#SOL17: A Process, A Serial Stalker, and Art

from my art journal. (Feb. 2017)

A theme may seem to have been put aside, but it keeps returning—the same thing modulated, somewhat changed in form. —Muriel Rukeyser 

I.

The weeks leading to the anniversary of Rob's death were more difficult than the actual day. By mid-February, a serial killer stalked my dreams. No matter what time I went to sleep--no matter how long I slept, I kept dreaming similar scenes over and over again. In most of the dreams I was investigating a series of murders. It seemed as if I was a detective. At the end of the dream--what I could remember--I sensed that a killer was stalking me as I tracked him and the fear this generated woke me from my sleep.

I did not know what this dream might mean, but I began to step up my writing.
I wrote most every day.
A lot. Often.

Within a few days of writing, my sleep became easy again, victimless. It remains so.


II.

A few weeks passed without a reoccurrence of the nightmare, but I was still curious. One afternoon, I googled, "What does it mean if you dream about a serial killer stalking you?"  The second explanation offered seemed more probable.

"...a serial killer may reflect a problem that is influencing a lot of other areas of your life. It may also point to reckless belief system "killing off" plans or hopes you had. Positively, a serial killer may represent a serious attempt to deal with a lot of problems at once." (from here).

III.

Is grief a problem?
Is the shock of Rob's illness and death a problem?

Grief as a natural expression of sorrow, not a medical malady. Working through grief is in many ways a matter of living in the present--standing where your feet are. I do wonder though about shock and the toll taken during the last 19 months. When I recount what happened most people express genuine disbelief, followed quickly by concern.

The events from diagnosis to death were so extreme,so fast, so relentless. Yes, I suspect the shock and resulting stress have been traumatic. I am not one to dwell in pity and find that being active these last 13 months has helped. Caring for Devon, writing this blog, reading what you and others have to say, keeping an art journal, talking out sorrow with close friends in a bereavement group, attending grief counseling, and walking ( a lot) have all helped. So too has been remembering how much I love my work I do and working full time again. Connecting with teachers and children is restorative.


IV.

Rob used to say that the only way out of something is through it.
This has been a year where walking through the grief, pain, sorrow, loneliness, anger, and loss has been deliberate and necessary.

#SOL16: Here and Then Gone

Somewhere Over the Atlantic (M.A. Reilly, 2016)

I.

38,000 feet below thick clouds that have severely roughened the air flight, the ocean is concealed. I imagine it nonetheless--the strong Atlantic moving, waves rising, cresting, and falling like a wild sea serpent plunging down and then resurfacing again and again. In the ocean, everything flows along currents to find beaches I cannot see, cannot name. There's an order to be appreciated.

Here lost among clouds that stretch like ghostly fingers across a coming dawn, I watch as if the shift in clouds might reveal you. I tell you twelve years of Catholic school taught me that heaven was largely a skyward business and I wonder if this is where you have come to rest, come to be.

And so I look for you among the ephemeral bits of fluff, but instead I see the head of a cow, perhaps a moo cow coming down the road for we may well be over Ireland and these clouds give way to a gnarly old man who seems befuddled, hunched over a cane. And then there is nothing.  Just like the clouds Berndnaut Smilde captures with his camera.

Here and then gone.

Here and then gone.

II.

Cloud interpretation is largely a geometry of faith--a language I cannot decipher. But even so, there is a simple joy that fills me as I stare out the window of this mostly silent airplane, winging east to Paris. We are less than 2 hours from landing.

I'm reminded that 17 years ago we tried to come here, somewhat keen on imbibing that old cliche of love. Paris in April. But instead we took those dollars and some more and paid for Devon's adoption--a surprise after so many months of waiting. We never made it to Paris, saying we would come here one day, just the two of us. We thought we had such time for who would know that a month after our son turned 17 you would be dead?

III.

Death is thick in Paris. I had forgotten how in Europe everywhere most everyone seems to be smoking. This is true for Paris as well. Young and old.  I look  and want to say, "Save your lives." I look at the young ones and recall you telling the oncologist that you smoked from when you were a teen until you turned 27. I look at the three young girls all puffing away until I must turn away and as I do I notice another group of three at a table nearby--all of whom are men and heavy smokers--all much older than you and I wonder how much of lung cancer is an unfortunate matter of genes. Your father died from lung cancer too.

IV.

Dev and I are here in Paris, Rob and there's a certain solace I find present talking to you tonight knowing somehow that this digital impulse will find its way to you.  Someone and I am sorry to say I have forgotten who said that there would come a time when I would be able to not only bare talking with you again, but revel in it.

Yes, revel.

3600 miles through roughened air I have come to learn a truth.

Interactive Read Aloud: Dwelling, Talking, Feeling & Thinking

When I designed the Newark Public Schools' summer school literacy project for children in primary grades, I gave a lot of thought about how to infuse high quality text into that experience and decided to emphasize the daily interactive read aloud as one important component of the daily learning.  Because I am also teaching and coaching in the project, I have the satisfaction of not only designing, but also seeing that work interpreted and enacted with children.  I knew without a doubt that I would learn so much and that this partnership would give rise to questions, wonderings, and theories about teaching and learning. I have not been disappointed as I have seen super work being done with regard to vocabulary and text response and this work has prompted my thinking.

Because most of the read aloud texts are meant to be read across multiple days as well as reread, I imagined that teachers might chart the wonderings of students as they talked and might let sit a question of two across several days:  a question that the teacher and students would revisit as they reread a given text.  Unfortunately, I failed to make that clear in the guide I wrote and so I might be most responsible for what I perceive as an absence.  It is the dwelling in ideas that matter so.

Child's response to what happens at the beginning of The Firekeeper's Son.

In correspondence with coaches who are supporting teachers and students in the project, I asked them to be mindful of the presence of student talk and to support teachers in ensuring that children have lots of opportunities to talk about what they are hearing, seeing, feeling and thinking.  Whereas there is a good deal of turning and talking among the youngest children, there seems to be less of this being done with the older children.  Alongside this emphasis of student talk, I also wanted to convey to coaches and teachers that interpreting and evaluating text often requires enough space for learners to dwell, not to simply respond.   In many ways that space is a placeholder for Louise Rosenblatt's concept of poem: the transaction a reader and text create.  A challenge with text-dependent questions is that they are often efferent and can be 'answered' definitively.  Whereas understanding literal details is important, so too are interpretive and evaluative queries and certainly text dependent questions can also lead to interpretation and evaluation.  It is these latter ways of thinking about text that I want to suggest make for good potential places for dwelling. When I rehearse teaching in my mind,  I imagine saying to children: "This is a question we may not answer and one that we will need to think about across the next few days. I'm going to leave it printed here on our chart so that we can think about it when we're not reading the book. Then when we revisit the question we can see if we have any new ideas and questions." 

I am going to be paying attention to dwelling in text as I make my way through the next week with the teachers and children.  I hope to post another blog in which I follow children's lines of thought that happen apart from the read aloud text and yet is connected to it.

Thinking beyond the read aloud time about the text is an important goal.

Here are some of the texts children are hearing and interacting with this summer.

Kindergarten

• Aruego, Jose.  (2002). Weird Friends: Unlikely Allies in the Animal Kingdom. Illustrated by Ariane Dewey. San Diego, CA: Gulliver Books.
• Brenner, Barbara. (1997).  Thinking About Ants (big book format). Illustrated by Carol Schwartz. New York: Mondo Books.
• Collier, Bryan. (2004). Uptown. New York: Henry Holt.
  
• Cotten, Cynthia. (2002). At the Edge of the Woods: A Counting Book. Illustrated by Reg Cartwright. New York: Henry Holt.
• Jenkins, Steve. (2011). Actual Size. New York: Sandpiper.
  
• Thong, Roseanne. (2000). Round as a Mooncake: A Book of Shapes. Illustrated by Grace Lin. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.

First Grade

Illustration by Edel Rodriguez from Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx.

• Burns, Marilyn. (2008). The Greedy Triangle. Illustrated by Gordon Silveria. New York: Scholastic.
• English, Karen. (2004). Hot Day on Abbott Avenue. Illustrated by Javaka Steptoe. New York: Clarion Books.
• Lunis, Natalie. (1999). A Closer Look (big book format). New York: Newbridge Educational Publisher.
• Park, Linda Sue.(2009). The Firekeeper's Son. Illustrated by Julie Downing. New York: Sandpiper.
• Winter, Jeanette. (2011). The Watcher: Jane Goodall's Life with the Chimps. New York: Schwartz & Wade.
  
• Winter, Jonah. (2011). Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx: La juez que crecio en el Bronx. Illustrated by Edel Rodriguez. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

Second Grade

Claire Nivola's illustration from Life in the Ocean.

• Chin, Jason. (2009). Redwoods. New York: Flashpoint.
• Elya, Susan Middleton. (2006). Home at Last. Illustrated by Felipe Davalos. New York: Lee & Low.
• Guiberson, Brenda. (2009). Life in the Boreal Forest. Illustrated by Gennady Spirin. New York: Henry Holt.
• Nivola, Clarie. (2011). Life in the Ocean: The Story of Oceanographer Sylvia Earle. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Tate, Bill. (2012). It Jes Happened: When Bill Traylor Started to Draw. Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. New York: Lee & Low.

Ida B. Wells by Stephen Alcorn from Let It Shine.

Third Grade

• Alvarez, Julia. (2002). How Tia Lola Came to (Visit) Stay. New York: Yearling.
  
• Curtis, Christopher Paul. (2004). Bud, Not Buddy. New York: Laurel Leaf.
• Myers, Walter Dean. (2008). Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told.  Illustrated by Bonnie Christensen. New York:
• Pinkney, Davis Andrea. (2000). Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters. Illustrated by Stephen Alcorn. San Diego, CA: Harcourt.
• Weston, Mark. (2008). Honda the Boy Who Dreamed of Cars. Illustrated by Katie Yamasaki. New York: Lee & Low Books.

Imagining A to Z: T is For Talking When You've Nothing to Say

T is for Talking When You've Nothing to Say

Talking About Malcolm X, II (M.A. Reilly, 2008)

John Cage  (1967) wrote:

                                                                           

                                                                              For something                         to

be             a                 masterpiece                    you             have             to             have    enough time       to     talk            when    you     have          nothing      to       say.

Talking About Malcolm X, I (M.A. Reilly, 2008)

I think about Cage's words as I think about the two men who are featured in these images. Both men were kind enough to allow me to photograph them while they talked. Originally from Brooklyn both were at that time living in Florida. They each lived in Crown Heights, but neither knew the other while there.  They met each morning at the ocean to talk, often about politics and the old neighborhood. One of those mornings I photographed them while they talked. On that day the topic was Malcolm X, Barack Obama, and how America might come to better understand itself by studying both men.  At the time Obama had not yet secured the Democratic nomination for president.  

Cage is right. Sometimes you just need enough time to talk, to see what surfaces, to come to say what you did not know you could produce. There are all kinds of ways to talk, yes?

Note: In this series of post during the month of April, I am participating in the A to Z blogging challenge, with each day focusing on a letter.  In order to bring some cohesion to this process--releasing the imagination is the focus of each post.