Hippo Thesis

The course I am taking - Language Acquisition and Learning in a Linguistically Diverse Society – is drawing to a close. My instructor casts assignments at us without cease, they sink to great depths, weighted by their complexity. I dive in after them, struggle down, down to see them clearly. Among the sizeable list of instructions for items to be included in a presentation: “create two different ‘visuals’ or graphic organizers that show the relationship between the course readings and the insights that you learned from the interviewee.” Well. From my interviewee I learned that if you are very bright, likeable, and beautiful, with strong and positive family relationships, strong ties to a tight-knit and stable community, and an optimistic attitude towards school, you may, like her, succeed despite having had to learn English without the benefit of sensitive support from teachers. I don’t know how to create a chart or diagram to illustrate this, and I don’t know why I should. The life story of my interview subject illuminates our readings by revealing the limited usefulness of the many generalities contained therein. I am disappointed when generalities and specifics are opposed, a toggle switch; I want them to reinforce and reflect one another.

I like to think of myself as a good student, but I am not. The tension between the general and the specific is but one source of irritation. I’m also weakened by tasks which demand that I make a ‘text to self’ connection. When asked to find such a link, I often lose the text, so overwhelming is my desire to reveal things about myself - and so tenuous is my hold on the author’s emphases. I sometimes suffer from “poor saliency determination.” http://www.allkindsofminds.org/learningBaseSubSkill.aspx?lbssid=47 Oh, well.

So, I just want to write a paper on a topic. I hate these multi-modal assignments: how long it takes me to even just understand what I am being asked to do, the way they chase precious knowledge from my mind, forcing me to replace it with personal tchotchkes that do not expand or refine me. I want something new, I want what I have not got.

But just then, there came the role play! Students were asked to choose an identity (from among a list of a half dozen) and have a blog-debate about illegal immigration. I chose to be an anti-immigration construction worker in LA. My group members chose various other identities and wrote politely – academically – about the needs and aspirations of immigrants. I wrote posts in the voice (as best I could evoke it) of an angry, bitter man. His basic premise was: the gains of illegal immigrants are his direct losses. I was alarmed, after posting a few replies to my classmates’ careful statements, to find myself sympathizing very much, ferociously even, with ‘his’ perspective that ‘your’ having results in my not having.

Hiroki (have I mentioned that his nostrils are the shape and size of tiny cinnamon heart candies?) would also sympathize with this perspective. He resents the happiness and autonomy – the equanimity – of his peers and seeks to strip, and pick, and peel it away. Rita says she doesn’t like carrots, Hiroki smiles at her in a way that is both malevolent and loving (she is, after all, about to validate his power), and says, “yes you DO, you DO like carrots.” Rita wails to me, “Hiroki said I DO like carrots, but I DON’T like carrots!”

Hiroki’s behavior includes, but extends well beyond, the typical 3-4’s assertions of emotional property rights (“Frederick is MY friend.” “No, he’s not, he’s MY friend.”) and intellectual property rights: (“I’m Spiderman.” “No, you’re not Spiderman, I’m Spiderman.”) Hiroki seeks out any opportunity to abrade. When I turn this about, “No, Hiroki, I don’t think you’re Spiderman, I think you are a hippo,” he collects himself, protesting, politely, that he isn’t a hippo, only a Spiderman. “Do you like it when I say ‘no you’re not,’ Hiroki?” I ask him. “No, I don’t like it,” he sweetly informs me. “Hmm, your friends don’t like it either, when you say ‘no you’re not.’” “But I LIKE saying that, I LIKE to say ‘no you’re not!’” I buy a little time, divert his conflictual urge with exchanges such as this, he seems glad for the respite or the chance to plead his case, but is soon back at his virtuosic practice of discord.

I mention hippos because Hiroki loves them. He spent weeks talking about his Hungry, Hungry Hippos game and is deeply attached to all our James Marshall George & Martha books – partly, I believe, because George and Martha are hippos and partly because they have many fallings out but are always friends in the end. Maybe he likes hippos because they are so, so big – maybe they are too big to feel lonely or jealous.

Early in the year I spoke with Hiroki’s mother and said I thought that his behavior – cruising ceaselessly from one area of the classroom to the next, knocking over children’s projects, resisting transitions, refusing to eat – might be an indication that he was missing her very much during the school day. She did not agree – “well, he acts like that at home, too,” she explained.

Hiroki is a hungry, hungry hippo, hungry for contentment, snatching it away from other children, only to find (like the hungry ghosts described in Buddhist tradition) that his fingers have closed only on unhappiness.

One recent day Hiroki was particularly unhappy – so unhappy that he wasn’t even interested in tormenting his peers. He focused on his own experience which had included a succession of disappointments. As we marched out to the deck to play outside, Hiroki collapsed in despair on the threshold, sobbing: “I want to go home, I want to go home. Tell my mommy I want to go home.” I held him a long, long time as he wailed. My assistant circled. She has, in the past, lifted Hiroki, sobbing, from my arms saying, “Ok, let’s go. I know you feel sad but you can’t scream like that. You’re ok. Let’s go.” This time she said, “What’s going on, Hiroki?” I turned my shoulder, just a little, shielding him, or us. I spoke softly to Hiroki: “You are missing mommy today. You are really missing mommy and feeling sad. That doesn’t feel good. You will see her later today, but it is hard to wait. Do you want to stay here with me for a little bit?” He nodded, still sobbing. I grazed the tears from his face, gently, with first -and second-joint knuckles, that’s how it’s done. “You know, you want to know something about hippos?” He was quieting. “You know, hippos poop IN the water?” He listened, his eyes no longer turned heaven-ward. “You know, what do you think that sounds like, Hiroki?” Attentive silence. “It sounds like: Poop! Bloop! Bloop! Bloop!” A deep smile. “What if you were a hippo, Hiroki, would I call you Hippoki?” “No,” he laughed, HippoROki!” Alive again, his limbs are suddenly lighter in my lap and ready to jostle, hustle, trick and play. I retie his shoelaces, they have come loose and are lonely, emptied of their knots and bows. I restore their charm. Hiroki jumps up and off he goes to Florian – who has been granted ‘most-favored-child’ status for the day. He looks a bit apprehensive as Hiroki approaches but as it unfolds their play is buoyant, sweet, and responsive.

I think of the assignments I have yet to complete for this course, sinking down, deeper into dark water. I feel too tired to dive after them, bring them up to light and air, though I know I will at least try. I want knowledge and I hope it will redefine me, contain but not confine me, distract me from my appetite for comfort. These complicated, strange assignments send me deeper into myself, exposing static-filled spaces where I do not wish to linger. I resent this and consider that only a person who feels happy and secure would conceive of such tasks. Someone with a loving husband, for instance, and perhaps, even, a housekeeper. What you have got reminds me what I have not got. I tie my shoes very tightly, to feel held and whole - secure. Oh sharp and shameful jealousy: perhaps hippos, with their huge heads, have got a wider and a milder view.

The Power of Powers

Hanauta and I visited, last week, my mother in the city of my birth.

In the basement of my childhood home there is a door that leads to a low, dim space that was my late father’s studio. When visiting my mother I walk down the basement stairs, drop clothes into the barrel of the washing machine, or the drum of the dryer. I adjust dials, pull knobs, I measure, I pour, I rinse, I gather, I carry. I look unthinkingly at the door, locked with a sliding bolt and covered with signs and stickers that my father fixed there 40, 30, 20 years ago. I re-ascend the narrow stairs to brighter and more lively rooms.

On Saturday, though, down the stairs I went along side my beautiful nephew, Velo. He is just about done with being three and has powers which flow from his mind through his upraised hand, out into the magnificent air of springtime: he is even more than the motion and strength of his body, he is his stories and ideas, his powers of transcendence. Velo climbs up and jumps down, climbs up and jumps down landing hard on the soles of his bare feet. He has powers and is the master of matter – flying crouched above earth and returning to it only by choice, emphatically but without pain. With my students I say: “Stop, I can’t let you jump here –LOOK, Oh! The ground is very hard, and YOU, you’re very soft, you could get hurt.” When children protest that their mom/dad lets them jump I say, “Yes, they may. But they have just you to play with, I am playing with 10/20/30 children on the play deck, today. I can’t make sure you are safe if you jump from here.” Or sometimes I just give the short version: “That’s not safe.” What I mean, as well, is “It will be a pain in the ass if you get hurt.”

Velo was tired of the lunch table and wanted to see the basement (“What’s down there?”) I needed to check on the laundry, so down we went: he propelled by curiosity, I by the primal urge for clean, dry clothes. Velo asked about the smell, the damp cool smell; the air feels different there, as well. There is not much to see though; a room with a washer, a dryer, five mops (I don’t know why) deep windowsills, some iron rods standing upright (I can’t remember what or why), a bucket (blessedly direct in its purpose) and the door to my father’s studio. Because Velo was with me I read aloud the door’s messages, I pointed out a race car and a skull and cross bones and the sign “NO BARE FEET.” We had put on shoes, Velo and I, just to go down the stairs and we looked down at our sneakers. Velo asked why there is a “NO BARE FEET” sign. “There could be something sharp on the floor,” I said. He wanted to see the room beyond the door. I said, “Ok, but you have to hold my hand the WHOLE TIME we’re in here.” That being agreed, I unlocked the door. “Why’s it have a lock?” He asked. Did he ask “Is there a monster?” In we went.

The room is full of tables on one side, and empty on the other where the press stood, seeming tall between the heavy, long-spoked stars that drove the rollers. The tables are now laden with framed and unframed prints and drawings. “Look over here,” I invited, opening small drawers on a low table … avoiding a pile of mid-century cigarette lighters, assorted pen knives and blackened etching tools. In the drawers were broken metal date stamps, broken watches. I thought he might take interest – objects that have lost their practical powers can more easily accept the range of meanings that any given individual may wish or need to confer. But Velo’s interest found no footing here. He left the room, having let go of my hand, with swift and buoyant gait, listing slightly as he turned to pass through the door, without a backwards glance. That last, familiar task was left to me.

My father forbade us, my sister and me, to enter his studio with bare feet. Such was the ferocity of his warning that even now I only rarely step foot even into the laundry room without shoes. I did that day, after Velo’s departure, and felt the reptilian tenderness of the old concrete floor. But the story my father told, about venturing beyond his studio door unshod, I remember in this way: if we came in with our bare feet and if we walked near a table where he had been working on a copper engraving we might step on a tiny copper bit, this splinter twist, with sharp edges all around, would enter our blood stream, travel to our heart and kill us. I took this very seriously, savoring the lethal aura surrounding my father’s work. The copper filings were only part of the lore, a bottle filled with a fluid of albuminous clarity stood in the refrigerator, perhaps the word “ACID” was inscribed indelibly in black laundry marker, there was certainly a hand-drawn skull and cross bones. My father had powers, they flowed from his mind through his hand: he tamed and controlled difficult and dangerous matter. I wonder if he could just have said, “It would be a pain in the ass if you got a copper splinter in your foot,” the threat of death seemed necessary to him. His version of a flaming sword, turning every way in the air, guarding his privacy – or our safety.

It is increasingly difficult for me to distinguish (for myself) between things that are simply a pain in the ass and things that are seriously problematic, or even dangerous. And this inability to recognize what is large and what is small has, in turn, become difficult for my heart which, late at night, gives itself over to lopsided revolutions, like a creature, tightly confined, turning round, burnishing, in desperation, the cage of my ribs. I worry about what I should worry about most and think of my earliest big worry, at age 3 or so, of a large monster, gray, the size of a house, just out of view and waiting just before dawn when I, alone, awoke.

In my classroom there are many monsters, many roaring, ravenous beasts. I imagine that the more I say, “I cannot let you do that, THAT is not safe,” the louder the monsters grow, the larger they loom as the world fills with dangers made palpable. Our heroes, our super-heros, for their part, become ever more brazen, their powers unstoppable – they silence and flatten me from a distance with leveled gaze and one palm thrust. Destroy the cautioner and you have no more need for caution! The more we learn about danger and what there is to fear the more vast we must imagine the dimensions of our power. I was taught and now teach what there is to fear. We find ways to make the uncertainties of life somehow tolerable. Belief in our own magical powers, or the development of our real ones, these pull us onward.

We return to our city (Hanauta and I) and find that cherry trees, of several varieties, have been planted in amongst the crabbed and failing linden, all along our street. I close my hand gently on the trunk of a purple leaf sand cherry. The satin bark with its granular markings, like fine, raised print, casts out all worry. Its goodness flows up from woven roots and out through me into the late and even light. I am part of its circuitry, for a moment, vast and contented. My power doesn't flow out through me, it flows in, through my senses, through the world. I have the power of being satisfied by beauty, filled and transported by bikes leaning at the curb, asphalt shingles, infants, mothers, strangers, things seen from train cars, birds, tangling phone lines dividing the sky, grasses and other wild things, my students, my daughter, the body I have as it fills with what I borrow and call my breath.