Philosophies of Teaching, Puzzle-piecing, Pop Culture, and Book-reading

The other day I was out at Mt. Logan Middle School, sitting in the back observing class, taking notes, wondering if I would be mistaken for some sort of Billy Madison. Afterwards, I stayed to help prep students for the Science Bowl, and before we got started one of them asks, “So, you’re not a student, are you?”

“Actually, I AM,” I answered with wide eyes and a smile. Then, a deadly silence…”…at the university,” I clarified, and further explained.

I’m doing my clinicals at the middle school this semester so I can get an idea of the age group I want to teach. Believe it or not, I actually preferred my middle school years over my high school years. It was a very impressionable age for me, and somehow I happened to have a lot more confidence as a pre/young teen than at any other time in my life.

I feel like perhaps it is at this age that I can best accomplish some of my primary goals as a teacher: Help the students develop more enthusiasm for science than they had coming into the class, and cultivate an interest for science outside of the classroom. These objectives are actually fairly impractical to measure. My methods teacher last semester called me a hippie for my subjective values as a science teacher. Well, sure I want the kids to understand cell and organ function, chemical reactions, and evolution. But I would rather convince them of the importance of curiosity, observation, investigation, and imagination through science so that they can apply it to their own personal interests and pursuits.

I hope that a good way to facilitate this is by incorporating a few generally untraditional ways of exploring science. I first plan to incorporate more writing about topics in science than any of my teachers ever did. I also want to examine the history of scientific thought as well as the societal influence/inference of science, including ethics. Another helpful idea mentioned in one of my classes was letting the students read a variety of trade books for your content area. I love this idea. I never got to read a fictional novel for any of my science classes. Even a non-fiction book would have been fun, if it was something other than the text book. Actually, my professor liked this idea so much that he is letting us find and review some trade books that we would use in our classrooms instead of taking our final. I’m glad, as I was going to do this eventually anyway.

So, after I finished up at the middle school, I went over to Borders to browse what they had in the way of science books, and to browse in general. I actually came across the strangest jigsaw puzzle I’ve ever seen. It was of The Beatles' White Album!

I know some of those puzzle-lovers want a challenge, but, seriously, how is it fulfilling to put together a picture of a white void? How do you even put into words the progress of your puzzle assemblage?

“Well, I finished another white section. Gee, that took me a lot longer than the last one.”

What a boring way to spend your time!

Anyway, I actually found a copy of The War of the Worlds for $3.99 that came with a cd where you can listen to the radio broadcast adaption with Orson Welles. It also has the text to the radio broadcast, and a bunch of reactions from people that really thought that the world was coming to an end. Haha, classic! Plus, the foreword is written by Ray Bradbury, so, all around, this was a great find. I’ve actually been wanting to get into old science fiction (H.G. Wells, Joules Verne, etc.). Though, I'd really actually peg this early stuff as fantasy.

It’s really just entertaining to look back on the time that space travel was fantastic, when the aim in the writing surrounding it was to tell an imaginative story of adventure with the absurd charm of a dream or unease of a nightmare, rather than to predict what may actually happen in the future. Although, when such predictions explore the extreme and ethical ramifications that lie in wait of our potential abuse of science and technology, it is a great deal more interesting.

Besides the science trade books, I also stumbled upon this marvelous (I feel silly for using that word, but it IS) book series that I am really excited to get into. It’s called Philosophy and Pop Culture. Now, I’m sure that there’s a book for everyone in this series from Philosophy and The Legend of Zelda to Philosophy and Metallica. In fact, it actually happened that about 80% of the ones they had in stock involved my absolute favorite tv shows. There was an edition of Lost, The Office, House, The Simpsons AND Seinfeld. There was also a Batman one.

I was totally filled with glee! I mean, this is basically my favorite intellectual passion combined with my favorite television entertainment. They are actually $20 each, but just too perfect for my personality to pass up. If you want to know what to get me for a gift, there you have it. Except, I bought the Lost one already, so, not that one. I looked them up on the net, and there is also a Beatles and Pink Floyd edition, which sound particularly awesome.

Hmm, I don’t know why I buy so many books sometimes. I’ve only read about half of what I own, if entirely all the way through at that. It’s weird, I like books, but I don’t especially enjoy reading. For long. I’m actually a relatively slow reader, perhaps because, for one thing, I say each word in my head. I honestly thought everyone did that! In fact, I was pretty surprised when I asked people out of curiosity if they said the words in their heads or just processed the words, and they said the latter. Huh. I don’t think I can do that very well, if at all, really. But I can’t do Magic Eye, the Spock hand gesture, or even sprawl the toes of my left foot either, so, there are a lot of seemingly simple skills that I lack. Bogus.

The real problem with my inner narrator, however, is that she is picky about what books to read. For instance, I remember that in high school I only got one or two pages through Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and I couldn’t take it anymore. My sentences had become a grammatical train wreck, and it was so annoying that I literally chucked the book across the room. Yes, my rashness did result in some spinal injury. But whether that regards myself or the book in question, you are free to interpret as you will. I think that the beginning of The Sound and the Fury may have been a similar experience, but that version of my inner narrator sounded more confused than overly-animated, so it wasn’t quite as bad.

George Costanza’s character on Seinfeld actually reads the same way, but doesn’t like to read often because he hates the nasally sound of his voice. So, when he had to read a business management book for work, he pretended to have vision problems so he could get book on tape. The funny thing was that the person narrating on the tape ended up sounding exactly like him. But he had the right idea. Sometimes if I can’t take what the reading does to my inner voice, perhaps the best solution is to find a different voice.

You know how you can custom order just about anything? What if you could pick a book and a celebrity, and get a custom made audio book? Wow, that would be expensive! If I were rich, though, I may use this service to actually irritate the celebrities I don’t like. Okay Chris Rock, you get to read Sense and Sensibility, and Rodney Dangerfield, how bout you read The Epic of Gilgamesh? And Matthew McConaughey, why, you get to read Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary. Doubly, if you wanted to irritate anyone else, what could be better than popping in any one these horrific audio books?!

Seriously, though, this would be pretty cool if it were practical. Luckily, sometimes you just run into really serendipitous combinations of book and narrator. I got a free download of The Odyssey with Ian Mckellen! And I saw an audio narration of The Bible by James Earl Jones once. Just imagine Darth Vader reading the Old Testament! Oooh ho ho :0 But then you can switch over to Mufasa reading the New, if you like. Or if you like irony, imagine Darth Vader the entire time. Then again, the image of Vader doesn’t exactly invite the Spirit, so maybe you ought to hold off on that purchase altogether.

Speaking of audio books, if you are interested, there are a bunch of free ones available for download here. Maybe there’s something for you. I’m planning on giving Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a second chance sometime, now that I can get through it without allowing myself to take on a Southern drawl. Ugh. That was incredibly annoying.

Beautiful Drowning

I wonder sometimes whether or not we as Latter-Day Saints hold the content of personal revelation too sacredly. By that I actually mean, too privately. It’s true, there are many spiritual experiences that I certainly believe are designed to be a personal guide strictly for self, family, and close friends. I have had these experiences before, and shared them with few. However, I feel that there are many experiences that while privately revealed, are absolutely meant to be openly declared to anyone and everyone who will hear.

I had one of these experiences last year, and I only shared it in full with my friend David. Somehow, I felt like no one else would realize the depth that the experience had in my heart. I regret feeling that way. I share it now because I am discontent in holding it privately. I want the desire I felt to fill you, in some capacity. I want the realization I felt to reach you. I wish to know if and how you have been affected with similar desires and realizations, that I may thereby come to relive and continuously feel the sense of unity which invigorated me at that time.

Spoiler Alert: This message is for Bradford. Yes, YOU, Bradford. Sitting there at work...reading my blog. Be warned that by continuing to read this you will officially be forfitting your chance to interpret my poem,"Cosmos in a Workshirt," as I am about to unveil its meaning.

It begins with a man, which, a few of you may agree, I am entirely too preoccupied with. If any of you have ever wondered why I especially love Ralph Waldo Emerson, you get to learn more about that today. The simplest answer is: I feel he connects me to the rest of the world.

I remember the day that I bought my simple edition of some of his most popular essays. I had just begun to read the first essay, History, before my geology class, and I felt with a sudden sureness what I had never actually known before. History is really not about the past. It is about me, and the world around me. The same conflicts, emotions, and resolutions of purpose from the past are ongoing today. We rejoice in certain stories and events because there is something true and living about them. And as time goes along and we change, we identify with new writers and people. People like us-- more like ourselves than words on a page or ancient works of art lead us to believe. The past can have a likeness to our lives that feels almost akin to personal memory. This epiphany could have come in any number of ways, but it came through Ralph Waldo Emerson, after at least a year of college, through a book that cost me less than two dollars.

Not only did the ideas Emerson presented fill me with such happiness as this, but reading the words themselves reminded me of one of my closest friends in the world, David Moser. When he came home from his mission, I sent him a copy of this book of essays, with an inscription. I remember that I had told him that whenever I was in need of self-discovery, I returned to this book, and that whenever I returned to this book, I was somehow reminded of him. The first real connection—I found my friend in those pages when I was initially looking to learn more about myself. I felt we were both in there, in the same words. Little did I know, through reading Emerson, I was in store for much more than that connection.

About two years ago, I purchased a biography about Ralph Waldo Emerson called Emerson: The Mind on Fire. In it, I came across the story of a dream that Emerson once had, that thereafter served as one of the most powerful metaphors in his writing, which he would draw back on time and again. He describes it briefly:

“I dreamed that I floated at will in the great Ether, and I saw this world floating also not far off, but diminished to the size of an apple. Then an angel took it in his hand and brought it to me and said, ‘This must thou eat.’ And I ate the world.”

This dream, this image, became absolutely fascinating to me. It was so powerful. I wanted the same dream. The same revelation. But I also wanted it to feel personal, somehow. I wanted to sense that sort of literal connection with the world, to know what it felt like to take it in, to be strengthened by it. I wanted to experience this vision for myself. Believing that I had as much right to these impressions as Emerson, or any other great mind in history, I decided to pray for it. After all, it was a good desire. Though I pleaded for it, I can’t say I honestly expected it. Despite that, as surely as I had asked, I received an answer.

An odd fact came into my mind randomly one day, which I learned from reading in my meteorology text book. I recalled having read that the number of molecules in a breath of air is the same as the number of known stars in the universe. Suddenly, a distinct image came into my mind of myself surrounded by a miniature scale of the universe. And as I took a breath, all of the stars, planets, galaxies and beyond were coming into my body and filling my lungs. It was amazing! I felt full of extraordinary energy and light. I immediately knew that there was a connection beyond the scale and scope of the world in store for me to fully realize.

This image took a universe that I knew to be billions of years old, and larger than I could fathom, and let it pass in and out of my lungs within the duration of a simple breath. I felt that an individual soul was so much more valuable, undoubtedly more beautiful, and vastly more eternal than everything else that exists. In considering the limited grasp I had of how grand and incomprehensible the universe is, I knew more than I ever had in my life, at that moment, what was meant by, “the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.”

As I mentioned a few entries ago, it was during the time I was in the mood to write poems that I decided to share some of my personal experiences with more people. So, I ended up writing a poem that relates this event:

-Cosmos in a Workshirt-

That apple-sized world seized my fascination;
I wanted to dream it, hold it, eat it- possess it.
I might have asked, “How dare I crave that nourishment
That enlivened the likes of his prophetic mind?”
If I had not known him well enough.

The pages of his History,
Stone tablets, the width of perpetuity!
Each character carved deep. Each one repeats.
I own his mind? He mine? that apple is as good as mine.

I prayed for the invitation of his angel,
“This must thou eat.”
The same visitation-- unique.
For I wanted to feel the world, in me.

Though ardently I asked, I never thought
To see this image come to pass.
God must have had a love-filled laugh
When that joy struck, and bloomed…
To fill my lungs—ten to the power of twenty-two!

That is the number, more or less,
Of molecules within a breath.
Not of that alone, but also this,
The stars in all the skies.

This fact itself, coincidence, just
Worthy of footnote in my science text.
Till God let me watch and feel those stars
Gather inside my chest.

O, how I will outlast you, Night! Your lights go out
Within the time it takes me to exhale.
How beautiful you are, I know-
Yet compared with me, a brief faint glow!

My Emerson, I dare say this gift exceeds your dream
Of one mere apple eaten - the rest high in the trees.
Though with it in you, and you in me,
You’ll come to it at last. You’ll come to taste
Another world, afloat, eager to be grasped.

I'm thinking now on one of my recent favorite songs, "Overcome" by Live, which actually reminds me quite a bit of my experience. It is on my Live playlist. I suggest you listen to it if you can, but here are the lyrics:

Even now, the world is bleeding,

but feeling just fine, all numb in our castle,

where we're always free to choose, never free enough to find.

I wish something would break, cuz we're running out of time.

And I am overcome, yeah. I am overcome.

Holy water in my lungs. I am overcome.

These women in the street, pulling out their hair.

My master's in the yard, giving light to the unaware.

This plastic little place is just a step amongst the stairs.

And I am overcome, yeah. I am overcome, baby.

Holy water in my lungs, yeah. I am overcome.

So drive me out, yeah, out to that open field.

Turn the ignition off and spin around.

Your help is here, but I'm parked in this open space,

blocking the gates of love.

And I am overcome, yeah. I am overcome, baby.

Holy water in my lungs, yeah. I am overcome, yeah.

And I am overcome, oh Lord. I am overcome, baby.

Holy water in my lungs, holy water, holy water.

I am overcome.

Beautiful drowning, this beautiful drowning.

This holy water, this holy water is in my lungs.

And I am overcome. I am overcome, yeah.

I am overcome. I am overcome.

That is an incredible song! The emotion he puts into it is overwhelming. I really am quite moved by the phrase, “beautiful drowning." I feel I know just what he means by it!

Anyway, this just isn’t the sort of experience you tell your friends about at parties. I don’t know how to share moments like these, the kinds that keep me believing in myself, and in the world, and in the power of prayer. I’d like to know how to revive this feeling from day to day. I want to hear about how those around me have come to discover this feeling. I want to urge those that don’t know personally where they fit in and connect with everything around them (with me, with you, with the past, with the future) to find a way. I’d like to think that all it takes is a spark, that they can keep feeding until they get a flame. Until the mind that connects us all is “the mind on fire.”