jumpingfish

I look down upon an endless sea of white cloud tops lit by the morning sun chasing away the shadows of night.

I look out and see this once, and I start writing. And then twice, and I write some more. And then a third time.

After an hour has passed and we begin our descent into Birmingham, I close my notebook and put my pencil away. And I gaze out the window again.

Certainly, I think… certainly I have looked out this window enough. Certainly there is nothing else those clouds will tell me, no new message they will suggest. Certainly there is nothing more to write.

But just then our airplane banks sharply. The morning sun reflects off the silver wing, making me squint. And in the distance it glints off a winding river snaking its way to the Gulf.

I take my pencil and open my notebook. No, there was indeed nothing else to see, nothing else to write.  I just thought I’d record that fact.

We drop out of clear blue skies of morning into clouds that looked so soft from 10,000 feet. The airplane jumps and rolls.The water on the lakes is still.The highways are empty. The city sleeps.

Flaps extended.

We pass over apartment blocks and office parks and the Cotton Bowl. Strip malls along quiet morning streets race by.

There are condominiums with balconies looking out over a freeway. And there are Sycamore trees beside a winding creek. And there is a Jack in the Box. And a Burger King. And a street. And a fence. And grass. And then the runway.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived. Spread some joy. Spread some peace. Welcome to Dallas.”

I love flying Southwest.

[…]
I am a dry man whose thirst is praise
of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup.
My sweetness is to wake in the night
after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.

— Wendell Berry, Water (1970)

He read his poem to us the other day from a chair on the stage. He sat there… or did he stand? I evidently only heard his words as sight passed from my eyes, because I can’t for the life of me remember the scene even though we sat only eight rows back.

In any event, he either sat or stood there reading his poem, and I thought of the drought we’ve endured.

I have been a dry man. A dry man in a dry house whose doors sometimes wouldn’t shut because of the tortured contraction of the parched ground around us. I have been a dry man looking after the trees with hoses and buckets. A dry man longing for rain.

And finally several nights ago we woke to the sound of it. And the night after. And again for a third. We woke after more than a year of drought, hearing the rain.

I just wish that the roof hadn’t leaked.

Still, you can’t have everything, and this rain I’ll take.  Even though it was only three inches in three days and the creeks are still bone dry, I’ll take the rain we got.

We can fix the roof (if only the tarps will hold).

I whine a lot. This I know. I have high expectations, but I am thankful for many things.

I am thankful that phone call from Ben from New York to tell of his adventures in Grand Central Station looking for a train to somewhere in the Connecticut suburbs where he was invited for a Thanksgiving dinner.

I am thankful for a little puppie who has more energy that I can possibly imagine and is now lying on the couch in a catatonic state from all the running and chasing and jumping during the day.

I am thankful for Austin’s sunny blue November skies in general and today’s warm weather in particular and of course the rain that fell last week making the Boxwoods green, the trees happy and the ground soft underfoot.

I am thankful for Steely Dan’s Goucho and Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense filling the room late in the evening.

I am thankful for a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat, prepared by the fair and industrious Trudy. And I am thankful for the five mile race we (slowly) ran in the morning to make room for it.

And I am thankful that for all of my whining and gnashing of teeth, our political dysfunctionalities in the United States don’t approach those that have led the people of Egypt to venture into Tahrir Square yet again and to die for their expectations of liberty.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

One of the amazing things to come out of the occupy movement is the human microphone: a pragmatic way that Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park cope with the constraint that they may not use any sort of public address system.

The speaker calls out “Mic check!” which tells the audience to pay attention. What follows then is a back and forth between speaker and audience in which words are spoken first by the speaker and then repeated by the audience, clause by clause, so that everyone can hear, all the way from the front to the back of the crowd.

It’s an amazing experience, not only for the practicality of it but also for the way in which the audience is actively engaged.

I have two examples for you: one a bit intellectual, the other more visceral.

1. Mic Check—Arundhati Roy

This video of Arundhati Roy speaking in New York shows how the human microphone works. It shows her learning to pace her words and gradually move from giving a traditional speech to something different.

At [0:30], the crowd applauds as Roy takes the stage. Right away, you get a feeling for how human microphone addresses work.

Roy calls for a mic check herself at [1:10]. She begins with a longish sentence thanking Judson Memorial Church and the audience. At [1:25] she starts a sentence which is too long for the audience to absorb and repeat, and you can see the realization on Roy’s face that she needs to adapt, smiling and nodding in implicit acknowledgement to the audience that she’ll figure it out.

In her next sentence at [1:30], she figures it out.

But today the people are back.

But today the people are back.

Short and sweet and exactly the stuff of the human microphone.

She gets better and better with the medium. And as I watched it online, I eventually found myself, eyes closed, repeating her words with the audience. I too became an active listener.

It’s a great talk in its own right. I highly recommend it.

[2:20] What you have achieved  … is to introduce a new imagination, a new political language, into the heart of empire. You have reintroduced the right to dream into a system that tried to turn everybody into zombies mesmerized into equating mindless consumerism with happiness and fulfillment. […] this is an immense achievement.

But it’s also a great illustration of how the human microphone works logistically, how it takes some getting used to and how the overall experience ends up being something quite remarkable.

2. Mic Check—UC Davis

Have you heard what happened at UC Davis?

Storm troopers in dark armor with helmets, visors and truncheons dousing kids from point blank range in a steady orange stream of pepper spray as the students passively bow their heads. [photos] [video]

But there’s more to this than the police abuse…

The students are clearly angry and at [3:15] they start to chant, “Shame on you!”

The police are clearly very uncomfortable. They form a tight knot, nervously glancing thru their visors at the furious students, and they begin to retreat. Elbow to elbow, some of them walking backwards, they take one small step and then another as the crowd continues to chant. The rearguard hold tear gas guns at the ready.

At [4:15] someone starts shouting about “sick swine,” but the crowd doesn’t take the bait. At [5:30] they start chanting, “Whose university? Our university!” And at [6:13] something amazing happens.

A guy yells “Mic check!”

He has to repeat it four times, but the crowd stops chanting and begins to listen. And what follows is amazing.

We are willing

We are willing

to give you a brief moment

to give you a brief moment

of peace

of peace

so you may take your weapons

so you may take your weapons

and our friends

and our friends

and go.

and go.

Please do not return.

Please do not return.

We are giving you a moment of peace.

We are giving you a moment of peace.

You can go.

You can go.

We will not follow you.

We will not follow you.

At that point, the crowd spontaneously begins to chant “You can go!”

The police clearly relax and move quicker. At [7:40] they are mostly out of the crowd, and the students begin to cheer.

What an accomplishment. What an incredible example of nonviolence. What an incredible use of the human microphone.