This
Journal

October
1999

Transcendentalism is a tough sell to sophomores. I don't really expect them to buy it - no more than I expected them to buy Puritanism or Rationalism. But maybe I do have a tiny hope that I could present the ideas in such a way that they'd say, at least, "Oh, yeah, I get it; that's kind of interesting."

I've been hacking away at Emerson and Thoreau all week, poking here and there, looking for an angle that might connect with them. (I brought in a selection from Birkerts on the accelerated busyness of our lives. One class today made a list of Ways to Waste Your Life in response to Thoreau's desire to avoid "what was not life.") I hate what our textbook has done to these writers, offering tiny mangled slivers of their thought, chunkettes. I see this as real disrespect for the student as well as the writer. Part of the dumbing-down process, lowered expectations. (Let's just show 'em the movie. I can't wait 'til they come out with the film version of Emerson's Nature. Shucks, if it can't be translated into electricity, it probably ain't worth a heck.)

So I latch onto a single sentence ("I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...") and push on it and question it ("How would you know if you were living a deep life?") as a way of modelling what can be done with a text. They doze and mutter in their sleep, "Why do you have to analyze everything? Why do you have to think so much about everything?"

What they really want to know is how a life without marriage and children, a life spent in classrooms (my life) could be anything but a waste. They're curious about the conditions of my life and are quite candid (bold? rude?) in their questions. I'm willing to talk directly, but some things are not open for discussion. "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."

"Judge not, lest ye be judged."

On this Friday before Halloween, our halls were livened by the chirps and chatter of tiny spooks, princesses, and pirates: the kids from Little Saints, our attached day-care program. Dom had provided me with candy for their appearance at my door, but they passed during my lunch period. 606 was empty. More candy for me.

A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.
Henry David Thoreau