The day after Halloween in San Francisco and one wonders. The shootings, the stabbings, all of them happening in the Castro District toward the conclusion of the festivities. It might also surprise some people to discover that the Castro, a neighborhood primarily of gays, lesbians, and transsexuals have experienced their party commandeered a bit too often by people who come merely to spectate. What does it mean that a community that was once often scorned and rejected now hosts a significant celebration during the harvest season? College students find themselves "exploring" the city by going to this party and as one student told me recently: "It's not really fun if you aren't drunk." I listened quietly as she shared stories of people groping and touching, activities that sounded a bit unsavory to me. For myself, I shared a pizza with a friend and viewed the The Gift, starring Cate Blanchett. Watching her turn cards while raising three young boys was far more entertaining than dodging bullets. I had given out candy in class, I had done my duty. The trick is to live, the treat is to enjoy living.

Mel Ferrer's Wait Until Dark (1967) remains a personal favorite and a perennial choice for film viewing as the light changes. Folks in search of a good thriller around Halloween might want to reconsider your typical slasher options and settle for an evening of carefully paced but even handed drama. Audrey Hepburn's Suzy Hendrix is vulnerable but not insensible. She lives in a world of "dark brown", left blind to the world around her as a result of a car accident which took place a year earlier. Her husband loves and supports Suzy and demands from her that she gain some independence. At a time when second wave feminists were making their presence known, Suzy's ability to overcome the predatory world around her makes her a timeless heroine.

Having gone to see Red Doors, a film focused on a Chinese-American family, I wondered how frequently people find themselves in crisis only to leave one's family in search of meaning. In the film, a father whose retirement comes swiftly early in the film, decides one day to leave his family, comprised of a wife, three daughters, one who remains living at home. When the eldest daughter finds her father, she finds him at a Buddhist monastery. Although his eldest daugher wishes for him to return home, he claims it is best for him to remain there, knowing that what he returns to will be deadening. Is Chekhov correct in suggesting that we only gain meaning in work? If so, what does that mean for people who are forced to retire? Eventually, the father must make a decision while the rest of his family have their own lives to live. What remained with me after the film was how little his absence seemed to mean for them. While his wife expressed a quiet grief, the rest of the family continued along, seemingly unaffected. Do the writers of the film want to say that Chinese-American fathers risk irrelevance? How often have we viewed programming in which the paternal figure has been reduced to ridicule or blithely dismissed? Why is it that men of a certain age become obsolete?

On Death

Maya Lin, in speaking about her designs for the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Washington DC, said that she wanted something honest and something which would encourage people to accept death. In our discussion in class about the reasons why her designs caused such controversy, we came to the conclusion that her monument forced people to confront death and in doing so, she elicited great resistance. Unfortunately, she suffered undue, if not racist criticism of her person. How could a "gook" (as she puts it) offer something that we could accept as a viable work?

The ensuing discussion surfaced a comment from a senior nursing student. She suggested that we are a culture that avoids death, that we deny it is even there. Yet, after class, I had a tearful student approach me and ask to discuss a recent death she and her family had suffered. We spoke about it and she considered seeing me when we were not so public.

My hope for all of us teachers is that we are always honest and forthright about the things which matter to people. We can invite criticism and critique, but at the end of the day, I have flesh and blood in front of me, and they deserve to be treated as such. In the early years, I did not have the ability to be as fully human but teaching humanizes us if we listen closely to what students have to say. I am grateful for people like Paulo Freire and bell hooks for writing the books they have written. I do not always use their methods, for each period requires different tools to teach, but I know that I have been influenced by their thoughts and ideas and I have been transformed by the freedoms which they want teachers to seek.

"Then there was America. Its narrative is a forward arc and it encourages self-invention. In America one feels little the weight of history. The past is not important; the future is always bright. America approves of amnesia, spurs the separation between children and parents, and assumes the premise of ever expanding opportunities" (35) from "Notes from a Warrior Son", Andrew Lam, Perfume Dreams.

On Defining American

In my early twenties, after a few years of college, I decided to do some volunteer work. I joined a program and ended up being sent to Chicago for training. Eventually, I would land in New Jersey working with inner-city youth, in a parish setting. While I trained in Chicago, I met with volunteers from the Midwest and the East. Having spent much of my time in the West, not only did this experience give me the necessary respite in order to return to studies with renewed vigor, but it also offered me some exposure to people with whom I would never ordinarly meet. It was during this time that I met a person from Missouri and she explained to me: "I have never met an Asian before. Your English is really good." I was not sure whether to bow or laugh since the expression on her face sought for some kind of response. Having come to the US at the age of two, one would expect my command of the language to be more than merely rudimentary. But of course, Said's concept of Orientalism explains this best.

Mass of the Holy Spirit, 11 Sept 2006

The community gathered in a large university church to begin the year asking for God's guidance as we toil through more reading, writing, and examinations. The experience, prayerful and moving, reminded me why we do need ritual and ceremony to mark the year accordingly. I had just finished a discussion with students on E.M. Forster's "What I Believe" (1939) in which he criticizes heavily the notion of belief and its attendant religious elements of ritual. Understandably, Forster's commitment to secular humanism made him wary of religious practice in which people would fail to ask the tough questions, believing only in what they have been told and not thinking for themselves.

However, I am delighted to watch the spirited discussion among my students. They were most passionate when discussing the elements of Lopate's essay, "Modern Friendship", in which he admits with a brand of candor that can only exist in this age, that he slept with his best friend's girlfriend as a means of testing the limits of friendship. Students howled at his arrogance and immaturity and were not particularly sympathetic to his exploration but found his betrayal offensive. One student remarked that the paper on which the essay had been copied had been wasted since his words meant so little. Finally, one of my other students came to Lopate's defense and suggested that learning through experience makes for better friendship. In making the error, an egregious one at that, he learns that he cannot do that kind of thing and expect a friendship to survive. Others countered by explaining that one does not need to do so because a decent person would know that it is unwise to play with one's friendship by committing such an act. Another student, attempted to minimize Lopate's open confession by suggesting that he did not really know what he was doing. We looked at the text again and saw how he admitted what he did. She continued to argue her point. Finally, when I asked her pointedly: "Why are you diminishing the weight of his act?" She replied: "Perhaps it is because I am trying to excuse the things I have done in the past." It was then that I remarked that the purpose of reading Lopate's essay is to face the honest truth even if it makes one appear less than virtuous. Since we have moved past feeling any real shame anymore, particularly in society, then the admissions we make in public only seem to underscore some strength of person as some might feasibly argue. "At least I could be honest," one might say. Even though one is a potential thief, murderer, or killer.

On Silence

May Sarton (1912-1995), writer, often wrote about the condition of silence in her books, particularly her journals. People who seek for it may find varied reactions, some even hostile, to a desire often associated with monastic life. Sarton commented that she found it surprising how much men and women in their twenties responded to her journals but she was cautious about recommending solitude to a young person. She warned that the kind of solitude she wrote about belonged to someone a little bit older.

But silence can be a comfort in an unquiet age. We use noise as a means of getting attention, of disturbing the silence, which too often leaves people forced to contend with thoughts and reflections that do not stay hidden forever. Once, someone who had claimed that he enjoyed the silence between us, finally admitted that he found it uncomfortable. He could not stand the quiet and in time, he shared that the demands of prolonged silence became deafening to him. I thanked him for telling me and promised that we would no longer sit quiet in a room together.

On Love and Friendship

I had written to a friend recently and after expressing some genuine heart-felt feelings in my missive, I received a phone call inquiring if I was ok and whether I was dying. After I had chuckled aloud, I explained to him that I was not going to succumb anytime soon but what I had written was sincere and honest.

Too often, we allow our friends to assume that they know we love and care for them and I think that this is a strange error to make. At some point as we age, it is important for people to know what we feel about them and not merely what we express in gestures, large or small.

But if we do not tell our friends what we feel, then how do we expect them to know? How will our friends know that the dinner in New Orleans was not only thoughtful but beautiful. Will that friend know how important it was to have his hand while one lay in the hospital, wondering about test results? Joseph Epstein's recent work on friendship fails to account for the fact that while he would never considering "sharing" with a friend because he finds it unmanly, those of us men who do not possess the same absurd notions about maleness much less masculinity, have embraced deeply our friends, regardless of their gender.

My hope is that I always have the raw courage to be frank with someone I would deem my friend. But I do not bestow that moniker easily. It is a slow process as Lord Chesterfield and Aristotle would have us believe and they are right. Rushing a relationship is pure folly and the folks who insist relationships are possible in zero to sixty have not been very honest about time or the conditions of love. Instead, they would have us think that this notion of "clicking" really works and once we have felt close, we are in fact, so.

Recommending Andrew Lam's book of essays, Perfume Dreams. It is worth reading. Comparable to some of Richard Rodriguez' early work.

Also, Hagedorn's Charlie Chan is Dead, Volume 2, is worth perusing if one is willing to pursue other literary interests outside of the mainstream Western canon. Hagedorn moves away gently from Tan, Kingston, and Vincent Chin, to make room for other new and upcoming writers.

Percy35