A Good Story

After finally getting Toward a Commons culture online, I celebrated by going out to Ahjumawi for three days of kayak camping. On the second day, coming back from a long, before-sunrise to midday drift through the marsh, I lay down in my tent and took a nap. I groggily awoke to semi-conscious awareness of kids’ voices. My sleep-encumbered mind could not make sense of it. It was Thursday afternoon, school-time, so kids wouldn’t be out here. They were boys’ and girls’ voices so it wasn’t some single-sex scout-type group. It didn’t make sense because I wasn’t sure how awake or asleep I was.

When I finally woke and got up, I could see and hear that they were definitely kids and there was a bunch of red canoes down by the lake and a bunch of tents being set up. The kids were loud with that kind of “I’m out in the Wild where I have the Freedom to Shout if I want to” energy which I can understand – though tempered with the hope that this Freedom would keep them revisiting the Wild until they matured to quieter voices.

That evening I prepared to go kayaking out onto the lake to binocular the Andromeda Galaxy which I had just written about in my post. I had brought a night-light to put on the dock to see if it could guide me back to the dock in the deepening moonless dark. I wanted to make sure the kids didn’t bring the light back to camp saying “look what I found” so I walked down the hill to their camp area. Kids were doing their thing (probably 8th or 9th graders) and beyond I saw a man and five women sitting together in camp chairs. I walked up to them and said “You look like the adults” to which the man replied “and you look like a retired middle-school teacher” to which I incredulously but delightedly proclaimed “I am!” and all the women Burst into laughter. That greeting led into a pleasant back and forth of “what did you teach” and “what school is this” type conversation. Then I told them that I was going out on the lake to watch the stars and I was going to leave this light on the dock and I would appreciate them making sure the kids didn’t move the light. Which led the man to ask if I knew about the stars which I do and he said he was going to do a star watch later with the kids and started asking if I “would want to help give…” and I delightedly said “I would” before he could complete the request. Told them I could show the kids the Andromeda Galaxy.

I paddled out on the lake. I could see my night light from far off. The dusk darkened to where I could see the galaxy. Paddled back to find all the kids standing on the dock with the male teacher doing a star talk with a laser pointer. He introduced me as I tied up my kayak. We slid smoothly into a veteran teachers’ shuffle of back and forth of presentation. I pointed out “arc to Arcturus” and told the myth of Orion and Scorpio (“so they’re never in the sky at the same time”) and what I found so amazing about astronomy was that until my lifetime with rocket probes, all that the astronomers had was light to study. They couldn’t touch or dissect anything. They just had light. Finally I introduced them to the most distant thing we can see with our naked eyes: the Andromeda Galaxy. The man had a good laser pointer so I could point the kids’ eyes right to it. We settled into that experience. One girl asked what happened to the light that doesn’t hit the Earth? It keeps going. But, I added, “some of that light that has been traveling for two and a half million years is passing through your pupils and contacting your retinas and creating bursts of optical stimulation which even now are creating new thoughts in your brain and how amazing is that? That ancient light, streaking from so far away, can enter your eyes and alter your brain chemistry and change what you’re thinking.”

The next morning I awoke to the sound of kids’ voices. I realized I had forgotten to point out Saturn. So after dawn had turned into day, I walked down to give the star map I had printed out for my Ahjumawi trip to that teacher. I walked through their camping area (some were starting to pack up) but he wasn’t around. I thought I saw him down on the dock so I walked out there. He came walking back. We met. He had his guitar. Said he had brought the kids out to the dock to watch the sunrise while he sang “Morning Has Broken.” We fell into delightful teacher talk and what he was trying to create in providing experiences like this for the kids (which I completely related to because I’ve been doing the same). He described a light disciplinary chat he had had with one of the kids as they were paddling across the lake yesterday which led me to share with him a disciplinary class lesson I used when needed. I bring in some stacking blocks and ask for a volunteer to stack the blocks into a tower and timing how long it takes the person – usually around a minute. Then I ask for another volunteer and have them knock the tower down. Half a second. “It’s far easier to knock things down than to build them up. This is part of the nature of this universe. It’s possible to build up but it requires work. It’s harder and takes more time.” As our teacher sharing wound down, there was something I had to ask him because it had been going through my mind all morning. “When I came up and said ‘you look like the adults,’ why did you say ‘and you look like a retired middle-school teacher?’ I’ve been thinking about that all morning and I’m not aware of anything I was doing that would reveal myself as a teacher. What did I do that looked like a middle-school teacher?” And that led Dave Vixie to tell me the titular Good Story of this story.

“When we arrived yesterday afternoon, we could see your tent up on the hill. The women worried that you might get angry with the kids shouting. I told them not to let their thoughts slide in that direction. It’s so easy to let your thinking head down towards the negative. But when they saw you walking down the hill towards us last evening, they were sure you were upset and coming to vent at us. And I started modeling a different thought stream. I was telling them ‘I’m not going to let my mind slide in that direction. I’m going to think he is a middle-school teacher who is used to this kid energy. But he’s kind of old so I’m going to think he is a retired middle-school teacher who misses the kids.’ I was modeling that to them so that’s why I said that to you and when you replied ‘I am’, that’s why they burst into laughter. They couldn’t believe it. In fact, now they are kind of thinking that you are my plant. That you and I had met at some other place, some earlier time, and I had arranged with you to meet us out here to help me with the star talk.”

We laughed at this good story as we walked back to their camp area. The women were working over at a picnic table. I walked up to them and grinningly but dramatically proclaimed, “I.” “Am Not.” “a Plant!” They burst into laughter again. “He ratted on us.” With big grins all around, I assured them that I had never met Dave until yesterday and I was just as amazed as they were when he greeted me with “and you look like a retired middle-school teacher.”

Dave felt like a kindred soul to me. Here’s a link so you can meet him.

Snippet – Seeing in the Fifth Dimension

The same place three and a half years apart. (The island appears smaller in the second picture because I was further back from it.) A willow now grows on it.

The two pictures, side by side, remind me of Gregory Bateson’s observation about binocular vision: how the slight differences between the input coming in through each eye creates a third input (depth perception) that resides in neither of the original two inputs.

Like binocular vision, the difference of the willow in these two images’ inputs creates a third input (the Fifth Dimension) that relies not on either image, but on the interplay between them through time. Seeing the Fifth Dimension allows me to perceive Life in the stream of stellar energy that’s streaming down from the Sun (and the Andromeda Galaxy); allows me to perceive Life harvesting that flow in order to swim up against it towards more Possibilities. The willow will buffer the wind, sun, and rain and create a place of less extremes. The willow will attract a greater diversity of birds, insects and their feces. The island will grow richer in possibilities. The Fifth Dimension allows me to see the willow as the Commons. It did not exist before Life, it became possible through the actions of earlier lives, and it, in turn, creates possibilities for other lives. This is the world I live within; I see it all around me.