Sublimity and Synchronicity

Why was today so sublime? Well, it was one of those incredibly busy days that comes along every once in a while where everything is spontaneous, creative, positive and productive. It's all about flow - like a great guitar solo, except your words are the notes and your feet are the fingers as you transition seamlessly from conversation to conversation, event to event, fret to fret. It's the feeling of being up in front of a classroom of students - your students - and knowing you're on. It's playing Hold 'em at lunch with the CAS Poker Club, founded by yours truly and some young gambling enthusiasts on the soph retreat at the Marin Headlands two months ago. It's hanging out with DeAndre after school, como siempre, and finally doing the Big Backpack Organization. We bought a dozen folders, went to an Italian deli, then sat in the sunshine and cleaned out his backpack, putting papers that had been missing for months into their newly titled homes.

Afterwards I went to my flamenco lesson, and we worked on Alegrias, and then David told me about discovering the Bay Area flamenco scene in the late 60s, which at that time had already been around for half a century at least. How did he know? One of his teachers, a Mexican musician who emigrated to SF in the 1930s, said that when he arrived during the Depression there was flamenco all over the Bay Area, and that it had been there for a long time. Increible!! What a privilege to have begun this journey in Sevilla five years ago, and to now be connected by this amazing music to such a uniquely creative and pasionate part of the world. Ole! Viva la Bahia! Viva el duende! Viva hyphy! Que vivan todas mis relaciones.

Oh yeah, and speaking of all my relations - why was today so synchronous? Olivia graduated from Columbia with a Master's in Historic Preservation!!! Wish I could have been there, but Mom, Dad, and Granny represented in NYC for me. She and I are just finishing as DeAndre is just starting to formulate his ideas about college, y todos estamos unidos. Cosmic circles. After my flamenco lesson I drove to the house of one of my freshmen to pick up a car-full of food for our daylong retreat tomorrow in Tilden Park. Memories of bulk shopping at Cosco for the soph retreat, cramming the back of the Subaru wagon, unloading it all into my fridge, then loading it all into the car again the next morning. Memories of waking up at 5:30am to transport more mountains of food last spring for our MexEx brunch fundraiser. What an unbelievable two years in Berkeley it has been!

Whole Earth?

Caught a ride to Davis last night to see a couple of bands perform at the annual Whole Earth Festival. On the way, we stopped at the quintessential Berkeley co-op, The Cheesboard, and listened to a great jazz trio (who always perform in the store) as we stood in line waiting for our garlic pesto choclo cilantro pizza.

I always enjoy going to Davis because it connects me with rural California, which is an amazingly short distance in any direction from the Bay Area metropolis. Nick worked his usual shift at Little Prague, 3pm til 3am, but I woke up when he came home at 4:30 and we talked for a while about our respective stations in life. I told him how after two and a half years of public school teaching a missing piece of my humanity has been restored - namely, the non-white piece. However, even though I've become a more understanding white person, and learned how to be an ally to non-whites, I am increasingly despondent about the fact that I am at the absolute top of the social ladder as a straight white male. This may sound like a conradiction, but I feel like I'm part of a woefully disconnected minority of people who are out of touch and out step with the rest of the peoples of the world. Straight white males are like overstretched empires and kings gone mad with greed, we sit alone on the throne in an empty castle while the rest of the world laughs (at us) and enjoys a life we're not capable of knowing. Maybe this is the source of my desire to learn other languages, travel, and be a part of other cultures. Maybe not. Probably a mix of reasons. Anyway, we agreed that the next step is to read Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities (recommended by Olivia when I explained to her my dilemma).

Now then, this realization doesn't mean I'm going to go around carrying the burden of white guilt. On the contrary, I'm going to continue being me and being open to all people I meet. Case in point: I took Amtrak back from Davis today and then got on the bus in Berkeley to go up University Ave to my apartment. After one stop, a man sat down next to me, and of course, I ignored him. Then he suddenly asked me how to get to campus, and if the bus would stop there, and it became apparent that he was a stranger in my town. I soon found out he had just arrived from India at 1am in the morning, and was in the USA for his very first time. As soon as he told me this, I grabbed his hand, shook heartily, and said, "Welcome to America!"
Keep in mind that ust a few weeks ago I invited a panel of immigrant students at Berkeley High to talk to my class, and they said they were miserable here, and that no one had ever given them a proper welcome, as they would have naturally done for any newcomer to their native communities.

The Indian man - whose name I asked but did not properly understand nor can remember - and I continued talking, and I told him a bit about Berkeley's political history. We got off at Telegraph Avenue and I walked him up to the student center. We shook hands again and he went off to meet his Indian friend, also a PhD student studying here for the summer. Small world, or whole earth?

Ravi & Anoushka Shankar

Anoushka played the first set alone and she was mesmerizing, swaying back and forth as her hands moved ever more quickly along the enormous fretboard. Fascinating as it was, I must admit that in my first live encounter, I found classical Indian music somewhat unaccessible. It was repetitive yet hard to follow. I got lost. I got bored. Everyone was so still. By the end of the evening, however, I was completely entranced, as the music finally began to sound familiar and the complicated rhythms began to fit together in my head.

Ravi came out for the second set assisted by one of his students, and he explained that he has to sit on a low wooden platform because he can no longer sit cross-legged on the floor after his bout with a virus that nearly killed him six months ago. In his words, he said he was "going, going," but his wife and family took such good care of him that he recovered. He is 87, and he looked so frail; his hands shook as he began playing, and many of the notes were inaccurate. As the hour went by, though, he warmed up - as if impelled by the amazing tabla player from Calcutta, with whom he had a seamless connection - and he regained much of his old vigor and virtuosity. His hands began to dance more quickly and powerfully up and down the neck of his sitar, and suddenly he was playing the most difficult runs without any sign of effort. He and Anoushka traded solos, mimicking each other and creating new conversations, calling and responding, as they built a thirty-minute raga to an unbelievable crescendo. The tabla player soloed like a madman for a good two minutes straight, and immediately upon finishing, he responded to the thunderous applause by simply pressing his hands together in prayer and touching them to his forehead. What a wonderful touch of humility - a requirement for any aspiring musician.

At the end of the show all the performers bowed to touch Ravi's feet before hugging him, and as they led him off stage, it was impossible to think that just minutes before he had been the source of all that sound! Now he was just a frail old man smiling and waving to the crowd.

Salif Keita

DeAndre and I went to see Salif Keita at Cal tonight, and it was without a doubt one of most moving, energetic, beautiful, and profound performances of live music I've ever seen. The layers of sound and rhythm from the nine musicians accompanyng him onstage were mesmerizing...kind of like Smashing Pumpkins meets Baba Maal. Yeah, that's right, Salif's music is so universal that it encompasses everything from grunge to hyphy to gospel and more. His regal, humble presence on stage, the brilliant and flowing clothing, the incredible range of his voice from guttural to operatic to flamenco, it all serves to put a spell on you.

Of course, everyone was dancing in the aisles, but the most amazing moment of the show was halfway through when the beats were heavy and the crowd was in a frenzy; all at once everyone left the stage, and Salif came back on, sat down, and began quietly playing a hollow-bodied jazz guitar. He sang two melodic, prayer-like songs, and his voice alone filled the cavernous auditorium with as much energy as when the entire band had been playing.

Then the band came back on and it was nonstop until the end. The kora player shredded like Jimi Hendrix, sliding across the stage on his back, playing upside down and behind his back to the delight of the crowd. Next several women jumped up onstage and began dancing in step with the drummers, and finally, Salif invited more people up on stage, and what transpired was a unique mix of Berkeley Rapture and African Radiance. A dreadlocked Berzerkleyian had brought his sax just for the occasion, and he got up on stage and started soloing to the band's delight. More and more women flaunted their African styles - many were African, many were RPCVs. The whole stage was filled with people dancing, and the music just kept on...

And to put the perfect touch on the experience, DeAndre was able to meet Salif after the show and get a cd signed personally!

Top Ten Movies

OK, since I did books, I gotta do movies. All lists subject to change at any time...

1. Slam
2. Crouching Tiger
3. Life is Beautiful
4. Brokeback Mountain
5. Babette's Feast
6. Fanny and Alexander
7. Some Like it Hot
8. Grapes of Wrath
9. Hable con Ella
10. El Norte

English vs. Spanish

To my surprise and delight, The Wind in the Willows was on Masterpiece Theater tonight. The actors were quite good and the story true to the original, but the truth is that nothing can compare to the book itself. The intricacies of language and the detail of the written word are among life's greatest pleasures, which is why I'm so enamored of the blog as a vehicle of expression. I've been wondering recently why I chose not to major in English, Am Lit or Brit Lit, and then I remembered...I have never really liked school!

I love learning, but the confines of classrooms and stylistic conventions, the toils of essay-writing and my penchant for procrastination always seemed to dampen my creativity. In fact, I think the only reason I'm a halfway decent teacher is because I don't like school. Getting back to the point, though, I remember deciding against English as a major because Emerson taught me to have an original relationship with everything, and from Thoreau I learned that the best books teach me, better than to read, to put them down and commence living on their hint. I reasoned that I didn't need any one to teach me how to read, interpret, reflect on, and write about books in my own language.

And so I chose Spanish, because I had "studied" it in the classroom for eight years but had minimal comprehension and fluency with the language. Ah, public school - if only my high school Spanish teacher knew what I was doing now! Anyway, Sevilla and Anette made the language come alive for me, and the rest is history. Now it's on to Swahili, but I guess my point is that I will always derive enormous comfort from reading books in English because it feels like home; I will never know another language with the intimacy that I know English.

I've always been given to hyperbole (but it's meaningful - when I say it's the best day of my life, I mean it, and every song and every riff is the greatest ever in the moment I declare it to be!) so I'll sign off tonight with a first draft of my top nine favorite books list (in no particular order). Readers, feel free to share yours...

1. Growth of the Soil - Knut Hamsun
2. Homage to Catalunia - Orwell
3. 100 Years of Solitude - Garcia Marquez
4. Kavalier and Klay - Michael Chabon
5. Moby Dick - Melville
6. Sometimes A Great Notion - Kesey
7. Angry Black White Boy - Adam Mansbach
8. On The Road - Kerouac
9. Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
10. The Awakening - Kate Chopin

Burmese Days

The following excerpt from George Orwell's 1934 classic (he served with the Imperial Police in Burma before volunteering in the Spanish Civil War and writing one of my all-time favorite books, Homage to Catalunia) had me in hysterics the first time I read it...maybe it's memories of ordering ALL the Chinese food after swim practice with Julio and Hode - ¿quién sabe? Anyway, I hope you get a laugh out of it, in particular those of you who recognize a little bit of yourselves in U Po Kyin. By the way, I have never found better Chinese take out than in St. Mary's county - represent!

"In the living-room behind the curtain a table was already set out with a huge bowl of rice and dozen plates containing curries, dried prawns and sliced green mangoes. U Po Kyin waddled to the table, sat down with a grunt and at once threw himself upon the food. Ma Kin, his wife, stood behind him and served him. She was a thin woman of five and forty, with a kindly, pale brown, simian face. U Po Kyin took no notice of her while he was eating. With the bowl close to his nose he stuffed the food into himself with swift, greasy fingers, breathing fast. All his meals were swift, passionate, and enormous; they were not so much meals as orgies, debauches of curry and rice..."

First verse

Alright, we'll see what corrections Pries makes, but here are my first bars in a looooong time (maybe since Meridian)

Some call me teacher of Spanish
some people think I'm outlandish
cuz they judge me by the color of my socks

I don't mess with glocks
the only weapons I brandish
is all my love
i even give you my sandwich
cuz I'd rather be empty than full

I teach public school
what you know about me?
I'm the tall white man from suburban DC

I'm your worst enemy
take your head off the desk
I don't let you sleep
so if you came to rest
then you best be steppin'
outta my class
if you ain't here to learn
get the heck outta CAS!

Back in Berkeley

How can I possibly sum up the spirit of this town in a few short paragraphs? I haven't even lived here two years, but it has already made a deep and lasting impression. Returning to Berkeley from a week in New York was like...(insert metaphor). I had a great time seeing all my students again today, and now DeAndre and I have decided to write a song together. Vamos a ver como nos sale. Driving back from his house, I decided to go to that ninth wonder of the world, the Berkeley Bowl, to do my grocery shopping. I'm not gonna lie, I usually go to Safeway, and as I was circling and circling in the tiny overcrowded parking lot, I was reminded why I usually save the Bowl for special occasions. After a long day of work, who wants to spend twenty minutes waiting for parking? But as I contemplated getting upset at the impractically small parking lot, a wave of serenity and understanding came over me, and I realized that the Bowl simply does not bend to the will of Mainstream America, and it exhorts its customers to do the same.

"I'm going to take pride in the fact that it takes me longer to park, because I'm doing it for a cause - this is organic slow food shopping - it's as much for my soul as it is my palate."

And so my eyes feasted upon the endless rows of exotic fruits and dozens of varieties of garden vegetables, and I bought with abandon, and returned to my car happy. As I drove up Parker St., I saw a tall blonde in black shades and a designer outfit who looked like she was heading for the nearest mall, but as she whizzed by me on her skateboard, I could only chuckle to myself and shake my head because Berkeley had upended the tables again. Where else in America - where else on earth does such a mad menagerie of people flaunt their uniqueness with such style? Skaters and mohawks, tattoos and Telegraph, hoodies and dreads, art cars and graffiti, grills and geoscience! I pride myself on the fact that I'm now a part of Berkeley's underground flamenco scene, because I wouldn't be justified in calling myself a true Berzerkleyian if all I did was teach during the day and do lesson plans at night. That being said, I'm blogging again instead of working, but who can blame me? I'm just trying to represent the beauty of the Bay Area in the short time I have left here. Love to all my relations.

What I'm going to miss about the USA...

...is public television! As a public school teacher, I have no life because I'm usually way too exhausted by the stresses of the teaching week to do anything on the weekends. Thank God for public television, which comforts me, entertains me, and keeps me company more than ever now that Anette is back in Norway. I've watched Brother Cadfael at least the past six Saturday nights in a row, and I always try to catch Masterpiece Theater and old Sherlock Holmes episodes during the week or on Sunday nights. But my all-time favorite is Nature, which in addition to being highly educational, will always remind me of curling up on the couch in the study with Olivia on Saturday mornings when we were kids.

Sweat Lodge

My first sweat lodge was in rehab on a snowy mountaintop in New Hampshire. Now it's eight years later...Thought you all would like to know that I drove down south of San Jose with my sponsor today to participate in my second California Indian sweat lodge. The ceremony was intense, and we were joined by some 15 members of a group called Common Vision - total nomadic hippies living in painted buses and traveling around California planting trees for schools. Wasn't sure if it was 2007 or 1967. The man leading the sweat (my sponsor's sponsor) talked about what he remembered from the 60s, and how much these young people reminded him of the good old days. Anyway, as we were driving back at sunset through the scrubby hills surrounding Hollister and Gilroy (garlic capital of the world)we saw a bobcat - a first for me! He was most certainly chasing rabbits who were out to silfay, but he stopped and let us admire him for a while. So, I can now add this rarely-seen beauty to my list of species that I've seen for the first time out here - including elk and quail.

Blogging again?

It's been exactly two years since I wrote "skool," the second post on this blog. I haven't had the time or energy to add anything to this page in the last year and a half, but I've been reinspired by the superhuman efforts of my friend Paul, an American opera singer married to a Norwegian flautist. Their daughter was born on my birthday in 2004, when I was living in Oslo, and just three days ago, their first son was born - on my dad's 62nd birthday. Through it all, Paul has been able to blog almost daily about all the details of his life, a feat I admire and appreciate.

The truth is, though, that I haven't been totally absent from the blogosphere - last summer I led an amazing trip for thirteen of my students to Morelia, Michoacan, and we recorded our experiences on the MexEx2006 blog and in the videos they created. Hmmm...maybe Nobu can help me figure out how to get the videos onto youtube, and then we can link them to the blog...

How ironic that I aspire to live as Thoreauvian a life as possible, yet with a few clicks I can utilize of the wonders of technology to disseminate my thoughts to the world. Well, I am finishing up my Master's degree, after all, and it is 2007, not 1847, so I guess I can reconcile any disagreements Old Henry might have had with computers and bloggers.

Speaking of that degree, that's why I haven't been able to write at leisure; all my writing of the past two years has been for school - either Berkeley High or George Mason. I'm not sure when I'll write my book about the travesties and joys of public education in America (maybe this is it) but I'd like to strive for consistency from here on out. I'm supposed to be be writing a research paper right now, but this is more fun.

As reflect on the "skool" post of March 23, 2005, I'm struck by the fact that good listening remains the cornerstone of my teaching and my classroom discussions. I could write pages about each and every day and each conversation and interaction that that has transpired between then and now, but happily, for all I've grown and been challenged by my students and the reality of their lives, I'm still me. Just today I had a similarly intense discussion as that first one two years ago, but this time with a different set of students. Granted, I know these students on a much more personal level (thanks to the idea of small schools - yeah CAS!) but the ultimate lesson for me is that to be an effective teacher, I simply need to be a caring human being with good listening skills.

I hope to write soon about our recent field trip to see Fernando Botero's Abu Ghraib paintings, and the awful irony of Congress passing an emergency war spending bill authorizing another 100 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. All I want to know is - where's the emergency public education bill?

Norwegian impressions of Berkeley

When I first came to Berkeley six weeks ago, I felt accepted at once. Not because of something I did or said, but simply by being ME. Nobody cares how you dress, how you act, Americans here are all crazy anyway! The diversity of people, I love it. As Professor Petersen said when I first met him: “You’re not here to learn, you’re here to develop yourself!” And as a Norwegian, I actually find it challenging to be and develop myself. In the culture I grew up in, I learned that “You shall not believe that you are somebody, you shall not believe you’re more worthy than us, you shall not believe that you are better than us”. These are some of the sentences in the so-called Law of Jante (“janteloven”) that pervade every part of the Norwegian society. In contrast, Emerson writes “ …the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude” and “I must be myself”.

Hence, I need to think less about “the others” and more about myself, and Berkeley is a good place to do this. But I don´t think I will ever be able to be as individualistic as Americans are. Nor do I want to. Fischer claimed in the lecture that individualism is not selfishness. But I can´t help thinking, isn´t the difference between self-interest and selfishness a small one? Can´t self-interest easily become selfishness? Maybe the different American grassroots organizations that Fischer talked about are keeping Americans loyal to others in addition to themselves, and hence decreasing the degree of selfishness in the American society. I´ve always been surprised about how patriotic Americans are: the talk in media about how good the US is, the amount of American flags hanging on peoples´ houses. It seems like people of all colors and different ethnicities share a feeling of being “American.”

Norwegians should take more risks to go against the mainstream and not be so afraid of social sanctions. People are unique individuals with different qualities that ought to be explored. Meanwhile Americans could benefit from being a little more humble.

Muir Woods Mysticism

A fantastic weekend of redwoods, red wine (lemonade for me) and poker...

Day Eight: Las Vegas to Berkeley, CA. 560 miles.

We made it!!!!!

Day Seven: Grand Canyon to Las Vegas. 120 miles.

"The Lord Jesus shall be revealed in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who do not follow His Word and do not obey the gospel."

This proclaimed on a ten-foot sign held up by a wild-eyed disheveled woman with long black hair in the middle of the madness on Fremont St. in Vegas. Then the world´s largest TV - three city blocks long - ignited above our heads with dancing showgirls and huge rolling dice, the hourly promo show on the roof of the strip. Overwhelmed by our first encounter with Lost Wages and its lost souls, coming from the sanctity of the Grand Canyon to this orgy of indulgence and desperation. We stuck to our hotel, the Lady Luck, and gambled slightly, she on 5 cent slot mahcines and me at blackjack.

Day Six: Zion to Grand Canyon. 126 miles.

Our first camping meal: the return of Thick Nutty Stew from the AT (oatmeal and grape nuts). Our first hike in Zion to Weeping Rock, then to Hidden Canyon - very steep, didn´t go all the way because baby afraid of heights. Saw lizards, hummingbirds, black and yellow striped dragonfly and blue dragonfly, and a small frog which din´t interest the baby. Hiked to Emerald Pools. At 2:30pm we left for Grand Canyon. Tired we stopped, tried to sleep in the car and drank coffee instead. Got pulled over by a Mormon policeman because of my (Anette´s) bad eyesight. (We pulled over to take a picture of the Welcome to Arizona sign but apparently weren´t far enough off the road). Lots of lightning and fat, big raindrops fell down on us. Clouds draped like curtains. Saw a family of wild turkeys and three deer on the Kaibab Plateau approaching Grand Canyon. Surprised at the beautiful forest of Ponderosa Pine and meadows at 8827 ft.

Set up camp under tall pines and went for a walk along Bright Angel Trail. Anette led the way as we clambered down the cliff´s edge for our first view of the Grand Canyon. Watched lightning on the other side of the canyon and a beautiful sunset over millions of years of layered rock. Suddenly, a swoosh of wings and turned to see a raven just alighted on our rocky outcrop to drink from a puddle in the rock. Surely a benign omen, and we saw 5 deer at dusk walking back to our tent. Made a campfire and cooked baby´s first mac´n´cheese. Then came baby´s first s´mores, which she loved. She also loved killing marshmallows in the fire med en seksårings glede. Då sov me.

Drove to Pt. Imperial in the morning and enjoyed fantastic views from a ridgeline hike. Heard hawks screaming and caught them in my binoculars. Hummingbirds flitting thru red, purple, yellow flower meadows and white and black trunks of burnt forest.

Day Five: Boulder to Zion. 642 miles.

Rocky Mountain majesty. Unbelievable tabletop cliffs pouring themselves flat onto the mesa. Arboreal green and wet to dry brown to orange. Blue Angels at Grand Junction, CO, chasing each other in the enormous sky. Take´n´bake pizza - no wonder it´s only $5, they don´t cook it for you!! Utah=Mormons=scary?? Providence: Not Rhode Island, the big ol´lighthouse on 15S. Sunset entering Zion, the most awe-inspiring I´ve ever seen. Stayed the night at Watchman campground. Windy.

Day Four: Layover in Boulder with Bree and Ashleigh.

Went out to Mountain Sun last night, the stereotypical hippie restaurant in the crunchiest town of them all. Then Bree gave us a priavte flamenco concert as I played guitar and he sang as only he can in his Spanglish and gave outstanding palmas. This morning drove out past the Flatirons and Flagstaff to Green Mountain. Saw a mule deer on the way up, as well as chipmunks, butterflies and a grouse. Picked raspberries, came back, walked in the rain, then napped. Anette had a little vondt i magen from so much traveling, but better in the afternoon. Went to a Tibetan restaurant then watched the first two episodes of "Six Feet Under." Ladybug earrings and a blue hairclip.

Day Three: Des Moines, IA to Boulder, CO. 686 miles.

Anette´s first time in the tent, unused since the AT in 2000, set up among cornfields at 11pm last night at the Timberline Campground. She was surprised to have a good night´s sleep, as did I, and we were off at 7:30am. Endless cornfields continued into Nebraska, but the western part of that state is devoted to beef cattle and pastures for grazing. It´s real cowboy country, with signs for ols Pony Express stations and the Buffalo Bill home/museum. Now we´re ascending the mesa into eastern Colorado, an incredibly beautiful, lonely, barren place. John Wayne should appear at any moment over the next ridge...