Dreams of starfish

There is a poet, major leagues only by the meager standards of the Twin Cities underground. Janitor/teacher by day rapper/poet by night. He goes by the name El Guante, and I happened to hear him speak once, at a Black History Month poetry slam a good friend had taken me to.

He read a poem called "Starfish", and I knew then that it would one day be important to me, even though at the time I knew it was not.

It is a poem about his time teaching poetry in the public school system.

"And my job these days, is to turn all the lights on. And pretend to be brave." Today was my first day at the high school. 6 more to go. One's island celebrity is based on a number of factors. For the elementary kids, things like your height, shoe size, the mere fact that your hair somehow exists, and does not cause the fabric of space and time to rip with its oddity, are all fascinating. You're still famous at high school. It's just a different kind of famous. You can't dazzle them with games where you roll around on the floor until you introduce yourself, and win a game of rock-paper-scissors.

I honestly don't know how all you out there who don't speak Japanese do it. It took every morsel of Japanese at my disposal to keep that class from descending into a narcoleptic coma. You see they tell us time and time again that it's not our place to criticize, and that we're not here to change the system. But what do you say to a class of kids who have studied English formally for 6 years, and still can't or won't pull out "my name is, I like"? I walk out of 2 classes and have a new understanding of what dentists go through. Pulling teeth. "and my job these days, is to melt the winter with a flashlight."

I sit in the office after class, helping to grade the 1st year students tests. The high score is an 84. The next three are in the 70s. The rest rarely clear 25. "and my job these days, is to identify bodies."

My job these days is to be the Disney-World-full-body-suit Sisyphus.
My job these days is to dream of starfish.
Tens of thousands, gasping for breath on the beach
being pulled apart alive by the Seagulls.
I tossed a few back into the ocean and people tell me that I'm making a difference.
but there is no honor in triage,
only necessity.

Go watch the poem (link embedded in the word "poem", just click it) now. You need to hear the whole thing, to understand where things go next. Why the first thing I did when I sat down in my shiny new office a month and a half ago was to change my desktop wallpaper:







My job these days, is not to make a difference.
It is to fight for a world in which I don't have to.



Given the state of language education, kids don't run up to you after class and thank you for being an inspiration. By high school, they're probably years behind where the textbook keeps telling them they should be. But you see even if we're not here to change things, we are here to show them that they could. I am, anyway. And no, there is no Brian in my story. No "Thank you", but there is the joy of getting to write an 84 on a test, and an unwillingness to believe that a 12 couldn't some day do the same. Even if all I can do for the high school kids is keep English from sucking for 7 hours a year, I intend to do what I can, and hope that over time, year after year, ALT after ALT, it adds up. Until Japan doesn't need to hire thousands of English speakers every year anymore. As much as we'll miss the opportunity.

A while ago, before I came to Japan, I was surrounded by courageous, idealistic young Macalester students swearing that they were going to save the world, but taking few concrete steps towards it unless they were courageously idealistically throwing their livers under the bus to protect the planet. I remember thinking that there is something about the human psyche, or at the very least the American one, which desperately craves the big win. The idea that change happens because of singular events--that you can elect a new president and wake up tomorrow morning to your bright shining new America. We don't like to wrap our heads around the idea that most of the time, ultimately, change comes from hundreds, of thousands, of millions of people, all stepping up and doing something. Even if it is only one or two at a time.

So here's to teaching starfish to fly. Even if it's only one or two. So that maybe, if I'm lucky, they can teach their friends,
and their kids,
and their grandkids,
and future mes can be out of a job.