I count on one hand my visits to Houston before making the move before my entire life changed.
On a Union Pacific bridge while driving south on 45, there’s a sign.
Some call it graffiti. I call it gritty.
Be Someone, it says.
It’s more than a sign, The skyline stands stong behind. A gateway for opportunity. A beacon for possibility. A call to action visible only on the way in, again and again like a mantra.
While traveling for the holidays, I downloaded the audio of Brené Brown’s latest book Atlas of the Heart, Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience.I drove and listened and clicked the button that flags the important stuff. Upon finishing, I counted my bookmarks, 113, and laughed out loud. Throughout January, I relistened to those parts, bought more hard copies for friends, and flipped pages before parting with these gifts. I took notes as if I were in school and ended up with close to 6000 words in a Word document. I reread my notes, highlighted my best takeaways, and can’t stop having conversations about this book. Brown and her team of researchers explore eighty-seven emotions and experiences (87!) that define what it means to be human. Writers need this, right? Doesn’t everyone?
I grew up in a family that didn’t talk about feelings. Maybe this is normal. I remember crying (quite often) to my mother. She would hug me and say, “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I said time and again. Call it a childish lack of self-awareness. Maybe it’s normal not to understand how we’re feeling. I’m curious how often we deny the truth. At some point, shouldn’t we be able to name our emotions in connection to our experience? How else can we let go of the baggage we carry?
“Our hurt feelings are typically experienced simultaneously with other emotions, such as sadness, anger, anxiety, jealousy, or loneliness. As a result, they don’t always feel the same way, as most other emotions do…Our reactions to hurt feelings can be self-blaming, or we might cry, lash out, or retaliate by trying to hurt the other person, and/or seek out other relationships to find comfort. When reparation doesn’t seem possible, hurt feelings can turn into anger or sadness.”
Brené Brown p. 200
Brené explains my tears as normal along with other common reactions. I find this helpful in understanding not only myself but also others. We’re all prone to hurt feelings (that carry a range of emotions), but a brave, honest, simple, vulnerable way to deal with them is to say, “My feelings are hurt.” I could have used this information earlier in my life, but it’s never too late to practice.
Brown’s work defines the nuance between awe and wonder, joy and happiness, guilt and shame, jealousy and envy. All topics are easily located through the table of contents. Before writing this book, Brown believed resentment was part of the anger family. Research revealed that resentment is part of envy.
“Resentment is the feeling of frustration, judgment, anger, “better than,” and/or hidden envy related to perceived unfairness or injustice. It’s an emotion that we often experience when we fail to set boundaries or ask for what we need, or when expectations let us down because they were based on things we can’t control, like what other people think, what they feel, or how they’re going to react.”
Brené Brown p. 33
Brown taught me when I start to feel resentful, instead of thinkingaboutwhat the otherperson is doing“wrong” or what they“should” be doing, I should think, What do I need but am afraid to ask for?
There’s so much good psychology here. It proved an impossible feat to choose my top ten takeaways. So here are just fifteen more:
15.
“Researchers believe that rumination is a strong predictor of depression, makes us more likely to pay attention to negative things, and zaps our motivation to do the things that would improve how we feel” (79).
14.
“Anger is a catalyst. Holding on to it will make us exhausted and sick. Internalizing anger will take away our joy and spirit; externalizing anger will make us less effective in our attempts to create change and forge connection. It’s an emotion that we need to transform into something life-giving: courage, love, change, compassion, justice” (224).
13.
“While some people disagree with me, I firmly believe that regret is one of our most powerful emotional reminders that reflection, change, and growth are necessary. In our research, regret emerged as a function of empathy. And, when used constructively, it’s a call to courage and a path toward wisdom” (53).
12.
“Shame is the birthplace of perfectionism. Perfectionism is not striving to be our best or working toward excellence. Healthy striving is internally driven. Perfectionism is externally driven by a simple but potentially all-consuming question: What will people think?” (142)…
“Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it often sets you on the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis” (144-145).
11.
“The heart of compassion is really acceptance. The better we are at accepting ourselves and others, the more compassionate we become. It’s difficult to accept people when they are hurting us or taking advantage of us or walking all over us. This research has taught me that if we really want to practice compassion, we have to start by setting boundaries and holding people accountable for their behavior” (128).
10.
“Empathy is an other-focused emotion. It draws our attention outward, toward the other person’s experience. When we are truly practicing empathy, our attention is fully focused on the other person and trying to understand their experience. We only have thoughts of self in order to draw on how our experience can help us understand what the other person is going through.
Shame is an egocentric, self-involved emotion. It draws our focus inward. Our only concern with others when we are feeling shame is to wonder how others are judging us. Shame and empathy are incompatible. When feeling shame, our inward focus overrides our ability to think about another person’s experience. We become unable to offer empathy. We are incapable of processing information about the other person, unless that information specifically pertains to us” (141).
9.
“Contempt is one of the most damaging of the four negative communication patterns that predict divorce. The other three are criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling….
Contempt, simply put, says, ‘I’m better than you. And you are lesser than me’” (226-228).
8.
“Researcher Frank Fujita writes, ‘Social comparisons can make us happy or unhappy. Upward comparisons can inspire or demoralize us, whereas downward comparisons can make us feel superior or depress us. In general, however, frequent social comparisons are not associated with life satisfaction or the positive emotions of love and joy but are associated with the negative emotions of fear, anger, shame, and sadness’” (21).
7.
“Across my research, I define connection as the energy that exists between two people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship…
The RTC (Relational-Cultural Theory from the Stone Center at Wellesley) sees disconnections as normative and inevitable in relationships; they occur when one person misunderstands, invalidates, excludes, humiliates, or injures the other person in some way. Acute disconnections occur frequently in all relationships. If they can be addressed and reworked, they are not problematic; in fact, they become places of enormous growth” (169).
6.
“Belonging is being accepted for you. Fitting in is being accepted for being like everyone else…True belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are” (162).
5.
Researchers Alice Huang and Howard Berenbaum “found that people who are more secure are more willing to be vulnerable with others. If we are comfortable with our own weaknesses (self-secure), we are more successful at being emotionally close to others and more likely to have healthy relationships” (174).
4.
“Connection, along with love and belonging, is why we are here, and it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. Shame is the fear of disconnection—it’s the fear that something we’ve done or failed to do, an ideal that we’ve not lived up to, or a goal that we’ve not accomplished makes us unworthy of connection” (137).
3.
“On one of the instruments that measures contentment, 71 percent of the variance in life satisfaction is measured by a single item: “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?”
This leads to the age-old question: If we’re not satisfied with our life as a whole, does this mean we need to go get and do the stuff that will make us satisfied so we can be content, or does this mean we stop taking for granted what we have so we can experience real contentment and enoughness?” (211).
2.
“It appears that many of the emotions that are good for us—joy, contentment, and gratitude, to name a few—have appreciation in common…
There is overwhelming evidence that gratitude is good for us physically, emotionally, and mentally. There’s research that shows that gratitude is correlated with better sleep, increased creativity, decreased entitlement, decreased hostility and aggression, increased decision-making skills, decreased blood pressure—the list goes on…
Gratitude is an emotion that reflects our deep appreciation for what we value, what brings meaning to our lives, and what makes us feel connected to ourselves and others” (214).
1.
“Our connection with others can only be as deep as our connection with ourselves. If I don’t know and understand who I am and what I need, want, and believe, I can’t share myself with you. I need to be connected to myself, in my own body, and learning what makes me work” (272).
At age twelve, Charles Dickens quit school and began work in a shoe blacking factory. Around the same time, his father went to debtor’s prison, where the family joined him, yet twelve-year-old Dickens lived on his own. “The horrific conditions in the factory haunted him for the rest of his life, as did the experience of temporary orphanhood” (*sparknotes).
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens bears significant autobiographical elements, depicting the grim realities of Victorian England and the Industrial Revolution. Orphaned and facing hardships, David narrates the story of his troubled childhood and overcomes adversities such as abuse and institutional poverty. Not to spoil the ending, but David ultimately discovers himself, the love of his life, and success as an author.
“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.”
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, p. 1
It’s one-gutsy move to take on a retelling of Dickens, a move that paid off for Barbara Kingsolver. Her novel Demon Copperhead won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2023. Damon Fields (nicknamed Demon—Copperhead for his red hair) tells his own story of trauma, losing his mother, enduring the foster care system, and battling the rampant opioid crisis within the Appalachia region—the author’s own home turf. Reading David Copperfield first isn’t necessary; however, part of the fun (in an otherwise heart-wrenching story) is seeing how Kingsolver uses her source material.
“First, I got myself born. A decent crowd was on hand to watch, and they’ve always given me that much: the worst of the job was up to me, my mother being let’s just say out of it.”
Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead, p. 1
David and Demon both face abuse at the hands of their stepfathers. Mr. Murdstone in the former. Murrell Stone, AKA Stoner, in the latter. Our protagonists eventually escape their situations and journey far distances to their only living relatives. For David, his dead father’s aunt Betsey Trotwood. For Demon, his dead father’s mother Betsy Woodall. Both ladies live with Mr. Dick, a distant relative in the Dickens and Betsy’s younger brother in the Kingsolver. Finding family serves as a turning point. In the Kingsolver, Mr. Dick is confined to a wheelchair. In both novels, he is perceived as simple-minded, while he is probably the smartest and kindest character of all.
There is a scene when Demon observes Mr. Dick writing sentences all over his kite in perfect handwriting: “Dispute not with her: she is a lunatic” … (ha ha) … “And if I die no soul will pity me. And why should they since I myself find in myself no pity to myself”… and more from the book he has been reading, Shakespeare’s Richard III. Allow me to excerpt the passage of the first time Demon and Mr. Dick fly the kite:
The clouds had bellied up since morning and a stout wind was kicking up outside, turning the leaves upside down and silvery. Mr. Peg always said that meant rain on the way. I asked Mr. Dick if his kite was ready to fly, and he said it was. Then let’s do it, I said. I got a shiver in my spine. Maybe that’s what my brain had been telling me all day: Run. Go fly a kite.
He looked pretty shocked, but he said okay, he just had one more thing to write on it. I tried to be patient, with him being the slowest writer. He said this one was from a different book, some words he wanted to put up there for me. He wrote them at the very top:
Never be mean in anything. Never be false. Never be cruel. I can always be hopeful of you.
If that was from him to me, it was more man-to-man talk than I’d ever had in life so far…. I said, Okay, let’s do this thing.
Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead, p. 209-210
Of course, I had to Google the quote, and lo and behold, Mr. Dick of Demon Copperhead was quoting Dickens via Betsey Trotwood in David Copperfield. My heart just about burst with admiration for Barbara Kingsolver. Plus, that’s what kids need.
Earlier this June I scrolled into a WordPress post called “Advice from Ray Bradbury.” I love Bradbury, I said to myself as I clicked the link.
In response to a post about favorite rereads by Ally Bean, E. A. Wickham pulled Zen in the Art of Writing from a bookshelf and opened the cover. There was Bradbury’s dated signature. She had seen him speak three times and bumped into him once at a Mexican restaurant. She relayed a piece of writing advice that stuck with me. Ray Bradbury said, “Read the Bible, a poem, and an essay every day.”
I ordered the book online and promptly drove north before it arrived. For the next week, I relished a family jackpot of quality time, cooler temperatures, and Dad on Father’s Day. Eventually I arrived home to my Amazon package containing Zen in the Art of Writing, a book of essays on creativity. I opened the cover. Gems abounded.
And what, you ask, does writing teach us?
First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that is a gift and a privilege, not a right…
Secondly, writing is survival. Any art, any good work, of course, is that.
Not to write, for many of us, is to die.
Ray Bradbury
Bradbury wrote about making lists of titles, long lines of nouns that caused his better stuff to surface. He wrote about running through those lists, picking a noun, and sitting down to write a long prose-poem-essay on it. That was all by page twelve.
In the next chapter, he said, “Read poetry every day of your life,” and went on to tout essays, short stories, and novels as muses. He wrote about word-association games played between head and heart. Nothing about the Bible yet, but still the advice remains in the back of my mind.
So I picked up The Norton Introduction to Literature and found the poetry section. It begins with “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus and definitions on poetry from Merriam-Webster and The Oxford English Dictionary, followed by Lydia Davis’s “Head, Heart.”
Head, Heart
Heart weeps. Head tries to help heart. Head tells heart how it is, again: You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday. Heart feels better, then. But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart. Heart is so new to this. I want them back, says heart. Head is all heart has. Help, head. Help heart.
And so I’ve been reading Ray Bradbury’s essays, poetry from an anthology, short stories by Alice Munro, and…
I have an amazing study Bible. I admit, I haven’t studied much, but Ray Bradbury said, “Read the Bible, a poem, and an essay every day.” So, each morning for the past few days, I’ve flipped to the book of Job to read a chapter or two. I had been thinking of him for months now, a man of perfect integrity who lost practically everything. Who would’ve thought Ray Bradbury would’ve lead me to scripture? How often do my own head and heart battle?
My Life Essentials Study Bible was written by my former pastor Gene Getz, a renowned Bible teacher, an avid writer, a college and seminary professor. He is super smart, and no matter your spiritual beliefs, he explains the text with a simplified, relatable, common-sense approach. The entire Bible is filled with QR codes linking to videos of Gene’s teaching and principles to live by.
Principle #1 We should use God’s spiritual resources so we can be victorious over Satan’s evil schemes.
A thirteen-minute explanation of Job 1-2.
Principal #2 When ministering to those who are suffering, we should initially focus our efforts on simply being present, not on dispensing information.
Nine minutes, felt from the bottom of my heart, on how to be a good friend, a continuation of Job 2.
Principal #3 We should allow people who are deep in pain to ask “why” questions without being too quick to offer answers.
From Job 3, a twelve-minute-proof that it’s okay to question God. Job did.
Bear with me. A few years ago when I became an official writing student, my class once dove into the the opening sentence of Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa:
I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong hills.
Isak Dinesen (AKA Karen Blixen)
Class discussed. I took notes:
The first six words of the novel are iambic, and the “had” emphasizes the past tense conflict. The narrator no longer has the farm. The prepositional phrases, “in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills,” reveal a general location—Africa—and a specific location—the Ngong Hills. The repeating anapestic rhythm connects the music of language and beauty of landscape. In this simple sentence, there are only two polysyllabic words. The rest are monosyllabic, which slow you down and lend a sense of gravity. It’s almost Biblical. “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.”
Biblical verses are memorable and recitable due to rhythmic phrasing. Just like poetry. And Bradbury, with his writing advice, is clearly onto something.
It was the day after Halloween when my classes read David Sedaris’s narrative essay “Us and Them.”
You know how when you’re young, everyone else seems weird because they do things differently than your family? Before the students started the story, I proposed the question written by the textbook company:
What is normal?
My seniors talked within table groups and then shared out with the whole class. Several people said something along the lines of “Being normal means not being weird.” Often in school settings, when one student has an opinion, others will jump on the bandwagon rather than form their own.
I can’t stop thinking about the girl who said:
“There’s no such thing as normal because everyone is different. So being different is normal.
Sedaris’s third-grade self spies on his neighbors, the Tomkeys, and he passes juvenile judgement on their lives. The Tomkeys don’t watch TV. They talk during meals. They even slap their knees laughing at each other. They trick-or-treat in homemade costumes. On the wrong day. The day after Halloween.
At the insistence of his mother and with dramatized reluctance, Sedaris must give away his own, hard-earned Halloween candy. Along the way, he pokes fun at himself for being human, judgmental and greedy.
And I’m still thinking about what it means to be normal.
“They sat there in the fresh young darkness close together. Pheoby eager to feel and do through Janie, but hating to show her zest for fear it might be thought mere curiosity. Janie full of that oldest human longing—self revelation” (Their Eyes Were Watching God, page 7).
“There is no book more important to me than this one.” —Alice Walker
I can’t stop thinking about Zora Neale Hurston’s words. Self-revelation. The oldest human longing. At the beginning of the novel, Janie returns home after a year-and-a-half absence. Pheoby wants to live vicariously through her friend, but she doesn’t want to come across as nosy. Janie wants nothing more than to tell her story. The rest of the novel is that story.
And that’s friendship—telling our stories, sharing our burdens, gaining self-awareness and insight through processing. But what about blogging? I suppose self-revelation, regardless of form, comes from a longing to connect.
I wrestle with what to share on the blog…with oversharing…crossing boundaries…telling stories that might not be mine to tell. I’m sure I could pick up the phone and share more with my friends and family. Then there’s the part about being an introvert and exhausted at the end of my days and weeks and recharging my energy through my quiet time. And there’s the part about not knowing what to say until the words appear on the page. I often find answers inside my heart all along.
As I re-read Their Eyes Were Watching God, I’m contemplating more this time through Janie’s journey and self-discovery.
I don’t know how many people have jobs with built-in opportunities for do-overs. I teach school, therefore, this past Monday was a new beginning for me—in so many ways.
On my first day of school, I opted for the stairs vs. the elevator, from the lower level of the parking garage to my fourth-floor classroom. 71 steps from the garage to the second floor, 98 to the third floor, 125 to the fourth floor. But who’s counting?
One thing I’ve noticed about my co-workers who take the stairs—they’re fit. What if the stairs are their not-so-secret secret? Game on, Stairs. Game on.
Students at the performing and visual arts high school started the day in their art areas—theater, dance, instrumental, vocal, creative writing, or visual arts. Academic teachers, like me, joined one of the art areas for crowd control, so I went to the theater department. Theater, however, had everything under control, so I simply stood by in awe.
The senior thespians, thirty or so, stood center stage, one by one, in the Black Box Theater. Each offered their advice to the underclassmen, and their words were sheer power. “Be kind and easy to work with. It will open doors for you.” And so many more I can’t recount, but what I heard set the tone for my day.
And my students—each class period—were quite possibly the loveliest ever in my twenty-two new beginnings. No one complained about sitting in alphabetical order, which is my strategy for memorizing 192 new names. They folded printer paper into thirds like a brochure and wrote their name on one side where I could see and call on them. On the inside, they wrote a goal for themselves before they graduate and one piece of advice for me. Then, they worked together on a poem puzzle, fill-in-the-blank with cut-out pieces of words and phrases. (By the way, not my original idea. I borrowed the lesson from a generous giver found here.) I had kids who pulled it off. Here’s the key to the puzzle:
Good Bones by Maggie Smith
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
Students annotated the text, and then we discussed the importance of certain words and phrases and clauses. They liked Maggie Smith’s poem and the freedom to say “shithole.”
“Good,” I said. “But what’s this poem about?”
“It’s about a mother protecting her child from the dark side of life,” they said.
“Yes,” I said, “but what’s it really about?”
“It ends on a note of hope,” they said. “It’s about the duality of life…She believes her child can make the world beautiful—We can all make life more beautiful.”
And like that, my students analyzed poetry on Day One.
“And we all bring our own experiences to our reading,” I said. “Could the speaker be a teacher? Could her children be students? Life is short and half terrible, but we have the power, especially as artists, to make it beautiful.”
At the end of my school day, I read their advice to me. One said, “Just love us. We love you already.” My heart burst a bit, broke a bit, and I breathed a prayer of gratitude. From my classroom, I walked down the hallway to the stairwell, took six flights down to the parking garage, and hopped in my car to drive home—to wait for another brand-new day.
A co-worker told me recently about a teacher who inspired him. He had visited his teacher once years later, and the teacher pulled one of his essays from a file and gave it to him. My friend was shocked and flattered that his teacher had kept his work for all those years. We spoke of sending our past teachers thank you notes and apologies.
I said, “I did that once. I’m sure I owe a few more teachers.”
My high school geometry teacher was elderly and kind. In retrospect, she was probably ten to fifteen years older than I am at present.
Back in my high school days, I took my socializing seriously for an introvert. I maximized my time in the hallway between classes, chatting with friends making eyes (or something like that) with my boyfriend. I would arrive at the classroom threshold as the bell rang. Mrs. Lee always stood there waiting with a patient smile. If I remember correctly, I asked her if I could go to the restroom almost daily as I arrived almost late. She always let me go. At some point in the school year, she just started taking my books for me, never with an ounce of exasperation. When I returned to class, my books waited for me on my desk.
When Mrs. Lee’s husband passed (He was my elementary school counselor who administered standardized testing and told us to bubble our answers “dark and glossy”), I searched for Mrs. Lee’s address. I found it and mailed my condolences, along with an apology from my former self and a note of appreciation from my adult-teacher self. Now I’m the one who allows restroom breaks when they might not be convenient and even when the students try my patience. I told her that, and you know what? She wrote me back, the kindest note in keeping with my memories of her.
In my twenty-first year of teaching, I still remind myself that kids are kids. We learn character, by witnessing character. I did anyway. Although I made A’s in my geometry class that year, I’ll remember what Mrs. Lee taught me about patience and kindness above all. And I’m grateful.
Do you have a Mrs. Lee? Someone who made a difference that might not even know?
The sun rose east of downtown Houston, the horizon glowed orange, and skyscrapers shone in reflection. A pale, full moon hung in the west. I joined teacher friends on the school rooftop—for the happening, camaraderie, and breakfast tacos. This was the first Thursday of autumn, the end of the first five weeks of the semester. I counted my blessings.
The teacher in me is always functioning in one of two ways: first, survival, then, reflecting to teach better. This year, the first year of my brand-new job after a two-year break, I’m teaching some lessons that have worked well in the past and some that are brand new to me.
A few years ago, I tried out this idea, students would read Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Puedo Escribir los Versos Más Tristes Esta Noche” (1924). First, in Spanish. The Chilean poet’s collection Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971. This is Poem 20 in his collection.
I have enough Spanish speakers in my classes to pull off the reading as intended. Multiple volunteers raise their hands to read aloud, and the rest of us listen to the beauty of the language. This lesson is more about poetry appreciation than analysis. (Click here to listen in Spanish.)
Puedo Escribir los Versos Más Tristes Esta Noche
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo: 'La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos.'
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.
En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.
Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.
Oir la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.
Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guadarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.
Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.
La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.
De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.
Then, we read and listen to the audio version in English, “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines.” (Click here.)
Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is shattered, and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms. I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too. How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her. The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance. My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her. My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees. We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her. My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before. Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her.
I ask the students who understand both versions which one they like more. “It’s so much better in Spanish,” they say. “So much more passionate, more romantic. I mean, Spanish is a Romance language.”
I ask what makes this poem poetic, and they zero in on the purposeful repetition, the images, and the speaker’s internal conflict. “Her infinite eyes. Now that’s a line,” they say. The students gush a bit. They like Neruda, and this is the point.
For homework, I ask them to write lines of their own. Theirs do not have to be their saddest. They can choose whatever they want—their happiest, their angriest, their most musical or most artistic. This year I’m teaching at a high school for the performing and visual arts. I’m throwing out ideas right and left.
They could borrow some of Neruda’s language, like “Tonight I can write ______” and stick to his format, mostly two-line stanzas, or not.
They could write poetry or prose. Either way students would include purposeful repetition (I teach them a word—anaphora), imagery, and an internal conflict.
They could write in a language other than English. This was another spur of the moment decision. Why not? During these first weeks of school, I try hard to know my students by name and need.
And when the students returned to class a week later with completed assignments, I asked for volunteers to share. For the first time in over twenty years of teaching, students spoke in Japanese and Russian in our classroom. Other students shared in French and Spanish, Danish and English. And overall, students surprised themselves with a newfound confidence in their self-expression.
Sometimes we make school needlessly hard. I get it. We’re preparing students for college. But many of my students have been learning online for the past year and a half. I want them to leave with some good memories, a newfound love of language, maybe even a respect for humanity.
Faith + Gratitude = Peace + Hope 