I Will Not Apologize
I am happy.
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Basho, the Japanese poet of haiku, has been one of my reads recently. He once wrote:
Come, see real
flowers
of this painful world.
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The Roots have a new CD out: “Rising Down.” One of the songs features Talib Kweli, which makes me happy on many levels. The song is called “I Will Not Apologize.” It’s been on my mind a lot. Not for the content of the song, so much as the title, and it’s melody.
It’s catchy. It sticks. It grabs your brain and doesn’t let go.
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School has started up again. Readjusting to waking up in the morning, planning, teaching, relating, forming new relationships, working on old ones, grading.
Dealing with problems that may or may not arise on a daily basis. It’s what I do. It’s what I love.
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I’ve returned from a very long summer, full of travel and travail. I wouldn’t change any of it, despite wishes to the contrary. Everything fell into place in its own way, in its own time. Nothing to do but accept it.
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I’m teaching Good and Evil this year again, an ethics class, a philosophy class. I will no doubt cover the stoics who believed that the universe was already set in stone. You cannot change things, so hoping for change is pointless. You must learn to want what the universe gives you.
This knowledge changes how most students look at the phrase “being stoic.”
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Walk boldly on,
through fly-swarms
into Kiso.
~ Basho
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Someone who loves me gave me a set of presents to open before every class that I teach this year, for the first day of school. Her picture is above my desk. Mine, over hers.
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This is the time of the year which should be called “Homecoming.” Former students converge on my door frame, email, voicemail, facebook, and text message inboxes. I am updated on live lived well and not so well. I am told of connections made from class to those lives. Thanks is not infrequent, no matter how uncomfortable it makes me, being one who doesn’t take compliments well. Hugs and handshakes are more than enough.
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Spring rain-
they rouse me,
the old sluggard.
~Basho
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One of my coworkers, a little sister really, spoke of leaving the school a few years back. A thought which is on my mind. She used the illustration of David cutting the cloth of Saul in the cave, tied to the idea of cutting the cord in other areas of life. That sometimes you have to let go. Sometimes you have to see where things are not working. Where they are unproductive. When the connection that you have formed, the relationship you have tied yourself to, is more painful than pleasing. Sometimes you have to cut the cord.
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“I will not apologize. . . This is for all of my peoples who understand and truly recognize. Some won’t get it and for that I won’t apologize”
~ The Roots & Talib Kweli
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I am happy.
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One Response to “I Will Not Apologize”
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I’ve been told by someone with a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Non-Fiction, therefore qualified to teach this stuff on the college level, that I just made a ‘Narrative Totem.’
nice