On May 17, I received an email from Liam Miller Castles, a sophomore here at Northwest Academy:
Hi David,
The Pigeon Press is in the process of publishing a series of art and writing pieces from our community called Life, Interrupted. We hope the series will give our readers a glimpse into the lives of the NWA students, admin and teachers while the city has been shut down.
I am hoping that you would take part in the feature. As part of my assignment for my journalism class, I need to find a faculty or staff member to submit a creative piece of work that examines their experience during this frightening moment in human history. My due date for your submission is May 27th. Are you willing to take part?
Thank you,
Liam
The Pigeon Press Staff
If you’re a teacher, you do not say no to that. I wanted to help Liam and to be of service. So I said yes. I didn’t hesitate.
And then I hesitated. And hesitated. And hesitated some more. Today is June 2. I missed that deadline. Liam was kind enough to send me a polite reminder a couple of days ago. Like the kind and empathetic teacher that he may one day become, this student gave me an extension.
Some things never change.
I have always been a procrastinator. Always, always, always. The quarantine’s changed many things, but not that. I’ll be keeping up that jolly tradition long, long after we’re in Phase 7, 8, or 9 – whatever we’re calling life after this terrible pandemic ends and we try to get back to…what?
It’s not that I’m unhappy. I’m not. But I’m not exactly happy either. Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly fortunate. I love my job. I love my students. And my colleagues. And my family. And my dogs. And that Community is back on Netflix, especially Seasons 1-3 when Dan Harmon was the showrunner. But no matter how fortunate you are – and I am very fortunate – 2020’s been a big fat festival of pick your own expletive. I hate to self-censor. But this is a school newspaper.
I’m sorry, Liam. I told you I’d get it in on the 27th. I did not do that. Which puts me on the other side of many conversations that I’ve had with my own students as they’ve struggled to meet their own deadlines. This is not to say that I know how they feel. I grew up in a different time. Granted, we were all terrified of a nuclear war. But it’s not like we had to watch it happen. My students, on the other hand, have to watch climate change in real time. And school shootings. And COVID-19. And videos of police officers murdering unarmed black people. And a militarized police force violently repressing free speech. And – well, you get the idea. We all know the list. We’re living it now.
To paraphrase Tolstoy:
Met deadlines are all alike; every unmet deadline is unmet in its own way.
So not to make excuses-
But of course I’m making excuses. Isn’t that what writing is? A big fat excuse to rationalize, even justify a world where rationality and justice are so maddeningly elusive?
I digress. To make an excuse – nay, several excuses – I didn’t meet this deadline because I was stuck. At one point, I’d begin by talking about an incredibly important life event: two weeks ago, I stopped myself from flinging a bag of dog poop at my neighbor. I was walking my dogs and this bastard just saddled right up beside me as he power walked down Center Street leaving no more than four feet between us. A man who didn’t even pretend to Social Distance. The temerity. The effrontery. The gall.
I opted not to start with that story. Maybe it’s because I wanted to use a stronger word than “poop” in a school newspaper. I have a hard time getting through my best days without profanity’s crutch. But I think the bigger reason that I let poor Liam down is because I didn’t know what to say.
I am an English teacher who is witnessing the failure of language. This moment is so much bigger than anything that we can possibly write or say.
In these uncertain times.
In these unprecedented times.
We’re all in this together.
You want to take a dive into the shallow end of the language pool? Check out Jessica Safia’s The First Lines of Emails I’ve Received While Quarantining:
https://twitter.com/jessica_salfia/status/1249000027198033922
My colleague, Raz Mostaghimi, sent it to me a few weeks ago and suggested that we read it in 8th Grade English. The poem is brilliant and brutal – a depressing reminder of the banality of language and its failure to meet the import of the moment.
That’s why we have Shakespeare!
At least, that’s why I have Shakespeare. Nerds like me turn to his Complete Works like a Secular Gospel. Did you know that during the plague of 1606, Shakespeare wrote King Lear? Did you??? If you’re my age and spend any time on social media, you definitely know, because that factoid was everywhere…when was it? Three weeks ago? Seven? Before George Floyd and murder on video and Central Park profiling and armored tanks and tear gas.
Well, at some point, King Lear seemed kind of important.
Maybe not King Lear itself. The fact that Shakespeare wrote it. During a plague. That’s what we thought was important. But not the play itself. My god, who wants to read King Lear? I know I don’t. I hate that play. Lear has always felt too big, too important, and too long. Like Wagner, but without the antisemitism. (That’s something that you can find in other Shakespeare plays, especially The Merchant of Venice.)
You know what my favorite part of King Lear is? The end! Because it’s o-ver! Three-and-a-half hours of my life that I will never, ever, ever get back.
But I also love the penultimate couplet that almost ends the play:
The weight of this sad time we must obey:
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
Two lines end five acts of unbearable grief. King Lear is the story of an old and narcissistic ruler. He ruins his kingdom. Why? Because he feels insufficiently flattered. One of his followers is literally blinded when captured. His eyes are plucked out one by one on the stage. The audience has to watch it happen. You know what happens next? You don’t have to. You get the point. King Lear is a brutal play written during a brutal period of English history. A time of sadness whose weight must be obeyed by speaking…what? If we don’t say what we ought to and try to give voice to our feelings…
I’ve made a lot of excuses for procrastination, but this is my crowning achievement. See Liam, I couldn’t turn this in on time because I was too sad. Too overwhelmed. Too obedient to the sad weight of the moment.
What was the prompt? What exactly did Liam ask me to do?
…submit a creative piece of work that examines (my) experience during this frightening moment in human history.
Oh, I’m very creative. Procrastination, avoidance, denial – you have to be insanely creative to pull these three off. Woo woo. Yay for me.
It’s not right to keep a young person waiting. You’ve all been waiting long enough. Since the beginning of quarantine, my son keeps telling me how profoundly let down he feels by my generation.
Wait! My generation? Dude, I am a Gen X-er. We’re the cool ones, baby! Remember the 80s? Of course not: you weren’t there! So you can’t be talking about us. I’ll bet you’re talking about the Baby Boomers! Right? Ok, Boomer! Ha ha! Remember how funny that was? Remember??? No no no, we didn’t let you down. We brought you up. With The Brady Bunch. And Irony. And K-Tel’s Dynamite Greatest Hits of Disco. How dare you hold me responsible for the world that I left you! The temerity! The effrontery! The gall!
And this is where Lear gets it wrong. Those lines I just quoted? They don’t quite end the play. They’re followed up with this zinger:
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
What a load of crap. What was Shakespeare thinking? And who cares? Shakespeare (or Edmund or Albany, depending on which version you read, email me if you want to geek out about it) gets it wrong, at least for this moment. The oldest hath not born most. Right now the burden falls upon they who are young. Who have already seen too much and may now wonder if they shall ever live so long.
What, then, are the Boomers and the X-ers and the Lears and the Shakespeares and venerable old procrastinators left to do? What, then, is our charge?
Atonement. Action. Restoration. And commitment – not just a promise, but a commitment – to recreate a better world in which the young can live for a very long time and that we all can be proud of.
I shouldn’t have procrastinated, Liam. I see now that was wrong. But I knew that from the get-go. So thank you for the extension. It was an uncommonly generous act that means much, much more than you may ever realize.
Thank you for teaching me something important during this frightening moment in human history. We should all be so wise.
