days.

In spite of this depressing context, I can't help getting excited at this time of year. Like the abused puppy that can't help jumping up and down when its owner comes home, even though it knows it will get nothing better than a swat, I'm hopping up and down on my hind legs trying to imagine that these courses of mine will go well. Ok. I'm not really hopping up and down. But I'm trying to convince myself that buried in that big room full of students who think they're there to pay their money, get their notes, and move on to the next step of their careers, there will be one or two who really do want to learn things. I know they're there. I just need to find them. And I will.