I Haven't Always Known Rivers: A Meandering River of a Blog

"In Between Nests" by Merrill Comeau

So already, one thing I know about my inner landscape is that a river runs through it.* I know. It's not an original image or feeling--or even an original way of saying it: as T.S. Eliot said in "The Dry Salvages," "The river is within us, the sea is all about us; . . .."** (191).

I'm cherishing my inner river right now because I see it clear as day, and there's much I don't see clearly in my inner landscape.

Headwaters

Of late, I've been thinking about inner landscapes, so much so that I posted an invitation to my Facebook friends to share possible inquiry questions about them.*** The questions they've posted have already stimulated my thinking, and I'm looking forward to focusing on a few of them first. Some of their questions have asked for descriptive, personal answers: What do you see when you look at your inner landscape? Hence this blog.

The River Blog Forks Briefly

Saturday afternoon, after I said to myself, "A river runs through my inner landscape," I recalled that I had a copy of Norman Maclean's novella "A River Runs Through It." Saturday night, I read it.

I loved it. It's a great story, a humbling story. It asks the question of how people help other people, especially when there's history--personal, familial, cultural--that complicates attempts at communication and action. As such, it's a story for our time in which so many people are saying they want to help. I'm thinking especially about the White people I've been speaking to or reading about who've been saying they want to know how to be active antiracists.****

So since I want to get back to the topics of rivers and the role of inner landscapes, which may in part be to help, I am simply going to provide you with this conversation between the narrator and his minister father about trying to help the narrator's enigmatic, somewhat rebellious brother.

Drawing by Scott Ketcham

     "'Help,' he [the father] said, 'is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.

     'So it is,' he said . . ., 'that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed. . . ..'"

     I told him, 'You make it too tough. Help doesn't have to be anything that big.'

     He asked me, 'Do you think your mother helps him by buttering his rolls?'

    'She might,' I told him. 'In fact, yes, I think she does.'

    'Do you think you help him?' he asked me.

    'I try to," I said. "My trouble is I don't know him. In fact, one of my troubles is that I don't even know whether he needs help. I don't know, that's my trouble.'

     'That should have been my text,' my father said. 'We are willing to help, Lord, but what if anything is needed?'' (81-82)*****

I would paraphrase that last line as "Please, God, let there really be no reason I need to help; please don't let me need to do anything more or different than what I'm already doing." I've had the feeling.

The River Blog Fork Rejoins the Main Flow--With Reverence

The minister father and his two sons share a love for fly-fishing, especially on Montana's Blackfoot River, which they also love; and they know rivers in a way I don't and suspect I never will. But that doesn't mean I can't revere rivers, and I do.

Dordogne in Beynac

I was thrilled the first time I saw the Mississippi River--at flood stage, in St. Louis, where it had crept up to, under, and beyond the Gateway Arch. Having seen the Dordogne River days earlier in its wide, dramatic downstream incarnation******, I loved fording it in France's Massif Central where it originates and seems more like a nameless stream than a major river, And I'll never forget singing with members of my college choir from boats stopped beneath an acoustically friendly bridge that crossed the storied Thames roughly thirty miles from London.

But nothing in all of my travels thrilled me more than seeing the Nile River in 2008.

It was very late afternoon. And frankly, I hadn't expected to see the Nile on my way to Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda. In fact, I'd never expected to see the Nile in my lifetime. And then there it was, spreading out before me, as old as time.

As afternoon reached toward sunset, I heard the words "ancient, dusky rivers" in my mind's ear. I'd taught Langston Hughes' "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" many times, and now here I was, so close to one of those rivers that had deepened the soul of Hughes' archetypal Black narrator who spoke from a perspective shaped by all geography and human history. I felt that poem with a new intensity.

The River Blog Forks Again, Draws Toward a Langston Hughes Poem

Hughes' poem was among those featured in the American Academy of Poets #shelterinpoems virtual poetry reading in late April, and classical soprano Julia Bullock read it. Not surprisingly, Bullock's speaking voice is beautiful, so listening to her read the poem (at minute 30:10) and share the story behind it (at minute 27:16) is as soothing an auditory experience as it is a deeply moving literary one.

The Negro knows rivers for good reason: he's had life experiences with the Euphrates, the Congo, the Nile, and the Mississippi--those major rivers that shaped civilization, civilized or not. We the readers move with him from dawn (on the Euphrates) to sunset (on the Mississippi) and feel that weighty human history as one long day.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I build my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

     went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy

     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

Such a long day, filled with raising and building in servitude, but also with bathing and lulling and sleeping and singing. All spring, I've been thinking about the emotional effect of repetition in poetry. Could we feel the Negro's transcendent groundedness without Hughes' repetition of "I've known rivers" and "My soul has grown deep like the rivers"? Truthful repetitions comfort and assure, even when the stories they relate to are fraught with struggle and uncertainty.

The River Blog Wanders Back to "A River Runs Through It"

Rivers flow, even when they seem still. And according to Norman Maclean, rivers speak, though we may not understand them.******* In fact, the father in "A River Runs Through It" sees rivers and words in relationship to each other, though the nature of that relationship has eluded him at times.

As the father explains to one of his sons, who comes upon him as he's rereading the first chapter of the Gospel According to John, "'I used to think the water was first, but if you listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath water'" (95). When his son disagrees, he says, "'No,' . . . . 'you are not listening carefully. The water runs over the words.'" (96).

Interestingly, he says this after a long passage in which that same son has talked about listening to the river's different voices.

The Margaree River, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia

"The voices of the subterranean river in the shadows were different from the voices of the sunlit river ahead. In the shadows against the cliff the river was deep and engaged in profundities, circling back on itself now and then to say things over to be sure it had understood itself. But the river ahead came out into the sunny world like a chatterbox, doing its best to be friendly. It bowed to one shore and then to the other so nothing would feel neglected" (95).

A river that was busy taking care to respect both of its banks? A river that was re-speaking in order to be sure it understood what it itself had just said? A river with voices formed of words and water in some sort of a relationship? And how about, in a later passage, "A river . . . [that] has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us" (102)?

Clearly I have much to learn about rivers.

And Finally, This River Blog Wanders Back to "Inner Landscapes"

My inner landscape doesn't specifically contain any of the actual rivers I've named or referred to above, though I'm sure the river running through it reflects each of them somehow. It's more an archetypal river that I see in my mind's eye; it appears more sketched or painted than photographed. Maybe that's because my husband is an artist; maybe it's because my inner landscape is more dreamscape than landscape.

And that may be the case for everyone. According to The Power of Myth, when Bill Moyers asked Joseph Campbell about the difference between a myth and dream, Campbell explained that "a dream is a personal experience of that deep, dark ground that is the support of our conscious lives, and a myth is the society's dream. The myth is the public dream and the dream is the private myth" (40).******

Drawing by Scott Ketcham

Frequently, explained Campbell, there's tension between the public dream and the private myth because each of us has both an inner and outer life. In my own case, my inner metaphorical river is calling to me, and maybe has been for a while. Over the years, I've loved listening to the river, watching it flow, but I suspect the public dream may have held me back from doing more than just passively appreciating it. The poems I've recently written and read have been telling me that my private myth has been bidding me to be more active for a long time: to get into or onto the river and flow with it to someplace new, literal or figurative.

But inner rivers can't do it all on their own. Too often, it's a failure of imagination masquerading as a desire for clarity that holds us back from heeding our inner rivers and letting ourselves know what we actually already know--which is where we need to go. That's why I loved it when Norman Maclean said, "At sunrise, everything is luminous but not clear." Intent on identifying the clear, we often overlook the luminous, which is so important if, as Campbell says, "we are looking for . . . a way of experiencing the world that will open to us the transcendent that informs it, and at the same time forms ourselves within it. That is what people want. That is what the soul asks for" (53).*********

Poetry, which allows us to experience ourselves and the world metaphorically, helps with this, says Campbell (59), and I concur. Since the coronavirus pandemic began, poetry has made it possible for me and others I know to engage deeply with a moment that, like other ordeal moments in history, has made individuals and whole populations have to confront change, loss, and despair. At the same time, it has reminded us that and how people endure such moments, even transcend them. Finally, it has offered comfort, solace, hope and connection while encouraging us to imagine a future beyond this present moment. In a nutshell, poems help.

Drawing by Scott Ketcham

My metaphorical river knows this, and is challenging me to wade into it and write more of my own poetry, humbled as I am by the great poems I've been reading, listening to, and living by.

Meanwhile my husband keeps unintentionally showing me to myself in some of the drawings he's been doing. Sometimes, it seems to me that a river runs through them. He's excited that I'm drawn to mythic and metaphorical rivers, whether or not he's actually drawing them. He encourages me to wade in and swim. That he believes I can do this and stick with it helps.

Since poems seem so alive to me, I can't think of a better aspiration for me than "to see life as a poem and . . . [myself] as participating in a poem . . . " (55). So here goes.

The Writer Wades in and Writes a Draft Poem💙

The Reader Speaks of Rivers

--with gratitude to and for Langston Hughes

I've known rivers.

I've known rivers rendered in words that pooled in my heart and mind, then carried me beyond them.

My soul's been infused with those rivers.

"Brook, Dark Phase" by Scott Ketcham

I've paused beside the

     sylvan Wye with a

     boy-turned-man, and

     heard the still, sad

     music of humanity.

I've followed the sacred

     river Alph into measure-

     less caverns and

     glimpsed a savage

     place enchanted.

I've moved among city-

     dwellers oblivious to a

     strong brown god that

     flowed implacable,

     waiting, watching and

     waiting.

I've planted myself on the

     banks of the singing

     river, beside the rock

     and the tree, and

     embraced the new

     hour holding new

     chances.

I've known rivers.

Mapped, metaphorical, mythic rivers.

My soul's been infused with those rivers.

[💙Note: All words and lines drawn from the poems the reader has read are italicized.]

__________

* From Merrill Comeau's "Tree Pieces": Painted Fabric Collages by Merrill Comeau, displayed at Hunnewell Visitor Center at the Arnold Arboretum in 2011. I believe this piece is called "In Between Nests," and it may not contain a river, but I seem to see one. https://patch.com/massachusetts/jamaicaplain/tree-pieces-painted-fabric-collages-by-merill-comeau

** Eliot, T.S. (1970). T.S. Eliot: Collected poems 1909-1962. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World.

*** Those who've participated have actually been doing the step of the Right Question Institute's Question Formulation Technique (QFT) that asks participants to generate questions about a Question Focus (or QFocus)--in this case, "inner landscapes."
**** This word is in the title of Ibram Kendi's latest book, How to Be an Antiracist.

***** Maclean, N. (1976). A river runs through it. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

*(6) Photograph included in the following blog: Waddell, T. (2010). Awaken to Beynac, in the Perigord/Dordogne, France [web log post]. Retrieved from https://myfrenchawakening.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/awaken-to-beynac-in-the-periograddordogne-france/

*(7) Screen shot of an image on https://quotefancy.com/quote/1307419/Norman-Maclean-We-can-love-completely-what-we-cannot-completely-understand

*(8) Campbell, J., & Moyers, B. (1988) The power of myth: With Bill Moyers. New York: Doubleday.

On White Silence and White Listening

So already, Speak up! Stand up! Lie down!* Act up! Shut up!

All of these are actions White individuals can take in the wake of George Floyd's death to help make the present moment transformative; done relentlessly, visibly, and audibly by racially diverse groups, they have the potential to pressure legislators, policymakers, and police departments to make the changes necessary for achieving a non-racist, racially just society--or to help our society make significant strides in that direction.

But wait a minute. "Shut up" as a strategy for making social justice change? What about the sign that protester is holding that says "White Silence is Violence"?** First of all, no one poster slogan should have to speak truth on every level. Since "White silence" in this case means complicity--a failure to speak up when Black and Brown people are being oppressed, victimized, murdered, under-served, and/or denied the basic human rights all Whites would claim for themselves--that sign holds true.

But in another context, White silence could mean listening rather than speaking, could mean seeking to understand others' viewpoints, especially people of colors' viewpoints, rather than sharing, defending, or justifying our own. 

On June 4, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh urged White Bostonians to listen to protesting Black Bostonians. And frankly, if you're talking, you're not listening. Hence, the "Shut up" above. 

I don't think Walsh meant White protestors should ask Black protestors to stop protesting in order to give on-the-spot tutorials on the history of race-based systemic oppression; I do think he meant that White people should open their ears, brains, and hearts as they experience the protests on the street or on their televisions.

Listening deeply to learn, to understand, to work together effectively isn't easy. I actually think schools have played a role in cultivating people's poor listening, all in the name of the laudable goal of cultivating student voice. Too many classroom participation rubrics have encouraged students to speak often, whether or not their "contributions to class discussion" have done anything more than put forth their own questions, their own opinions, their own interests. Why would students listen to other students if they didn't expect those other students to respond to them? 

Thalia Speaks; Liam Listens

That's why I began asking my students how much they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: "I learn more by listening than speaking." Discussing the roles that speaking and listening played in our own learning got us thinking together about the purposes of listening and speaking inside and outside the classroom--and invariably quickly got us beyond "So I could get a good participation grade for the day."

So yes, there are times that White silence that indicates listening and thinking with the intent of understanding is crucial. Let's face it: activism that lacks understanding, that's based on ignorance, a lack of self-awareness, and a lack of other-awareness, can make problems worse, not better. That's what Camus was talking about in The Plague. So what's really needed is activism based on understanding that has developed at least in part through deep, attentive listening.

But how will our fellow Americans, or the world, know when our silence signals not that we're indifferent, but that we're listening? Chances are they won't. 

Shut up!

And that's why, I suspect, many White Americans who understand they've been the beneficiaries of racial privilege keep talking, keep talking, keep talking, keep trying to make clear to Black people and other White people that they are good, knowledgeable, actively engaged, and ready to give up their privilege. (I'm guessing some of us are ready, some of us think we're ready, and some of us wish we were ready.)

Time and time again during the last couple of years, I've heard Black people say they're tired of educating White people. Many of them have been doing it for years. And really, why at this moment--when many if not all of them are feeling intensely and personally enraged, vulnerable, and/or sorrowful, and when so many of them are busy trying to put an end to the injustices that threaten their lives, not White people's--should they also have to take on the work of educating me and my fellow White people? 

White people really can do a lot of this educating ourselves, as long as those of us who've gained some needed understanding in the last few years actually have the conversations with friends, family, and colleagues that expose differences in thinking and address powerful, dangerous misunderstandings. The White silence that's dangerous is the White silence that won't do that. And any White person who's silent in the face of those dangerous misunderstandings values something more than racial justice.

And one more thing: that doesn't mean that the first thing we should do after having had such tough conversations is proudly report them to others.Yes, we White people may need to risk that no one will know we've done something potentially useful.

Recently, a Facebook friend posted something on her page*** that helped me think about my own actions during the last two weeks. I haven't participated in any Boston-area vigils or protests, and I have my reasons for that. The four screenshots at the left have reassured me that I alone need to understand my reasons. 

But I also better not be self-deceptive--either about why I'm not out in the public square, or about whether my chosen "activism" is really apt to do something that will help to stop to the murder of Black people at the hands of brutal policemen and civilians.

Years back at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a group of teacher-learners spent several years inquiring into the listening-learning relationship. Our efforts were most guided by the concept of a "pedagogy of listening" that was articulated and developed in the Reggio Emilia Preschools and Infant-Toddler Centers. Carla Rinaldi defined listening in a series of statements that emphasized the need for "openness to change," "curiosity," the acceptance of some degree of "precariousness," and "a deep awareness and at the same time a suspension of our judgements and above all our prejudices" (80-81).****

The statement we most struggled with was not about openness, but about action: "Listening as the premise for any learning relationship – learning that is determined by the “learning subject” and takes shape through his or her mind through action and reflection, that becomes knowledge and skill through representation and exchange."**** Many of us had accepted listening as invariably and exclusively invisible and interior, and as somewhat passive. Rinaldi's definition made listening active, and even interpersonal. [Interestingly, when we asked our students what they thought we meant when we said, "Listen," they said we wanted them to be quiet. Obviously, something needed to change.]

But about the last word in that statement, "exchange." As you can see in the adjacent image, the "White Silence is Violence" poster is actually not the main subject of the Boston Globe Metro section photo in which it appeared last week. The real subject is the conversation happening between a White protestor and a Black protestor. The caption includes the following: "Frantzia Carasco and Steve Kellerman, both from Roslindale, talked as they shared a bench together."** Given that both of them are wearing masks, we can't tell which of them is talking and which of them is listening. Maybe Kellerman is doing what Marty Walsh asked White Bostonians to do: listening. And maybe Carasco is listening, too.

There's a lot of good pressure out in the world right now to get on the racial justice bandwagon, and the time couldn't be more right and ripe for the pressure and the pursuit of racial justice. But people are different, and there are multiple ways to contribute. In my opinion, listening and learning are part of White people have to be doing at this moment, and much more than that, as they can--and as will genuinely help to create the needed changes. I hope this blog post hasn't merely filled the air with more White noise--and I'm sure you'll let me know if it has.

* Tlumacki, J. "Protesters laid down with hands behind their back on Washington Street in front of the Jamaica Plain Boston Police station." Retrieved from https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/04/metro/photos-boston-area-protests-call-justice-george-floyd-other-black-americans-killed/ Note: Tlumacki is a Boston Globe staff photographer.]
** Tlumacki, J. "A Silent Vigil for Black Lives was held Thursday evening at the Adams Park perimeter in Roslindale Square. Frantzia Carasco and Steve Kellerman, both from Roslindale, talked as they shared a bench together" [digital image]. Retrieved from https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/04/metro/photos-boston-area-protests-call-justice-george-floyd-other-black-americans-killed/ Note: Tlumacki is a Boston Globe staff photographer.]
*** @andrearanaej. Performative Activism and Another Opportunity. (4 photos) Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/amber.mayes.94
**** Carla Rinaldi’s definition of listening can be found in the chapter entitled “Documentation and Assessment: What is the Relationship?” in Project Zero and Reggio Children (2001): Making learning visible: Children as individual and group learners. Reggio Emilia, Italy: Reggio Children.