A Poem To Capture a Conversation

Back and Forth

By Susan L. Lipson, October 2015

You toss a ball to me                                   

Stiffly

And I catch it, flashing a smile at you

That you don’t, or can’t, return.

I toss it back

Casually

And you let it drop and roll, sighing,

Because you didn't like my throw.

"C'mon," I encourage you, "throw it back,"

And I pick it up and hurl it at you

Sharply,

Noticing you wince at its impact.

You whip the ball at me now,

And I leap to grab it

But miss,

And you sigh with exasperation

That I just didn’t get it—

That I just don’t get you.

A See-Saw of Words Becomes a Circular Poem

     "The more ____, the less _____," offers a playful, thoughtful see-saw of words on which to balance contradictory concepts. I played with those concepts today, after posting another of my "freeze frame" moment photos on Instagram. A friend recently commented that she enjoys the way I observe the world through photos. I replied that my new photography hobby helps me slow down to notice things, and to dedicate a few sacred moments to conjuring thought-provoking captions. From this conversation, built upon the verbal see-saw, this poem evolved:

Circular Treadmill

By Susan L. Lipson

The more we rush,

The less we observe,

The more we feel unfulfilled,

The less we strive,

The more we stagnate,

The less we grow,

The more we disconnect,

The less we feel we matter,

The more we need to matter,

The less time we seem to have to make our marks,

The more we rush,
The less we observe…

We Need Diverse Books To Enlighten, Not To Enforce Enlightenment

On Diversity in Literature and #WNDB

By Susan L. Lipson

I wish that discussions of the need for diversity in literature (#WNDB, a.k.a. We Need Diverse Books) focused more on realistically presenting the glorious array of humanity in literature than on zealously defying stereotypes. Defiance through diversity implies a defensiveness that ironically gives power to the stereotypes and undermines the very reasons behind the need for the #WNDB movement. I equate this to the use of the word “tolerance” to promote programs of unity among people, while paradoxically suggesting that differences must be “tolerated” (i.e., endured or allowed, implying a superiority of the one who must “tolerate” another). “Respect” is a much more apt term for the encouragement of open-mindedness and social harmony. And “diversity” in literature should encourage and facilitate respect, not enforce tolerance.

Similarly, the inclusion of the term “white privilege” in discussions of diversity in literature only serves as a finger-wagging kind of term to divide—and not even accurately—readers into the following subgroups: white people who have economic, educational, and social privileges and black people who do not. What about the white people who live in poverty—are they still “privileged”? Or the black people who are doctors, lawyers, authors, teachers, scientists, artists, etc.—are they “underprivileged”? Or the white people who are privileged in some aspects, but discriminated against in others—such as religion or sexual identity? Or the black people who are considered “privileged” by the “underprivileged” within their own racial group, and disdained as being “too white”? Or the non-white, non-black people who are left out of the discussion about “privilege” as the social illness that requires the good medicine provided by “diverse books” to heal the world? How can such divisiveness have arisen from a movement designed to grow inclusiveness?

Recently, an online debate I had with another writer about a reference to “white privilege” led to my being questioned about my understanding of “white privilege,” which the other writer defined as “white readers seeing diverse media starring people-of-color as ‘not for me.’” I pointed out that the term “white” in her definition is inadequate, since I teach many Asian students, and I have seen a few hesitate to read books I’ve handed to them that feature black kids as protagonists, whereas I’ve never seen such hesitation about books that feature white kid protagonists. I distinctly remember one such student saying to me, after reading a novel by Sharon Flake, “I never would have picked this up on my own, and I’m really glad you gave it to me. It was really good.” The term “white privilege” clearly is not applicable to a non-white reader who avoids books about “people-of-color” when she herself has brown skin. Also, what is the actual “privilege”—is it a socioeconomic advantage or a naïve mindset about the “underprivileged”?

          One of my former students, a privileged black girl with a lawyer and a doctor for parents, who grew up in a predominantly non-black, upper-middle class neighborhood of whites and Asians, once told me that she found it offensive that she, a suburban black girl, had no black characters representing her in literature. I told her that I could relate to that because most of the Jewish kids in books I'd read were nothing like me at all; they showed up in Holocaust stories, or turn-of-the-century immigrant tales, or stories about Orthodox Jewish life, so unlike my own. The absence of people like us in literature is disappointing for us personally, but even more disappointing for the reasons that people unlike us know us only through outdated or stereotypical characters. Diversity must focus on realistic portrayals more than tokenism.

          This exploration of the admirable, yet sometimes flawed #WNDB movement leads me to conclude that diversity in literature is not just about characters representing various races, cultures, religions, sexual identities, or physically challenged lifestyles. It’s not just about publishing books by authors who are “people-of-color” or of nonmainstream lifestyles (however "mainstream" is defined by publishers). But it is about opening our minds and our media to sharing stories about memorable, realistic people from all walks of life, as a means of broadening all readers’ perspectives and making readers not just see themselves in characters, but see themselves in relation to both familiar and unfamiliar characters. Diversity is universalism.

The Difference Between Knowledge and Wisdom

To find wisdom: Be still, observe, experience!

Knowledge grows from shared and augmented perceptions, a.k.a. “facts,” while wisdom grows from quiet and profound observations, a.k.a. “epiphanies.”

     In today’s world, people store the perceptions known as “facts” as an end in itself: the acquisition of intelligence. In a social setting, if we haven’t read or heard the latest news to garner a hashtag, we might be viewed as unintelligent, dismissed for offering no insights on what “everyone knows.” In previous centuries, however, before people collected “facts” via modern media, people aspired to be wise, not just smart. And the seekers among those ancient people sought guidance from proverbial “wise men,” revered because their wisdom profoundly impacted seekers’ lives. Wisdom had nothing to do with facts.

     In olden times, the wise were those who observed their surroundings and their feelings with full attention, and then faithfully applied their intuition to their observations to reach profound levels of understanding. Sages and prophets of old didn’t publish research papers or conduct scientific studies, didn’t hold academic degrees to justify their credibility, and didn’t spout facts or statistics they’d read in various media to support their heartfelt assertions; they studied life itself, by being present, being observers of beauty in unexpected places, being moved by interactions, and being aware of all connections and coincidences. This way of being resulted in the epiphanies that have, throughout human history, altered social thought, heightened collective consciousness, and started new religions and ways of living. Wisdom had nothing to do with academia.

     Ironically, epiphanies today must pass the credibility test determined by fact-checking intellectuals and the inspired person’s credentials. To espouse a view or proclaim a truth, one needs proof, not just gut instincts. If some barefooted, uncredentialed preacher, like Moses or Jesus or Buddha, posted philosophical speeches on YouTube today, they would need introductions by academic types to have any chance of “going viral,” let alone gaining a respectable number of views. Absurd, isn’t it, to think that what legions of modern people faithfully accept as Truth came to us via wise people without formal education? Wisdom had nothing to do with education.

     These words and thoughts about the differences between knowledge and wisdom arose, I now see, to wrestle the guilty feelings in my head evoked by my ignorance of some historical event that came up in a conversation with friends who obviously considered that event to be “common knowledge.” I could have dismissed my feelings of inadequacy with a quip: “I’m no commoner, obviously,” or “I only store uncommon knowledge.” But I chose to seek answers to my discomfort via intuition and meditative thought instead. So that means this blog post is either an epiphany or a rationalization. Hmm…

Peace in Common Ground

     Other-ness is the perspective that enables hatred, fear, and war. When we redefine the Others as fellow humans, with similar needs, and feel ourselves breathe in the same air they breathe out, then we can start to build peace together--BUILD being the operative word. If we see only walls between us, walls erected by different values, then we will overlook that the walls rest upon the same ground composed of our shared basic needs. We may need to dig into that common ground and forget about struggling to climb or topple the walls. 

     I am pondering these concepts after reading news reports from around the world, and meeting people whose only friends and neighbors are people like themselves. Have you shared a meal, a word, a smile, even air, with a person outside the communal walls that surround your family? And I don't mean sharing by accident, but with intention. Do you see the walls you may have unwittingly erected by hanging out mainly with people whose values reflect your own?  We all retreat behind our walls at times, no matter how much we attempt to connect with people from outside  those values-based-walls. But those who cannot see beyond the walls, who fear getting their hands dirty by digging into the common ground of basic needs, will never become peacemakers, only politicians and patrons of Others. 

Remembering Typewriters, The Stacks, White-Out, and Other Extinct College Artifacts

Pre-1990’s College Nostalgia that Today’s Students Will Never Know Firsthand (Unless They Find a Time Machine)

By Susan L. Lipson

The Stacks: That’s what we called the top floor of the oldest library on campus, reached by climbing skinny metal staircases, where serious students studied silently among stacks of the dustiest library books and the ghosts of students past. The multisensory experience of leafing through heavy, hard-covered tomes in the dim light among crowded, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves; hearing whispers and the sound of turning pages around the shelf corners; smelling the mustiness of yellowed pages longing to be aired out; and feeling the thin, onion-skin paper of delicate old books, in this once-revered section of the campus library—is this experience lost forever to college students of today and tomorrow, who now crouch over computers at cubicles, listening to music through headphones, in the new campus library world?

                                       

The smell and sight of correction fluid (which we called “white-out”) as it dried on translucent typewriter paper: Sour-smelling as it wafted upward into the nostrils, the dabbed white spots dried brighter and more opaque than the paper they covered. You blew on the painted spot so you could quickly resume typing, but if you didn’t wait long enough before rolling the paper backward on the typewriter roll—into that perfect spot so the letter key would strike in the right place, aligned with the other letters around it—then you’d end up seeing not a crisp black letter over your whited-out spot, but an embossed-looking smudge. And then you’d have to clean the typewriter key, before starting the correction process again—with patience. Such “simple” methods of revision hardly encouraged multiple drafts! The Delete key of today’s students was but an imaginary invention in a science fiction world. 

The DING at the end of each line of type:  After hearing the happy typewriter bell, nothing beat that joyful release of hitting the carriage return to slam it to the left side of the typewriter and start typing another line. This sound, if not in front of you, could regularly be heard through the thin dorm walls.

Cut and paste editing. This involved using scissors to cut a misplaced paragraph out of an essay, and cut a spot in another place to fit in the passage like a puzzle piece. Then you either taped or glued the puzzle piece into its new spot in the essay so that you could make a photocopy on a Xerox machine (we all called it “xeroxing” then). The copy would come out with a faint outline around the inserted words, which you would then dab with “white-out” to disguise the inserted section before making another copy of the “clean” page. If you didn’t learn from hastily typing over not quite dry white-out, then you might have also discovered that outlines became gray smudges on copies AND left white smears on the glass surface of the copy machine!

Word Limits on Essays: You either counted words with your index finger, bleary-eyed, and had to recount in the middle if you lost your concentration, or you estimated based on the typical number of words on a standard, double-spaced page with one-inch margins all around—margins that you set manually on the typewriter carriage, and sometimes fudged a bit when you realized you exceeded the word limit but had no time left to edit and retype.

Grade Postings: They were literally posted on a bulletin board outside a professor’s office, which meant walking there, sometimes in lousy weather, just to eliminate some of the waiting time until the transcripts were mailed to your mailbox—that’s MAILBOX, not INBOX. Instant gratification wasn’t a Thing yet.

Carbon copies: You know that line on your email in today’s world, that says “cc” so you can simultaneously email the same message to another person? Those letters stand for carbon copy, which used to be created by inserting a sheet of black-inked carbon paper (one side inky, the other clean to the touch) that you inserted between two sheets of typing paper before rolling the three sheets into the typewriter carriage (the “carriage” was the round, scroll-like thing that the keys tapped against, in case you’re from that other planet called ComputersOn). Typing on the top sheet caused the ink in the middle to imprint the identical letters on the bottom sheet, like some old-fashioned checkbook registers still do today (mine does, of course).

Dictionaries and Thesauruses: Those big books full of words and definitions and etymologies and sample sentences that we always kept beside us while writing essays. They would help us spell words and find more powerful substitute words, and sometimes we’d even get sidetracked by other interesting words on the page and even add more to our vocabulary. Fancy that! Dictionaries and thesauruses also made good, albeit hard, pillows when we’d find ourselves snoozing in the library during an all-nighter. Furthermore, these word-finders didn’t require an internet connection.

Encyclopedias: These multi-volume hardcover books provided the information now usually found by students on Wikipedia; however, the encyclopedias were supposedly fact-checked and not able to be edited by any reader who deemed themselves more of an expert than the reference book writers.

Mail in the dorm mailbox: As we entered our dorms, we’d stop to check out mailboxes in the lobby for letters from home or elsewhere, maybe even for a bill.

 

Dorm rooms had wall phones. A missed call was missed. No answering machines either.

Rather than go on and on with this nostalgic brainstorm, let me explain the catalyst. An 11-year-old student, in the middle of completing a writing assignment during my workshop, paused to reread, then frowned. He looked up at me from his notebook and commented, “I wish paper had built-in spell-checkers.” I pointed to the dictionary, and he groaned. Then he added, “And I wish it could cut and paste lines, too.” I offered to get him scissors and some tape. He shook his head, sighed, and started rewriting the page.

I replied with a chuckle, “You are so…two-thousands.”

And then I realized that we are already way past 2001, the year that my college classmates and I thought of as the year of a space odyssey. 

I finished that lesson with this advice to my student, “Just remember, when you’re a dad someday, that your kids will make fun of the ‘old-time smart phones’ that they used to have before your kids began simply dialing their arms.” We exchanged smiles.

Imagine my surprise when I opened Facebook that same night and saw on my Timeline a link to a video that showed a new bracelet that turns your inner forearm into a cell phone! So much for “old-fashioned.”

                    (This essay also appears, along with some essays not found here, on         

                                          www.medium.com/@susanllipson.)

New Haikued View Sparked by One Memorable Word--Oubliette!

While reading GONE GIRL, by Gillian Flynn, I came across an unfamiliar word that I paused to look up: OUBLIETTE. Images of oubliettes led to poetic verbal images in haikus, and final to this poem, prompted by one memorable word!

Haikued View from an Oubliette

 by S. L. Lipson

Conceived in a room,

We start our lives in darkness

Shackled by a cord.

Concealed in that womb,

Till light fills the oubliette—

  Walls quake and free us.

Contained by no one,

We reach for others, and yet,

Live behind new walls.

Connected by windows,

   Lest despair's fog makes them walls--

A mind's oubliette.

                   

   

Consoled when fresh rain

      Defogs our glass, refracts light,   

                                                                   Refreshes our view.

Reborn throughout life

Climbing walls, we gasp for breath—

For new light each day.

WHAT SINGLE, MEMORABLE WORD HAS INSPIRED YOUR POETRY? Feel free to share one below (and to share my poem with other poetry lovers)!