don't you just live for anonymous mail? i know that i do.

the first was a suggestion for my rumors (which, yes, i have been ignoring for a long long time). it went something like "brother tom spent 15 years in prison for..."

i like this... (though i won't imagine what i could do that might earn me 15 big ones) i can see myself moping behind bars, working in the laundry, dodging shivs, training the roaches to write irrational poems in jailhouse gravy ink.... but, no... i've walked twice through stateville... seen too many episodes of the brutal, nightmarish, and recently defunct Oz (hbo) to even fantasize...

once, in another war, i considered a principled incarceration for myself... you know: "under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison" (hdt) but... what's become of the ideals of our youth?

which brings me to the next piece of anon-mail in response to something i said... or must have implied... last week:

A naive and inexperienced student of yours says- what is wrong with sappy movies? You seem so cynical of the joy a "happy ending" brings. And sure, those stories are unrealistic. But what's wrong with a little idealism? Human nature needs to be reminded of the noble and pure, and of the triumphant, heroic power that good has... Amidst all the "sexy underwear" ads, isn't it nice to have something in the media that makes the heart feel something innocent and uplifting?

i was commenting on Remember the Titans... a guilty pleasure for me because my intelligence (such as it is) says: "another formula flick... been there... i will tell you not only how it ends but exactly how each step on the rocky path to glory (right up to The Big Game) will be charted... don't i have shirts to wash or toenails to clip or something..."

well... so says intelligence... but something else cannot look away, cannot get up to be more useful or productive... that's why we call it entertainment... isn't that the attraction of all genre fiction... in whatever form... a predictablilty that belies our widely expressed desire for something new, something fresh... but not too new, not too fresh... or challenging... or true.

i'm as much a junkie for the Big Emotional Payoff as anyone... i suppose.

so... Billy Elliot (triumph of a dream) brings tears to my eyes...

...but i'm not going to call it "the best movie ever made" (as one student a decade ago wrote of A Few Good Men)

to a naive and inexperienced student of mine: i begrudge no one his or her joy... i don't have a problem with happy endings... i am concerned with how the work gets us there... good art respects its material enough not to force it into some pre-fab form(ula). i'm unable to take any unalloyed joy from shabby product (not really art)... (though i'm willing to laugh if it's really bad) ...that's the curse of a certain kind of education... maybe i'm a snob... but i don't look down my nose at you... like what you like... love what you love... you don't need my permission or approval.

as for a little idealism... youthful or otherwise... i also have next-to-no problem... i think yr right about what our human natures need to be reminded of... most cynical older people were once great idealists... who have seen their grand hopes smashed by a thoroughly indifferent (if not a downright malicious) human world... i hate to find that kind of cynicism in my students... but i do... though i understand that in most cases it's a defense... sometimes a pose...

am i a cynic? o... no... no... not really... sometimes i'm sad... sometimes i want to give up... sometimes i'm a smartass... for all the usual reasons...

but i'm a christian smartass... i see the cross... and know it's truth... but i look for the resurrection of the dead... and the life of the world to come... with all my sorry heart

(p.s. don't make the common mistake of thinking that this "world to come" - this "resurrection" - is necessarily just some far off post-mortem site... there's an interaction, a constant conversation between the two... here and there... and there and here.... now and then... and then and now)

And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart.
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

W. H. Auden

 

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