“Hurt”

I just finished reading Johnny Cash, Robert Hilburn’s biography of The Man in Black.  For anyone who is a music fan, I highly recommend this, and I mean fans of any American music genre because Cash’s influence and legacy extends in all directions.  He embraced music, lyrics in particular, that spoke to him, and he recorded the writing of singer/songwriters from old time gospel and blues to U2 and Nine Inch Nails.

His last recordings were done with Rick Rubin, a real surprise to everyone in the industry since Rubin was associated more with rock artists, but they became close friends and Rubin was an incredible advocate for Cash’s final work.  When they were recording the album “The Man Comes Around” in what is known as the American Recordings collection, Rubin wanted to do a music video of Cash’s version of the song “Hurt,” by Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor.  Mark Romanek, who had done videos for the likes of NIN, Michael Jackson, and David Bowie, was all but begging to make it.  It turned out to be what most in the industry consider the best music video ever produced.  I intend to attach a YouTube link to this so you can see and hear the song.

Cash didn’t change much with Reznor’s lyrics, just a word or two.  What is most different is that his version becomes much more universal in its description of a person in great pain and suffering from personal loss.  Reznor had written about the agony of drug use and abuse—this was shortly after Kurt Cobain OD’d—and Cash had lost several family members and close friends simply to age.  When Cash recorded the song, he and June both new their days were numbered.  As I read Hilburn’s account of the recording sessions and the descriptions of what was going on in John’s and June’s lives, and then went back to think about Reznor’s lyrics, I thought about how the song reflects the pain and hurt I often saw sitting in front of me in my classrooms.

In my four decades as a teacher I dealt with losses of several students and colleagues and their family members.  Teachers are human beings.  They have feelings like everyone else, but like many professionals, when the alarm clock goes off on a school day, they suit up, put on a smile, and do their best for their students.  Many times no one knows they’re ill—physically or mentally—or that they’re grieving or just worried, sometimes frantically.  I’ve seen a colleague I knew was in her own tremendous emotional pain drop everything to help a student deal with breaking up with her boyfriend, offering a consoling shoulder and calming advice.  Then I took a box of tissues to my friend and closed the door on her classroom so she could pull herself together in the five minutes left before the next class.

The most difficult part of a teacher’s day, however, is managing the emotional rollercoasters of all of the students she faces.  Not just one carnival ride.  Usually twenty or thirty.  In each class.  Every day.  Teachers prepare academic lessons and plan means for organizing and controlling the learning environment, but being prepared to deal with the trauma students face on a daily basis is probably the single most superhuman feat educators perform.  Every one of those students, from the most likely to be depressed to the one who seems bubble-headed and unaffected by everything, all go through the same kinds of adolescent nightmares.

Think back.   Remember the pain of broken promises and relationships?  The skin eruption twenty minutes before you went out with your biggest crush?  An embarrassing faux pas in the hallway or cafeteria?  Your perceived ineptitude at one thing or another…that was laughingly pointed out by the class bully?  Or maybe the crushing solitude that made you consider the world a better place without you?  How about the physical abuse in some relationships?  I’ve seen sixteen year-old girls in pancaked makeup and long sleeves who were hiding the bruises from their boyfriends.  And I’ve spoken with students about the abuse they’ve received from their parents or family “friends.”  Over and over they come to class, while dealing with illness and death in their families.

I can’t even list all of the possibilities or the examples from my career because I saw them in those seats.  They were seventh graders, freshmen, seniors, college sophomores, even graduate students.  We teach them all.  We try to reach them all and then help them learn whatever subject we’re responsible for delivering.  And these days get them through the state tests.

Watch the video.  Listen to the song.  Watch Johnny.  He would lose June just a few months later.  When he did this shoot, his eyesight was so poor that they had to tell him where the camera was, and the vocals are spliced together bits and pieces of multiple recording sessions because his asthma wouldn’t let him finish a phrase.  He couldn’t walk, either, except to be helped into a wheelchair.  He hurt, but he was Johnny Cash.  He was human, and he got up every time and went on with living.  Remember, too, that he didn’t do it alone.  No one can.

“Hurt”  http://youtu.be/3aF9AJm0RFc

Do I Know You?

One of my favorite poems is this one by Donald Justice:

“On the Death of Friends in Childhood”

We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven,

Nor sunning themselves among the bald in hell;

If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,

Forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands

In games whose very name we have forgotten,

Come, memory, let us seek them there in the shadows.

It’s not that I’m being morbid.  I like the basic concept Justice is presenting here: the last time we see someone is the image of that person that is burned into our memory and the way we remember them until we meet them again.  I like that.

This is something I’ve thought of often since I’ve been a facebook user.  Most of my “friends” are high school or college classmates or former students.  I’ve been out of high school since 1968, college (undergrad) since 1972, and I’ve been a teacher for 40 years.  Some of my former students are grandparents!  I have not seen most of these people in just about that length of time.  The pictures I have of them in the yearbooks of my memory are images of those last encounters.

My alma mater folded in 1992.  The alumni organization is quite strong, and we have a reunion at the end of June each year.  My fraternity brothers and I started getting together in that little town a few years ago, and now I have a pretty good catalog of gray-haired fraternity “boys” and former classmates.  We get together and reminisce (we can tell the same stories to one another every year since none of us can remember the truth for 12 months!) and show pictures of our grandkids.

Social networking is another matter.  It’s always interesting to get a new “friend” request.  I’ve made it a practice only to accept requests from former students (not current ones).  Those who graduate in May and ask to “friend” me in June typically end up asking me to proofread college essays or write more recommendations for a year or so, and then I don’t hear from them for a long time.

My high school classmates and students from 25-40 years ago are another story.  Some of them are still in the vicinity, like I am.  I have run into a few at different venues, especially those folk who like my son’s music.  It’s fun to experience that “Aha!” moment when one or the other of us comes to recognition.  Usually people remember me.  Not because I am so memorable but that I can’t remember until someone reminds me!

The facebook requests from these older students are the fun ones.  Many people use current pictures of themselves as their Homepage icons.  Some don’t.  Now and then I have to look at their pages to check hometowns to see if they are former students or classmates.  The women present another problem.  If they use their married names instead of their maiden names, I have no idea who they are!  You can’t pay me enough to talk about those photos!

One of my fraternity brothers made an interesting observation a few weeks ago.  He took an unofficial poll (of his facebook friends) and noticed that most of the men post their pictures.  The women use shots of their children, grandchildren, pets, or favorite quotations, etc.  He took some heat for it, but I think he’s probably right.

Does that mean the women are more vain than the men?  I’m not going there, either.

Actually, I think it’s terrific that so many of those 60+ classmates and “younger” students of mine are cruising the Net.  We’ve had some fun re-discovering one another.  No, it’s not always what I want to know (I don’t like cats, and I don’t discuss politics or religion with anyone), and I don’t play computer games of any kind, but it’s still interesting to see where people have gone both geographically and personally in their lives.

Most of the time it makes me feel pretty ordinary…and comparatively (sometimes) that’s just fine with me!  When I stop and honestly consider who I was so long ago, I’d just as soon they got a more current picture than the one with which I left them.  They may not meet me “bearded in heaven” someday, and despite my hair loss, I hope we don’t renew our acquaintance in hell!

Summer Solstice

June 21^st.  The earth stops and the sun is suspended in the sky longer today than any other day of the year.  In the Midwest, this can mean a long, beautiful day of sun and fun or more daylight to get a better look at clouds and wind and rain.

I remember several days long ago when I thought the day would never end and didn’t want the sun to set.  One day in particular stands out.  I was in summer school at Tarkio College in 1970.  It was such a gorgeous day that hardly anyone went to class.  The large grassy area behind the girls’ dorm, Hopkins Hall, was the place to be for impromptu Frisbee contests, softball games, maybe some soccer, and lots of just sitting around in the sun with friends.  I think everyone on campus was there most of the day.  It was one of those perfect days, too.  The cloudless sky was also calm and a perfect temperature—not the possible unbearable heat and humidity. Lunch and supper from the cafeteria or snack bar were takeout.  No one wanted to leave.

Eventually the sun approached the horizon and we watched the azure sky become pink, rose, reddish-purple, deep blue.  We watched stars appear in the clear sky.  Millions.  Billions.  Even the rising moon couldn’t diminish the showy constellations.  The Milky Way was a creamy streak.  Still we stayed to watch the shifting pinpoints and chase their reflections in the lightning bugs that zipped across the yard.  We wanted it to last, but that day blended into the next with all the promises the future holds.  A perfect memory.

Today—forty-one years later—was much different.  Last night storms ripped through the area.  High winds brought down tree limbs.  A tornado destroyed buildings nearby.  Heavy rain and hail pounded the area.  The Missouri River, already well over flood stage, rose another destructive foot.  The day brought more clouds, cold wind and rain, and the promise of more devastation.  The day seemed like it would never end, but we wanted to put it behind us.  Whatever could go wrong seemed eager to oblige.

I spent the day with my father in the hospital.  Nurses and doctors were in and out of his room, attaching tubes, running tests, exchanging grim faces for reassuring smiles.  Aneurism, weakening valve, decreasing heart function.  Eighty-one years taking their toll.  The sun was out there, behind the clouds and the rain.  The promise of tomorrow was still in the air, but our conversations were more about yesterdays, and plans for “tomorrow” were “what ifs.”

It was the longest day of the year.  I thought it would never end and let me could go home and try to sleep and forget for a time.  Too many memories were vying for my attention.  I had too many phone calls to make to marvel at the ferocity of the storms or wonder where the stars were hiding.

As I drove home, thinking about the day’s events and another summer solstice, I kept remembering Dylan Thomas and wondered if he might have written, on the longest day of his year,

“Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”