Three Beautiful Things 06/02/09: Father Daughter Sweetness, Strong Walk, King Lear Chickens Out

1. The painter hired on his daughter today to help out with prep. I enjoyed seeing her work so hard for her dad. Their mutual respect and good rapport with each other was sweet.

2. I took a walk to 7-11 and back, about twelve blocks round trip, and tried to pick up my pace a bit. I'm feeling stronger.

3. During tonight's vigorous thunder and lightning storm, with the accompanying downpour of rain, I felt like being King Lear, opening my bare chest to the elements, and shouting, "Pour on! I will endure!" But I didn't. Instead, I went grocery shopping.

Sibling Assignment #73: Shakespeare and the Mystery of the Meaning of Life

It's time to really get back in the swing of things on this blog. I'm dreadfully behind in writing sibling assignments, so one of the first things I'll do is caught up.

InlandEmpireGirl raised this question for Sibling Assignment #73:

As the school year here is the assignment. Write about a school experience that was significant to your school life. Describe the experience and why it was significant.

InlandEmpireGirl remembers being a public poet in the sixth grade here and Silver Valley Girl explores arriving at a deeper understanding of the relevance of essay writing, here.


When I enrolled at Whitworth College in 1974, I don't know what I thought I would discover through my study of Shakespeare. The Shakespeare course was required for my English major. Eileen, whom I would marry in two years, loved Shakespeare and we decided to take the course together.

In my two years at North Idaho College, almost all of my study of literature was concentrated in the twentieth century. I fell in love with the modern study of stories and poems that explored the lonely, alienated condition of the human being in an empty and meaningless world and the great weight of responsibility the modern human being carried to make meaning out of h/her existence in a world devoid of essential meaning.

I had experienced this meaninglessness in the summer of 1973 when I was nearly killed at the Bunker Hill Zinc Plant. The accident resulted from a random human error. It was purposeless, unprovoked, and unrelated to whether I was a good person or to anything I did.

I was blinded. During the days I was blind, my eyes turned inward and within myself I saw the very nothingness that modern writers explored as the one universal truth about life. I confronted the benign indifference of the universe within myself.

I came to believe that forging meaning in such an empty world was up to me. Through my study of literature at North Idaho College, I obsessively worked to figure out the meaning of my life and life itself.

When I commenced my study of Shakespeare, I thought I would find in Shakespeare's plays a well-ordered world, free of the absurdity of the modern world. I thought I would find these plays outdated, irrelevant to the struggles of my existential crisis.

The first day of the course, our professor, Dean Ebner, introduced Shakespeare by telling us that we would be entering into an exploration of the meaning of life. I gasped. Why would studying Shakespeare's plays and his characters involve exploring life's meaning? I thought that "back then" it was figured out and that it was thanks to the obliterating impact of the two world wars in the twentieth century that the meaning of life had been erased. I thought the question of life's meaning was a modern question.

Early in the course, the plays did not shake me up. I didn't feel the tremors of anxiety and doubt about the meaning of life I had felt studying modern literature.

But then we studied Othello. Iago began to shake me. I couldn't believe that an "old writer" from the turn of the 16th into the 17th century could have imagined and created such an amoral and duplicitous character so energetically committed to evil. I couldn't believe Iago's glee.

I was reading Othello in the basement of South Warren Hall and began to tremble. The character Othello was in an existential predicament. The world of loyalty and trust that Othello had assumed to be intact started to unravel. Absurdity, chaos, unpredictablity, all engineered by Iago became the dominant reality of his world. He couldn't make sense of it. Fear and rage fuelled by his outrage at the deterioration of his world view began to destroy him from within himself. Othello lurched from extreme distraction to murderous calm, unable to forge meaning out of his disillusion.

I was getting it. There is no such thing "back then". It hit me. Human beings have always wrestled with how to make sense out life, out of the excruciating demands of mutablility, out of the pain and disillusion of things in life never being what we might idealize them to be.

As we moved forward to Hamlet and especially King Lear, I spent more and more time leaving my dorm room and walking through the November fog that encased the towering pine trees on Whitworth's campus, feeling the passion of Shakespeare's tragedies, exploring how my life at this very young age paralleled the uncertainty, painful self-exploration, loss of idealism, and riddling mysteries Shakespeare brought to life in the actions and interior monologues of these characters.

To this day, thirty-four years later, Shakespeare is the philosopher and artist I look to with the most trust to help me understand what a dicey, often unfair, and inherently contradictory experience human life is.

Shakespeare's plays and poetry helped light my understanding of all other writers and all other philosophers I've studied.

It was through my study of Shakespeare that I have come to understand the complexity of the stories of the Bible and the parables and poetic words of Jesus.

No other writer has so profoundly shaped my perceptions, insight, wisdom, or understanding of love, war, politics, despair, redemption, restoration, human nature, and the condition of human life itself.

King Lear and Jesse Ventura

Katrina, my good blog friend over at the exquisite Notes on a Napkin wrote in response to my recent post detailing the wild dream I had about Jesse Ventura and plastic surgery, here, wrote this comment:

And I thought I had weird dreams! Maybe this is your subconscious mind warning you of the ills of plastic surgery. I hope you're not considering having any work done, RP. It would be the death knell for your acting career, for one thing. It's hard to play King Lear when your skin is stretched so tight you can't blink, let alone evince all the requisite wrinkles that a good Lear demands.

I love the thought of ever being able to play the role of King Lear, but I barely have the chops to play an attendant to Cordelia.

However, I did attend a Halloween party in 1995 as King Lear:

The Night I Never Hugged Bob Dylan

The night I never hugged Bob Dylan began with a foul note from Benny's mom in the late afternoon.

It was April, 1997.

Benny's Mom's fiftieth birthday fell on Shakespeare's 433rd and I'd bought Oregon Shakespeare Festival King Lear tickets to celebrate, along with a night in a bed and breakfast.

Her note jammed in my back door called the outing off and, for me, called off the thing we'd had going for over a year. We never went out again.

Dave and Dave came by later and we drove to Portland to the Aladdin Theater and so began the night I never hugged Bob Dylan.

I'd seen Peter Himmelman live once before at the Back Door in Seattle in 1996 the night my Twisp friend Bill Davie opened for him and Sherman Alexie laughed at Bill's quips and doubled over in joy at Himmelman's jokes.

Peter Himmelman creates a living room on stage with couch and coffee table and candles and at some point in the show he invites audience members to make themselves at home on stage.

I didn't know he did this when I saw Peter Himmelman at the Back Door in Seattle.

When Dave and Dave picked me up after I read Benny's Mom's note I was feeling the free, loose way I feel after a thing with a girl ends and I told Dave and Dave that if Peter Himmelman put out a call for couch sitters at the Aladdin tonight I was going. I would spring to my feet the second I heard him start to mention it.

I followed through.

On the night I never hugged Bob Dylan, Peter Himmelman was part way through his first set when he started to say how nice the couch and candles and coffee table were on stage and did anyone and before he could say want to join him I jumped to my feet and started down the aisle and jumped on the stage at the Aladdin Theater to be with Peter Himmelman.

Later Dave and Dave came up and we all had beards and Peter called us Dave and the Beards.

I was happy to be a member of Dave and the Beards on stage with Peter Himmelman. I had bought his tape Strength to Strength in a shop in Newport the summer before, a few months after Sherman Alexie was in the house at the Back Door and I loved to pop the tape in my player and open the front door wide and plant irises and dig plots in the front yard while dancing with my shovel to "Woman with the Strength of 10,000 Men".

I'd made Benny's Mom a Peter Himmelman tape and a Bill Davie tape, too, and she called them my boys when she told me she loved those tapes and so with Benny's Mom now gone from my love life it seemed right to be on stage with Peter Himmelman.

I didn't know when I was on stage with Peter Himmelman that he would ask me to dance.

At one point he turned to me, out of mike reach, and said, "Bill, do you do interpretive dance?"

I was feeling loose and free and the stakes were low and I was taking Improv. Acting at Lane Community College and I said yes, I do interpretive dance.

Peter motioned me forward and told the packed house at the Aladdin Theater that I was an interpretive dancer and that I would perform to his song "Wrapped Up in Cellophane" (hear it here).

I didn't know the song. I listened keenly as Peter Himmleman sang and I was feeling loose and free and kept the stakes low and I floated, tried to keep my 235 pound third string rugby halfback body light, and convinced the packed house at the Aladdin Theater that I felt this song and my body swayed to my feelings and the audience believed I had cellophane in my hands while at key moments in the song I mummified myself in cellophane.

It was the night I never hugged Bob Dylan.

After the show, audience members mobbed me. I felt loose and free and grinned broadly and shook people's hands as they slapped my back and laughed and thanked me for my dance.

Still, I never hugged Bob Dylan.

After I was done with my dance, in front of the packed house at Aladdin Theater, Peter Himmelman hugged me so close I could smell the garlic from the green room pizza on his breath.

Peter Himmelman is Bob Dylan's son-in-law.

He could tell I felt loose and free.

He thanked me for my dance.

We hugged.

It was the night I never hugged Bob Dylan.

But, I was close.

Three Beautiful Things 10/14/07: Cinematic, Problem Solving, Courage

1. I was rendered speechless by the Lane Community College Student Productions Association's cinematic stage presentation of "King Lear". I was so moved by the production of this play that I can hardly write about it yet.

2. I have started receiving student essays written in Microsoft Word 2007. The documents can't be read in Word 2007. I went searching for a solution and found one and now I can read these documents. Six months ago, I would have despaired and not even thought to look for a solution and I'm very happy that I'm becoming a more assertive problem solver about such things. The solution, by the way, was not difficult. I just needed to think to look for it and once I did, finding it was easy, too. This is a big step forward for me.

3. The story "Speaking of Courage" in Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" is brilliant.

Three Beautiful Things 06/16/07: Cast, Relaxed, Peccadillo

1. My teaching schedule in the fall keeps me from being a spear carrier or some other minor role in the LCC fall production of King Lear, BUT I went to the first cast meeting today and listened to a first reading of about three scenes. Oh my! Sparky has cast the play beautifully and even this early I could feel great chemistry among the cast and could easily imagine these seated actors making their way through the language in a cold reading becoming becoming splendid characters in this huge and mighty play.

2. This quarter I decided to forego giving as much energy to my blog and more energy and commitment to staying caught up in my paper reading and grading. I've been much more relaxed and with grades due on Tuesday, I've read every paper handed in to me as of now. Some stragglers with still hand in papers in the next couple of days, with my blessing, but I do not have that feeling of being overwhelmed and anxious as my grade submission deadline approaches.

3. Molly's boyfriend, our guest for the next month, fixed a wonderful Cuban dish, Peccadillo, for us tonight. It was exquisitely simple and down home. It was a well-spiced tomato, ground beef sauce flavored with green olives and served over jasmine rice. It inspired talk all through dinner of other dinners we could prepare and eat in the coming week. Nothing fancy. Just more good meals were being discussed and planned. Hiram's presence is invigorating our family life.

Three Beautiful Things 05/16/07: Hugo, Never, Flash

1. I gave a written lecture on my indebtedness to the poet Richard Hugo in October, 2002, to mark the twentieth anniversary of his death. I reworked it tonight to deliver to our students in the American Working Class Lit/Research Writing class.

2. Reid claimed he had never written poetry before and presented a most insightful poem to the Shakespeare class today, built around King Lear's utterance of "Never, never, never" as he grieves over his dead daughter, Cordelia.

3. It's a small thing, but it felt really productive and good today to consolidate three flashdrives of files into one. I have a much better sense of where things are!

Three Beautiful Things 05/14/07: Straddlers, Lear?, Giddy

1. I have nearly finished the compelling book, Limbo: Blue Collar Roots, White Collar Dream by Alfred Lubrano, a book of over 100 interviews plus Lubrano's excellent insights into the way people feel who have moved out of the working class into the middle class. I don't know when I last related so deeply to a book.

2. Is the conclusion of King Lear nihilistic? Inspiring? What do we learn from King Lear? These questions anchored today's thoughtful discussion in class.

3. Snug goes jumpity, yelpy nuts when Molly comes home because she often takes the dogs out back to play "ball".

Three Beautiful Things 05/09/07:Beauty, Lear, Limbo

1. Jane King wrote me a lovely email. It included the following passage:

I'm a part of this little group that meets each Wednesday to discuss
the lectionary texts for the week. This is a comment for this week
in connection with Psalm 67 that I read this morning in DISCIPLINES,
an Upper Room Publication. I believe the author is Rene A. Perez:

"Many years ago I heard about a high school teacher whose husband
unexpectedly died of a heart attack. About a week after his death,
she shared some of her insight with her students: "Each of us is put
here on earth to learn, share, love, appreciate, and give of
ourselves. None of us knows when this fantastic experience will end.
It can be taken away at any moment. Perhaps this is God's way of
telling us that we must make the most out of every single day. So I
would like you all to make me a promise. From now on, on your way to
school or on your way home, find something beautiful to notice. It
doesn't have to be something you see, it could be a scent--perhaps of
freshly baked bread wafting from a house or the sound of the breeze
slightly rustling the leaves in the trees or the way the morning
light catches one autumn leaf as it falls gently to the ground.
Please look for these things and cherish them. For these things are
the "stuff" of life, the little things we are put here on earth to
enjoy, the things we often take for granted. It becomes important to
notice them, for at any time it can all be taken away."

2. I received the kindest email from my student Katy who had done a fiercely beautiful painting of King Lear during the storm on the heath. She was grateful that making art was a project option.

3. I listened to a superb radio interview with Artur Lubrano, author of Limbo: Blue-collar Roots, White-collar Dreams. He discussed how his book explores the difficulty of blue collar family kids making the move out of the working class into the middle class. I have written about this about myself and his work more than validated some of my insights about the limbo people like me feel having made this move.

Three Beautiful Things 04/30/07: Monday, Deliberations, Comic and Tragic

1. Every night I put a baseball game on XM Radio and am almost impervious to what's happening in the game and am more interested in how each play by play announcer and fellow analyst narrates the game, an especially difficult task in baseball when almost the entire game lacks action. Tonight I listened to Rick Monday. Average.

2. I observed, mostly, and offered a few highly non-binding observations to the Denali editorial board as they deliberated over what written pieces to publish. I'm the magazine's literary advisor.

3. I gave as compelling and comprehensive a lecture as I have ever given today, addressing the complexities of Act III in King Lear. Recent trends in instruction tend to discourage lectures, but today I said to hell with trends: I let it rip. I sensed my students were captivated. I hope so.

Three Beautiful Things 04/18/07: Projects, Teaching, Stealin'

1. My Shakespeare students can present non-essay projects to meet what would normally be an essay assignment and I was proud and excited by the work they did today: one graphic design student made a spare, gorgeous poster for a performance of King Lear; another wrote and performed a searing song; another brought a mirror she shattered and etched lines from the play along with an image of the shattered King Lear; another wrote an insightful poem about the feelings driving Edmund. There were others, all good, all bringing beauty to the study of King Lear .

2. I spent all afternoon and evening working on a series of projects to supplement my instruction and hope that my students find these supplements helpful.

3. On Napster I found the song "Stealin'" by Uriah Heep and remembered the late Friday afternoons that Scott and I played this song before going to Jekyll and Hydes to drink beer and play pool and often to hit the road to go watch the Kellogg Wildcats play away games. Once we went to Sandpoint by way of Athol and in Sandpoint we drank at the Middle Earth Tavern and then enjoyed watching the Wildcats beat the Sandpoint Bulldogs handily.

Sunday Scribblings: Secret Identity

Sunday Scribblings posts a new prompt each week about Friday/Saturday and invites submissions. If you like writing assignments for your blog, check it out. This week's prompt: Secret Identity.




IMMEDIATELY, I think of Shakespeare's play King Lear. In the first act, the eighty-year-old king, in a fit of rashness, banishes the daughter who loves him most, Cordelia, and the subject most loyal to him, Kent.

Kent leaves. He returns. He disguises himself as Caius. Caius becomes Kent's secret identity.

I've thought long and hard over the years about Kent being in disguise and I've concluded that Shakespeare intensifies the chaos and danger of this world of King Lear by portraying the way that in a world of evil, those who are good must assume a secret identity in order not to be killed. But it's more than survival. Kent must deceive the king to serve him. He cannot do the good he wants to do with his actual identity. He must mask it. He must assume a secret identity.

It's one of my favorite and most complex ideas the runs through Shakespeare's play: virtuous deceit. In order to be good and to try to do good, characters like Rosalind, Friar Lawrence, the Friar in Much Ado About Nothing, Hermione and Paulina in The Winter's Tale, Puck, and others cannot be openly good. They have to apply poison to poison and cure deceit by being deceitful.

Shakespeare seems obsessed with how can one be moral in a mutable world. He distrusts the idea that moral codes should remain fixed or static when the world itself is always in flux. He never asks it outright, but implicitly he suggests that to make the best and most moral response, characters, and, in turn, we must be morally alert and flexible. We cannot apply the same moral code to each thing that happens. Shakespeare almost always portrays flexibility as morally superior to rigidness.

I act on this a lot in my work as a community college English instructor where I work with myriads of different students who come to my classes from a wide variety of contexts. Many of my students are in deep trouble of one kind or another. They might be freshly released from prison. They might be in deep poverty. They might be recovering from drug addiction. They might be starting over after divorce. They might be trying to gain confidence and purpose after having been beaten up and trapped in a cruel marriage.

As I work with these different students together in the classroom, I portray a fairly consistent identity as an instructor. It's an identity (or a persona) different than my one at home or when I'm playing poker with friends in Kellogg. It's a secret identity to people who don't know me as an instructor. My identity elsewhere is a secret to my students.

As an instructor to these many different students, I sometimes assume a secret identity with some of these students in my office or away from class. It's an identity I can't always show the whole class. More often than not, it's a more lenient person, a person who is willing to bend institutional rules, deceive the college, in you will, in order to help the student and possibly give the student a break.

Like King Lear in the beginning of Shakespeare's play, officers charged to run institutions are very suspicious of rules being bent or broken. They operate in an imagined reality where to treat people equally, you must treat them the same.

I know this isn't true. To treat people equally is to treat them justly. I treat my students equally in this regard. But justice and fairness can have multiple faces, and often in order to do the right thing, I must assume a secret identity, and like Kent, do what I think is right from behind a disguise or a mask.

This virtuous deceit, in my work and elsewhere, has done more to help me live with a clear conscience than any other factor in my life.

Three Beautiful Things 04/09/07: Edmund, Autobiogaphies, Laugh

1. Reading closely, with my students, the Act I, ii soliloquy of Edmund as he argues his amoral devotion to Nature, nature which he defines as amoral, as the goddess of the strongest being the ones who survive. He is especially motivated by his hatred of custom which has branded his bastardy as base.

2. Reading my research writing students' intellectual, philosophical, educational autobiographies and learning about their backgrounds, ways of thinking, personalities, and experiences.

3. Making a stressed out Linda laugh when I said about a loud person we work with: He is risen, He is risen indeed. I think Sarah woke him up.

Three Beautiful Things 03/02/07: Shakespeare, Sleep, Champions

1. When was the last time I had my own course to teach in Shakespeare? I can't remember. But I get to teach Shakespeare this quarter and it was really fun looking at the opening thirty-five or so lines of "King Lear" and see how much of the whole play of Lear is in those opening lines.

2. I slept this afternoon in a kind of coma, thanks to my late arrival in Eugene last night and my getting up early to go teach.

3. The Florida Gators beat the Oregon Ducks in the round of eight in the NCAA tournament. Tonight Florida won the national championship and it felt good to have the team that eliminated the Ducks be the national championship.