"Courage is being scared to death . . . and saddlin' up anyway." John Wayne
I'm not sure why it took me so long to come to this particular blog day. I've been toying with the idea of simply skipping it, and perhaps that's what caught my attention. Why was I avoiding this one? Because "Demagogue Days" was so political? Ranty? Leftist? I think we all know me better than that by now. So . . .
What's in my craw?
I found it over my third cup of coffee. Fear. Let's have a chat about saddlin' up, shall we?
I'm with Almond, all the way down to the last level of Dante's hell. Pissed and self-righteous with him, hurt and indignant with him, embarrassed and vindicated with him. It came as quite a jolt that Canto XXX left the two of us (yes, the two of us) in the dust, so to speak, and horribly grieved at the real fallout. When do my rants, valid or not, take me away from my intended heroism? How many times have I been right, had a warrant (and boy, did we cover that one), filed my exquisitely crafted injunctions with the proper authorities and found myself, smoking gun in hand, so far from my cause?
Just to be clear, I'll provide disparate examples of such shenanigans:
1. Professor X warns me that I am too emotional about my essay subject. Obviously, Prof X is an Anal, Archaic, Sexless Fart who is part of the great conspiracy to rip the passion out of my writing. Final essay firmly refuses to examine AASF's alternate take on said well-loved subject (damn skippy!) and lands in a slap of dust and glory on AASF's desk. Take that. Flash forward to my first B.
2. With doctorate firmly in hand, and under sudden and decidedly unwarranted attack from an uptight academe, I (and my little warrant) saddle up and ride into Town. After all, others like myself need defending. Freedom of speech and religion and all that. I think I was feeling a little less John Wayne and a bit more Clint Eastwood, circa High Plains Drifter. (Of course, I completed forgot that Clint was dead, nothing more than a vengeful ghost with a bone to pick.) The rest was all pathos-driven-Facebook-diatribing, cost be damned. My mother isn't quite over it yet.
Let's now look at the fallout, shall we?
1. I publish the B paper in a well-respected academic journal. Accolades all around, self-satisfied grunts, and AASF will still not speak to me in the halls. Word.
2. I read the end of Almond's essay and drop my gun. Shit. Tyler. I had completely forgotten about Tyler. But there he stands, hair in his eyes, that stray bullet all on me. My student. Well, damn.
You know, sometimes "my bad" doesn't quite cut it.
I guess what I'm saying/asking/posing is something a bit like this: How far can our warrants take us? Or, how far are we willing to go? Personally, I don't think we can count the cost when saddling up, mostly because I think it might be too late. I've asked a lot of you, stuff like honesty and passion, and so I hope it's not too late or too much to ask one more thing: foresight. Temperance. Just in those places where we have forgotten a little thing like ethos and we are galloping so fast toward our target that the townfolk get a bit blurry. I think Steve Almond, and I, are a bit trigger happy. Maybe it's worse to be slow on the draw? Either way, when it comes to our writing (and maybe the rest), qualitative balance couldn't hurt.
One last thing. For any of my students: I really hope the shooting match isn't over. You were the point, all along.
I come from a long line of loud mouths who also have a tendency to fly off the handle and/or overreact. So do I understand that words can write a check our ass can't cash? Yes I do. Warrants can make us fee entitled because we can speak from our own perspective, seeing as how it's free speech and all. I think it's human for emotion to overflow and spew from our mouths. The problem is when our emotions, normally very strong emotion like hate, get in the way of others and ourselves. The times that I've been so mad that I knew if I didn't speak my mind I would rip though myself- those times are only followed by reason or caution, unfortunately. The things that should have never be said live inside of me and knowing that scares the hell out of me. It's so easy to sing the song of caution and reason, but it always goes out of tune when the nasty arrives.
ReplyDeleteMost of these regrettable moments occur quickly and verbally. The only time I have written something intentionally spiteful because I believed I was in the right- 7th grade and it was about a boy. The hate note that I wrote to a girl I believed was flirting with my “boyfriend” was read aloud in class by a teacher who did so with all notes passed in class. I was humiliated – by a teacher and twenty plus students that weren't even in the same room. My “boyfriend” was a kind, shy boy, so no one looked down upon him for my actions. It was less of a shooting match and more of a backfire, all over my face.
I did have a recent experience on Facebook with someone else's warrant about the Case Anthony trial. I was invited to the group: Boycott Anything Casey Anthony Does to Get Publicity. These good hearted people merely wanted to express their feelings about how Casey Anthony doesn't deserve any attention....all I did was point this out. It's equally unpleasant when someone feels they have to defend their warrants to you. So be cautious.