Labyrinth

Posted on by Dale

On Monday, Labor Day, I went to my back yard and began tidying up, cutting down shrubberies and generally just taking a hard look at it. I used to joke that I landscaped nine square feet a year back there, only that was true, not a joke. But since I’m not here during the summer, the back yard has gone if not to ruin at least to deshabille.

Long ago I had nice brick edgings, a brick step path, several little plantings, and a garden bench. Now, most of the bricks are under dirt or moss, the plantings have been swallowed up by ivy, and I’d be afraid to sit on the bench.

Still, it is the navel, as it were, of the Lichtenbergian world, so I’ve been thinking about actually turning it into a kind of place… you know, a place.

I’m thinking I want a labyrinth back there.

No, not a maze. A labyrinth. A maze is a puzzle, involving choice and angst. A labyrinth is a single path that arrives at the center through many twists and turns, but you cannot get lost.

This is a labyrinth, the most basic kind, the classic 7-circuit labyrinth. It is what I will be building in my back yard. It’s a left-handed one, since you turn left upon entering it.

The lore of the labyrinth is long and compelling. I won’t go into it all here, only to say that for me it is very compelling indeed. I have built one three times (which is different than building three labyrinths), and the tattoo on my leg is of a Spanish paleolithic rock-carving of this very pattern.

The three I built were all at my school. The first one was the result of an article I had read in one of my magazines, about how hospitals were having these built into their gardens and that there was some evidence to suggest that patients who trod the labyrinth, rather than just walked for their exercise, recovered more quickly. This seemed to true especially for patients who were recovering from brain injuries.

At the time (the late 90s), Newnan Crossing served a population that required a great deal of remediation. For one of the intersessions we did — we were year-round at the time — I had a math teacher challenge his students to build one of these. We got a $1,000 grant from somewhere, I taught them how to draw, and Home Depot came to the school to show the kids their options for ground cover, materials for outlining the pattern, etc. Teams had to come up with a design and a proposal for materials. The motive was for them to learn their multiplication facts, but we would also end with a labyrinth in our courtyard, and I figured that if our kids walked on this thing, hey, like the brain injury patients, it couldn’t hurt, might help.

Here it is, after the kids helped get all those fence rails into place and we had most of the mulch spread out. It had wide paths so that many kids could play in it at once, and it had straight sides because it was cheaper and easier (as you’ll see in its next incarnation.)

This was set in between the two wings of the school. I was very clever, since we were going to be under construction starting that summer, to check the floorplans and make sure we wouldn’t be caught up in the debris. I got it finished on the Sunday before I drove to GHP that summer.

Foolish man. That very week, the principal was horrified to walk out one morning to see the bulldozers tearing it up. There was a walkway being built across the courtyard that was not in the plans we’d been given.

I waited a couple of years before trying again. This time, my brother-in-law Daniel designed and built a four-foot-tall concrete sundial, and we designed a labyrinth to go around that on the new playground.

Here it is. We got the lawn edgers laid out, and I was only halfway through getting them in the ground before I was told that the sundial was dangerous and had to come out.

We moved it to the front of the school, where it still stands and where I use it in my lessons about shadows and the sun with kindgarteners.

Then I was told I had to move the labyrinth itself because playground equipment was going to go there. Again, I had checked before putting it up there.

So I moved it all back to the courtyard and tried again. I had a webpage on my site where I listed the times I would be working on it, and that information went home in the school newsletter, but I never had any help on this version. (Three dads were magnificent in getting the sundial up and going.)

I finally got it done and was waiting for some funding from the PTO for mulch, since I had basically paid for the rest of it myself. Somehow, that was snafu’d as well, and I got home from GHP several summers ago to find it gone. “It was an eyesore and might have been in the way if we had to work on the drains,” it was claimed, even though the butterfly garden on the other end of the courtyard was in total disarray and completely blocked access to the courtyard, and parents came in and put new mulch in the butterfly garden at the same time my labyrinth was being removed. Needless to say, I have not done a great deal of volunteer work for my school since then.

So, it’s been a couple of years since I built one of these, and like the pangs of childbirth, one forgets how much work it is.

This afternoon I laid out my stakes and string and got half of the pattern spray painted onto the ground. I’ll complete the bottom half tomorrow. It was very pleasant: I brought my living room speaker out, plugged my iPhone directly into it, and had Pandora play my New Age station while I worked. I’ve begun placing neat candle holders around the yard, and I lit those as it got dark. Finally, I just lit the fire and imagined the yard as the space I would like for it to be. It’s going to be a haven.

And since I know you’re going to ask, here’s my tattoo:

Disbelief

Posted on by Dale

I am extremely disturbed by the reaction of the paleocon crowd to John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. They have gone from apathetic about his candidacy, if not outright antipathetic, to joyful. Finally, a real conservative on the ticket, change they can believe in!

And why? She’s one of them: a rightwing, conservative Christian, anti-abortion hardliner. And I’m thinking: is this all you got? Abortion? Is this the single, overwhelming problem you think we need to solve in our nation, so much that all other positions, policies, and qualifications of a candidate can be disregarded? Should be disregarded? Now you can be excited about electing the man who will continue almost all of George W. Bush’s disastrous policies?

There’s also something ghoulish about their glee. I read one supporter’s comment who actually said that it wasn’t reasonable to expect McCain to live through his first term, and then we’d have our first woman President. Heavens.

I am not too torqued about her “lack of experience.” Some of us on this planet are just preternaturally competent, and she may be one of us. It does mean that the McCain campaign have to drop their attack on Obama as unprepared.

It’s more her religious extremist background that concerns me. Creationism? No place in our educational system or in our government. Anti-abortion? Dangerous. That’s on top of her usual Republican issues. Anti-environmentalist? Can’t afford it, people. Big Oil buddy? Been there, done that, and look how that’s worked out.

She’s anti-corruption? Where was she when the Republican party needed her for the past eight years? And does that include her own Troopergate, which is scheduled to hit the news cycle right before the election?

The base of my extreme unease over her selection, and the joy with which it’s being celebrated out on the fringes, is that the American people are just so damned dumb. There are a host of issues and policies that they need to be looking at before selecting a candidate, but they go with gut feelings and personality traits. I actually had a teacher ask me the other day if I thought Obama was secretly Muslim. WTFF?

Don’t do this, people. For once in your Fox-News-blighted lives, find out what the candidates would do if elected, and vote for the one who would make the America you want your children to live in, even if he is black or can’t remember how many homes he owns. Then maybe I could sleep at night.

Jazz class

Posted on by Dale

Jazz dancers, download your instructions here.

Yes, it’s true, I’m taking the adult jazz class on Tuesday nights at the Newnan School of Dance. Marc talked me into it, he’s also taking it, although he was nowhere to be seen last night and I hope it takes him weeks to catch up with the new choreography, and it’s of course a lot of fun.

I’ve never taken jazz before. I was a ballet guy twenty-five years ago, and I wasn’t bad at all. Precision and passion were my fortes. Extension was not. But I loved it a lot. I would have taken classes a lot longer, but Bettina rescheduled the advanced classes for the evenings, rather than the afternoons, and NCTC had the prior claim. So I had to give it up.

I think I’d still rather be in a ballet or modern class, but for the moment I’m in jazz and having a good time.

Are there body issues? Well, naturally. When I was in ballet, I was too thin. Now I’m too fat. I never had a lean, lithe, sleek dancer’s body, and while I keep pretending that dance is for all of us, the truth is that a lean, lithe, sleek body just is exciting to watch and mine is, well, not as.

I’ve been surprised and pleased at a) how quickly I’ve been able to pick up the choreography; and b) how sore I am not the day after class. That really surprised me: I thought I would be completely sore and hobbled for at least three days after the first class, but I felt nothing. Perhaps this is due to my moderately increased activity level recently. I have, since April, lost 20 pounds, and I can tell the difference in many aspects of my life: pants don’t fit, I’m not out of breath, and jazz class doesn’t leave me sore after warmups and choreography.

The class puts me out of the house on Tuesday nights, so that’s Monday (Masterworks), Tuesday (dance), and Wednesdays (Coriolanus) that are not available to me for composing. I think I will devote Thursday nights to that effort, which should begin next week.

Excelsior!

Musings

Posted on by Dale

Yes, I know I said I’d write every day, but you didn’t actually believe me, did you?

The Lacuna Group has had two work sessions, I hesitate to call them rehearsals, on our production of Coriolanus, and I have to say that I’m very excited.

It’s not that I’m confident, yet, about our chances of success, although things are looking very positive that we’re going to show up on October 25 at the Greenville Street Park with something worth watching. It’s just that the sheer brainpower in the room is exhilarating. It’s like being at GHP twice a week: ideas flow, textual analysis just happens, and there are mad skillz all round.

One of the rather interesting things about the group is their willingness to play. We have not cast any roles (although we keep putting Marc as Volumnia); we’re not planning on casting the show for another week. We’re just playing with scenes, solving problems (Can we keep the fickle Citizens from getting laughed at? How mean is Volumnia? How can we point up the tempo changes in this scene? How do we show Romans being routed on the battlefield?), switching out roles, exploring.

Somehow, out of all this, ideas happen, and eventually, we trust, decisions will be made.

I say “somehow,” but that suggests we don’t know how it works. We do know how it works. It works as advertised: you play without concern about result, and results come without concern. It is a marvelous way to pass one’s time.

It’s also rather wonderful to be reunited with such great actors from my past: Greg Lee, Dan Coleman, Jeff Bishop, Kevin McInturff, Marc Honea. (Matthew Bailey and Jeff Allen join us… Saturday, guys?) I only wish the others whom we’d invited to join us had the time to do so. To hear those familiar voices tackle Shakespeare’s language with even greater assurance than the last time we were all together is heartwarming. I’m verklempt.

Meditation: Questions

Posted on by Dale

Why would anyone vote for George W. Bush? Twice?

How can we create art?

How do we create art?

What is art?

Why is it so hard to exercise?

Why is the sky blue?

Why are LOLCats just so darn precious?

Where do babies come from?

Why do we think we love someone?

Why do we think they love us?

Why are words like oint and flammivomous so cool?

Who is this God person anyway?

What is your quest?

Why is the internet down?

Why does Windows suck so bad?

Would you rather have the body of an Olympian swimmer, gymnast, water polo player, or sculler?

Why am I not king?

When can I win the lottery?

How were Shakespeare and Mozart and Bach, to name three, even possible?

Will Coriolanus make it to the stage?

What will my son do with the rest of his life?

How long will I live?

What’s for supper?

Meditation: Anger

Posted on by Dale

Take a deep breath.

I used to get very angry. Most of it was the self-righteousness of the young, of course, but some of it was a deep-seated personality flaw, by which I mean that I was unaware that my “green”ness was not actually an unflawed way of looking at the world. The fact that greens are “98% right”, and it is a fact… trust me…, doesn’t mean we’re 98% correct.

It took me a long time to realize that other solutions to problems I encountered could be as valid as the one I proposed. In other words, I realized that what I thought was the way things were supposed to be was just my brilliant evaluation and only that.

Eventually, I became aware that sometimes the best way for others to realize the weakness of a plan was not for me to point it out but to allow them get it wrong. Enough times of that happening, and one builds a reputation for reliability, if not outright infallibility in some circles.

And of course, if things went well, that was fine, too. There would always be time to refine the process if necessary. Successive approximation became my modus operandi, and I was able to expunge a major source of my anger, in that I could relax if my solutions were not the ones adopted by whatever group I was involved in.

What makes me angry now? Waste, mostly, people wasting time or energy or talent. George W. Bush wasting our nation’s reputation and standing in the world, not to mention our treasury. Me wasting my time and talents in regards to my music.

But my anger these days is self-contained. I don’t direct it outwards, because I don’t like the way that feels. Instead, I focus on it and allow it to dissipate into a sadness over things I cannot directly affect or to become the determination to change the things I can.

What anger has to do with “masculine meditations” is a bit of a puzzle to me. My wife has a much fiercer temper than I and is not averse at all to releasing into the atmosphere. The assumption that men have an “anger problem” is more than a bit sexist, although I realize there is a connection between testosterone and rage. As always, these things are more of a personal problem than a gender issue.

Meditation: Spiritual progress

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Okay, this one I do not get. That has to be because either I was at a fairly advanced spiritual state to begin with or I’ve never advanced beyond some kind of larval stage.

What does it mean? When I was young, it would have meant “growing in Christ” or a “deepening relationship with God.” As far as I could tell, all that meant was burrowing like a Guinea worm deeper into the warm flesh of Southern Baptistry and refusing to be pulled out.

At least, that’s what it meant for my family and those around me. It seemed to me that most (not all, certainly) people who were determined to become bigger and better Christians were merely becoming more severe judges of humanity.

I remember distinctly being in elementary school, either 2nd or 4th grade (we lived in Macon my 3rd grade year), and thinking I was being sold a bill of goods. Someone was lying about something: an all-good God who was apparently eager and willing to condemn 90% of the planet to a pretty vivid damnation? (Remember, I was a Southern Baptist.) The same guy who rampaged through the Old Testament, testy and implacable? As the great theologian Oolon Colluphid wrote, “Who is this God person anyway?”

Other faiths, even other Christian denominations, were dismissed out of hand. As far as I could tell, it was simply because They were not Us. As far as I could tell, we were being told to seek God, and everyone else was going to hell because they were seeking God the wrong way. But it was clear to me that They were all seeking God.

Eternal optimist that I am, I chose to believe that we are in fact loved by an eternal God, that is what they told me, after all, and that those who seek will find.

As far as “progress” goes, I guess I would have to claim the steady unpacking of my Southern Baptist upbringing as being progress. Big white-haired white guy in the sky? Check. Exclusive path to salvation? Check. “Salvation”? Check. As I’ve gone through life and had enough time to turn my attention to these and other concepts, I’ve unwound the bandages from the underlying shapes to see what we might have meant by putting the bandages on to begin with. Every time, I’ve found very simple concepts that are not as scary or as scarifying as what I was brought up to believe. (I once offended my family by referring to myself as a “recovering Southern Baptist.”)

Occasionally I’ll be asked where I’m going to church these days. I’m not, of course, which in SB terminology means I’m “unchurched.” I should probably call it “dechurched.” Progress? I think so.

Meditation: Gratitude

Posted on by Dale

This is an easy one.

I am grateful to my wife, the very fact that she is my wife. One reason I fell in love with her was her ability to keep my ego in check, but the fact of the matter is that she is my biggest supporter, often rising to my defense even when I don’t. She has kept me laughing for more than 30 years. When I look at who I was 30 years ago, I am constantly amazed that she was even attracted to me.

I am grateful for my son. Children teach you many things about life, the most important being that you are temporary. I am grateful that my son is smart, witty, and kind. I am grateful that teaching at the high school level for as long as I did, and working with young people in the theatre and GHP, taught me about letting go. I think I have done a lot better in that regard than many parents.

I am grateful to my profession, where I get to go to work every day and do battle with the forces of ignorance. I get to take a child’s mind and help it realize there’s an empty shape inside it, and how to fill it. I am grateful, you can’t know how grateful, that my school is a good school, full of smart, competent teachers and smart, supportive leadership. I’ve been where that’s not true, and I will never tolerate that kind of evil again.

I am grateful for the role theatre has played in my life. It has brought me great joys, great frustrations, and great triumphs as we worked together to make the thing that is not and share it with an audience. I am looking forward to Coriolanus for that very reason. Yes, my heart sank a bit as I wrote in all those Wednesdays and Saturdays between now and October 25, but I know that it is going to be a marvelous adventure.

I am grateful to my friends, the Lichtenbergians, the Lacunians, the GHPers. One of my true concerns about leaving the theatre behind was that I had no friends in my life outside the actual production of a show. This has not been the case, as this and other blogs go to show. These people have kept my mind working, served as audience and kibbitzers for my work, and have been supportive in ways I don’t think they realize.

I am grateful to music, for everything it brings to my life. I am about to plunge back into my own music, for better or for worse, and I tender that gratitude as an offering to the gods to take it easy on me.

I am grateful to GHP and the role it has played in my life, for over half my life. From attending as a student, where Diane Mize changed my life forever by showing me exactly what the creative process was and could be; to teaching in the program, where Lonnie Love, the director, taught me how the program is deliberately put together to produce its effect on students; to heading up the instructional program itself, a life-altering experience and responsibility indeed: the whole time has been the most incredibly enriching and challenging process in my life. Every time I think about not doing another summer, I realize that I’m not through with GHP yet, nor GHP with me.

In a similar vein, I am grateful for the life of the mind. Ideas are important, expression of those ideas is important, and sharing of those expressions is important. Books, music, theatre, film, the web, these blogs, all are part of the Great Conversation, and I am grateful to be invited to take part.

Meditation: Change

Posted on by Dale

One of my favorite educational consultants, Heidi Hayes Jacobs, snorts, “Change? Nobody likes change! Change is bad! Growth, on the other hand…”

I don’t like change myself. I am suspicious of it, especially change instigated by other people. Part of that is my innate green-ness: can they possibly have given this change the thought that I would have given it in order to make sure that the consequences are not unduly horrible? Years of experience have confirmed my suspicions, generally.

I suppose, too, that my dislike of change is largely responsible for my having decided years ago that a career in education, completely in my hometown, was a better option for me than pursuing a career in theatre in New York or that other coast. I was always envious of guys like Wayne and David and Helen and Paul (and Mike and Bailee!) who just headed out and worked job to job, from city to city and apartment to apartment, and who along the way built careers of one kind or another. Envious, but not enough to follow their example.

Even now, eligible for retirement, knowing that I could probably make a lot more money as an educational consultant, I shove that idea to the back of my mind. My entrepreneurial spirit barely registers on those aptitude tests, because my tolerance of risk and change is minimal. Trying to track down people to hire me, staying on the road half the time, constantly having to assess my status and the status of those for whom I’m working: too much change. My stomach rebels at the very thought.

It is ironic then that I have so often been an agent of change. At school, at GHP, at the theatre, in Masterworks, I push(ed) constantly for a re-examination of what we do and whether making a change might be beneficial. Doing the same thing over and over, resisting change for no good reason, drives me as insane as change itself. I suppose that this is what Heidi would call growth, and I’m OK with that.

Resistant to change as I am, it’s important to ask the question: Have I changed? Absolutely. I’m sure everyone in my life would tell you I’ve gotten “nicer” as I’ve gotten older. I think they mean that I’m more tolerant of other’s foibles. I’m not sure that’s true, but I have gotten more interested in finding explanations for the idiocies of others. I still think they’re idiots, though.

I’m not as single-minded about most things in my life as I used to be, and I even am able to let go of personal disappointments in what I hope is a healthy way. (A common myth in my family is that I always get my way; it might be truer to say that they don’t realize when I don’t get my way because I don’t mention it.)

I don’t think I’m as disciplined as I used to be, which may be the same thing as the previous paragraph. I find that I mostly require a deadline to be extremely productive, which is one reason I’ve ginned up this series of meditations. My failure to work on any real music since April 23 is another example of this difference in my life. Change, but definitely not growth.

A change I’m hoping to make in my life is the ability to examine it more thoroughly, another reason for this series of essays. Of course, a blog is not the place to do a lot of airing of dirty laundry, so I’m not sure how effective I’ll be in making this change in myself, but as I scan through the topics in the book, I can see some that will require me to do some deep thinking before writing about them. Forced change. It will do me good.

LATER:

I think one thing about the word change that leaves me wondering about myself is that I don’t really see myself as fundamentally changed since I became an adult. I’ve learned more stuff, naturally, and my understanding, and perhaps tolerance, of the world has broadened, but then I was never very narrow in my judgments anyway.

I do change my hair. I got tattoos. I just got my ear pierced. Those are changes, but external. Internally, I think I’m the basically the same, just bold enough to get my ear pierced.