The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian

Written By Sherman Alexie

An Uncommon Book Review

            Do you know what it means to be free? To break out of a cell even if the cell is the size of an Indian reservation with tall trees and land that stretches past hot mountains and a mysterious Turtle Lake that has the power to swallow up Stupid Horse?  Do you know what it means to run away from home, but not because you’re scared, but because you’re looking for some semblance of hope?  Well, Arnold Spirit knows— he knows exactly what it means.  Arnold Spirit, aka Junior was born running and fighting because he’s different.  Born with a brain disorder, Arnold was left with a lisp and dark rimmed glasses and bad luck winning anything. If it weren’t for his best friend Rowdy, the toughest boy on the rez, he’d probably be left for dead on the side of some dusty reservation road by now. Instead, Arnold almost breaks his math teacher’s nose with a text book which ends up being the one act of defiance that saves him from his doomed fate.  Instead of a punishment, the teacher offers Arnold a confession that changes everything.  Imagine your ticket to freedom being buried in one simple truth?

            If you think life can be hard and being a teenager confusing, take a look at Arnold Spirit’s world.  His world is called the rez— a beautiful but very sad place set aside by the government to quarantine the Indians.  It’s on the rez where Junior’s alcoholic father shuts himself up in a room and his sister is called Mary Runs Away because she won’t leave the basement.  It’s on the rez where being a member of the tribe means you have to fight to the pulp, drink too much and get used to being pushed around just for being Indian. And contrary to what some folks believe, Indians living on the rez are dirt poor. Many of them live in broken down trailers that look like TV dinners and drive old cars.  So, when Arnold thinks about freedom, he’s thinking about surviving.  Luckily he isn’t afraid to ask why and he dreams life into his world by drawing funny cartoons—pics you’ll love just as much as his best friend Rowdy does because they’re really cool, clever even!  His cartoons are a masterful glimpse into his world, his part-time Indian, part-time basketball extraordinaire, part-time geek world. 

            Let me say this: this not a depressing story.  It’s sad at times, yes and you might even think—really, they live like that?  No way!  But, it’s really a story about winning.  It’s about getting to intimately know the song of the underdog and cheering him on every step of the way.  It’s the inside story on how this one lone Indian leaves the messed up world of the Indian reservation to find a whole new kind of mixed-up world outside—the world of an all-white, all American high school.  You see, that’s what the math teacher told him, he told him to leave the reservation and find hope. 

            This book will get you thinking about how saying goodbye and fear mixes in with poverty and how pain and a history of untimely death changes the meaning of things.  It will get you worked up about how some Indian dude can fall in love with a pretty white girl, make it on the basketball team and vomit in the toilet cause he’s got not money.  It’ll throw you for a loop and get deep, talk to you about what it means to be an Indian surviving a legacy of alcoholism.  In fact, this diary will probably make you question everything you’ve been taught about love, family and friendship and what’s really important in life but mostly— it will make you to laugh out loud.  It’s that simple, reading Arnold Spirit’s absolutely true diary is like listening to one guy’s real-life, no joke secrets about surviving. 

A Litte Bit about Arnold Spirit, aka Junior (The Protagonist)

            Let me tell you right off the bat that I want to be Arnold’s friend, or in the very least get a chance to see his comics, because the guy is funny and honest and weird and really,  someone who thinks about what’s really important in life.  Of course, I’ve always liked smart outsider types with a talent for drawing and telling a good story.  Funny how Arnold is also an awesome basketball player.  I really wouldn’t have guessed that since he described himself in the book as kind of dorky with big feet and crooked eye glasses, a lisp and prone to seizures.  How that turns out to be a star varsity player is a contradiction, sort of.  But you believe it’s possible because Arnold does a lot of growing up in the book, he just grows into himself with each turning page and he has this amazingly funny voice that kind of brings you along for a good ride.

            At the all-white high school, Arnold introduces himself as Junior and says everybody on the rez (short for reservation) is called Junior.  I was glad to learn his name was really Arnold Spirit, because this guy is so different than the typical “Junior” and even different compared to most of the male teenagers I’ve read about.  First, he has this uncanny way of making you laugh, cry and puke at the same time.  How is that possible? Like for example when he finds out his sister is dead. The guidance counselor at the school, who he describes as a fit type who’s old but still works out, hugs him and he can’t help thinking how turned on he is. I mean, can you imagine?  His sister, Mary Runs Away, gets burned up in her trailer started after a night of drunken debauchery—and Arnold, hugging the woman thinks like a weirdo teenager hot for an older woman. The truth is, Arnold is just super honest and is as close as you get to life.  That’s right, he’s a real-life kind of guy that doesn’t worry about saying it like it is.  And he’s so innocent about it which makes you wonder—does he really know how brilliant he is?

            He’s more sensitive than a lot of guys because he cries a lot and talks a great deal about how much he loves his best friend and he even doodles for him, too.  He says, “I draw cartoons to make him happy, to give him other worlds to live inside.”  That’s sensitive and deep.  But, you learn that Arnold cares deeply about everybody, even his sorry old math teacher who’s riddled with guilt but who Arnold understands is really just as lonely as the Indians. He’s sensitive and romantic about love and friendship in a way that probably made him a target for getting beaten up all the time, but regardless, there is no doubt that Arnold Spirit is confident about his masculinity.  He gets silly and stupid about girls, confesses he reads playboy magazines and a good part of his diary is dedicated to how he feels about Penelope, the white girl he meets at Reardan High School.  Come to think of it, Arnold never really stops talking about girls and his burgeoning sexuality.  At one point, after his best friend calls him a faggot (playfully) Arnold shirks it off in a mature and balanced way by making reference to the fact that Indians have a history of being open and tolerant.  That’s Arnold too.  He teaches you something about culture without even thinking, like how the Indians thought gays were divine in some way. 

            Overall, I’d say Arnold is an outsider but he’s comfortable in his own skin and doesn’t shy away from talking about the not-so-neat, strange and sometimes confusing grey areas life has to offer.

****

             Highly recommended read  for YA literature, Grade 9+ for critical literacy, culture, class, poverty & the Native American experience...and all else, for every teenager.

The New Proletariat

What can the new proletariat offer the world?     

     This question has been on my mind for a long time, the role of the proletariat in society, this modern day matrix in which we find ourselves today.  As I sit back and observe my life reflected in world events, localized and marginalized as a result of the current economic crisis— I feel in spirit with those who fought the French revolution, the Cinderellas and the Oliver Twists, Sir Piri Thomas of Down These Mean Streets, the Irish famine, the fight for India, the plight of the Native American, the War No More lyrics: "I'm gonna lay down my burden, down by the river side, down by the riverside, down by the riverside."  Although I have had the privilege of travel and completed many degrees, I am born of poor folk, working class people with history and stories, sweat and dreams deferred, the burden of a hard life whispering.

            Today’s proletariat is a different breed, I believe.  The notion that poor folk lack intelligence, unity and the ability to move beyond the simple, mindless, “petty” things we tend to busy ourselves with may be true for some (for even amongst ourselves we speak in code about the “element”) I’m convinced that the contemporary working class is far more intelligent and represents a far greater richness of diversity ever imagined.  It could be a direct result of social media and technology, this rapid development of a new intelligence that is nuanced and organic, born out of the need for survival.  It could also have something to do with the numbers. We must be in the billions, by now— the number of people on this earth that are forced to compromise themselves for a basic wage.  The odds are in our favor.

            The other night, while scanning my Kindle for a good book, I came across Charles Murray’s Real Education: Four Simple Truths.  Here is an excerpt from the description of the book:

            “America’s future depends on how we educate the academically gifted. An elite already runs the country, whether we like it or not.  Since everything we watch, hear, and read is produced by that elite, and since every business and government department is run by that elite, it is time to start thinking about the kind of education needed by the young people who will run the country.”

            When I read this, I felt a familiar sickness in my stomach.  It felt like the kind of vomit that sits in your gut and makes you slightly dizzy because you know you’re facing a reality that just a short time ago, you thought impossible, insane, inhumane, unbearable.  Murray articulates a world view that is raw and undoubtedly askew.  I’m not sure if it is entirely new, this classist perspective but it’s astoundingly overt and in some circles considered normal and mainstream.  We are living in a new society, aren’t we?  One in which people believe a good education and all that comes with it should only be provided to the rich or those deemed "gifted."  As an educator, how can I swallow this?  If the world is divided up like this, as in Maggie Simpson Longest Daycare short film where the tiny tot is sorted out by “intelligence” and sent to a miserable, art-less, color-less, resource-less, dangerous “classroom”  in the neighborhood Ayn Rand’s School—then what is my role here?  What can I do in a world in which the value of some children’s lives is rapidly diminishing?  The message is very clear.

             “An elite already runs the country, whether we like it or not.  Since everything we watch, hear, and read is produced by that elite, and since every business and government department is run by that elite, it is time to start thinking about the kind of education needed by the young people who will run the country.”

            When I participated in a course on Leadership & Management of Humanitarian Affairs, I realized that education is not the only field that reflects the new world order.  Rhetoric and the dissemination of humanitarian aid strategies based on pervasive class warfare fueled by systemic racism and the abuse of power over natural resources, coupled with the explicit reference to “norms” and the standardization of a global, professional elite who are convinced of their own superiority and incentivized to maintain control over “localized” communities permeates humanitarian discourse.  I am sure you will find the same in healthcare, the entire social service sector, the penal system and so on.

            What can the proletariat offer the new world?  What is our purpose?  Do we have something more to offer the world other than manual labor & mitigation?  If it is not already too late, can the proletariat put a halt to the dangerous course that we are headed? Can the working class do something to return the world back to its original experiment in trying to build a democratic egalitarian society?

            It’s hard to address these questions without knowing where we are in our journey, if its too late.  Like the war to save public education, “public” anything.  How can we know, really, the actual state we are in?  How many battles have been fought and lost and how many still remain, if any.

            Notwithstanding, just this weekend, I caught a glimpse into a new thought pattern.  That is why I am writing— in order to think it through before the flash escapes me.  Regardless of whether the elites have already overtaken the world, there does still remain a familiar framework in which we are all functioning, a framework that allows for critical thinking and essential examination of the functions of our society.  So, for the sake of argument, let’s say that we are in a transition in which there is still something to fight for—then there is still time to consider this: The new proletariat has one, very important, very unique advantage over the elite.  We “the people,” and I refer to those of us who are engaged in some way or another with social media and/or intelligent forms of communication—those of us who are acutely aware of the state of affairs and have articulated a passion to preserve the value of humanity—

            We the people are in the unique position to mediate a new standard of global existence. 

            What does that mean: mediate a new standard of global existence? 

            It means that the contemporary proletariat knows how to work with the poor world from a position of empathy and compassion rather than charity.  The new proletariat holds the power to build consensus without judgment and propose new forms of collaboration that do not perpetuate dependence but rather inter-dependence and mutual respect.

            In A Bed for the Night, David Rieff writes:

 “As I write, there are twenty seven major armed conflicts taking place in the world; 1.2 billion people are living on less than one dollar a day; 2.4 billion people have no access to basic sanitation; and 854 million adults, 543 million of them women, are illiterate.  One of the most important things that has happened over the course of the past fifty years is that the world has increasingly become divided into three parts: the small, under-populated commonwealth of peace and plenty that is North America, most of Europe and Japan; the part made up of Latin America, the former Soviet Union, China and India, in which wealth and poverty coexist and where the future is unclear; and finally, above all in the sub-Suharan Africa and an area stretching from Algeria to Pakistan, there is a vast, teeming dystopia of war and want whose future no decent and properly informed person should be able to contemplate without sadness, outrage and fear.”

            Then shortly after he adds,

“Of course, we in the West who live in such privilege should care more.  It is right to do so, and we all know that.  It is not as if, for all our comforts, we have forgotten to care… but, is it even possible for people who live in comfort to care deeply enough…?”

            There it is.  The glimmer of a new purpose, of hope.  Who is in such a unique position to care “deeply enough,” if it is not we the people who do not come from “such privilege,” but who have because of an education, hard work or luck, had access to some or all of the benefits of such “privileged” societies of peace and plenty?  Can this be it, the “new proletariat—?” A second or third generation middle class (or those who have recently fallen) who have lived both in the “poor world” and the privileged world simultaneously?  Is it possible that this sudden polarization, this shift into poverty consciousness for some, has created a new intelligentcia that has power, power to transcend differences, who can communicate a new vision, who can defend a worthy cause, build a third party?   Perhaps we are in a great transition and we “the people” are being prepared to become the great mediators of our time, mediators for a new world peace. 

Disunion

By Andrés Castro

Is there code to escape this ear piercing

siren? Buddha? Tibetan singing bowls

with their long sustaining harmonies?

How did I arrive in this space this time?

I am here again in a merciless universe,

where a cold Black Hole is pulling

the top of my head away from the rest
of me; I am being insanely stretched out.

I am a long thin elasticity trailing behind

a grotesquely distorted skull projectile,
close to losing all feeling in this form;

I have become a trite cartoonish figure.

Then there is the familiar hungry ache

to walk barefoot in warm white sand,

without one lie visible on the horizon,
and all the lies behind me disappearing.

Who will reconfigure me this morning?
Is only a feverish wish for immortality,
stoked by naïve vanity and childish fear
enough to rescue breaking bones and skin?

In two weeks I will be fifty-four years
old; my grown-up son suggests therapy.

~Andrés Castro is the Managing Editor of The Teacher's Voice and is listed in the Directory of Poets & Writers.

The Illusionist

Sitting across the table from you, Sir/Madam—

I see you are the chosen one hiding the draw key.

I say, my how young you look, younger than expected, perhaps.

You say, ‘just enough’ and your blue breath spirals between us like confetti.

Poof! A spell is cast and we are left dazed.

Follow me just, follow me, just the eyes.

 

Mask on. 

Mask off. 

Mask on. 

Mask off. 

My degrees run laps around the table, then fall exhausted to the floor.

With each question, I recalculate my size and wait.

One must consider the risk, you say, and switch.

Please, Sir/Madame. I need the...humanity.

Let’s weigh that in, shall we?  But, can you make yourself smaller?

Mask on.

Mask off.

Mask on. 

Mask off. 

Calm like humidity simmering, I wait. A book slams shut.

This is how democracy works, you say, the process is paramount.

Two young teachers swathed in velvet robes begin to float and I gasp.

We mustn't discourage them, say!  But, what of the children?

Mask on. 

Mask off.

Mask on. 

Mask off. 

With a flip of my wrist, my seminal book appears. Piss off, I say.

Follow me, just the eyes! With all due respect, Sir/Madam—

But the book vanishes and I know we are both left in Oblivion grey.

Mask on.

Mask off.

Mask on. 

Mask off. 

A rain storm gathers outside the tall window overlooking the city—

The curtain drops, leaving several white pages dating back to 1996 on the table. 

Mask on.

Mask off.

Back on the street, the black cape falls into a puddle the size of a moat. 

Mask off.

Carrots & Sticks

What motivates educators?

        This is not just about merit pay.  This is about seriously thinking about why people follow or allow governments, corporations, and/or institutions of power to move ahead agendas that are fundamentally against education.  Mind you, I can replace the word “education,” in this sentence with any term that refers to the betterment of humanity—words like equity, tolerance, peace, green-- but for the sake of this piece I will focus on education, which I believe encompasses all of these things since education is fundamentally about preparing for our collective future.  Peter DeWitt in his article in Education Week, What Does It Mean to Be an Educational Leader writes that “Educational leaders are really tired of following through on mandates that are not good for education.” I responded on Twitter: Change won’t happen unless every educator refuses to follow mandates that are not good for education. But even as I wrote that, I heard how simplistic I might sound, how someone from out in the field might say: It’s not easy to put your foot down.  It’s not easy to take a stand, not easy to stop doing what you’re being asked to do even though in your heart of hearts you know that ultimately you’re a cog in the wheel of massive destruction— and yes, I think it’s fair to say that most of us are implicated in the destruction of our public education system. If you are not saying “No!” and stopping what you do, completely and entirely, refusing to do something that you know is wrong, then you are following & allowing.  And for those of you who consider yourselves “diehard activists” and believe that you have to change the system from within, please, don’t fret.  I’m just making an argument, here.  Appease me.

          Susan Riley writes, “Maybe [the education system] needs a rest or it’s just overloaded?  Maybe it needs to ‘reboot?’” (Reimagining Your Parameters).  I think we need to take this notion a step further.  I think we need to really consider our role in changing things and understand what benefits we are receiving from keeping things moving in the direction its going.  I think we need to consider how the bigger machinery works and identify our very special role within it.  Why is it hard to say “No?”  Why is it hard to do the right thing, especially now, especially in the field of education?  We are talking about a system with long roots in school reform that has historically had a devastating impact on the poor and people of color, aren’t we?  Yet, something is new, now, isn’t it?  It’s spreading.  The same greedy hands that have always manipulated education for the poor and predominantly brown schools in the US are digging into communities that have not had to deal with this onslaught of data driven decision making, high paid Harvard & TC consultants experimenting, researching & testing (why just about the whole body of research on whole school reform has been obtained on the backs of poor schools & students of color—Diane Ravitch knows that, ask her, she’s brilliant and she’s been documenting the machine for a billion years!), publishing company driven competition, private management & business bottom line thinking. 

          This is so much more than just merit pay.  Even though it's necessary to understand motivation & the err of carrot & stick policies, read Diane’s blog: the New York Times Editorial is Clueless. Because it is precisely “the carrot & the stick” that is getting conscientious educators to squirm in their seats!  Educators who, according to Ravitch are professionals for Christs sake!— not donkeys.  She’s referring to the surprising truth about motivation: Once you get above rudimentary cognitive skill—higher rewards lead to poorer performance.

          Research says that when a task requires creative, critical or conceptual thinking—more money (the carrot) does not motivate for better performance.  Of course, employers have to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table, that is, so that they can think about the work, not money.  But after that, the following are the 3 key motivators for better performance: autonomy, mastery & purpose.

         Take a look at this wonderful animated talk on motivation:

          So, if this is the case, then why in the field of education, purportedly undergoing a radical shift from public to private in order to benefit from the ideals of “good business,” are we motivating educators with carrots?  Are we suggesting that educators are not (or should not be) creative, conceptual, critical thinking professionals with the capacity to innovate?

AUTONOMY, MASTERY, PURPOSE

          My best guess is the system is made up of very real people and people are very concerned with their own families, their own survival, and micromanaging fears (fears that are exasperated & exploited in the current climate).  There is a long list of incentives that get people to follow through with/allow mandates that go against the very heart of education.  Here are a few, very real rationales for not stopping the machine (not even for a momentary “reboot”):  

“At least I’m working”  

“How can I effect change unless I’m in it?”

“Other people’s children”

“This too shall pass”

“It’s really not that bad, it’s about compromise & embracing change”

“It wasn’t working before, so we need to try something completely new”

“Frankly, they got me by the balls”

          When I think about all these very real challenges, I hear a lot of individuals feeling alone and isolated.  Even though there are groups all over the US (and the globe for that matter) that are advocating for education and fighting for the rights of those who are experiencing the worst consequences of the reform—my sense is that there is no real comprehensive coalition being built (and if I’ve missed one, please let me know!) – that at any given moment could galvanize every leader, every educator in the country to STOP working and say “No, we will not open school today under these circumstances! We are all going to take a day of rest to reflect upon what is going on and where we really want to go.”  Imagine that? Imagine the impact that might have, everybody refusing to open the school doors, together?

          What if there were such a possibility, in which there was enough unity around the simple idea that “we can no longer continue on with business as usual” because we are not only stomping out the lives and opportunities of the most disenfranchised in society but because we are also stomping out what we professionals value the most.  Imagine?

Independence Day

Excerpt from Losing the Middle: Essays & Ramblings from the Disappearing Middle Class 

            I walk to a small lake to drop in some money.  The change in my pocket is my offering to the universe.  If I were a Cuban priestess in training, I would have cut up a rooster with a meat cleaver and thrown that into the water as well.  But I’m not.  I’m just me-- so throwing a couple of pennies and a quarter into the murky lake feels like plenty.

 It’s eight in the morning and the Bronx is out early setting up tables, chairs and charcoal bins.  Several small groups have gathered in the park right next to the train station.  A middle-aged brown-skinned woman wearing long white shorts, a bright yellow t-shirt and sneakers unloads her car.  She has short hair, glasses propped on her nose and lip-gloss.  She reminds me of my dead aunt.  It could be the caramel brown of her calves or her moon round glasses but I get the feeling that it’s more than that—like, maybe that woman and my aunt share the same state of grace.  My aunt had the kind of spirit that made you feel glad to be born even if you were setting up a picnic on the side of a congested road…in a patch of grass…in the Bronx. 

            I follow a small path that heads through the park. I watch Black and Latino families with their shopping carts filled with aluminum foil covered trays, soda, potato chips and bottled water.  A group of teenage boys with sagging dungarees, long t-shirts and baseball caps sit around a milk crate playing cards.  Hanging over them is my aunt’s peach shower curtain and moonshine grin.  This is poor in New York City, I think.  Passing time on July 4th playing cards on an old milk crate in a public park surrounded by a few dented garbage cans. 

            Independence Day is the day we pay tribute to the men and women who died fighting for our freedom.  I wonder how many of these people sitting in the park have family members dying overseas in one of the perpetual wars in the Middle East or have sons being tortured in solitary confinement in one of New York’s jails?  I wonder how many feel they live in “the land of the free?”  If my aunt were listening, she’d tsk, tsk, tsk me and say my interrogation was disrespectful.  Even though she worked the last fifteen, twenty years in a hospital in New Jersey and had to fight to save her health benefits at the end when diagnosed with cancer—my aunt believed in America.  Even though she died penniless, her few belongings stuffed into several closets in her 1000 square foot apartment, a Latina woman who experienced the same discrimination and struggle as any —my aunt believed in America.

The plight of the poor in America is the ultimate paradox, I think.  It’s hard to live in a country that spends billions of dollars on the military while you live a life of bondage, a minimum wage, underemployment and a glass ceiling.  I think about how President Obama just signed over 70 billion dollars to Israel because he said we must protect them from harm and show how our friendship is unshakable.  I think about the ten human rights activists killed by Israeli snipers bound for the Gaza strip a few years ago, the horrific pictures of African immigrants suffering in Tel Aviv being passed around on Twitter and the Palestinian families forced to live in a ghetto.  I think about Trayvon Martin and Chi-raq.  I think about Stop and Frisk, Bloomberg and the hundreds and hundreds of poor black and brown children being bullied in their schools that are being sold out to large corporations who mask their greed by shouting philanthropy, school reform and innovation. I think about Arizona and the dismantling of critical thinking programs and the banning of good books.  I think about how “illegal” Latinos are being accused of stealing government benefits and supposedly that’s why our country is in an economic crisis—not the big banks nor the wealthy corporate backed politicians who can afford to pay $40,000 for a plate food. I think about how I have nothing left to sell, living unemployed for over a year now, my family has officially hit a level of poverty and debt that I fear we won’t ever recover from and I ask, really? Should we be celebrating Independence Day at all?  Then I look around at the poor folks around a picnic table and I wonder, do you guys get it?  Do you understand what’s going on in the world? I’m not being elitist, I’m just asking because somebody once told me that thinking globally is a commodity for the rich. 

A dark skinned woman rolls her mother pass me in a wheelchair. The old woman is my grandmother who is also dead.  She has no teeth and Alzheimer’s disease.  Passing by her, I smell my grandma’s kitchen and the fourteenth hand of Rummy-Five-Hundred while she babysat me and my brother.   I walk around the back of the park to the track and start running wildly as I see myself come apart into one big jigsaw puzzle made up of a thousand pieces.  I feel the pain, the love, the pity and joy even!  It occurs to me that I am all those people back there, all those poor people in the park are my puzzle.

            By the time I get to the lake, I’m feeling compartmentalized.  I stare at the water for a long time.  I imagine the distant highway disappearing.  The city streets turn into gravy and the helicopter that flies overhead becomes one big firefly in the sky. All the clouds take on miraculous forms and I swear I see roman numerals up there spelling out a hidden message.  Later, I think, I’ll look them up in my book of dreams.  What does my life mean now that everything I’ve ever relied on has come undone? What does it mean, Dios mio?

I fumble around in my pockets and find three pennies and a quarter. That’s four wishes, I think, or rather three small wishes and one big wish if I conjure up my father’s mathematically precise spirit.  I look out over the lake and pray.  I want God to know a few things.  I want him to know that I’m a good person and that I work hard and care about people. I say, I know I’ve experienced adversity in my life but I haven’t had to endure the much greater sorrows of life, like those sufferings I read about in books.  I think about Rwanda and Anne Frank and the slave ships.  I think about India.  I think about the real poor like what I know about in the ghettos of New York or even my in-laws who lived through the Spanish Civil War who washed themselves with a pail of water and ate stale bread for dinner if they were lucky.  I think about how I’m grateful that my suffering is not the greatest suffering but I’m angry, I say, because my suffering is still great enough to say something, to say something to God and to the world all over because it’s real and I’m not alone in my silent day to day fear.  I worry about my children every day because we have so few choices now. I’m scared that even though I’ve done everything and still continue to do everything possible to find a job, pay the rent, I’m losing. 

I throw three pennies into the water one at a time.

Splash, circle, circle. 

Splash, circle, circle. 

Splash, circle, circle. 

I watch the circles spread out from the center like a drain sucking water out into the opposite direction.  It reminds me of a museum exhibit about sound waves and the conversation Jeff Blume has in Jurassic Park about the butterfly effect.  I watch the rings grow on and on until they blend in with the natural current of the lake and the surface returns to its natural state of tranquility.

Then the heaviness of the silver quarter in my hand calls me.  It’s the twenty-five cent bubble gum weight of it.  This time I want God to know that I am ready to embrace abundance.  I tell him that I am ready to go back out into the world.  I tell him that I have learned my lessons well and that I will make him proud.  I promise him that with my skills I will teach peace.  I stare out into the lake and spot a porthole. With all my might I throw the heavy quarter and it slam-dunks right in.  Bam!  Splash, circle, circle, circle, circle.

A zillion circles ripple out!

Man, I’m so impressed with my aim that I forget my wish.  It just disappears into the absolute silence of the moment as if wishes don’t need to exist.  I feel one with the universe and I’m a Zen master just then.

I head back in the same direction I had come from.  I decide there’s no harm in walking through the park because now all my heavy emotions have slipped out of my hand and the people out there will just be strangers.  I was all left-brained again.