Socrates Weeps

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Socrates Weeps

No doubt a number of my undergraduate students assume that Socrates and I were contemporaries.  Which isn't all that strange as they also think that Socrates was the drummer who Ringo replaced in the early days of The Beatles. And it is usually only the graduate students who know that The Beatles was the band that Paul McCartney was in before Wings.  But I wax cynical, which is problematic as I often have trouble just finding cynical, let alone reserving the time for waxing it - I think it is out in the garage somewhere.

But back to the Socratic method.  For those of you who live in towers other than the ivy-covered one in which I have spent most of my life, the Socratic method defines the bucolic myth of higher education; wise teachers sit with a cohort of curious students - ideally in an olive grove - engaging in a lively and penetrating dialogue about issues both enlightening and profound. 

It sprang to mind last week when I stood in front of a classroom in which every one of the 78 seats were taken.  

"Wow," I thought. "It has been what? a decade? since I have taught a class this small!"  Socrates weeps. 

I did my undergraduate work at Kalamazoo College in the late 1960s.  It is a small liberal arts college in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  A couple hundred students north of a thousand constitutes the student body. While I recall large classes - maybe 40 students in Western Civilization and Entomology - it seems that most of my classes had fewer than 20 students.  The main campus consisted of picturesque brick classrooms, dorms and a student union surrounding a shady lawn that climbed a rolling hill, topped by the steepled chapel that smiled benevolently down on us as we scurried along to class.  I do not actually remember having had classes out under the oaks, but we may have done so. A former professor of mine from Kalamazoo College is one of us here on The Wall, if his memory of the view from the other side of the desk conflicts with my recollections, I will pass those revisions along. 

In contrast, I teach at an institution of about 35 thousand students, 2000 faculty and some 3000 administrators. So 40,000 of us call NC State home to some degree or another. It is a huge institution, and one that has grown increasingly dependent upon technology to accomplish its most central objective: teaching students.  Well, maybe its second most central objective - behind grant writing, and there is publishing . . . But let's leave that tangle for another day. Back to Socrates and teaching. 

While I considered it aberrant at the time I now find bittersweet the memory of a colleague in the English department who, decades ago - when the task simply entailed dropping a coaxial cable from the ceiling - refused to allow "that thing" into his office. Now we simply cannot do our job without "that thing."  We, either by choice or mandate, post our syllabuses on the Internet, we handle the sensitive concerns of students with disabilities on the Internet, we present our classroom notes over the Internet, we record student grades over the Internet, we distribute lectures to distant students over the Internet, we even manage our own University retirement accounts over the Internet.

And in the ten or eleven days since the semester began, when I called upon those various functions, every single one has malfunctioned. And no, I have been doing this for years. Operator error was not the issue. The cause was, in each case, the Glitch Who Stole Christmas. The "outages" have ranged from minor irritations to major disruptions in my ability to do my job. 

However, as surprising as it may seem, the primary motivation behind this post cum rant is not the fact that the Internet is so untrustworthy - I have taught about the Internet for years before there was an Internet. I have always known it is a fickle lover, promising more than it ever really can deliver. I try, often futilely, to instill that same wary attitude in my students.

No, the burr under my saddle this time is that having to take care of the Internet makes it increasingly difficult to take care of my students.  I spend hours making sure the technology necessary to interact with my students works, which compresses the time I have available to consider what I wish to share with them, horribly. We may have fooled ourselves into believing that the swift and efficient exchange of texts, or voice mails or skypeing counts as a Socratic dialogue that encourages relationships and critical thinking. That is simply not true. At the very best, these tools serve as compromises for a conversation under the elms. We have come to believe that the compromises are the equal of the human systems they have come to replace.

And that is why Socrates weeps.

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Love is Harmony’s Handrail

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I have always considered my myopia more blessing then malady. As a youngster it was not a matter of choice; when I took my glasses off, all the world more than 12 or 14 inches distant dissolved into an impressionistic haze - soft and gentle, like life lived within a cloud. At the same time the objects an inch or two in front of my face leapt into sharp relief.  The small became all. Horton may have heard a Who, but I could see them. I have no doubt that the way I have always seen the world outside my head has had a significant impact upon the way I interpret the world from inside it.

For example, I quickly learned that, if I needed to go to the bathroom at night, rather than find my glasses, turn on a light and make my way down the hall it was far easier to keep my eyes shut, and trace the path - with my hand against the wall guiding me to my destination.  And, once there ensconced I could, if I so desired, peruse the illustrations of House at Pooh Corner or Treasure Island in incredible detail.  Those experiences, while decades removed in time, are conceptually snuggled up right next to my current assertion that love is Harmony's handrail.  Come on along.

I do not know if the eagle-eyed among us use handrails.  I assume they do, for in my youth when I had my glasses on, or later my contacts in, I would use handrails or their posh kin, banisters, to hurtle down stairwells or haul myself swiftly up the other way - they served me like poles serve a skier, all zoom and schuss! But in the dark, without light or lens, their existence became imperative. Without them I would be lost, scooting butt-by-board until I reached my destination. So, handrails are constructions that lead the way; they guide us to our destination. Which is what? A question with a singular answer: Harmony.

It follows then that if the first tenet of Distilled Harmony is to foster Harmony, it only makes sense that we seek the meaning that arises from those times when we stumble upon that destiny; from those precious moments when Harmony rises unbidden from the mist, like Brigadoon. That is not to say that we should not consciously seek Harmony.  We do that in a variety of ways.  Some of us meditate, others work out, paint, play music, rock climb, hang glide, cook, pray, sing, play an instrument, work in the garden, hike the Appalachian trail. Whatever. To be human is to seek Harmony, and we should, and do, all explore our own paths to that ultimate goal.

Still it is quite amazing in those other, unplanned, special moments, to suddenly realize you are there. To discover that, without even trying, there you are, covered all over with Harmony. That's incredible. There is really nothing else in existence like it, or, perhaps more accurately, there is nothing else in existence but it - Harmony is existence.  Still, we so rarely recognize that existential truth, we should consider how we might better, and hence more often, hail Harmony.

Some 20 years ago, when I started to write the book that would eventually become The God Chord, I decided to begin by recounting a variety of "stunning moments" in my life: a youthful  night at the Vienna Opera House, magical moments along a mountain stream in Northern California, the birth of my first child, opera again, with both daughters and their mother in the mountains outside Santa Fe, an unexpected encounter with soft eyes across a cup of coffee.  Those moments were, I now realize, moments when I spontaneously found myself "all covered in Harmony."  

Recently I have been trying to "cross-reference" those moments from my past with my current explorations in Harmony. I'm looking for correlations between those stunning Harmonic moments and other less ephemeral clues that Harmony may be slipping by unnoticed, something that nudges our shoulder and whispers, "Hey, pay attention! Something potentially very important may be going on here!" I, as we all should, do consciously try to recognize and acknowledge the harmonic moments around me everyday. Clouds, trees, birds in flight, these are the dependable old stand-bys. And I'm going to head out on the deck in an hour or so when the Perseid meteor shower is due to peak. Still, life in the 21st century usually seems a tad harried for the bucolic sensing of Harmony. So I put some time aside everyday to do some focused "Harmony hunting."

That time is, of course, my meditation time.  Sometime between 11:00 PM and 1:00 AM I slip away from the "have to do" stuff and the "ought to do" stuff, even the other "want to do" stuff and take 30 or 45 minutes to do my "ritual" - a basic Reike routine combined with Pandora supplying the Bose-world-and-noise-cancelling-headphone-assisted music. An interesting pattern has begun to emerge. When selecting the music for the evening's ritual, the first and most basic decision is: vocal or instrumental?  If it has been a fairly mellow day, I go with instrumental. The purity of sound. I lean toward the symphonic, or "spa-ish" piano or violin pieces. Those take me to some very soothing places. However, if the day has been hectic, those unfocused strains can quickly fade to background music as I continue the day's debates in my head.  On those more hectic days I opt for a vocal background. The stories in the songs, most of which I know word for word, blunt the dramas the day may have rained upon me.

Strange thing about those poems set to music - they are almost all love songs. Some are happy love songs, some sad love song, some "guy and gal" love songs, some "I love the mountains" love songs, I love the sea, the rain, the wind, some "wanna-be-but-don't-quite-understand-love" love songs; but almost all are some kind of love song. Here, I am coming to believe, lies a easier map to finding Harmony, a clue to when we are - for at least the moment - in tune with the harmonic sentience of the universe. When we are in love, we are in Harmony. Not all Harmony is love, but all love is Harmony. Thus, if we gently and steadfastly follow the handrail of love, it will eventually lead us to precious moments of Harmony.

Still, both love and Harmony wind us along an intricate path though existence. Sometimes, as in the musical Oliver it seems mysterious and unattainable: 

Where is love?

Does it fall from skies above?

Is it underneath the willow tree

That I've been dreaming of?

Other times we, like the Bard in sonnet 116, we think we have it nailed: 

Love "is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark."

But perhaps the most callow definition comes closest to the mark: I may not be able to tell you what love is, but I know when I'm in it.  

Harmony, I think is much the same. The noun itself may be irrelevant. Wisdom, Transcendence, Nirvana, Salvation, Grace - call it what you like.  I am coming to believe more and more firmly that those words all describe the same state of existence, one defined by our ability to hold the Harmony of existence - and by extension, love - within and before us at all times. A tall order to be sure, but, how did Browning put it? "A man's grasp should exceed his reach, or what's a heaven for?" 

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Swatting "Isims" at Three O'Clock in The Morning

Which one startles you awake 

In these small hours?

Cynicism? Pessimism? Optimism? 

Or, perhaps romanticism?

It is a question worthy of consideration

As it is unlikely that our essential inclination 

Is so lightly ascertained

That we may consider these wakings

As but slight disruptions

Of a night's repose.

My own has been sorely won

In countless jousts against the foe.

Until now, like all romantics, 

I fence my way through life, 

Holding discord at bay 

With the point of my pen.
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