Summer has been good. I’ve been relaxing lots as well as traveling. Two separate trips to California, one to Houston. It’s concluding though, and I’m preparing to dive back into my fifth year as a high school teacher.

God is the Music

A young man sits before pages of sheet music. Treble and bass clefs stretch their notes along the page. Dots stack and flow, rise and fall, race and space out, each taking their time. And this young man, even if he can name all the notes and identify the chords and cadences, will be robbed if he never sets his hands to the keys.

Sheet music is for playing.

Daniel Coleman wrote that, “God-as-communicator is like a specific kind of writer, like a composer of music, whose text is inaudible until someone actually picks up a violin or a guitar and brings the silent text to life” (In Bed with The Word, 80). This idea made me reconsider what scripture is for. The sheet music means nothing unless it brings about music. Reading the scriptures without living the way Christ teaches is like naming notes but never setting your hand to the piano. God is not revealed in the word alone, but in our living of it.

“The important thing is not to think much but to love much” (Teresa of Ávila).

You will only hear the music as you try to play it.

God is a Child Painter

I’ve had this poem in my notes for a while. I don’t know if it’s at its final form, but I’m happy enough with it to share it here.

Sunset persuades me
that God is a child painter
with an early bedtime,
and mother is walking
up the stairs to see
if he is, in fact, asleep.

Instead of resting his head,
he has left bed to put
his hands to paint.
The clouds love his colors,
and he loves to play.

A split-second before
his mother opens the door,
God leapfrogs back to bed
winks out the lights
and pretends to sleep. 

Of course mother knows. 
But she plays along and sends 
him a kiss from the palm 
of her hand then looks
toward the west and whispers
I think this is His best yet.

And our little painter, 
no matter how hard he tries,
can’t seem to fight the easy rise
of his mouth into its
lovely, sunbright smile.

Drawings

I’ve been drawing more. Mostly trees (some with colored pencils) and scenes from places I’m at. I also recently bought oil pastels to try out. I wasn’t thrilled with my first attempts, but I did four small scenes on the same page that I’m quite proud of.

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Photography

Tahoe boats; 4th of July balloon; sky and lamp; sky

Field Recordings

Hidden Beach @ Lake Tahoe

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Goodies

Blue Prince ☞ My girlfriend and I got this game at the beginning of July and have put in about 40 hours already. Escape room meets board game, but it’s actually a video game. It’s been fun to play together. We have pages of notes. Also, we’re pretty good at it, ngl.

Cycles by Bernardo Castro ☞ My favorite find of the month. Beautiful, soothing, and many subtle textures to find. Listening from top to bottom is the recommendation. If you only choose a few, try tracks 8 and 4 (Camino a casa; Abuelita).

LUXURY (live) Jon Bellion ☞ This put a grin on my face that I could not remove.

✵ ❂ ✵ ❂ ✵ ❂ ✵

2026 Book Log

FINISHED READING

January

• Why They Can’t Write — John Warner

• More Than Words — John Warner

February

• Death Comes for the Archbishop — Willa Cather

• Treasure Island — Robert Louis Stevenson

April

• The Editors — Stephen Harrison

• March Book 1 — John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell

• March Book 2 — John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell

• Ghost Town — Eric Colossal

May

• Night — Elie Wiesel

• Make Sneaky Art — Nishant Jain

June

• The Hobbit — J.R.R. Tolkien

• The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness — Andy Puddicombe

• The Art of Living — Grant Snider

• First You Write a Sentence — Joe Moran

July

• In Bed with the Word — Daniel Coleman

• Summerland — Michael Chabon

• Mindfulness in Plain English — Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

• Attached — Amir Levine and Rachel Heller

August

• Skip — Molly Mendoza

• Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark — James K. A. Smith

○○○

CURRENTLY READING

• Liturgies of the Wild — Martin Shaw

• The World-Ending Fire — Wendel Berry

• The Fellowship of the Ring — J.R.R. Tolkien

If you’ve read some of my newsletters, you probably won’t be too surprised to hear that I bought a flip phone. I’ve been using it for a little over 4 months and love it. My iPhone 13 mini is in the morgue.

Do I miss anything about the smart phone? Ehhhh, being able to react to people’s messages with the little hearts or “ha-has.”

Do I miss anything else? Nope.

I love that my phone is back to being a phone instead of a black hole to the internet.

I use it to call and text, to set timers/alarms, and to navigate. If I want to listen to music or a podcast, I connect it to my computer and drag some mp3 files onto it. Kinda clunky, kinda fun.

Which flip phone did I buy? The Sunbeam F1 Pro.

What’s cool about the Sunbeam company is that they take their phone and make different versions with different feature-sets. I got the Aspen because I wanted gps and a hotspot, but I didn’t want access to my email.

The other cool thing is their numberlink service which allows me to text from my computer. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve actually gotten pretty fast with the whole T9 thing, but sometimes, when I’ve got a batch of messages to send, it’s nice to just let my fingers fly on the keyboard. (What’s the point of practicing on monkeytype.com if I’m not going to put that wpm to use?)

If I ever go away from a flip phone, it will probably to the Clicks Communicator or something like it. Something running android or a likewise customizable os instead of Apple’s straitjacket. I would keep a short list of apps on it, none of which would be browsers, social media, or videos. Just reading, listening, communicating, and navigating.

Meditation

The point of meditation is to practice the skill of mindfulness, and the natural result of mindfulness is headspace. Let me talk about these things in reverse order.

HEADSPACE

Headspace is the experience of “existing in a place where you are at ease with whatever emotion is present” (65). This ease is a calm, and “with calm comes clarity. You begin to see how and why you think and feel the way you do. You start to notice the patterns and tendencies of the mind. And what this does is to give you back the choice of how you live your life. Rather than being swept away by undermining or unproductive thoughts and emotions, you can respond in the way you'd actually like to” (109).

So headspace isn’t the absence of emotions, thoughts, or feelings but rather a disposition of ease toward whatever thoughts and sensations are in one’s mind and body. This ease creates space between yourself and your thoughts, giving you more choice.

MINDFULNESS

“Mindfulness means to be present, in the moment, undistracted. It implies resting the mind in its natural state of awareness, which is free of any bias or judgment” (18).

You can be mindful at any/every point of the day, not just when you’re sat down to meditate. As you wash the dishes, your mind might tunnel after some thought, replay something that happened in the day, or anticipate the events of tomorrow. Being mindful while washing the dishes would mean to let go of these operations of the mind and simply be aware of present sensations: the feeling of the dish in your hand, the temperature of the water, the smell of the soap (or the stinky rag).

You’re present to the present, undistracted. You’re not judging the events. You’re just experiencing them.

MEDITATION

To increase your capacity for mindfulness, you must intentionally practice it. This is where meditation comes in.

If I were to distill what it means to meditate it would be this: be aware of a particular thing on purpose, notice when the mind has wandered, direct your awareness back to the particular thing.

There are a variety of things that this “particular thing” could be. In fact, as I meditate, I progressively shift what this thing is:

• the space around me

• the feeling of my body pressing down on the floor

• the sounds in the room

• the sensations throughout my whole body

• the sensation of my breath (sometimes the feeling of my belly or chest moving, other times the sensation of air moving in my nostrils or at the back of my throat)

Naturally, my mind will start to wander or think about whatever I’m choosing to be aware of. I hear a car drive by, and my mind might start going. “That was loud. I wonder what kind of car that was. Wow, I’m so distracted. I gotta get back to meditating. Am I doing this right?” As soon as I notice that my brain is doing this, I acknowledge it and then simply go back to being aware of whatever my point of focus is.

This is meditation.

ANXIETY

In the last year of my life, I’ve experienced a drastic rise in anxiety. There have been days where it’s been hard to be in public, nights when panic has raced through me, and afternoons where all I wanted to do was sleep to get away from my mind. It felt like I had mental tunnel vision dictated by fear, worry, and guilt.

I’ve learned that a key to responding to any anxiety disorder is the way we relate to our minds. It’s less the anxiety itself that’s the problem, but more-so our involvement with it. We are anxious about being anxious, so we do everything we can to not be anxious. Our efforts to resist, avoid, or control the anxiety only fuel its fire.

Meditation increases my capacity to experience anxiety without the need to resist it or change it. I simply practice being aware of it. From this awareness, this mindfulness, I am more at ease with not feeling at ease. I’m more okay with feeling anxious. And, as it so happens, I’m usually anxious less (both in frequency and intensity).

It’s the Nanny McPhee principle: when I don’t want to experience anxiety, that’s when it sticks around; when I’m okay with it being there, it tends to leave.

From ease comes space, and with space there is more room to choose. I experience less of the fear-induced tunnel vision and rumination I mentioned before. I am more able to make decisions based on what I value regardless of the way I feel.

Some logistics:

• This book was great for helping me understand meditation. (It’s also the book that I quote in the writing above.)

• I love doing the daily Headspace meditations. I listen to the introductory bit to improve my understanding of meditation/mindfulness, and then I usually mute it and do the exercise on my own. Use this link for a free trial of the app.

• Sitting on a zafu (meditation cushion) is nice because it elevates your hips, aligns the spine, and creates a more stable base for sitting on the ground. It’s also nice to tie my practice of meditating to a specific object.

• Speaking of objects, I’ve also enjoyed using meditation beads as something to focus my awareness on.

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Photography

Spring Tree; California in November; Beach in November; Baldy; Music Room; Fall Canyon Drive

Field Recordings

Red-winged Blackbird Singing on a Windy Day

Waves into Sand

Guitar at Grizzly Peak, Disneyland

Disneyland Ambience

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Goodies

Tiny Puppet Sound ☞ I love listening to vinyl/DJ sets from youtube. I love it more when the DJ is a puppet.

El Prado by ann annie ☞ This is the album I’ve listened to the most over the last year. I love it.

Gerard Manley Hopkins ☞ I really liked listening through the Hopkins season on this podcast. It was my first exposure to Hopkins. His sprung-verse is captivating.

Rabbit Room Poetry

Hopkins: "The Caged Skylark"

The latest episode from the Rhyme and Reason podcast…

Read more

a year ago · 10 likes · 2 comments · The Rabbit Room

Mental Health (for Humans) by Kenneth Reitz ☞ This essay reframes what a diagnosis means in a needed way.

Video Games ☞ I’ve been enjoying Celeste, Hyper Light Drifter, and MarioKart World. (And some Minecraft and Stardew Valley.)

Tennessee Red Pencils ☞ These pencils have a sharp and spiced(?) smell that lasts a long time. I also like the color and grain of the wood.

✵ ❂ ✵ ❂ ✵ ❂ ✵

2026 Book Log

FINISHED READING

January

• Why They Can’t Write — John Warner

• More Than Words — John Warner

February

• Death Comes for the Archbishop — Willa Cather

• Treasure Island — Robert Louis Stevenson

April

• The Editors — Stephen Harrison

• March Book 1 — John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell

• March Book 2 — John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell

May

• Night — Elie Wiesel

June

• The Hobbit — J.R.R. Tolkien

• The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness — Andy Puddicombe

• The Art of Living — Grant Snider

• First You Write a Sentence — Joe Moran

July

• In Bed with the Word — Daniel Coleman

○○○

READING

• Liturgies of the Wild — Martin Shaw

• Make Your Home in this Luminous Dark — James K.A. Smith

• The World-Ending Fire — Wendel Berry

• The Fellowship of the Ring — J.R.R. Tolkien

This post is to regain momentum and restore the intent for regularity moving forward.

Here’s an inadequate recap of the last months.

Standouts from the First Half of 2025

The school year ended nicely. The sophomores I taught back in 22-23 all graduated. It was fun to see them grow up and start the next chapter of their lives.

To be honest, I overworked myself this year. It all caught up to my body during spring break. I got the most sick I’d been in a long time: a multi-day fever that wouldn’t break. This led me to miss almost a full week of teaching. I’ve been trying to pre-game a bit for this upcoming school year to set myself up for greater balance. I am, however, planning on trying a lot of new structures/strategies, so we’ll see if “balance” remains elusive per usual.

I’ve been doing more reading this summer than I expected, less writing than I intended.

I’ve been sitting on my porch a lot.

Other fun things:

• Presented at a few conferences

• Family trips and reunions

• Drove the esports students to their state championship and watched them win

• Dislocated my shoulder while dancing at a school event

• Camping

• Lake swimming

• Reading in the park with friends

Poor Man’s Polaroid

I picked up a little camera at the start of the year. It prints photos onto receipt paper. I get the fun and tangibility of polaroids, but it’s not nearly as spendy.

I take a photo every day to document my life. Like BeReal, but cooler.

Because the photos are tangible.

Audio

Transition during half•alive’s Persona Tour acoustic segment:

The sound of victory:

Fourth of July parade:

Fourth of July neighborhood concert:

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Photography

bicycle; sushi tacos; bear lake; the fourth; half•alive

Thanks for reading. I hope you have a nice week!

♡♡ Brandon

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Thoughts on Screen time

“If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That’s all there is to it.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

The goal of decreasing phone screen time is so that your phone has less gravity in your life. Ironically, a focus on decreasing screen time actually increases how much you’re thinking about it.

While the number of minutes spent looking at the screen may decrease, the amount of attention it gets probably does not. Healthy relationships with our technology cannot stem from a desire to use them less. A beautiful garden is not made by deciding which weeds to pull. One must plant flowers.

The flowers of my life consist of playing music, reading books, riding my bicycle, sitting outside, being with people, teaching, etc. The desire to do these things, however, reside not in the domain of impulse but effort. My first inclination is to refresh the YouTube page to see if there’s a new video to watch or save to my “watch later” playlist and never look at again.

Things that exist in the realm of effort reveal themselves after our movement.

I’m not motivated to read a book until I start the first few pages. Getting my bike tires pumped takes time and umph, but once I get riding, I could cycle all day.

Here’s the key: I don’t want to do the good things until I start doing them. Then I realize how good they are. I think I want to use my phone. Then I realize how good it isn’t.

It’s very difficult to plant flowers if you can’t even get off the couch. Our phones are addicting and soothe us into bad habits. What follows are strategies I’ve used to decrease the pull my phone has over me so that I can, hopefully, get a good garden going.

A quick acknowledgement: I am aware that phones can be great tools. That goodness however, is often smothered by mindlessness, a disposition our phones are really good at fostering within us.

Strategies To Loosen Your Phone's Grip

Use a Custom Launcher/OS

Custom launchers help your phone feel like a tool you’re in control of.

If you have an Android phone, I recommend installing the Before Launcher or Niagara Launcher. (I use the Before Launcher on my Boox Palma. It’s great.)

Apple products don’t play nicely with the ideas of launchers which is a shame. The Smiles Widget app is my workaround.

Remove Apps from Your Home Screen

Out of sight = Out of mind. Mostly. If I see an app that soothes my dopamine needs, I’m more likely to use it. Removing all apps from my home screen means I have to pull down on the screen to type in the name of the app that I need. This encourages greater intention. I’m actively seeking the apps I need rather than being sought by the apps my brain has been conditioned to want.

Don’t Delete Instagram.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve reinstalled the app. (Maybe it’s one of the most installed apps because it’s also one of the most uninstalled?) I’ve tried deleting it so I can only access it through a browser. This has helped, but I always reach a point where I want to use a feature that isn’t available via browser, so I reinstall the app. Then I get reeled in.

Rather than deleting the app, I’ve installed Opal to retrain my use of Instagram. Opal is a paid app, but I’ve only needed its free features. I’ve made it so I can only use Instagram three times each day, for five minutes each time. There are also sections of the day where I can’t use it at all.

Yes, I could go in and change settings/toggle on a break, but Opal adds just enough friction and waiting time that it makes me realize I don’t actually want to use the app. (Opal does have some heavy duty features, if you go paid, that eliminate every single loophole.)

Using Opal has been a great solution because I feel my inclinations changing. I’m starting to only use Instagram when I have a specific reason to do so.

On the topic of deleting apps, there are some that aren’t worth having on my phone. Video streaming services? Don’t have them. YouTube? Nope. It’s not there. If I need them, I can go to my tv.

I think it’d be nice to go back to the era when the internet was only accessible from one spot in the home.

Turn Off Your Notifications. Almost All Of Them.

I joke with my students (and it’s honestly a pretty dumb joke) that your phone has a “do not disturb” mode which implies that, if you don’t turn that on, you’re always disturbed.

Really though, notifications are stupid. They’re just a means for companies to tug at your shirt and pull you into doing what they want. Turn them off.

What notifications do I allow to show up on my phone? Messages, Reminders, and Email. That’s it. (There was a span where I even turned of message notifications. I kinda liked it.)

The email choice may seem odd, but I’ve had a similar battle with deleting/reinstalling my email app as I did with Instagram. (I know, how lame of me to be impulsively checking my email.)

When the email app was on my phone, I was likely to check it. Then I’d close the app but keep using my phone. Thumbs down.

Keeping the app and turning on notifications for email has made it so I don’t have to unlock my phone to see if I’ve received cool emails.

Give Yourself Space

Don’t take your phone with you everywhere you go.

Put it in a bag, not your pocket.

Put it in an inconvenient-to-access drawer when you get home.

Don’t charge your phone in your bedroom. Don’t use it in your bedroom. In fact, it may even be worth spreading a line of salt by your bedroom door to remind you that evil spirits don’t belong there.

If you’re working on projects in one place, make sure your phone is in another.

Instead of panicking when you realize you don’t know where your phone is, you should rejoice: you are making progress toward liberation.

Mornings Are for Sunrises

With varying levels of consistency I’ve implemented habits to keep me from checking my phone first thing in the morning. For a while, I made it a rule that I needed to get sunlight before screenlight. I’d sit on my porch for a few minutes in the morning after waking up. As I’m writing this, I’m remembering how nice that was. I should probably start that up again…

Plant Flowers

Remember: If you don’t have anything in mind to try or do, then you will push past the healthy friction these strategies create and get sucked back into your phone. All these tips are useless unless you have flowers you’re trying to grow.

During the school year, I don’t have to worry much about my screen time usage because I’m captured by my love for the work of teaching. Moving into summer, my screen time went up until I found some books I wanted to study and some projects I wanted to pursue. My screen time dropped.

Ditch your phone. Read a book.

Grow flowers, don’t just pull weeds.

To keep with the two-for-one theme, I’ve got two ideas that have been on my mind the past two months.

Idea One: Intangibility

This stems from my notebook entry on November 12th:

Reality and experience are intangible now. Music doesn’t exist on CDs or tapes but in your little metal box that contains everything else. You can’t hold the photos you take. The words you write to other people don’t exist.

The limitlessness of phones devalues the artifacts of our lives. If you can take an infinite amount of photos, stream any song, and read anything, can any of it be savored? Savoring something depends on the knowledge that the thing is unique and has an end. Having access to everything means you never really hold anything.

I prefer things in the real world. I love my notebooks because they’ll still be around twentythirtyforty years from now, and that’s cool. I’ve started printing out pictures I take. That’s also cool.

I still feel, however, like I’ve been brought up by the digital world, so my impulses push that way. Living in that direction is ephemeral. I scroll the feeds, and they are palpable, but as soon as I press the lock button on the phone, they disappear, and the present rushes in on my senses. Oh yeah, I’m in my living room. The internet isn’t even a whisper in comparison to what’s in front of me.

The digital illusion is convincing. Persuasive. It needs to be because it’s making up for everything it lacks, which is...well, everything.

The internet is good insofar as it can be made tangible. We must pull it into our world rather than get pulled in by it.

Idea Two: Modes of Operation

What is my mode of operation? Often, it is efficiency and bang-for-buck calculations.

Our GPSs assume that the best way to get anywhere is either the quickest way or the least-amount-of-miles way. That’s it. That’s its mode of operation.

What about a GPS programmed to take you on the most beautiful routes? Or onto the roads that tuck you in and out of the oldest neighborhoods? What about a GPS that inserts a few laps around a block before moving on so you remember that you’re already somewhere even before you get anywhere?

Charles Taylor talks about social imaginaries. These are the background assumptions that frame our thinking. We are typically unconscious of them just as fish are of water. These imaginaries, though, are historically constructed. They are results of society + culture + time.

An example: society assumes the world to be explainable. It seems like that’s simply the way it is. The world is quantifiable and measurable, and with enough grit and panache, by golly, we can understand it all.

Well, is that really how the world is, or is that an assumption? Is the world understandable? And if it is, is the best “mode of operation” to seek to understand it? Could there be other ways of framing the world?

Maybe the world is not our puzzle to solve but simply a puzzle to be in awe of. Maybe questions grow inside us as flowers in a field, and our desperation for answers simply turns out to be lawn mowing.

Photography

Driving South; December Golf; Driving North; Clouds

Goodies

Daniel Cloud Campos ☞ C’mon now! So cool.

Ali Gallop ☞ Watch the video. Replace “kite” with something that ought to be cared about.

VOCES8 Nightfall ☞ The full album is here. The first song I heard from the album is this one. I love the soprano climb at 3:29. 🥹

Persona by Half Alive ☞ Certainly my favorite album of November. The song “Thank You” made me teary-eyed (especially the second verse).

Make it Yourself ☞ Have I made anything from this resource? No. But it’s cool.

Cheers!

p.s. Winter morning skies are pretty. A little layer of lace diffusing everything, softboxing the sky.

p.p.s. In 2024, I wrote over 36,000 words between this newsletter and my teacher newsletter. Almost got a full little novel.

October 2024 (snippets from my notebook)

Every October is a new nesting doll containing all the Octobers you’ve had before. This one was warmer than the last which was colder than the one before.

Reading through my October 2023 notes makes me realizes my attention is still caught in the eddies of many things, though this year it’s less frazzled. Or maybe I’m just more tired, more out of juice. The mellow man mellows out more.

Before the end of Daylight Savings, I enjoyed walking out to my car in the mornings. The sky is beautiful. Even at 6:50am, the day hadn’t broken in, so I saw stars; Venus always the last one to go.

On the 18th, I cycled through three hoodies. The first was comfy but not warm enough for when I went outside for errands. The second was warm but not worth the risk of staining while cooking dinner. Hence changing into the third.

The last week of October was blue. Living alone is hard. Life is a team sport, so going it solo is a lot. I’m in charge of the cooking, cleaning, shopping, budgeting, scheduling, all of it. And there’s the bullet point list of things I leave undone, standing in front, blocking me from a sense of rest. I love teaching, but no one sees me getting to do it. Celebrations are private, so is the monotony.

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Photography

Photography is one of the things I’ve done less of. Not much to show.

Goodies

Botanica ☞ Botanica is a newish genre of music. Very sound designy and textured. There aren’t a lot of full tracks out there (at least not that I could find) but here are little snippets. Demotapes is one producer that comes to mind. Porter Robinson’s Lifelike from his album Nurture feels close as well.

Lifeline by MARO ☞ I had this on repeat through a lot of October. The guitars are so nice.

Stuff from Instagram ☞ I mean, these things are cool.

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Reading Notes

On virtue (from ):

“Virtue should not be thought of as a handmaid of heroism, but instead as an undercurrent of everything one does. Day-to-day matters are more important than theoretical great acts, and failure to give them proper attention is its own cowardice. Let every small thing you do be as careful and good as it can. The virtuous person should live so well that they leave breadcrumbs of virtue everywhere.”

The Map is Mostly Water

Breadcrumbs

thinly separated thoughts…

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2 years ago · 263 likes · 4 comments · Simon Sarris

Anti-algorithmic (a snippet from Robin Sloan’s newsletter):

“What happened (and this always presages a good experience with art) was that I surrendered to the strangeness, and the strangeness started to make sense. I entered OOF’s world, rather than insisting the band fit into mine, which is, of course, the demand of the Spotify playlist.

“You’ve got to give things a chance. You’ve got to let them seep into your brain. It takes time! I have spoken, often, of the dream-state that makes fiction work. It’s like an energy field, and it cannot, will not, simply snap into place; it eases in, just as sleep does, as dreams do.”

Cheers!

p.s. I’ve been writing online for three years now which honestly feels like a small number, but the steady accumulation has led to a lot of good. I’ve become a better writer (hopefully), I’ve become more self-aware (hopefully), I have a record of myself for myself, and I’ve made great connections online. Thanks for reading!

Prayer

September 8th:

“How do I engage my soul in prayer? I must sit and push against the wall. When it feels like it’s just me and the room (because that’s how it always feels), I must sit and pursue to pierce the wall. I must put forward effort. And after much pushing and striving, and after nothing happens, I must get up and go about my day, maintaining a prayer in my heart. And the next time I kneel, the next time I pray, I will see the unmoved wall, and against it, I will push.”

///

From ’s article Kaleidoscopes of Memory:

“We stood in a holy place, a place where our prayers mingled with the prayers and supplications of countless others throughout the ages, from wandering kings to determined tourists. This place was not only holy because of the past, but because we, ourselves, living and breathing, with bonds of friendship and love stood in that place with our own hopes, fears, and dreams. We stood in a place of timeless moments, within walls which had witnessed both transcendence and banality.”

God, Mediated

September 14th:

“I realized I haven’t thought much about God today. And when I did, I think it was mainly a function of duty. What a tricky thing (drawing nearer to God) when the things that lead us to Him so subtly replace Him.”

September 15th:

“How is it possible to know God if every bit of the relationship is mediated?

“Come to know God through the word ≈ knowing the word, not God.

“Would I know a different God if I were born 100 years ago? ≈ I do not know God but my generation’s conception of God.

“How to know a God that is infinitely away/elsewhere? Or is God everywhere and in everything? Is He in the rain? The sound of water steaming out between the burner and pot? The phone playing music: something written and recorded miles away? Is God in the solitude of my apartment? The crowd of strangers crammed together? Can you know the Creator from His creations? Is He His creations? Or is He separate? And even if He stood before me, what would the filter of self obscure? Or is His presence so pure that it can only be fully, immediately known?”

The circumstance of mediation reminds me of one of my favorite poems, “Altruism” by Molly Peacock. Here’s the first half:

What if we got outside ourselves and there   

really was an outside out there, not just   

our insides turned inside out? What if there   

really were a you beyond me, not just   

the waves off my own fire, like those waves off   

the backyard grill you can see the next yard through,   

though not well -- just enough to know that off   

to the right belongs to someone else, not you.  

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Photography

Morning Moon; Ice Cream; Kids Chasing Balloons; Football; Jazz

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Three More Excerpts from my Notebook

i.

September 14th (edited):

Anything you can think of is happening now somewhere on this planet of ours. An airplane, like a needle pulling contrails through the sky, sends its passengers elsewhere: some arriving, some returning.

Around the corner someone’s crying or swearing or kissing or sleeping.

Everything that could ever happen is happening now.

Every emotion, radiating right now, singing off this rock, spinning as a record, in the dark vinyl of space.

Space the vinyl, earth the needle: eternal is the song.

ii.

September 17th:

All eyes seem to be on us. The precipice generation. Do we tip the world over the edge into a chaos that cannot be retrieved/restructured into peace?

iii.

September 27th (edited):

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could open up the parts of our heart like an advent calendar and see with clarity the things that make us who we are. Like that one high shelf behind the cupboard door where grandma’s wedding china is stored. Dad’s old baseball glove. The old box of knick knacks that switch your mind back into your childhood. I wonder if, in some way, we could set up little stands and put out the items that have made us. It’d look like a flea market, and we’d be tempted to call it a me market, but really it would be a we market. And no one would sell things because we’d just give things. We’d give each other our stories and our listening and our hugs and smiles and tears and laughs. And I bet we’d see similar items on each other’s shelves, and say look at all we have in common. I think we’d realize how alike our patchwork is to someone else’s. The sun might set and the moon would rise but we’d set out lights to look and talk all night.

Goodies

What You Get Is the World - L. M. Sacasas ☞ This is my main reading suggestion for you.

“In both cases, the reward of attention is the disclosure of a multifaceted reality: the things themselves, the places they shape, the times they mark. By our attention we gain the world and the world becomes a home.”

The Convivial Society

What You Get Is the World

Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology and culture. In this installment, I’m thinking a bit about how modern society tends to deplete rather than renew us and what we might b…

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4 years ago · 191 likes · 9 comments · L. M. Sacasas

T.S. Eliot’s East Coker (No. 2 of “Four Quartets”) ☞ Just a portion of it:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

In order to arrive at what you do not know
    You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
    You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
    You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

About Abandoning Books ☞ a quote from :

“One sign of a wise reader is a mastery of the art of abandoning books. Give up on a book too early and you miss out on hard-won treasure. Slog through the wrong book at the wrong time and you’ll rue the day. The best readers know exactly when to say ‘maybe later.’”

English Teacher Weekly

English Teacher Weekly for Sept. 5th

Welcome to English Teacher Weekly—your source for what’s worthwhile from the worlds of literature, education, Christian thought, and the humanities…

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2 years ago · 22 likes · 2 comments · Andrew Campbell

wave to earth ☞ A new band, discovery a gift from an almighty algorithm, and one that I can’t get too much of.

The Wind by Ann Annie ☞ Definitely the album I listened to the most in September. The intro is perfect.

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Cheers!

p.s. This video had me laughing.

p.p.s. I’m writing this on my porch, and the blue of the sky with the pinkorange of the mountain right now cannot be beat.

The guest to the florist shop on this simple Monday was, among many things, a grandson, living at a distance. He wanted a special arrangement sent to the person who, among many things, was his grandfather. His grandfather’s mind had long since abandoned itself, but what the old fellow lacked in recollection, he made up for with warmth: a man with a sourdough nose, low earlobes, and a few strands of cirrus clouds for hair. He regularly sat on the back patio of the assisted living center, watching the world pass by.

The grandson entered the florist’s shop, and his eyes filled with green. Everywhere he looked were plants in easy bloom—vines twirling up little lattices and flowers singing their colors with vibrato. A small bell rang when he’d opened the door, and now he heard the florist call for him to come to the back room. He went. The abundance of green was replaced by stacks of seeds, arranged in some taxonomy beyond his understanding.

This florist kept the store stocked with the expected floriculture, but her true service, the one for which she was known, and which this young man had come, had to do with planning and planting instead of cutting and tying. This florist resurfaced the past. All she needed was a retelling of a memory and a small picture of the person the gift would be sent to. She’d place seeds on a table between herself and the guest in the comfortable, candlelit room. The florist would ask questions. The guest would speak. She’d open her heart to listen.

Something about her kindness reassured every sacred detail from this young man’s heart. The words travelled off his lips, floated across the air, until settling over the seeds which absorbed the memory’s emotional hues. After he finished, the florist gathered the little seeds in her hands, and together they walked to another room where they scooped dirt into a clay pot. Partway through, he put in a picture of his grandpa and filled it over. Once the pot was full, the florist gently guided the young man’s hands in her own, leading his thumb to push its print into the earth, making a small cocoon for the seeds. The hole was covered. Tears rolled down his cheeks and dropped into the pot: the first bit of water for the seeds now safekeeping everything.

❦❦❦

It took the old man a bit to notice the pot on his patio, but he tended to it generously, leaving notes for himself so as not to overwater it. After a few weeks, sure as magic itself, tendrils stretched, buds unbundled, and gorgeous flowers bloomed. The morning it happened, it was obvious. They were the most beautiful flowers he had seen. He picked up the pot and lowered his old face close to the petals and nectaries to gently inhale. With the subtle, sweet smell came a memory, a trickle from time that resurrected into his mind, a moment long ago forgotten that was once a sustaining current through his darkest times. Two birds that had been singing on a branch, floated down, flitted onto the railing, and watched the old man sit in his rocker, eyes closed, more at home than he’d been in a long time.

Old Journal & Old Yearbooks

My mom kept a journal for me before I could sit up on my own. She regularly updated it with little facts about my growth: my first and soon-to-be frequent words, the outline of my hand, the toys I got for Christmas. I recently went home and brought back some of my keepsakes boxes. The journal was in it.

It’s been a treasure to read through it, to get to know the parts of me lost to time, the parts of me that my mom remembers and that I’ll only know secondhand. It’s a treasure because by reading it, I get to know my mother as the mother of little me. The journal shows what she cared about and focused on.

My high school yearbooks were in the boxes I brought back. I flipped through the back pages that friends signed and wrote me notes. Reading what old friends said brought into my heart a feeling of gratitude. So much of who I am and the blessings and joy I feel come from the people that have been in my life. It’s bittersweet that the tides of life draw people toward various lands and paths, that people who I spent most days with are now years and states and countries away.

What a strange kind of beautiful it is that life weaves us together and apart, that who we are is made by the people long gone and others soon to come.

My friends from years ago will likely never read this, but it’s a thank you nonetheless.

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August Entries from My Notebook

Index of Smiles (August 27th-29th):

Someone smiled in a way that reminded me of an acquaintance of mine. This led me down a little curiosity, a making of a small index of smiles. This may become a growing list, or it may rest with these few:

• The Eye Smile — When you look at someone after you both witness the same thing and smile with your eyes because you’ve shared the same thought.

• Sunrise Smile — This smile is thoroughly sincere. It curves slowly, not rushed. The dawning of an emotion. The person is truly happy to see you.

• The Sad Smile that is a Hug — You see your friend that just had something sad happen in their life. The smile is a soft “hi” mixed with “tell me anything or nothing” followed up with “you can just be and I’ll be here with you.”

• Reverb Smile — Comes on strong and lowers slowly, naturally. You’re not conscious of it changing. The happiness just lasts and your mood lifts to meet it.

From August 16th:

I think it’s true that the more significant a moment in your life, the stronger of a hold it has on your future. People and places and circumstances seem to me of having a way of stretching a hand from the past into the present, turning my head to look back to where I came from. Sometimes it fills me with longing, but most of the time it fills me with questions. I look back at decisions I made and wonder what it would be like if I had done something else. It’s like a nostalgic daydream for a life I’ll never, but could have had. I wonder if there’s a word for that: missing the life you didn’t choose.

From August 25th:

Sunlight before screenlight has been a good idea. Especially on mornings like this that are cool. Yesterday I was thinking about how it’s probably better/more effective to fill your life with good than to just remove the bad. Filling with good is a one-step process. Removing the bad results in emptiness which needs to be filled. (It’s usually filled by regression back into the bad.)

I’d rather my life be filled with silence than meaningless noise. The silence might be the soil from which beauty grows; noise may prove the force that muffles it.

Photography

Overlook; Clouds 1 & 2; Walmart; Yardwork

Piano

Here resides a little piece I composed:

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Goodies

A Little More - Valley ☞ This is probably my favorite song from their new album.

Humble the Great ☞ A recent discovery that I’m happy was sent my way (via an almighty algorithm).

In The Sun - Yuuf ☞ Another algorithmic success.

Make with Miles ☞ Respect for the handiwork.

Sporarts ☞ Yep. Just cool photography.

Cheers!

p.s. I feel so lucky that I love my job.

Desk Notes from Mr. Merrill

02: Using Student Data Can Be Easy

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2 years ago · 6 likes · Brandon Merrill

Her mind only worked when her legs did. The doctors called it a hypokinesthetic-cognitive dysfunction. The greatest cure she could find for surfacing her mind out of sluggishness and mirk was taking to the streets to skate. Something about the vibration of wheel and road, rattling up from board to feet to shins and body, dislodged the dust in her brain, and, man, once she got moving, her mind went all streamline, bullet force, forward motion. Color splash thinking type stuff. She skated the streets invincibly.  

It was a shock to her, when one muggy afternoon, she skated near a busboy who was wiping off a patio table, and, clear as water, she heard in her head a word from his train of thought. Unanticipated pickpocketing of the mind. Limited telepathy. The boy’s voice resonated in her skull, so calmly. The overtness of the presence knocked her to the ground, full stop, and her mind decrescendoed back into its fog. And the busboy? He just continued working because, to him, nothing happened besides someone biffing out on a bit of sidewalk—proves her right, being so reckless. She found her board, shaky fingers numb to the grip tape. 

* * *

She stayed inside for a week, seeking immobility and a muted mind. Each time she got up and shuffled around the apartment, the memory of his voice came back, front and center. It soon faded, though, and was replaced by a hunger, asking her to find out if it could happen again.

One day, with nikes laced, shirt baggy and comfortable, she stepped onto her board and started kicking concrete.

The movement immediately rushed her mind with clear air and color, more than she’d experienced before. The first street was unoccupied, but a few blocks out, Lancey Avenue was bustling.

She saw people and nothing happened. Passed by, and her mind stayed her own. It was only when she nearly crashed into someone running to the bus stop that she heard one of his words. She dared herself and started skating at people, aiming for near misses, close enough to hear their exhale. It worked. Words were pulled in succession, copy-pasted, like a symphony of thought all pizzicato and brilliant. A word from one person’s mind would string into the next and suddenly she heard the earth speaking through its people. She kicked faster, she moved closer, she threaded every needle in the gaps between all people and heard the grand oration: an ancient song. Her eyes filled with tears.

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I’ve Launched a New Newsletter

For the past few months I’ve been working behind the scenes on an educational newsletter. It’s finally public! I will still be publishing on Record—Reflect once a month, but my education content will move over to my new publication. If that interests you, check out the intro post!

Desk Notes from Mr. Merrill

I'm Opening the Door to my Classroom.

I love teaching. A lot. When I first started teaching, though, I quickly realized that my capacity would always fall short compared to my list of to-dos. I could work long and hard but there would still be a stack of things I could’ve done…

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2 years ago · Brandon Merrill

Assorted Thoughts from My Journal

• I’m sad because I was looking at my rosters, and I don’t have a lot of the same students as last year. I pour in a lot of love, and it’s sad to not get to be their teacher again.

• One of my favorite moments today was when we were singing a hymn at church, and I sang a wrong note so loudly that it derailed the whole row behind me.

• On seeking God’s will: Using the best of what I know about God, what do I assume He would have me do with the circumstance/opportunities/relationships I am in? Do my best to pursue this while also seeking to improve my understanding of God.

Photography

Paris Workers; Jardin du Luxembourg; Rock Canyon; Rainbow and Kite; Climbing

Piano

A little something I’ve been playing with.

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Reading Notes

The Cloud/The Internet:

I’m forever fascinated by the interplay of technology and societal habituation. I appreciated ’s take.

“After a brief dalliance with false gods, we have returned to our primordial state. The serpent tempted Eve not with fruit, but an Apple iPhone. Indra had not a thousand eyes, but a thousand lenses. Zeus threw not lightening bolts, but 5G download speeds. We are become Homo *Dyēus once more, servants of the great Sky Father, slaves to the CLOUD.”

“We have outsourced our minds to the machines, and thus we have outsourced our god too.”

Cosmographia

All Hail the Cloud

Welcome to Cosmographia. For the full map of posts, see here…

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2 years ago · 455 likes · 78 comments · M. E. Rothwell

More thoughts on the same topic from a different author and article:

“On TikTok, anything and everything can be content. For those who are willing to play that particular game, they can film and share and monetize every mundane or salacious aspect of their lives. Nothing is sacred and everything is scalable.”

For two novels that will get your mind and gut all twisted up on this topic, try Feed and Landscape with Invisible Hand, both by M. T. Anderson.

On Faith:

My understanding of faith continues to grow. Here are quotes from ’s essay:

“Faith is not something you do with your mind. Faith involves movements of one’s whole being. Faith involves a changed perceptual capacity—that is, it literally brings a light that illuminates the world and changes the way we see the people and situations around us.”

“The goal of Christian faith, then, is to produce people who take as their own aim the work of the Father—the redemptive work of succoring and showing mercy to others.”

Wayfare

Tasting the Light

In the modern understanding, faith is something you do with your mind. To have faith is to believe a proposition. Or, more precisely, it is to believe a proposition even when lacking supporting evidence. But this is an impoverished conception of faith—one, incidentally, that Alma does not share…

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2 years ago · 24 likes · 2 comments · Mark Wrathall

On Questions

My good friend and fellow substacker and educator recommended ’s article to me.

“In essence, a great question has a generative power that transcends any single answer. It perpetuates an upward virtuous cycle of ever-deeper curiosity, ever-richer perspective. To me, someone who asks great questions is both intelligent and wields the capacity for infinite abundance of knowledge. Ultimately, getting good at questions means getting good at thinking, the very essence of human experience.”

Kindred Spirits

questions are desire paths of curiosity

I’m one of those people who gets particularly—nerdily—excited about chasing tendrils of curiosity down rabbit holes. I have an uncanny ability for sourcing information that other people might not find in places they don’t seek, and I unleash it on any topic that catches my fancy (lately, it’s been technology, craft, furniture, literature, and internet l…

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2 years ago · 33 likes · 4 comments · Sindhu Shivaprasad

AI Needs You:

A good read from .

“The first thing we learned very quickly here is that AI needs you - i.e. the quality of the prompt that you give to AI is critical. If you simply ask AI to ‘create me a course storyboard on X topic’ it reproduces instructional design practices which are common rather than those which are optimal.”

Dr Phil's Newsletter, Powered by DOMS™️ AI

How I Used AI to Turn a Document into a Course Storyboard & Prototype in <10 Mins

Hey everyone…

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2 years ago · 26 likes · Dr Philippa Hardman

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Goodies

Coulou’s Trumpet Meditations ☞ These have soundtracked a lot of my writing the past bit.

Lara Somogyi ☞ She is releasing more harp music, and it is so nice.

About You - John Mark Nelson ☞ This one is going to be on repeat for a while.

Photo Edits I Like ☞ The cityscape one was fun.

Cheers!

p.s. My bicycle has a flat tire.

The month of June was filled with professional development. I wanted to keep myself in the circles of educators. (And: I didn’t want an empty calendar.) I learned lots and am thinking about how I’ll structure classes this upcoming school year. A lot is going to change. I’ve also written some vignettes that I’m quite proud of. Here’s one of them.

The Monk

He was a strange urban millennial monk who had made vows to live a life of monastic meandering. He would walk, attempting to do so aimlessly—which seems logically impossible...aiming to have no aim is in fact an aim. The length of his stride was determined solely by the average amount of peace people were feeling within the block he strode by. A longer stride meant a more peaceful block. 

Naturally, his steps were very very small. A sort of scuffling shuffle. He was unable to linger in the most peaceful places, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. He felt most at home on the blocks where he was dragged to immobility, feet stationary. There he would stand, utter incantations, and exude a sort of calm. Fellow pedestrians just saw a man standing and felt no different as they continued on their way. Slowly, one of his feet would inch forward and he knew that somewhere deep in the tenement someone had, for a reason unknown to them, taken a deeper breath and let their long-held resentment go.

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Reflections on Myself as a Reader/Writer

I think I look like more of a reader than I am. I’ve got bookcases. I’ve got stacks of magazines. But it takes a force of will to start reading. I also shop around. I’ve started so many books this year and finished few. I’m really good at doing that.

I think I need a system of accountability in order to finish books.

As far as the things that I like to read... I like magical realism. I like beautiful, vibrant language. I like prose that makes me think. I like wisdom. I like reading stuff about spirituality/religion in the 21st century context.

As far as writing goes, it’s also something that I have to will myself into doing. But I have written some things I like, and I think other people like those things, so that makes me happy. Makes me want to write more.

What pulls me into writing? Force. Someone telling me to. That and personal goals like publishing my newsletters. Boredom. That pulls me into it. The occasional curious combinations of words that I want to explore.

(Are we our desires, or are we what we do despite our desires?)

I toy with the idea of trying to get my work published, but I am scared of permanence. If it gets published, then it is there in all its gore and glory. I might think a piece is good now, but eventually I’ll look back and be embarrassed by it. Unless I’m more compassionate to my past-self.

A Revised Version of an Old Poem I Wrote

Forcing Hands
I lassoed a sparrow in flight;
cried into its ears
my fears and plight,
caressing its nape
so it would listen
and remember.
Instead of loosing it to
fly my message to heaven,
I, in a grand crescendo
of betrayal, left it bound and tied
held it over a ledge 
at night, and yes:
I dropped it. A plot for God,
to prove his presence
and set me free.

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Photography

Window Washers 1; Window Washers 2; Underground Room of Stuff; Orchestra

Reading Notes

Water

I appreciate Philip’s noticing and distillation so that I too can pause and notice more.

“But what’s really traumatic about water is what it does to the body, how it traces its lineaments infinitely better than an eye does, how it shows the eye the speed at which it should look. And how painful to see, again, how the eye doesn’t learn, how it returns immediately to its extractive approach, mining form for content (too fast), or mining content for form (too slow).”

oldoldoldoldnew

26/05/2024 - 29/05/2024 [love │ grammar │ European agriculture │ beauty]

26 05 2024 afternoon Reading a message from D this morning, just five or six words, and then looking up from my phone at a completely altered world: bigger, warmer, better. Often this feeling, that the people I love have access to a binary switch which controls the light in my head. The peculiarity of this switch is that there is no way they can determine whether it’s on or off. This is perfectly just: interpersonal opacity is the condition of all sincerity, is the source of my love for them in the first place…

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2 years ago · 35 likes · 1 comment · Philip Traylen

Beauty of Holiness

Beauty in the ordinary when the ordinary honors God.

“I am, ever so belatedly, beginning to understand that worshiping God in the beauty of holiness is a different thing than worshiping beauty, and that holiness is beautiful in both the poetry of the Psalms and in the homely prose of a dutiful life.”

Wayfare

The Beauty of Holiness

When I was almost eight, earnestly trying to do what was expected of a soon-to-be-baptized member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I decided I needed to participate in the customary fast on the first Sunday of the month. Skipping breakfast before church was easy, but not eating lunch left me cranky by two or three in the afternoon. My…

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2 years ago · 38 likes · 2 comments · Kristine Haglund

What Faith Is

Faith isn’t intellectual labor to square what exists in the world with what you’ve been taught in church. Faith is living in a way where you consecrate what exists in your circumstance to bless those around you. It’s weaving the threads of your circumstance into a sweater so your neighbors can be warm in the cold times. Faith is doing our best to live as Jesus teaches.

“Faith, in other words, doesn’t look for an outside to the system; it creates an outside to the system. Trusting what she has heard of or from God, the person of faith looks at the world with an eye to dislodging things from their places in the network of the world and then seeing what use they can be for creating a community where people can and do live together in love. Faith doesn’t look especially like defensiveness, in the spirit of fear. It looks like creativity, rooted in a conviction that Christ has indeed overcome the world.”

Wayfare

Faith in the Twenty-First Century

“The times they are a becoming quite different.” – Principal Seymore Skinner, The Simpsons Perhaps you’ve noticed something of a 90s revival going on in popular culture. It’s fun for me to see this happening. I’m myself a product of the 90s, shaped so thoroughly by that decade that I often feel like a foreigner to the times I’m living in now. I’ve in fac…

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4 years ago · 13 likes · 1 comment · Joseph Spencer

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Goodies

Dorothy’s Harp by Dorothy Ashby ☞ I know you didn’t know that you needed jazz harp in your life. That’s why I’m sharing this album with you.

Cosmographia ☞ Many good things to be found here.

Cosmographia

Creating a map of the world and our place in it.

By M. E. Rothwell

Nothing to Do But Dream by Joey Pecoraro ☞ I love this stuff.

Cheers!

p.s. I bought this keyboard and I like typing on it very much.

I allowed four and a half months to slip by without composing a newsletter. Apologies to my past self who set a goal for regularity. Time to revive that intention.

Simon Sarris

I enjoy reading when the ideas are new to me or when they are conveyed in beautiful, fresh language. Simon Sarris’s writing does both of these things. I set out to read all of his posts, and I have about 3 left. Allow me to share some of my favorite quotes (and their associated posts):

Read slowly. There is a kind of marinating that happens with very good works, they are always more than their story. The goal is not to digest information, but to layer over your reality with a fresh coat of moss.

…

He who has no poetry in himself will find poetry in nothing. A person that reads no stories is unready for life. A person that reads many stories will be open to yet more stories. The appetite grows by what it feeds on. Dine as best you can.

The Map is Mostly Water

Reading Well

Reading is alluring. It has a nameless quality beyond satisfying desires for information and pleasure. Despite more colorful and interactive media, reading text somehow remains more refined, more seductive. There is a visceral feeling to good reading. Partly this is because reading is nearly solitary…

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3 years ago · 289 likes · 24 comments · Simon Sarris

To love a place is to allow ourselves to contribute beyond expectations of material return. To dwell poetically is to live as if even a simple apartment was your home forever. Once you are able to cast off the feeling that wherever you are living is somehow temporary, wherever you are living will begin to feel like home. To do this requires a kind of love.

The Map is Mostly Water

Familiarity and Belonging

“Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.” — G.K. Chesterton Dear friends, A short story: The princess kisses a frog, and creates the prince. ~ ~ ~ Over time several thoughts of the same cloth have come to me…

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6 years ago · 107 likes · 13 comments · Simon Sarris

When complexities are quickly grasped by experience, we call this intuition. It is our empirical (of the senses)—not our rational—insights that lead us towards good intuition.

The Map is Mostly Water

In Praise of the Gods

When you have offered your libation and have prayed, as is right, hand your comrade the cup of honey wine, so he may pour out his libation, too, for he looks like someone who offers prayers to the immortals. All men need the gods. the stupor of rationality • stories, building intuition • alchemy, building process • religion, building wonder…

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6 years ago · 316 likes · 49 comments · Simon Sarris

Words softly tread upon our minds, making their marks. Some repetition is beneficial, it is after all the basis of ritual. But successful ritual requires repetition and attention—If we are careless, we risk imprinting unworthy grooves in our language and thought. The words and concepts we see repeated the most might become our intellectual borders. Deep grooves become ruts, and we may forget how to think clearly, on our own, and with our own voice. The world is covered with this film of inertia.

The Map is Mostly Water

The Hidden Storehouse

A different language is a different version of life. — Federico Fellini Fellini is right, but he stops short of the essential thought. Words softly tread upon our minds, making their marks. Some repetition is beneficial, it is after all the basis of ritual. But successful ritual requires repetition and…

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4 years ago · 25 likes · 4 comments · Simon Sarris

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Thoughts on Ungrading After One Year

I am pleased to report that the first year of ungrading was primarily successful. It is an ongoing experiment, one that I am encouraged to continue to improve in the upcoming school year.

Why did I like ungrading so much?

• Students asked better questions.

  • Instead of students asking about points/grades, they tended to ask about the concepts we were learning.

• I felt unshackled when assessing work.

  • Rather than trying to distill a student’s work into a letter grade/percentage, I simply focused on seeing if they’d passed it off to the level it should be at. If not I could provide feedback and support so they could improve.

• Grading seemed to take less time most of the time.

  • I don’t know if it actually did or didn’t but that’s the way it felt.

• It forced me to improve my rationale for assignments/units.

  • I couldn’t leverage “points” to compel students to do work. I had to help them see the inherent value in the thing itself (aka: I had to make sure classwork was actually valuable).

What did students have to say about it?

• “I love how this class is run, I just have to worry about learning and not my grade.”

• “I feel like the way he does the grading and stuff makes me actually feel like the work I do is appreciated, and I actually learn things. In some of my other classes I’ve stopped trying as hard, and I just do like the bare minimum to get an A because I realized I often get the same grade as someone who barely tries. But in this class I actually do my best because I know it’s actually worth something, and he actually cares about my learning and potential.”

• “I like the way you made it about learning and not about grades. It made it less stressful in your class and made learning better.”

• “The fact that our letter grade was dependent on what we felt we deserved was interesting and made me think deeper about what I was actually doing in class that helped me get to the grade I wanted and not about how well I can remember basic information. It also challenged me because I had to make sure I was actually putting in the work to get everything turned in so I could get an A.”

• “He makes it so there’s no stress about learning, I can actually learn and not have to worry about a grade attached to everything.”

• “The way he grades has helped me a lot. I think that it makes the classroom experience much less stressful for me because I don’t have extremely tight deadlines. When doing the reflection, I get to really think about if I learned or if I was deciding to use my time ineffectively. I like the way he runs the class, it is a fun learning environment.”

• “It wasn’t focused on the grade but the learning which was challenging in a good way because I had to actually use my brain and learn more than just what a stupid assignment says.”

Anecdotal data is important and valuable. I am looking forward to this next year of teaching where I plan to be more thorough in gathering other types of data to synthesize with things students have said to more thoroughly evaluate the effect ungrading has on learning.

Current Questions:

• How can I integrate more student choice?

• Should I continue marking assignments as either passed-off/needs work or have a more nuanced scale? Something like a 1-4 proficiency scale to help students see how close they are to passing something off?

• How can I encourage students to push themselves more than they are inclined to?

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Photography

Park; Friends’ Band; Jacob Collier Concert

From School

Student: “You know, Mr. Merrill, if you ever didn’t do the teaching thing, I could see you as a Bill Nye kind of guy.”

Student: “Mr. Merrill! I have a birthday present for you. So... I made you a Tinder profile, and: you have a match!!”
(I talked to this student later and they hadn’t actually made a profile. I mostly believe them.)

Student: “Your class really makes me feel inspired and motivated to do my best, so I wanted to say thank you.”

A student I knew but never taught: “I heard you’ve gotten worse...”

Student: “Your class was the only thing that brought me to school on B days last year.”

Student: “When I graduate would we be able to hang out? Or would that be like weird? Or not allowed?”

Student has his arms fully extended with a pencil in each hand and swings them together trying to have the erasers touch: “See look, I’m sober.”

Student: “Your hair looks weird. Did you do something to it?”
Me: “I got a haircut.”

Student: “I figured out how to spell arson on my calculator. See look!”
Shows me: 4r50π

Student: “Mr. Merrill, would you rather have a girlfriend or a Bugatti? One can bring you love. But the other can bring you love and joy.”
(The love and joy being provided by the Bugatti…)

Student: “Mr. Merrill, your handwriting bothers me.”
Me: “What, is it the way I write the letter a?”
Student: “No, like your handwriting itself looks good. Looking at it doesn’t bother me. But like the way you write. Like how your hand looks and when you write on the board? I just can’t stand it.”

Student: “Cody Simpson aged like fine wine.”

Student: “I hate you Merrill! Why would you suggest a book like that to me?? How could you recommend that to a child??”
Me: “It’s sad, isn’t it?”
Student: “It’s terrible! What have you done! I’m never talking to you again. I don’t know you anymore.”
(The student honestly loved the book and he came by my class at the end of the day after he’d had time to think through the ending, and we had a good conversation.)

Student: “I’m only fifteen, so I can’t read your like old-person handwriting.”

My question of the day for students: “If you found out you were going to die a year from now, what would you change about the way you’re living?”
Student A: “I wouldn’t come to school.”
Student B: “I didn’t say this, my friend said this, but: lose my virginity.”

Goodies

Wyoming by Elijah Fox ☞ I’ve been listening to this album a lot.

A Beautiful Day ☞ How can you not be a bit happier when listening to this?

Airborne at Low Elevation ☞ If only I could write an essay this beautiful. Some day.

Wayfare

Airborne at Low Elevation

APRIL ON THE OZARK HIGHLANDS, the middle of the middle of North America, calls up a riot of life. Every year there appears in the crowded zone between earth and heaven a race of apple-green inchworms that ride the breeze on long strands of silk. Springtime also resurrects an army of dandelions from my lawn; with Sisyphisian futility, I c…

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4 years ago · 44 likes · 4 comments · Rosalynde Welch

Readwise ☞ I was hesitant to pay for this for so long. I regret not purchasing it sooner.

Cheers!

p.s. I have a teacher website that I think is pretty rad.

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Keep Going - Austin Kleon

I recently finished reading Austin Kleon's book and enjoyed it. Here are some of my favorite parts:

Uncertainty

Here’s what he says about art and uncertainty:

Uncertainty is the very thing that art thrives on. The writer Donald Barthelme said that the artist’s natural state is one of not-knowing. John Cage said that when he was not working he thought he knew something, but when he was working, it was clear that he didn’t know anything. “This has been my job in a way,” says screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. “I sit at my desk, and I don’t know what to do.”

Surprising, isn’t it, the emphasis on not knowing? Kleon referenced Donald Barthelme. Here’s Barthelme’s words:

Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing, a forcing of what and how. We have all heard novelists testify to the fact that, beginning a new book, they are utterly baffled as to how to proceed, what should be written and how it might be written, even though they’ve done a dozen. At best there’s a slender intuition, not much greater than an itch.

Art as a means of knowing

Here’s a quote from Kleon’s book (one of the things I admire about Austin Kleon is that he gathers good quotes):

“Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world. I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.”

- Frederick Franck

I interviewed an author who said something similar:

I think if you know exactly where a poem is going to go before you start it, it tends to be kind of boring, and not very fresh, not very interesting, and it might be better as a sermon or an essay than a poem, right? So I’m going to pay really close attention, and I’m going to look at those details, to try and be surprised, to see something I haven’t seen before, and in the process of that, I come to love that thing more, because I’ve been attentive to it.

Keep at it

I talked to my creative writing students last week that what matters as an artist is less about having produced something great but being in the process of creation and reflection.

Here’s more from Kleon:

No matter how successful you get, no matter what level of achievement you reach, you will never really arrive. Other than death, there is no finish line or retirement for the creative person. “Even after you have achieved greatness,” writes musician Ian Svenonius, “the infinitesimal cadre who even noticed will ask, ‘What next?’”

The truly prolific artists I know always have that question answered, because they have figured out a daily practice—a repeatable way of working that insulates them from success, failure, and the chaos of the outside world. They have all identified what they want to spend their time on, and they work at it every day, no matter what. Whether their latest thing is universally rejected, ignored, or acclaimed, they know they’ll still get up tomorrow and do their work.

This last chunk is one of my favorites:

We have so little control over our lives. The only thing we can really control is what we spend our days on. What we work on and how hard we work on it. It might seem like a stretch, but I really think the best thing you can do if you want to make art is to pretend you’re starring in your own remake of Groundhog Day: Yesterday’s over, tomorrow may never come, there’s just today and what you can do with it.

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New Music Release!

I’ve released my first single of 2024. You can listen to it and support it on Bandcamp. It’s almost on major streaming platforms.

A Little Book

I watched a little video where Austin Kleon made a book out of a single piece of paper. So I made my own little book without storyboarding—just went with the flow, page to page.

My feelings about teaching are multidimensional. This little book conveys one tiny slice of the pie. Part of being human is that I was in this feeling, but, at the same time, I was outside of it and analyzing myself as a person feeling it. (Like an out-of-body experience but out-of-feeling-analysis of the feeling?) I felt it, I stand by it, and I critique it. While it sometimes lowers my moral to have students not value what I try hard to make valuable, I also understand that I teach English at a public high school. I mean c’mon, of course some students won’t be thrilled to be in class.

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From School

My students seem to have taken an interest in my dating life recently (more than usual)...

Student: “Mr. Merrill, how was your break? Did you get a new girlfriend??”

Me: “Any questions?”
Student 1: “Do you have a girlfriend?”
Me: “I do not.”
Student 2: “Have you ever had a girlfriend??”

Student: “What if Mr. Merrill is actually secretly married?”

Student: “You’ve become a mean elf. Before the break, you were like Santa Claus.” (This was said in response to me being stricter on some classroom policies with the start of the new semester.)

Student: “Do you have friends or are you depressed and lonely?”

Student: “Not even 8 in the morning and that bathroom already smells like weed.”

Me: “How’s your week been?”
Student: “Pretty crazy.”
Me: “Yeah?”
Student: “When I was welding, I closed my eyes and almost burned myself.”
...
Same Student: “Also, I figured it out! You can use a welder to cook stuff.”

Student: “That last passage from The Great Gatsby was soooo beautiful. Just so good!”

Goodies

Rick Rubin ☞ He says that greatness in art comes as it is devotional (a gift to God/the universe). I aspire to create with pure intentions.

Niche - Ali Gallop ☞ Both the rapid style and sound design are fun. The intro segment alone!

Start - UTAH ☞ Fun song.

The Dipper - Kathleen Jamie ☞ Short little poem.

Cheers!

P.S. I have some websites that I’m proud of and might show you all.

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I read an article six months ago that I still think about. It opposed a lot of what I promoted in my undergraduate work.

It changed my mind.

The article by Gena Gorlin is titled, “Intellectual Humility is a Cop-out.”

Most people are familiar with the idea of intellectual humility. (Either by name or by essence.) Given the complexity of reality and the diversity of experience, it is better to humbly reevaluate our own thinking than to arrogantly brandish it as irrefutable.

It’s great to have discussions with people who are intellectually humble. They work to understand your point of view. They aren’t brash or contentious. They aren’t (here’s a fun word) braggadocios.

People who are intellectually humble don’t care about being seen as correct or right.

However, there’s a problem. As Gorlin discusses, intellectual humility encourages an insufficient relationship with knowledge. If the most prevalent goal of intellectual humility is to recognize that you could be wrong, then you’ve accomplished the goal as soon as you admit you don’t know things. Congrats.

But so what?

Here’s Gorlin’s solution:

“To the extent that we want to live well and build things worth building, we need to be right, a lot, and we need to know that we are—so that we have the courage and discernment to act on the knowledge we do possess. This is at least as important as ‘knowing what we don’t know,’ and arguably more so, if our goal is not merely to avoid missteps but to boldly and actively live well. 

The best thinkers—and thus the best builders—are not intellectually humble but intellectually ambitious. They respect the work that achieving real knowledge and earned certainty requires, and they embrace that work as the requisite to a life fully and consciously lived.”

A week or so ago, I was reflecting in my journal. Here’s what I wrote:

It feels pretentious and arrogant to claim rightness among diversity and options. And arrogance is emotionally distasteful in our society, thus there is social pressure to not claim a monopoly on truth.

Alan Noble, in his book Disruptive Witness, pulls from Charles Taylor’s work and speaks to these ideas from a historical lens.

“In some ways, Western society has turned this experience of tentative belief into a virtue, which is significant because with the collapse of a shared belief system we lost a shared stable of virtues to aspire to. Being open-minded, refusing to draw conclusions, the idea that diversity of belief is a good unto itself—these are all results of a fundamental shift in our basic beliefs about the world. Thus, we aspire to be noncommittal” (42).

In today’s world, being noncommittal is praised but not praiseworthy. It is an open-mindedness that is futile because someone who is noncommittal within diversity is adrift. Open-mindedness must be sustained by assurance in what we know and harmonized by determination to know more. Only then does real progress grow.

Jaron Lanier says:

“There is mystery, and the way to address that mystery is with rigor. It’s with self-doubt, with intellectual modesty, where you don’t assume narratives that are really beyond your reach. But at the same time, you believe in a destination and a quest for meaning that’s totally beyond your reach. And you quest for it incrementally. That tightrope, I think, is where technology can improve. It’s where beauty can happen and where relationships can be real.”

Intellectual ambition solves the same problems as intellectual humility but pushes further. Achievement is not found in admitting ignorance but in working to discover truth.

Thankfully, one can (and should) ambitiously pursue truth without being prideful. Being right and being humble aren’t mutually exclusive. Gorlin writes:

“The most epistemically secure (i.e., self-trusting) individuals tend to be the least concerned about proving how much they know or how right they are. Their fundamental goal is not to reassure themselves of their basic epistemic efficacy (which is already a settled matter), but rather to solve the next problem, answer the next question, master the next challenge on the road to building what they want to build. 

As a result, they are comfortable asking ‘stupid questions’ and constantly pushing themselves to new frontiers on which they are once again beginners; in other words, they are comfortable being ambitious. Thus they often appear ‘humbler,’ on surface, than the insecure blowhards who lack such genuine confidence.”

Good comes from commitment to truth. Saying “I don’t know” is easy. Knowing what’s true takes work.

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Piano Music

I’m thinking of releasing a single next month…

Photography

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From School

• “Nothing is good enough for Mr. Merrill.”

• “I know I actually have to do good work for you. Some teachers don’t even look at stuff. Like this one teacher’s class? I can just type the same thing over and over so it looks like I’ve said a lot.”

• “Mr. Merrill, what shoe size are you? Because I kinda like yours better and wanna trade.”

• Me: “Hey check your email.”
  Student: “Oh no.”
  Me: “No don’t worry, it’s not bad.”
  Student: “Did you Venmo me?”

• “Mr. Merrill you’re like my second father because I’m in here everyday.”

• One of my students is prone to leave class or make excuses when she feels the work is too hard. She also has a sassy, defiant attitude. During class, she told me she had to use the bathroom. I told her she could go once she finished her writing. She said, “I have to go,” and then challenged me by saying if I didn’t let her, she would pee in the desk and make me clean it up.

Goodies

Sean Lew ☞ One of my favorite creatives/dancers/artists.

mymind ☞ Curate the internet with ease.

Untools ☞ Systems for better thinking.

Neal Agarwal ☞ A cool dude of the internet.

Cheers!

p.s. Merry Christmas and Happy New Years!

Grading System Check-in

It might just be my selective hearing, but I feel like my students are asking me better questions. Instead of, “Is this good enough?” it’s: “I’m not sure if I’m just summarizing or if I’m actually analyzing.” “Is this how I format the quote or does the period go somewhere else?” “Did I do the evidence right?”

One of my students this last week said something along the lines of, “I actually really like the way you do grading. It helps me learn to write better.”

There are still aspects of the system that I’m thinking about and working through, but it’s fun to hear the positive responses.

Continuing Questions:

• I’m unsettled about my late work policy.

• It’s tough to promptly provide high quality feedback simultaneous to all the demands of teaching.

• Every assignment is marked either with a 1 or a 2 to signify if the student needs to revise their work or if they’ve passed it off. I also provide qualitative feedback on each assignment. Sometimes, though, it would be convenient to have a quick signifier to convey the nuances of a student’s ability. (In theory, this is what a letter grade might do, but it’s attachment to a GPA (and everything that’s attached to GPAs) spoils it.)

Student Art & Whiteboard Grafiti

To teach synthesis, I shuffled some “how-to-draw steps” together from three different pictures and had students pick three random steps. They had to draw a picture that incorporated every step. (After the initial drawing, they had to work together to figure out what the actual drawings were supposed to be.) Here are some of their first drawings.

Whiteboard Grafiti

Teachers are Like YouTube Videos

I love teaching. It’s also challenging. Some hard parts I expected, others I couldn’t have guessed. Here’s an attempt to explain one of the difficult social/emotional aspects of being a teacher:

Being a teacher is like being a YouTube video. A lot of the time, I feel more like a thing than a person.

People comment on YouTube videos as if the creator of it is a step removed from the video itself. In a similar sense, as a teacher, I feel I sometimes become a thing to be commented upon by my students. I’m part of their collective experience and am a reference point in their lives.

They’ll say things about my appearance, or interests, or social life, etc. I’ve learned to take as much as I can in stride and laugh at their jokes/the things they say, but it takes emotional energy to do so. 99% of the time, my students aren’t malicious or intentionally rude. They’re just saying things in good fun. And, truthfully, what they say really is funny and brings me a lot of joy (that’s why I collect and share their quotes). Occasionally, though, when my bandwidth is low, all the comments add up and leave me feeling a little insecure.

And You Became a Teacher??

I did well academically. Occasionally my students find out. They’ll ask me about my ACT score or my GPA. As soon as they find out how well I did, their immediate response is, “Then why did you become a teacher??/You picked the wrong profession.”

This reveals how the profession of teaching is viewed in society. It shows that students are socialized to prioritize salaries. Their responses imply something interesting:

“If you are so smart, why would you choose to teach?” = It’s a dumb choice to be a teacher, or smart people don’t teach (a.k.a. teachers aren’t all that smart).

Choosing to teach is one of my favorite decisions.

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Photography

Thanksgiving; SLC; Kitchen; SLC 2

Piano

I inherited my parents’ old piano and recruited help from my neighbors to get it into my room.

Goodies

Gentle Playlist ☞ My carefully curated (and continually updated) playlist of gentle, neoclassical music.

Moderna Records ☞ A lot of my favorite piano songs come from Moderna Records. I also love the album covers.

Felipe Pantone ☞ I’ve recently been introduced to this artist (thanks to the algorithm).

Arc Browser ☞ I downloaded this browser a year ago and recently started reusing it. A lot of the features are helpful. It allows me to pin/organize tabs in different spaces. I have one for all the regular folders/websites I access for teaching my juniors. I have one for my sophomores. I can toggle between the two spaces easily. It’s like having a bunch of work rooms set up for specific purposes. They are flexible and last as long as I need them. (I’m excited for when they come out with a version for Windows so I can use it at my work computer.)

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From School

• Student 1: “I’m so hungry, is there anything edible to eat?”
  Student 2: “You could eat this eraser.”

• Me to a student in the hall: “Good morning. What’s your first class today?”
  Student: “PE. And what am I going to be for Halloween? Someone growing up in a corrupt world. In other words: myself.”

• Student: “We were going to dress up as you for Halloween, but they were all out of single, middle-aged men.”

• Student: “This is bad, Merrill. You got me to like reading AND writing.”

• Student: “Since when do you have a beard? Why are you old??”

• Student: “Sheesh, Mr. Merrill, you’re making me think. So whatever your goal was for doing this teaching thing, it’s working.”

• One of my students who wasn’t a fan of the activity I planned: “I literally hate you, this is so dumb.”

• Student: “Mr. Merrill, I made you crème brûlée."

• Student: “Mr. Merrill, when I first read your disclosure, I was scared. You sounded like a professor.”

• I said “bet” in class and a student said, “Mr. Merrill, don’t try to sound young. Are you a millennial? Just stick to like YOLO or whatever.”

• A group of students when researching AI:

  • “This is scary! I’m scared for my children and their children.”

  • “Let’s just go back to better times. Like the 1600s.”

  • “Nuh uh, I don’t wanna be a pilgrim.”

  • “Or like the 80s. Or the 60s with Elvis.”

  • “Or what about like the 2000s when we had One Direction? That’s what we need.”

• Student: “Mr. Merrill, do you consider yourself a man?”

• It’s been interesting. With my juniors, a few times I’ve prefaced an activity by saying, “This will be challenging/difficult.” For the most part, they lean into it rather than complain.

Cheers!

p.s. Can you believe it’s almost 2024? I purchased a Hobonichi planner and am excited to give it a try.

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“If I can’t write about cherry blossoms, then I quit poetry.”

So said poet and professor Michael Lavers when he spoke to the staff of the literary journal I volunteer for. He was discussing his thoughts on originality and called it the golden calf of art.

It seems like everyone chases it, or feels as though they should. You and your work must be singular, revolutionary, and new. This is the siren song, the false god.

The pursuit of originality is vain because it is really a pursuit of status. It is self-centered, not art-centered. Thus, work created in the pursuit of originality is insincere. It matters primarily to the extent that it sets the artist apart from the crowd.

A better aim in art is honesty.

Honesty requires clarity. It requires the self to be attuned to itself and experience. It hears the voices of a thousand “oughts” and “shoulds” from society’s expectations and recognizes them as what they are: false imperatives uttered from the mouth of a mirage. The honest artist learns to listen elsewhere.

An honest artist seeks to see themself clearly. This includes their thoughts, feelings, aspirations, shame, and fears. As the honest artist experiences the world, they are sensitive to what has life. Often, they detect a hint of potency and vibrancy before knowing in fullness what that vivacity is. Thus, they pursue what is surprising to them.

Michael Lavers said, “Great poets are taught by their poems, they don’t use them to teach readers.” Be wary, he continued, of a poet who thinks they know something.

If someone were to walk and notice the beauty of cherry blossoms and feel their heart moved, the honest artist would dwell and consider and follow that abstract experience (of self with something) through their medium of choice. This attempt at translation is not only focused on integrity to the initial experience but more so on continuing the experience by following it and letting it unfold new corners of feeling and insight.

The artist who seeks originality would smile under the trees but disengage, because, to them, the cherry blossom has been exhausted. It has been painted, photographed, symbolized, and written about too many times.

As a consequence, that person deprives themself of one of life’s kindnesses: feeling the soul expand and grow in light through an honest, receptive interaction with the world.

The honest artist is edified through their artistry. The person who seeks originality is puffed up and, as a consequence, less full.

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What I’ve Learned after one Term of Ungrading

If you read my newsletter last month, you’re aware that I am implementing a non-traditional approach to grading and assessment in my classroom.

Here’s a quick overview of my system as described in that newsletter:

I’ve categorized the work we do in class as “Concepts” and “Assignments.” Concepts are skill and knowledge based aspects of state standards that must be mastered. For example: “Students can write an objective summary of a text.”

Assignments are learning activities we do to help build knowledge and ability. They are stepping stones toward Concepts and must be completed professionally.

(I clearly outline the criteria for what “professional” and “mastery” means for each learning activity.)

If students master the concept/do their assignment professionally, it gets marked as a 2. If they did the work but haven’t mastered it/didn’t do it professionally, it gets marked as a 1. If they didn’t do it at all, it’s marked with a 0.

Anything marked as a 1 can be reworked to a 2 within a certain timeframe.

At the end of the term, students will reflect on the class via a questionnaire I’ve created, and propose a grade for their achievement.

…

Students know that if they want an A, they must master every Concept and complete each Assignment professionally. (If their overall percentage of mastery/professionalism is less than 60%, they fail the term.)

A few weeks ago, I had my students fill out a form to share their thoughts on the system. They talked about what was working well and what was problematic.

I’ve been implementing changes based upon their feedback to try to improve the system. We’re slowly getting better.

The Successes

Here are some of the responses that students gave about the positive aspects of the system:

• “It’s simple and to the point.”

• “You’re accountable for what you do.”

• “It forces you to learn the subject.”

• “I think it is easier to learn because if you do something wrong it is easier to learn what you are doing wrong and how to fix it.”

• “You get to have a say in what your grade is.”

I’ve noticed my students’ understanding improve, and the work they produce has increased in quality.

The Problems & Resulting Changes

Here are some of the problems with the system:

• Most students felt that the expectation for an A (receiving a 2 on all Assignments and Concepts) was unrealistic; a third felt it was fine.

  • I adjusted the expectation for an A. Students wouldn’t need to have a 2 on everything in the Assignment category but would need to have a 2 on everything in the Concept category. They would also need to accomplish the reading/writing goal they set for themselves at the start of the term. This change was a relief for the students and enabled them to focus in on the concepts.

• Using 1s and 2s in the online grade book was confusing for students. The grade book converted the numbers into percentages (either 50% or 100%). I told them repeatedly to ignore the percentages—the 1s and 2s aren’t measures of ability but simple trackers to know what hasn’t been passed off—but they were too hard to ignore. Old habits die hard.

  • Eventually I figured out a workaround by making the assignments be out of zero points. This got rid of the percentages. I may adjust even further by using the letters P and W instead of 2s and 1s (P = passed off, W = working). Students know how close they are to passing something off by reviewing the work itself and the feedback I’ve provided them.

• I had a problem with my late work policy. Initially, if students turned in an assignment late, I considered it unprofessional. Thus, it could only earn a 1 and could not be reworked. Students were stressed about this because one late assignment would disqualify them from an A. I became dissatisfied with the policy because students no longer had any reason to revise their work if they turned it in late. Learning happens through iteration, thus removing the opportunity to revise an assignment removed the opportunity to learn.

  • I haven’t found the perfect solution to this. I simply told students that I changed my policy: all work could be revised to a 2, even if it was initially submitted late.

  • I’ve made an online table/tracker to clearly indicate to students when revisions must be completed. Hopefully this helps me not be overwhelmed by the amount of work to review and provide feedback on.

Continuing Questions

• I want to find ways to improve grading conferences. This week was the end of the term and my first experience doing the conferences. I need time to reflect and consider what went well and what didn’t.

• Students still seem primarily motivated by their grade and not by learning. My system, at least, requires them to truly learn the material if they want an A.

• This system places me as an authority figure. I decide if they’ve mastered the material/skill. In many instances, I do know better than them if they’ve met the standard. My opinion is rightfully authoritative. I don’t want, however, my voice to be solely authoritative. I want my students to grow in their ability to self-assess accurately. I need to find ways to do this.

Piano

Some piano playing from last Sunday:

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Photography

London; Salmon Hatchery 1, 2, 3; Construction on Campus; Farmer’s Market

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From School

Whiteboard Art

Quotes

• Student: “I learned that Mr. Merrill actually grades the assignments, and now I have to try.”

• Student: “Wow! I did better than I thought!”
  Me: “At what?”
  Student: “Writing with my eyes closed!”

• Student: “I've brought a blanket to class, and if I fall asleep I'm not sorry.”

• Students arranged some desks in a circle after school to have a ritual and bring the muffin man back from the dead.

• Student: “Do you still have to stay here for a while?”
  Me: “Yeah, I’ve got a meeting.”
  Student: “Oh...” A little bit later: “Okay, I’m going to leave you now to wallow in your sorrow and loneliness.”
  Me: “My what?”

• Me: “Who’s your favorite country artist, it’s Morgan Wallen, right?”
  Student 1: “Uhhh obviously.”
  Student 2: “Oh. Yeah. She wants Morgan Wallen for President.”
  Student 1: “I want Morgan Wallen for Christmas.”

• I saw a student in the hall and started talking with him.
  Me: “What class do you have.”
  Student: “Geology. But my abs are killing me.”
  Me: “Why’s that?”
  *Student reaches under his shirt and pulls something out.*
  Student: “It’s an electric shock pad. Gives me a better sixpack. Buuuut the stickiness wears off after like 30 minutes so I gotta go to the drinking fountain to put water on it.”

From my journal on Oct 12th: “The best part of my day was sitting criss-cross applesauce with my B2 class and reading a picture book to them and having my voice crack BIG time and it made them all laugh and I wasn’t embarrassed and I made a joke about it and it was just happy and fun.”

Goodies

Poems by Michael Lavers ☞ Here are two of my favorite poems of his: Coda, The Burden of Humans.

The Rain by David Shumate ☞ I don’t think I can just copy and paste his poem here, but if you want to read it (you do, trust me), then open the preview of his book on Amazon. It’s the first poem in the collection.

The Sacrament of Attention ☞ Here’s my favorite quote from the post:

Superficially, the essay is about the spiritual importance of secular education. But really, it is about prayer. “Prayer consists of attention,” she tells us in the first sentence. “It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God.” For Weil, the primary value of any kind of education is that it develops our ability to focus our attention on something for a substantial amount of time. It doesn’t matter what we study, she argues, or even if we end up learning it. Algebra, French, history, music, biology, and economics all require us to develop the capacity to pay sustained attention to a single thing. And we need to develop that capacity as fully as possible to have a meaningful relationship with God.

Wayfare

The Sacrament of Attention

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” —Simone Weil, Letter to Joë Bousquet, 13 April 1942 For good reasons, our language often frames attention as an economic commodity. We pay attention to things we value. If we talk to someone for too long, they might think we are…

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3 years ago · 35 likes · 4 comments · Michael Austin

Split on Film ☞ I enjoyed looking through the film photos and reading the associated captions.

Cosmographia

Split on Film

Not that long ago, I was listening to an episode of Sophy Robert’s excellent podcast, Gone to Timbuktu (if you like Cosmographia, you’ll love it), in which she was interviewing her good friend and collaborator, …

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3 years ago · 80 likes · 60 comments · M. E. Rothwell

Littler Books ☞ Nonfiction book summaries.

Cheers!

p.s. I’m about to have a real piano in my room which means my life is basically complete.

I despise grading. This year, I’m not doing it, not in the traditional sense. I’ll tell you more about that momentarily.

This week is midterm for the first term of the year. It’s gone by fast. I remember being painfully nervous at the start of school last year (it was my first year). I had a little Garmin smartwatch that tracked my heart rate. 120bpm throughout the entire first day.

This year? No nerves. At least, not in a way that dominated my body or mind. I was excited and confident. Back-to-School night was fun. I enjoyed meeting some of my students and their parents. I work hard to memorize my students’ names leading up to school based upon the rosters I receive. (I don’t memorize everyone perfectly, but I've got most of the names within the first week of classes.) When some of the new students walked in with their parents, I could say, “Oh, you must be so-and-so.”

Last year, I only taught sophomore English. This year, I’m teaching junior English as well. (Plus running a study hall first semester which changes to a creative writing class in the second semester.) Because I’m teaching junior English, I get to have some of the same students from last year. It’s been nice.

I always give my students fist bumps as they come and leave class. “Good morning.” “Welcome to class.” “It’s good to see you.” “What's good?” Students who I taught last year but not this year will angle over to my door during passing period to give me a fist bump. I love it.

I still have a few class periods that are cold and quiet. They haven’t warmed up to each other. I’m brainstorming ways to help. Some of my classes talk and ask questions freely. I want that bug to spread.

Pictures from School

1. Students like to write and draw on the board after school.

   

   

2. What a goal.

2. A student brought flowers during the first week, so I put them in this fist which was a recent gift from my 10th grade English teacher (who I look up to in so many ways).

Ungrading

So yes, I’m not grading in the traditional sense. Jitter out a quick Google search on the consequences of grading students, and here’s what you’re likely to find:

• Grading discourages students from taking risks. (If they take a risk and fail, then they’re penalized. Therefore: place safe bets.)

• Grading pushes learning to the backseat. Monitoring percentage points is what matters to students.

• Grades are an arbitrary measure that claim to communicate a student’s performance but don’t have a stable meaning.

• Grading pulls my attention away from offering feedback, toward the impossible task of translating the work of a student into a letter grade that is supposed to reflect their individual ability while also fitting within the spectrum of the class’s performance at large.

Throughout my studies at university and through my own reading/research last school year, I designed a different system for assessment that works within the context of my district’s policies.

I’ve categorized the work we do in class as “Concepts” and “Assignments.” Concepts are skill and knowledge based aspects of state standards that must be mastered. For example: “Students can write an objective summary of a text.”

Assignments are learning activities we do to help build knowledge and ability. They are stepping stones toward Concepts and must be completed professionally.

(I clearly outline the criteria for what “professional” and “mastery” means for each learning activity.)

If students master the concept/do their assignment professionally, it gets marked as a 2. If they did the work but haven’t mastered it/didn’t do it professionally, it gets marked as a 1. If they didn’t do it at all, it’s marked with a 0.

Anything marked as a 1 can be reworked to a 2 within a certain timeframe.

At the end of the term, students will reflect on the class via a questionnaire I’ve created, and propose a grade for their achievement. The questionnaire helps students develop metacognitive practices. They think about their attendance, technology usage, the revision process, and other things.

They calculate the percentage of Concepts and Assignments they’ve mastered/completed professionally and compare that percentage to a traditional grading scale. They use this percentage as one of many data points to inform their grade proposition. I then review their reflection and proposition, talk with them in a grading conference, and finalize their grade.

Students know that if they want an A, they must master every Concept and complete each Assignment professionally. (If their overall percentage of mastery/professionalism is less than 60%, they fail the term.)

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Hopefully, this approach:

• Enables students to relax about their GPA/grades. They can revise everything until they’re happy with what they’ve accomplished.

• Course corrects the attention of students from percentage points toward mastering the course content.

• Forces me to focus on providing quality feedback.

Here’s what I’ve noticed:

• The students seem to appreciate the system.

• They are more focused on learning. (I overheard one student say, “Man, now I’m actually going to have to do stuff in this class.” Another said, “Wow you actually do grade this stuff. Now I’m really going to have to try.”)

• It takes a LOT of time to give feedback to each student.

• I’m relieved to not be experiencing the internal ethical debates I felt last year when trying to grade objectively and fairly and equitably.

• It’s tough to keep track of all the due dates, rework dates, late submissions. I’m figuring that out.

I’m excited to see how my system develops as the year goes on and as I get feedback from students and parents.

An Assortment of Thoughts

When someone does something so well, they are no longer a person doing a thing but become the thing itself.

I sense a growing distaste within me for the term “spending my time,” like I have a savings account and I’m choosing to spend. We do nothing to acquire time. It can’t be acquired. So maybe instead of “thanks for spending your time with me” it’s “thanks for being with me.”

Is God my god, or is a life that appears to be in adherence with God my god? Do I worship the habits, or do I worship God?

Just a Few Photos

Mountain Outside School; Kitchen; Campus at Night

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From School

• “He has the greatest memory of any teacher I’ve ever met which sometimes isn’t a good thing for me.”

• “Mr. Merrill, how was your summer??? Did you go to Britain with your French girls??”

• “Why do you look like both Tobey McGuire and Andrew Garfield?”

• “You look like Harry Potter.”

• “I’ve got a lunch date with one of the Italian exchange girls.”

• “Mr. Merrill, make yourself look like a Who from Whoville!!”

• A student was jumping down the hall after school shamelessly doing Mario impressions. For 15+ seconds.

• A student intentionally fell over with his desk in class because someone dared him to.

• Students dancing outside my window to get my attention.

• Points at one of my plants. “Can I smell this?”
  “Uhhhh, sure.”
  “Smells like dirt.”

• “I had a dream that everyone at work was doing the griddy and, Mr. Merrill, you were there!”
  “Was I doing the gr—”
  “Yes! You were doing the griddy!!”

• “Mr. Merrill, can I show you my pet snail?” He put it on his desk for most of class. Until later… when he put it in his mouth.

Goodies

Hello Poetry ☞ Cool little resource.

I Am Offering this Poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca ☞ A poem I read to my students.

The Gift by Li-Young Lee ☞ Another poem we read in class.

Routines ☞ I’m excited for this catalog to increase.

Fun/Playful Choreography by Sean Lew

Cheers!

p.s. I’m volunteering for a literary journal.

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A quick recap of the past month(ish): I went to Europe with my parents. I moved apartments. I’m finalizing my ungraded curriculum for this school year. Teachers go back to school this week to prep; students come next week. I’m excited to be teaching again.

Notebook Excerpts from Traveling

I’m on a plane. It’s 3am body time, 10am at our destination.

London, ahead of my day, what have you done so far? I’ve attempted sleep, not gaining more than 30 minutes at a time for fear of hurting my spine. I have to fold or extend in odd ways, this long body of mine, in the confined space of an airplane seat.

We landed and took the train/metro to Covent Garden which is where our flat is. So many shops and people. Every traveller for themselves: pedestrians don't really stop for bikes which don’t really stop for cars or those double decker buses.

At the start of walking—actually, on the train—people were distinct. Yes, these look like Londoners. After walking around and seeing so many people, the faces became the rain—either indistinguishable or repeating.

///

9am. A nice morning. I’m recharged. Vitality, gentle excitement. Hypothesis: it’s tourist city that overwhelms me; morning city + locals feels better.

I want to try talking with people. Find people at a park. Interrupt by asking if I can interrupt. Then a deep dive after a brief hello-my-name-is. What do you think about God?

Audio Journal

Seagulls at Bath

Violinist at Bath

Stealing Newton’s Principio (Oxford)

Street Traffic in Paris

Victoria Line

Poems from Traveling

London and Paris
Streets an unfinished game  
of pick up sticks, 
barely even started.  
People traced the lines,  
put up brick and stone  
walls on either side.
In Paris, they add  
graffitti smoke urine  
beneath the  
copy paste copy  
paste buildings.  
London, neater,  
in a way, and more  
various. Full of  
visitors seeing a retired  
reclining elderly empire
drinking tea, 
feeling lonely.

Sainte-Chapelle
The Holy Spirit was
the shush of the usher
in the chapel was
God's finger pushing
people's foreground gaze
inward to their own interior,
making them justify
or reconsider why
they came.
I judged you came
for the building,
but maybe you
came for God: eyes
ready to be touched.
You, pupil, 
saw the light 
through stained glass. 
No longer seeing 
the color of it
but the brilliance
from without.
Which, indeed, 
sets everything aflame.

Lunch
I gagged during
last bites of cold salmon
while thinking of
egg yolks
for some reason,
and the slime
that my mom
pointed to with
her eyes. 
Had to bow 
my head on laced
fingers. Like 
surrender; almost a 
prayer. Maybe sleep
keeps the stomach
greased so food
moves down without
questioning—kinda 
like a bribe. 

Science and Creation

The painter who paints, paints.

Yes, their neurons fire to contract muscles to move the arm, to move the eyes and coordinate with the hand. The paint interacts with the canvas at a molecular level. Yes, the science happens, but the painter isn't thinking about physiology. The painter is painting.

When God created the world, maybe He was just creating. He put on his (at the time) favorite symphony, stretched out with some yoga, brewed His ritual tea, and then got in the zone and jammed. (And yes, the science happened.)

Sometimes science seems to unravel the creation story, or it turns God into a scientist rather than an artist (Who says He isn't both? Thumbs down, I say, to false dichotomies. Truly, He is the font from which the words “artist” and “scientist” garner any meaning in the first place.). And in my search to understand God and the world in a secular era, I am pressured to look at science (which I find valuable and awesome, for the record). But maybe that's like analyzing the nervous system to understand the why and how of Monet. Or maybe it isn’t... maybe it's like looking into his art supplies.

Who am I to say?

The Magnificence/Benevolence/Charity of Christ

A few weeks ago, I read a scripture about the Atonement of Jesus Christ, that the purpose of His sacrifice was to bring about the bowels of mercy (“bowels” meaning the place in the body where emotions were believed to reside).

As God took on flesh, experienced mortality, and atoned for our sins and infirmities, his reaction was mercy. He saw and knew humanity in clarity/honesty/totality and was not repulsed but filled with compassion and understanding.

This humbles and teaches me. It hints to me the immensity and grandeur of God’s character and love, simultaneous to my great lacking of those attributes. Occasionally, when I meet people, see how they treat others/are treated, I am not filled with mercy but disgust. Thus, two things can be deduced: I do not understand these people/their circumstances fully (if I did my reaction would be different), and, second, my soul lacks the ability to love in the same magnitude as God.

So I pray for both: better understanding of others and the refinement of my soul for divine love.

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Photography

Paris from Eiffel Tower — St. Paul’s Cathedral 1 — Under Eiffel — The Real Greek — Champs-Élysées — St. Paul’s Cathedral 2 — St. Paul’s Cathedral 3 — Parliament Building (I think)

Goodies

Recraft ☞ Generate vector designs with AI. Yes please.

Explore Public Domain Stuff ☞ What a fun resource.

Ian Howorth Photography ☞ Take a look. I really like the colors and compositions.

Tiny Apartment Build - Get Hands Dirty ☞ So cool.

Tiny Things - Tiny Habits ☞ A song that resonated with my heart. So many good moments, but please appreciate the vocal flip at :29-:30 on the word “tiles.”

Cheers!

P.S.

A conversation I overheard while walking into the British Museum:
“The real question is why did you eat a pigeon last night?”
(a few moments later)
“…the pigeon is the fish of the sky.”

Reading as Meditation (Open Letter #2)

Last newsletter, I included an open letter to . He was generous enough to reply. I’ve written him once again. Writing these open letters has been good. My writing is directed, and my learning is stickier—more so than when I write for myself.

The letter format lends authenticity and impetus.

I’m entertaining the idea of writing open letters to more people on Substack (so much so that I’ve created a new section dedicated to open letters). If any of you readers/writers are interested in an open internet correspondence, tell me in the comments. Or hey, just write me a letter and tag me in it. I’ll respond.

To learn more about the open letter idea, click here.

Here’s my second open letter to Robin:

Freedom

The little fireball rumbles  
up the vertebrae  
ridges coinciding as a guiro  
before the explosion.  
All because your tail caught  
the tongue of the flame  
which fizzled into your  
stomach without much pain
helping you spit up
all that powder  
they pressed into you,  
their thumbprints  
a scar. This time, on the  
way out, it shimmers:
a fire flower showered 
into the eyes
of someone young
and awake.

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Piano Music I’m Working On

The piano (both playing and listening to it) tends to be something that draws my emotions out from invisibility/imperceptibility. It’s a boon for my soul.

June

July

Writing Helps Me Settle

Here’s a little excerpt from my notebook, 23 June:

“Trying to freshen my mind. It’s been pushed around a bit today and feels like it’s running on sugar and noise. It mostly is. This is like turning the knob toward slower motions—writing, that is. Writing is what turns the knob. In two hours I’ll be spending time with ___. Hopefully. Before that, what? I should eat better food. I should harmonize with the Spirit through studying the scriptures…”

I then spent time writing thoughts down about my motives in writing, music, photography, etc. I felt my soul slow down and clarify.

Writing in my notebook pulls myself into focus. The pace of it allows the dust I kick up during the day to settle out of the way. It’s restorative.

Photography

Camping: Fishing; Spiderweb on Boat; Basecamp; Swinging in a Hammock

Canada Day: Volleyball; Strangers Returning; Biker

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Goodies

Man Like You ☞ This is one of my favorite songs, and Tom Misch’s cover of it is great.

Two Articles ☞ The first is a vibe check of our information landscape. The second discusses happiness and meaning: specifically how Cormac McCarthy’s work reveals their elusive nature.

The Honest Broker

30 Signs You Are Living in an Information Crap-pocalypse

People keep telling me that we’re living on an Information Superhighway. But that’s not true. The flow of information today is more like a river. A very polluted river. Folks have been dumping their crap into our information flows for a long, long time. Big corporations and institutions are the worst offenders—they actually get rich by polluting our data …

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3 years ago · 965 likes · 213 comments · Ted Gioia

Wayfare

Bearing Witness to Silence

Where do we go when we die? he said. I don’t know, the man said. Where are we now? —Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) For Cormac McCarthy, meaning isn’t bone deep. It’s penumbral. Meaning is a shadow cast by the mass of an otherwise silent world. It’s a byproduct of the world’s mute turning. Here, redemption isn’t what happens when I finally talk the world into…

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3 years ago · 16 likes · 1 comment · Adam S. Miller

Design Resources ☞ Are you making a logo? Want help following the best design processes?

Directory of AI Tools ☞ There are a lot of tools out there. Find the one for you.

A Journey on Wheels ☞ ‘Twas very entertaining to watch.

The Importance of Documenting Your Life ☞ Soothing and heartwarming.

Cheers!

P.S. I’m leaving for London and Paris next week! Any tips/destination suggestions?

The original letter I wrote to .
His reply.
Now my response.

Robin,

Thank you for your letter. You’d think with the reality of the internet, my response would outpace traditional mail, yet here I am, nearly three weeks later, finally writing back.

The conflation of philosophy and literature (which you mentioned from Deleuze and Guattari’s work) is what bothered me. As I've thought about it more, though, I feel the conflation itself is permissible, but the quality of the reading experience hinges on the reader’s expectation going into the text. If I see the text for what it is, the experience isn’t disappointing. If I try and take it for literature only, I’ll be let down by, as you say, “flat characters who serve as mouthpieces.”

In terms of science fiction and Fahrenheit 451, I read an essay by Bradbury that corrected my expectations:

“It is, after all, the fiction of ideas, the fiction where philosophy can be tinkered with, torn apart, and put back together again, it is the fiction of sociology and psychology and history compounded and squared by time. It is the fiction where you may set up and knock down your own political and religious and moral states. It can be a high form of Swiss watch-making. It can be poetry.”

Knowing that Bradbury intentionally engages with philosophy and society via fiction, it’s easier for me to take his novel as he intended it, and therefore appreciate it. That said, it’s not (as of now) my preferred genre/style of writing.

In discussion with one of my friends who is working on a novel, the phrase “authentic portraiture” came to mind. That's the type of literature that I really love—literature that is aimed at portraying humans/humanity through the art of words.

Your comments regarding this type of literature were insightful. This part of your letter stirred my thinking the most:

“I fell in love with reading through rainy nights under my blanket with a lamp, and at the end of a good novel, I’d re-emerge into the world in a stupor, an intoxication that spurred reflections. These reflections, at times philosophical, were always tethered to my life experience. Thinking about literature didn’t feel like overreaching into an elevated archive of theory but a deeply personal practice, like meditation.”

What intrigued me, Robin, was the idea of reading being a personal practice like meditation. I’m not sure if you solely meant that reading and meditation are both practices, or if you meant to connect them more closely by saying that reading is in fact meditative in nature. The latter idea is what intrigued me.

Jon Kabat-Zinn describes meditation and mindfullness as “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, nonjudgmentally.”

Let me tie this definition to Louise Rosenblatt's ideas on efferent and aesthetic stances in reading. Here's how she distinguishes these stances (both have value):

• When someone reads with an efferent stance, they are trying to “carry information from the text.”

• If they read with an aesthetic stance, they are trying to “live through the text.”

If I were to read in a meditative manner (this is where I'll merge Kabat-Zinn and Rosenblatt's language), I would pay attention, on purpose, to the text without the intent of judging it or carrying information and meaning from it—my aim wouldn’t be interpretation via dissection—but, rather, I’d seek to live through the text and experience it as art. Leading to what you described as “literature percolat[ing] through our identities from a place of empathy and compassion alongside an alert gaze for a better worldview.”

In meditation, the practitioner pays attention, nonjudgmentally, to their inner and outer worlds. This is the garden from which awareness grows. Likewise, reading literature aesthetically and meditatively—or as you might call it: experiencing art—blooms the reader’s awareness of the inner and outer worlds of others. Through lines on a page, the reader inhabits the heart of the author and their characters (which consequently unfolds their own).

That, to me, is a kind of alchemy and magic worth savoring and practicing again and again.

Thanks again for your letter.

Cheers,

Brandon Merrill

Utah, United States.

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This open letter was originally written in my “Literature Without Gimmicks” post in the “Me, Currently” section of Record-Reflect. I’ve since created a new section on Substack dedicated to open letters.

Robin Waldun, a writer on Substack, has invited people to write open letters. Click to read more about his work and his idea.

Dear Robin,

I'm starting to form an opinion (dangerous, I know), and I sense that my ideas aren’t tight and sound. I guess that’s a point of dialogue in open letters: it helps me think through things and realize where I’m making sense and where my thinking isn’t solid. Hopefully that kind of refinement happens over our correspondence.

I'm realizing that I don't enjoy gimmicky stories. I'm thinking of “gimmick” in the context of magic tricks. For example, a deck of cards may have a gimmick: something about it that allows the magician to perform a trick without giving itself away. To the viewer, the deck pretends to be something other than what it is. It appears normal. A stripper deck, for example, is made of cards that taper. The top of the card is slightly wider than the bottom. Thus, if a card is inserted into the deck oriented opposite the rest it is retrieved by sliding your fingers along the edges and catching the difference in width.

“Is this your card?” Applause.

In magic, gimmicks make sense; in literature, I don't like the trick.

Stories that are gimmicky are stories whose characters seem to be human but in reality are vessels for an author's message. Last week I read Fahrenheit 451 to decide whether or not to include it in my sophomore curriculum next year. The narrative felt like a gimmick. It claims to be literature when it is really a vessel for Bradbury's philosophies/ideas (to be clear, I'm not taking issue with what the book teaches but that its primary purpose is to convey a message rather than be a piece of literature).

Captain Beatty—a sort of antagonist—isn't a convincing character/human to me. He is first and foremost the point of view with which Bradbury spars. In this way and others, the book is like a gimmicked deck: it claimed the status of literature while actually being a critique on society and culture.

If you have ideas to convince me of, stick with nonfiction and flesh them out with clarity and thoroughness. Don't package them into a story and call it literature when it is a planned message.

Now…

Maybe I’m going too far. This could all be a misrepresentation on my part. Am I forcing Bradbury’s story into something it isn’t? Science fiction as a genre is maybe less about being literary and is more about writing extremes in the future in order to comment on society today. If this is the case, I need to reset my expectations and read compassionately: read something for what it is and what it claims to be, not for what I want it to be.

All of this is to say that I'm realizing—as someone who doesn't often have strong opinions—that I feel literature is at its finest when it acts like photography or painting. Using words, the best literature captures and paints the human heart and experience. It doesn't do it for the sake of a moral or message, it's not a trick where characters or plot points exist solely to elucidate a philosophy.

I’m reminded, in part, of what Tim O’Brien writes in The Things They Carried:

“In a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning.”

The best literature has meaning deeper than a moral and is an aesthetic experience. Writing for the sake of a lesson or exposition unravels the experience for me and feels inauthentic. It feels like less than what it could be.

Cheers, Robin. Thanks for reading.

Brandon Merrill

Utah, United States.

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