Tests

Four-hour essay tests are tough, particularly if whether you graduate or not hangs in the balance. I just finished the second of two tests I have to pass to get my Master’s in T.E.S.L., about ten minutes ago. I say it was “tough,” but that’s a relative term. For sure, it was easier than writing a thesis. For sure, I didn’t even study that much, if you don’t count the two years I’ve devoted to taking all the background classes.

I think I passed. I’m assuming I did, unless I didn’t write enough about something, since, as a pedagogy test, it’s not really a “right answer/wrong answer” kind of thing. Language acquisition is a fairly intuitive game. (Is it better to have students recite drills, or have them actually learn to carry on conversations and write essays and dance and cook and have fun?)

So, yeah, my hand is tired, but I’m otherwise calm, particularly since I got a little perspective right before the test. A friend who took it with me told me she’d just discovered she had melanoma on her scalp; in what stage, she doesn’t know. She’s a redhead; a dear lady. She smiled as she told me and said, if it comes to that, she is not afraid of death, nor of dying. And that, I think, is a test worth passing.

On daughters, college, and nouveau patriarchy

At this moment, in my family and extended family, there are just three females born Botkin who still remain Botkin: me, and <a href=”http://visionarydaughters.com/”>Anna and Elizabeth</a>. These two girls are more or less leaders in a Christian movement encouraging daughters to stay at home until marriage. They quote scripture to support this idea; Proverbs 7:11, for example, describing a harlot: “She is boisterous and rebellious; her feet do not remain at home.” This ideal of not straying from under a father’s roof means not going to college, and not going abroad alone, not even to translate the Bible.

I can understand why, for these two girls, this seems like a feasible option. Their father is my uncle Geoff, who is intelligent, loving, and considerate. Their family has made a business producing films and going on speaking circuits; the girls help do research, write, and act on occasion. Their brother Ben creates the music; other brothers and their father direct, film, edit, or also act. They are good at it. Isaac, the oldest, and my best childhood friend, trained in New Zealand; at the ripe age of 14 he was already, by himself, constructing animation for the U.S. Navy. The family gets along, loves each other, even when working so closely. They are good people and I miss them.

However, I do not think their proposed model is the best for all, or even most, families, and I think any movement that requires this lacks understanding and charity. I have certainly not stayed home my whole life, and this was not because I don’t respect my father or love my family. My father is a physician who worked chiefly in the emergency room; a family business is a little out of the question, especially if one is not allowed to go to school to get one’s credentials. I left my father’s house at 18, with his blessing, and, while he is the wisest, most multi-talented and loving man I have probably ever met, and while I have sought his good council for every major decision since then, I have learned a lot in the interim, away from home; things I wouldn’t have come across trying to keep the peace in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. My father has rejoiced with me in my journeys, which often led me back to his doorstep with something new; spices from North Africa, understanding of truly restrictive government from China, books from Europe and the ability to read them; intelligent people, future additions to the family.

I went to college; state-run college. The sisters’ major objection to college is its worldview: a Statist, “Marxist” worldview. They claim that “modern universities serve the State and teach their students to serve the State” (So Much More 133), warning that college curriculum would thus inevitably “do more harm than good.” The sisters have not been to college, by the way; I have been to four of them in the last 8 years. I encountered a lot of idiocy, but zero passionate loyalty to the State. Teachers typically dislike the government, for varying reasons; if anything, colleges promote an anarchist “down with the man” attitude. State colleges are paid for, in part, by the state, but so are roads, fire departments, 911 response units, and jails. The state gave me more money to attend college than I gave to it — no strings attached.

What I learned from college undergrad classes is somewhat limited, but I did learn French, some Anglo-Saxon, philosophy, semantic theory, linguistics, and First Amendment law standards, all from teachers who were good enough and interesting enough to spark love for, and understanding of, the subjects. I looked at my own cells under a microscope, acted in a children’s play, wrote for the school paper, became an editor of the school paper, and learned how to get along with the kinds of people who fundamentally disagreed with me. I learned how to speak, and write, in public, and this aided my understanding of a whisper. I learned how to travel, how to save money, how to cook, how to weigh each word for meaning, how to balance health with study and friendship with introversion. I did this without becoming promiscuous, without becoming a drunkard, without bending to the attitude that in order to live you need to give everything under the sun a try.

And this, I think, is the real objection to college: the fact that by attending it, many children have succumbed to this assumption. Thus, say the most careful, we must not even look the temptation in the eye; we must keep our beloved families close, where we can watch them, where we will be sure to never stumble. But this, my dears, is a great fallacy. People do not do stupid things away from home because everywhere away from home is stupid, but because people are stupid. If you <em>require</em> the security of a family’s rules to be good, your goodness is definitively based only on environment, and, likely, there’s a lot of error boiling already under your skin. Pride, for example, or lack of love for your enemy; two cherished Christian sins, damned in scripture more than drunkenness or sleeping around.

I am now teaching at this Statist institution, and I hope I am not doing more harm than good. I am trying to do the opposite, as I have been given the opportunity to try. As I type, I am holding conferences with my students. I am asking them why. I am saying: this is idea is a good start, but have you thought further? I am asking them to formulate clear suppositions, unmuddied by cultural clichés. I am not even doing this as a rebel: the composition courses here, in this Statist institution, are based on Aristotelian rhetoric, a triumvate of ethos, pathos, and logos.

And in the beginning was Logos. The word, logic; the expression of Being. Try it on for size sometime.

Guidelines for writing argument essays (and for living life in general)

1. Act charitably to all men and women, especially when dealing with differences of opinion. There are intelligent people out there with hugely varying views. I guarantee it, some of your opponents are smarter than you. A yelling match will not win them over.
2. Be clear about what it is that you’re saying. Find out why you are saying what you’re saying. Test your own theories, thinking them out to their final implications. Be consistent.
3. Cite your sources. Make sure they’re credible.
4. In all your logic, don’t forget beauty.

surprise

He got an antique ring off ebay using my account. I forwarded him the emails verifying the purchase. You can see if you like it; I don’t have to keep it, he said. It’s not very expensive. So what, I said. It’s cool. It’s a brown-pink champagne diamond set in filigreed white gold. It’s me. Just surprise me some other way.

He said ok, and tried to convince me that it was romantic, knowing everything ahead of time. He asked if I wanted to go to Spokane Saturday to eat out. I said no, I didn’t; I didn’t want to waste gas knowing full well what would be on the dinner plate. I said I was going to my sister’s birthday party instead.

In the meantime, I contemplated running away to Kazakhstan, the Czech Republic, Mozambique, Portland. I considered the unknown of these places. I considered the wildness they promised, the romance. The bike paths, the horses, the trains, the dusty foot trails. Winding. Not straight ahead. Never just straight ahead.

I hinted this to him. We talked. We argued, in fact, all weekend. He was leaving for the east coast Monday. The chill of autumn came, suddenly, and I buried myself under blankets and slept.

He came in late Sunday afternoon and found me sleeping. It’s about to rain, he said; I have to go drop stuff off at the dump for my mom before the roads get muddy. Do you want to come with me?

I considered saying no, but remembered that I had been researching our latest theological debate and needed to finish it before he took off. So I came. I brought my wallet in case we broke up and I felt the need to repay him for anything.

We were arguing, sure enough, all the way to the dump; the neighbor’s private dump, he said, hence the muddy roads and the need to traverse them before it rained. I was barely paying attention, such was the heat of our dialogue, but I vaguely saw the path we had traveled once the first day he had held my hand. It was very awkward, that day. Now, he stopped at a gate in the road and jumped out to unlock it, just as our argument dissipated.

He came back from the trunk, not with trash, but with a volume of Shakespeare, as it began to rain in earnest onto the car windshield. He read me sonnet 29. This, unknown to him, I had heard from the cradle. He interjected and then gave me his own words: that the ideal proposal would be one where everything that lead up to it converged on the necessity of its acceptance.

“like so many things of the world,” he said “the state in which I make you this offer is, itself, quite imperfect…”

It seems ironic: I remember, years ago, expressing disgust at particularly smarmy proposals. I want it to be like real life, I had said. I want it to be interesting, but I want it to be real. Real real real.

Real like intellectual anger, rain, mud, and an old book. Real like a sheet of paper with the ripped-off hole fragments still attached, stained with the soul of a man. Real like tears and like a coat donned for the dump, not for romance.

He first offered his hand imperfectly in this spot, in this twisted muddy path, and here again I accepted with the imperfections of my own. The ebay ring surrounds my finger now as I type, as pragmatic and graceful as I could wish for. So I’m getting married. Surprise.

in the hills outside Dallas

Once upon a time, when I was visiting Berlin, a woman remarked upon the Oregon acreage I used to call home. She had also seen it, and she said that it reminded her “of East Germany before the wall came down.” People staying in the same spot and doing the same things with a sort of pastoral un-commercialism that was at least mildly baffling, I think she meant. I considered her comparison a stretch, until this last weekend.

Then my sister and two of my brothers and I went back to our old haunts, or old church. We sat in the sanctuary and watched the friends of our youth walk in with their own children. Our old neighbors, four blonde girls, had grown up (moved to Romania and back) and were still, in their twenties, sitting all in a row together. The same lady (Mrs. Rogers) played the piano. The same fellow (Guy) was running youth group. The last pew on the right-hand side was filled with the same old parishioners. One (Gaillord) was having his 91st birthday, and we ate cake in the fellowship hall after church to celebrate. They claimed that I had not changed, either: “you’re still as skinny as a rail,” remarked a friend I had not seen in 7 years. But yes, I have changed in 7 years. I forget sometimes, until I re-visit my childhood.

Arguing by rote

My English 102 students are supposed to be constructing argumentative essays. They come in to meet with me, as scheduled, with handwritten outlines and typed-up introductions. They want to argue about wolves, educational policy, abortion, technology, gun control. I sit across from them… the minimal age difference seems acutely obvious, this close… and ask what they have to say. They tell me.

“Native American rights?” I ask, swinging my shell earrings and lowering my eyebrows in a neutral sort of puzzlement “What do you mean? Land rights? Why?”

“Because they were displaced. Because their ancestors had their land taken away.”

“Hm,” I say “But lots of people groups were displaced. The Irish were displaced due to starvation. They came to the new world, and they suffered too. The Native Americans married into the new population, and that’s why I exist.” (a little Irish, a little Cherokee, a lot bastard. Are you invalidating my birth?) “Human suffering is universal, right? Why should one group get more out of historical prejudice than another?”

My student gapes silently at my sacrilege. I draw some diagrams on her paper (“answer the opposition,” with arrows pointing to the body of her text) and wait for the next student. This student wants Marijuana legalized, because it is not as bad as alcohol. Or maybe he says that sports teams provide good role models. Or maybe that parents should control their children’s consumption of video games. Or maybe that exercise is good for the body.

Suddenly, I find teaching very, very entertaining. I never realized how easy it was to be disagreeable.

I say things to them that only bigots are allowed to say. I try to do this delicately. After all, I don’t want to damage their feelings — or my job — just their platitudes. Just the unquestioned assumptions they hold so dear. One student mentions “raising awareness.”

“Ok,” I say “but what good will that do? I mean, people have this assumption that awareness is the problem, but is it? Just because you know you should do something, do you always do it? What if doing what you shouldn’t do is easier?”

Human nature, I think, and watch him fidget nervously. He should have done more research. And I think he knows it.

Waiting for the bus

Inter City bus lines comes through Turangi, the self-styled trout fishing capital of the world (where fishing will set you back $120 NZ), at 1:10 a.m., less than two hours from now.

It comes through more than once, but this way we save on hostel fees. We can sleep on the bus… at least in theory. We arrive in Auckland at 6:50, catch the airport shuttle, and leave the country at 11:40. There’s an exit fee of $25 per person, so we’d better have some cash left.

We’ll be into Spokane at 9:25 pm.m local time. Tomorrow will be, to date, the longest day of my life: 43 hours total. Meanwhile, I wile away the hours at Extreme Backpackers, having paid 10 bucks for the honor of staying until 1:10 a.m. Maybe I should try to take a nap on the couch.

Auckland to Kaikoura

Blogger in New Zealand seems to be stuck in Japanese, so I’m not a hundred percent sure what I’m doing here. Tomorrow it will have been two weeks since we left… or rather, the day after tomorrow back home.

We landed in Auckland. Auckland is boring. Think Seattle with nothing to do. They call it the city of sails, but we walked along the wharfs for a long time and saw only motorized boats, and not many of those. We did catch an Allblacks vs. Wallabies game being held in Auckland, though we could only make it to the local sports pub. NZ won. New Zealand rugby is the best in the world, they say. The fans certainly were riled up about it.

We arrived in Kawerau, a geothermal hotspot, a week ago. We were met at the bus stop by a fellow with a wild gray beard: our host for a few days, my boyfriend’s father’s brother’s wife’s penpal’s husband. “I’m Rod,” he said. When we got to his house, he showed is, in quick succession (spurred by our honest curiosity, no doubt) his moonshine sill (legal), his equipment for making colloidal silver (healthful), his backyard greenhouse (useful), and home videos of amoebas under a microscope. Lily arrived shortly, and made us a fine dinner of beef, veggies and Pavlova, the local dessert made of eggwhite, sugar, cream and kiwi fruit. After we went to see the glowing worms in the hills and the southern stars in the sky.

With more hospitality than I have perhaps ever seen, they took us to see the sea, the bush, local animals, bubbling mud pools, and vegetation… much vegetation, and a lot of volcanic rock. Daniel climbed everything he could.

On Wednesday we left for the south Island, and arrived in Kaikoura late in the afternoon. Kaikoura sits between the mountains and a deep offshore marine trench, and is the best place anywhere to see marine wildlife. So far we have only seen a few seals, however. They charge quite a bit for whale watching tours. We clean the hostel in the morning and get to know the others staying there. Traveling is always good for meeting people who challenge the coziness of home. We get asked ridiculous questions (“is everyone in America fat?” — to Daniel in a bathing suit, of all things) and make fast friends, if only for a few days. Tattoo artists who take pleasure in arranging the bed linen well, because it makes the world more beautiful. 22-year-old chefs with greasy hair who eat while taking notes about the food. Biochemists studying mitochondrial oxidation, who still smoke.

After 35 hours of travel and a few more resting

There is no time. No day, night. No hour for eating, or sleeping. I am always tired, always dozing, but never fully asleep. I am never hungry and never full. I am fed dinner at midnight local time and then breakfast at 3 a.m. local time. These are seven hours apart. I am in crowds. I drink but am not satisfied.

I am in a winter where the cool air falls gently on my bare arms and bare toes. I am on a bus where the sun hits my shoulder backwards and the trees outside are like gigantic versions of baby pine trees. The same proportions. I am walking up a hill looking for a hostel. A fellow on the street tells us as we pass that he once hitched from New York to the West coast with twenty dollars in his pocket. This was in the 1970s. We are the kind of people you can tell that to in passing. I am sampling free food on the hostel table. Mashed potatoes and fish in a croissant-like pie crust. I am telling my brother to profit from the gratuity, and he is not jumping to the task like he ought. I am without a clock. Always without a clock. Always without the touch of the other world, there, where I used to be. I am typing on a site filled with blocks instead of letters, where the computer stays seven spaces behind my typing. I am still tired. It is not yet 8 o’clock here. I will prepare for bed.