1550pack

Being in the World

English 1550 Handbook

Dr. William Greenway
English 1550: Being in the World

        The course introduces you to the introspective nature essay and uses the work of "nature" writers and poets to show how close observation of relatively ordinary phenomena can be a way to illuminate any number of moral, philosophical, or even theological problems. Students study nature writings, discuss them in class, and, drawing on their own experiences and observations, use descriptions of the natural world as rhetorical structures for their own essays. Within the context of the course, every writing strategy can be used—argument, comparison/contrast, analysis, definition, description, explanation, narration. One of your papers can be your response to one of the books—a longer meditation on nature—on the reading list. I also encourage you to go on field trips, even if only to Mill Creek Park, where one student spotted, and wrote about, a Great Blue Heron.
The organizing principle of this quarter is an old one—the belief that the mind can meditate on nature and extract meaning from it, and that nature can communicate meaning by acting as a paysage moralise, a landscape reflecting an interior state. Annie Dillard’s writings, for instance, do both, and she is so allusive a writer that every element of Western thought, and quite a few of Eastern, comes up during the quarter.
        The first writers, like the first painters, turned to nature for their inspiration. They felt, like all of the great poets, that there was a power in nature, that somewhere in nature was the answer to all of our problems, spiritual and physical. Some of our best writers have been "nature" writers. I put the word in quotation marks because people often think that nature writers only write about plants and animals, forgetting that everything, including ourselves, is nature, and that conservation means conserving ourselves as well as the other beings with which we share the planet. The model for your writing will be the essays of Annie Dillard, who spent a year alone in a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The book tries to reconcile her own spiritual yearnings with the beautiful, but sometimes violent, natural world. We will also read along in the contemporary nature poetry anthology.

Interview
Interviewer's Name:
Interview a student in your group with the following questions:
1 .Your greatest achievement is:
2. Your most prized possession is:
3. If you could have a T-shirt printed with a message, it would it say:
4. The most fun you've ever had was:
5. What annoys you the most is:
6. Your least favorite word is:
7. Your favorite curse word is:
8. Your most humbling experience was:
9.   A sound that you love is: Why?
10. If you could be a plant, you would be: Why?
11. Your favorite childhood memory is:
12. Something you wish you could stop doing is:
13. What excites you the most is:
14. A book you recommend is:
15. Your favorite sight is:
16. A really great evening to you is:
17. Your fantasy is:
18. Something you wish someone had told you about college before coming to YSU is:
19. If you could change one thing about yourself, you would:
20. If you discovered you had only one year to live, you would:
21. If you were stranded on a desert island, the three people you would like to have along are:
22. Something you don't like to touch or hold is: Why?
23. If you could be a color, it would be: Why?
24. Four words that best describe you are:
25. An adjective that best describes you that begins with the first letter of your
first name is:

Interviewee's Name:

Writing Exercise
Complete the following paragraphs.
There is a wolf in me . . .
There is a fox in me . . .
There is an ape in me . . .
There is a hog in me . . .
There is a fish in me . . .
There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . .
O, I got a zoo, a menagerie inside my ribs, . . .

Essay # 1 Meditation
        Often essays draw on personal experiences—moments in nature when the author has either felt, or doubted, the existence of God. Remember and recount an incident in your own life when nature prompted you to think about religious, spiritual, or philosophical matters, or show what effect a landscape has had upon you? Has a place (perhaps where you were born or raised) helped shape your character?
        Try to be as descriptive as possible, and use metaphors to help the reader see what you have seen.
        The essay should be approximately 500 words, which, typed in 12 pt. font, and double-spaced, with one-inch margins, makes about two pages.   Staple the whole thing together in the upper left corner, and put your name in the upper right-hand corner of the first page. Don’t give me your only copy.

Grading Criteria

1. Clarity – Is your essay clear and easily understandable?
2. Originality – Do you describe your subject in a fresh and original way?
3. Organization – Are your details organized in a logical way so that your essay is
        easy to follow?
4. Style – Are sentences varied and graceful?
5. Correctness – Are technical mistakes minimal so that readers aren’t distracted
        from your descriptions and ideas?

Essay # 2       Description
        Using five metaphors that you’ve never heard before (avoid clichés), describe a natural object (a tree, rock, leaf, river, etc.). Try to make the reader see the thing, or place, not just your or their idea of it. The meaning of your essay should reside in the description itself, not just be pasted on somewhere. Remember, your first goal is to accurately render your subject. If you do this well, your personality and thoughts about the subject will be there. Thus, it would be wise if your subject reflected an interest of yours. Describe something that you care about, then your description will be loving, and therefore revealing. Try to show the reader something they haven’t seen because they don’t love the subject as you do. Put the reader there and show them what they’ve been missing by not seeing what you see.
        The audience for your essay will be me and your classmates. Your goal is to give us a new understanding of and perhaps appreciation for something we might have been unaware of, taken for granted, or not paid sufficient attention to.
        On the other hand, try to avoid subjects that encourage clichés such as dogs, sunsets, rainbows, etc. Not that you can’t describe these in a fresh way; there are no bad subjects, only bad treatments. But it’s harder to be fresh and original with some well-worn subjects.
A model of a good description is Elizabeth Bishop’s poem "The Fish." Though lacking the vocabulary of the scientist, she notices and notes details carefully, trying to make us see them by comparisons with common, familiar, even domestic, things. She doesn’t have to say the fish is heroic or admirable, for example, if she describes it as having a "beard of wisdom" or "medals." Such details might also suggest something about Bishop: perhaps that she has had a hard life and therefore admires endurance.
In short, don’t tell about your subject, show it.
        The essay should be approximately 500 words, which, typed in 12 pt. font, and double-spaced, with one-inch margins, makes about two pages.   Staple the whole thing together in the upper left corner, and put your name in the upper right-hand corner of the first page. Don’t give me your only copy.

The Fish Elizabeth Bishop
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
—the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly—
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
—It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
—If you could call it a lip—
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels—until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Paper #3     Narrative
        Write a narrative, a story. It doesn’t necessarily have to have happened to you, or to have happened at all. Or you may embellish the story, or exaggerate it. (As poet Richard Hugo says, "You owe reality nothing and the truth about your feelings everything.") But the story should illustrate something: an idea, a belief, a feeling, something. That is, your story should have some point to it. Remember to use metaphors, and to rely more on them than adjectives like "beautiful, lovely, frightening, stately," etc. As always, avoid clichés: don’t write anything you’ve heard or seen before. Don’t be afraid to imagine. Make your story relevant to the reader. Try to make it enlightening and entertaining. (Good writing, Sir Philip Sidney says, is "like a medicine of cherries.")
        The essay should be approximately 500 words, which, typed in 12 pt. font, and double-spaced, with one-inch margins, makes about two pages.   Staple the whole thing together in the upper left corner, and put your name in the upper right-hand corner of the first page. Don’t give me your only copy.

Paper #4       Response
        Write a response to something you’ve either read, or we’ve discussed that has touched, intrigued, angered, or changed you. This should be a paper about some idea that has come up this quarter. Though this does not mean your discussion should be abstract (remember: use details, be visual, engage your reader), this should be your most thoughtful, even meditative, paper.
        You might even respond to the work as if you were reviewing it for a magazine, describing it, discussing its strengths and weaknesses, summarizing its themes (the ideas it engages or embodies), and explaining what it is about. (Notice I said review not a report. Look in New Yorker or The Atlantic or the New York Times Book Review in the library to see what a review looks and sounds like.)   But it’s okay to respond to some part of the work, too, such as a chapter. You might even do a critical paper, discussing the work as literature, tracing, say, a theme or motif.
        Or you might want to compare or relate an experience of yours to the author’s in order to confirm, contradict, or amplify one of the themes of the work.
        Just remember to stay focused on responding to the text. Don’t wander too far away. In fact, it’s a good idea to refer directly to the book by paraphrase or, even better, direct quotation(s), using parenthetical citations, such as (24) when the material you’ve just quoted or paraphrased is on page 24. These parenthetical citations usually precede punctuation. (See Rosen)
        The essay should be approximately 500 words, which, typed in 12 pt. font, and double-spaced, with one-inch margins, makes about two pages.   Staple the whole thing together in the upper left corner, and put your name in the upper right-hand corner of the first page. Don’t give me your only copy.

Peer Response
        Here are some guidelines to keep in mind while writing your own paper, and reading and responding to your classmates’ papers. Make notes on each paper to remind you of what you want to say about it in class, as well as writing more detailed responses to give to the writer after we’ve workshopped all of the papers.
1. How were you involved as a reader in the essay? If you did not feel involved,
     what revisions would you suggest to involve you more?
2. Which are the most vivid descriptive details in this paper? Which parts need more
     details?
3. Identify any parts of this essay (sentences, phrases, etc.) that confused you as a
     reader.
4. What would you say is the author’s purpose in writing this narrative? What is the
     narrative thesis? Is it implied or stated?
5. Read the essay through again. Make a check ü anywhere where you wish there
     were more details. Put an x where you think there might be a technical error
     (misspelling, punctuation error, etc.).
THESIS?     This essay is about_____________. What is the meaning of the essay?

REALLY? What evidence or specific details support the thesis?

SO WHAT? What is the significance of the essay for the reader? What’s the point?

SAMPLE ESSAY
Rain

        Usually I enjoy the rain, but today is one of those all day all night pitter-patter splish splash never ending drizzles which make us quiver in our coats of skins and shrink from the moist wiles of nature. As I drive to a place I do not wish to be, freshly wrenched from a bed I did not wish to leave, I imagine death foraging the asphalt, hunting and gathering along the slimy wet pavement I reluctantly travel. It seems that I can hear doom’s persistent whisper in the steadily popping droplets which bounce off the roof of my too-old-to-be-out-in-this-stuff Oldsmobile, and that I can feel the old derelict’s cunning nudge in the sliding of bald tires on slippery corners and too short stopping distance at sudden red lights. I usually enjoy driving, but in this morbid state of mind I know that I must park this car and walk.
        Athletes seem to emerge in the rain, and running with head down and hands in pockets seems to be the sport of choice in this weather. "Son of a bitch" seems to be the standard greeting for those not blessed with speed of foot or something to put over their heads. Books, newspapers, and coats stretched over bowed backs and applied to sticky foreheads (like improvised cowls for just converted nuns) seem to be the means of protection for those too proud or too unwise to carry an umbrella. Parkas, slickers, hoods, and rubbers abound. Boots and gloves and grim expressions are the tools with which we strain to keep the outside out. The technology of rain relief is impressive and complex. And then there are seagulls.
        Anthropology teaches us that we are separate from the beasts, that we, with our big brains and upright posture, are the first (and seemingly only) creatures to have stumbled upon a way to create a world out of ideas. That we, with our language and our science and our opposable digits, are the first (and perhaps last) organisms which can turn cognition into concrete, to see our thoughts take shape and then convert that shape to matter, to harness and control the primal forces for our lodging, food and entertainment. That we, above all, can manifest our destinies, order our existence, and make this harsh old world our own. And then it rains. And we run, and we jump, and we shriek, and we pout, and our umbrellas turn inside out. Our basements flood, our roofs sprout holes, the river swells, and our carefully constructed houses pull up roots and look for new towns to call home. But up above our sodden grief, floating in that dark and enemy sky, there is one seagull, flying in the rain, with feathers which repel the wet and wings to carve and shape the wind to his design. He has no tools, save claw and beak and quill. He has no history, philosophy, technology, nor any other words which end in y, yet in his genes is a schematic for the creation and re-creation of the perfect tool for gliding through the gusty air, and fending off the wet, for surviving in a shopping center parking lot or half a mile out to sea. This simple bird can do what we with our big brains and our practical ideas cannot. He makes the world his own through the very act of being; he is what we can never be, can never make, can never fully understand. As I walk (head down and rushing, we are none of us very upright in the rain), I cannot help but wonder whether it is better to think or to fly. I can never know, for I can never know the alternative. Anthropology teaches that all is vanity—I cannot help but wonder; the gull, however, cannot help but fly.
        The gull, however, cannot drive. As I return from walking, soggy and contemplative, I notice how bright and red and clean my never-broken-down-not-once-knock-wood Oldsmobile has become, sitting still in the scrubbing rain. I climb inside and drive, the tick-tock wipers clearing my vision, and my imaginings of tragic death seem remote to me now, and purposeless. The car becomes an extension of myself, seeming to anticipate my thought. It moves with guile and precision, agility and supple speed, faltering occasionally, but always with enough room for correction. I enjoy driving once again, and the rain, and achieve a peace and cooperation with the road, working with it toward the common goal of transportation. But as I move closer to my loved one and that warm and friendly bed, I spot a seagull from the corner of my eye, cruising in his vehicle, moving through the rain. And I wonder, and I drive a little faster, trying to catch up.
Jeff Hugely

Typical Paper Topics

The Uses of Snow
A Coral Reef
Scuba Diving (Snorkeling)
A Cord of Wood
You Are What You Hear
A Camping Trip
Winter: The Best Season
The Smokies vs. the Rockies
Bicycling
A Canoe Trip
Sailing
An Unusual Trip
A Fishing Trip
Urban Wildlife
The Bird Feeder
Summer at the Shore
Summer on the Great Lakes
My Garden
The Backyard Zoo
Wind
The Stones of Ohio
My Favorite Place
Trees of the Great Lakes
Fishing in the Midwest
A Day Along Mill Creek
The Farm
Crops of Ohio
The Ohio Farm
The Amish: Our Neighbors
From the Madding Crowd
Wildlife of the Mahoning Valley
Indians of Ohio
First Snow
Spring in Y’town
An Unusual Pet
Life in an Aquarium
Exploring the Countryside
The Road Less Traveled
Anatomy of a Pond
Winter Fishing
Wildlife Photography
Hunting in Ohio
Birding (in Ohio?)
Out West
Golf: Another Way to Walk
A Winter Walk
Walking in the City
Along the River
Living By the Sea
Horses & Me
Country or City: 2 Ways to Live
North or South
Getting Ready for Winter
Insects & Me
Wild Flowers of Ohio
A Summer Place
Conservation in Ohio
The Flowers of Suburbia
Mountains or Plains: 2 Ways to Live
Farm Christmas
What Birds Eat in the Winter
Leaves
The Colors of Autumn: What Makes Them?
Lake Milton

The Three Brains
Robert Bly

        Some recent brain research throws light I think on what we’ve been talking about. I’ll sum up some of the conclusions and speculations made by the American neurologist, Paul MacLean. I first ran into his ideas in Koestler’s book, The Ghost in the Machine, where he gives about six pages to MacLean’s theories, and refers to the neurological journals in which MacLean publishes. The gist of MacLean’s thought is that we do not have one brain, but three. MacLean’s map of the head isn’t psychological, as Freud’s Ego, Id and Superego, but geographical - the three brains are actually in the head, and brain surgeons have known for a long time what they look like. MacLean’s contribution has been to suggest that each of these brains is to some extent independent. During evolution, the body often reshaped the body - fins, for example, in us, turned utterly into arms, but the forward momentum in evolution was apparently so great that the brain could not allow itself the time to reform - it simply added.
        The reptile brain is still intact in the head. Known medically as the limbic node, it is a horseshoe shaped organ located in the base of the skull. The job of the reptile brain appears to be the physical survival of the organism in which it finds itself. Should danger or enemies come near, an alarm system comes into play, and the reptile brain takes over from the other brains - it takes what we might call "executive power". In great danger it might hold that power exclusively. It’s been noticed, for example, that when mountain climbers are in danger of falling, the brain mood changes - the eyesight intensifies, and the feet "miraculously" take the right steps. Once down the climber realizes he has been "blanked out". This probably means that the reptile brain’s need for energy was so great that it withdrew energy even from the memory systems of the mammal and new brains. The presence of fear produces a higher energy input to the reptile brain. The increasing fear in this century means that more and more energy, as a result, is going to the reptile brain: that is the same thing as saying that the military budgets in all nations are increasing.
        MacLean himself speculated, in a paper written recently for a philosophical conference, that the persistent trait of paranoia in human beings is due to the inability to shut off the energy source to the reptile brain. In a settled society, if there are no true enemies, the reptile brain will imagine enemies in order to preserve and use its share of the incoming energy. John Foster Dulles represented the reptile brain in the fifties.
        When the change to mammal life occurred, a second brain was simply folded around the limbic node. This "cortex", which I will call here the mammal brain, fills most of the skull. The mammal brain has quite different functions. When we come to the mammal brain we find for the first time a sense of community: love of women, of children, of the neighbor, the idea of brotherhood, care for the first time a sense of community: love of women for men, and men for women, love of children, of the neighbor, the idea of brotherhood, care for the community, or for the country. "There is no greater love than that of a man who will lay down his life for a friend ". Evidently in the mammal brain there are two nodes of energy: sexual love and ferocity. (The reptile brain has no ferocity: it simply fights coldly for survival.) Women, it would seem, have strong mammal brains, and probably a correspondingly smaller energy channel to the reptile brain. They are more interested in love than war. "Make love, not war" means "move from the reptile brain to the mammal brain". Rock music is mammal music for the most part; long hair is mammal hair.
        The Viking warrior who went "berserk" in battle may have experienced the temporary capture of himself by the mammal brain. Eye witnesses reported that the face of the "berserk" appeared to change, and his strength increased fantastically - when he "woke up", he sometimes found he had killed twenty or thirty men. The facial expression is probably a union of the concerns of all three brains, so if one brain takes over, it is natural that the shape of the face would change.
        What does the third brain, the "new brain," do? In late mammal times, the body evidently added a third brain. Brain researchers are not sure why - perhaps the addition is connected to the invention of tools, and the energy explosion that followed that. In any case, this third brain, which I shall call here the new brain, takes the form of an outer eighth inch of brain tissue laid over the surface of the mammal brain. It is known medically as the neo-cortex. Brain tissue of the neo-cortex is incredibly complicated, more so than the other brains, having millions of neurons per square inch. Curiously, the third brain seems to have been created for problems more complicated than those it is now being used for. Some neurologists speculate that an intelligent person today uses - 1/100 of its power. Einstein may have been using 1/50 of it.
        The only good speculations I have seen on the new brain, and what it is like, are in Charles Fair’s book, The Dying Self (Wesleyan University Press). Fair suggests that what Freud meant by the "Id" was the reptile and mammal brain, and what the ancient Indian philosophers meant by the "self" was the new brain. His book is fascinating. He thinks that the new brain can grow and that its food is wild spiritual ideas. Christ said, "If a seed goes into the ground and dies, then it will grow". The reptile and mammal brains don’t understand that sentence at all, both being naturalists, but the new brain understands it, and feels the excitement of it. The Greek mystery religions, and the Essene cult that Christ was a member of, were clear attempts to feed the new brain. The "mysteries" were the religion of the new brain. In Europe it was at its highest energy point about 1500, after knowing the ecstatic spiritual ideas of the Near East for 700 years. Since then, "secularization" means that the other two brains have increased their power. Nevertheless a man may still live if he wishes to more in his new brain than his neighbors do. Many of the parables of Christ, and the remarks of Buddha evidently involve instructions on how to transfer energy from the reptile brain to the mammal brain, and then to the new brain. A "saint" is someone who has managed to move away from the reptile and the mammal brains and is living primarily in the new brain. As the reptile brain power is symbolized by cold, and the mammal brain by warmth, the mark of the new brain is light. The gold light always around Buddha’s head in statues is an attempt to suggest that he is living in his new brain. Some Tibetan meditators of the 13th century were able to read books in the dark by the light given off from their own bodies.
        If there is no central organization to the brain, it is clear that the three brains must be competing for all the available energy at any moment. The brains are like legislative committees - competing for government grants. A separate decision on apportionment is, made in each head, although the whole tone of the society has weight on that decision. Whichever brain receives the most energy, that brain will determine the tone of that personality, regardless of his intelligence or "reasoning power". The United States, given the amount of fear it generates every day in its own citizens, as well as in the citizens of other nations, is a vast machine for throwing people into the reptile brain. The ecology workers, the poets, singers, meditators, rock musicians and many people in the younger generation in general, are trying desperately to reverse the contemporary energy-flow in the brain. Military appropriations cannot be reduced until the flow of energy in the brain, which has been moving for four or five centuries from the new brain to the reptile brain, is reversed. The reptile and the new brains are now trying to make themselves visible. The reptile brain has embodied itself in the outer world in the form of a tank which even moves like a reptile. Perhaps the computer is the new brain desperately throwing itself out into the world of objects so that we’ll see it; the new brain’s spirituality could not be projected, but at least its speed is apparent in the computer. The danger of course with the computer is that it may fall into the power of the reptile brain.
        We do not spend the whole day "inside" one brain, but we flip perhaps a thousand times a day from one brain to the other. Moreover we have been doing this flipping so long - since we were in the womb - that we no longer recognize the flips when they occur. If there is no central organization to the brain, and evidently there is not, it means that there is no "I". If your name is John there is no "John" inside you - there is no "I" at all. Oddly, that is the fundamental idea that Buddha had twenty-six hundred years ago. "I have news for you", he said, "there is no ‘I’ inside there. Therefore trying to find it is useless." The West misunderstands "meditation" or sitting because, being obsessed with unity and "identity", it assumes that the purpose of meditation is to achieve unity. On the contrary, the major value of sitting, particularly at the start, is to let the sitter experience the real chaos of the brain. Thoughts shoot in from all three brains in turn, and the sitter does not talk about, but experiences the lack of an "I." The lack of an "I" is a central truth of Buddhism (Taoism expresses it by talking of the presence of a "flow"). Christianity somehow never arrived at this idea. At any rate, it never developed practical methods, like sitting, to allow each person to experience the truth himself. Institutional Christianity is in trouble because it depends on a pre-Buddhist model of the brain.
        Evidently spiritual growth for human beings depends on the ability to transfer energy. Energy that goes normally to the reptile brain can be transferred to the mammal brain, some of it at least; energy intended for the mammal brain can be transferred to the new brain.
        The reptile brain thinks constantly of survival of food, of security. When Christ says, "The lilies do not work, and yet they have better clothes than you do," he is urging his students not to care so much for themselves. If the student wills "not-caring", and that "not-caring" persists, the "not-caring" will eventually cause some transfer of energy away from the reptile brain. Voluntary poverty worked for St. Francis, and he had so little reptile brain paranoia the birds came down to sit on his shoulders.
        If energy has been diverted from the reptile brain, the student, if he is lucky, can then transfer some of it to the mammal, and then to the new brain. Christ once advised his students, "if someone slaps you on the left cheek, point to the right cheek." The mammal brain loves to flare up and to strike back instantly. If you consistently refuse to allow the ferocity of the mammal brain to go forward into action, it will become discouraged, and some of its energy will be available for transfer. Since the mammal brain commits a lot of its energy to sexual love, some students at this point in the "road" become ascetic and celibate. They do so precisely in order to increase the speed of energy transfer. The women saints also, such as Anna of Foligno, experience this same turn in the road, which usually involves an abrupt abandonment of husband and children. Christ remarks in the Gospel of St. Thomas that some men are born eunuchs; and some men make themselves eunuchs in order to get to the Kingdom of the Spirit. However if a man is in the reptile brain at the time he begins his asceticism, then the result is a psychic disaster, as it has been for so many Catholic priests and monks.
        The leap from the reptile to the new brain cannot be made directly; the student must go through the mammal brain. St. Theresa’s spiritual prose shows much sexual imagery, perhaps because the mammal brain contributed its energy to the spiritual brain.
        "Meditation" is a practical method for transferring energy from the reptile to the mammal brain, and then from the mammal to the new brain. It is slow, but a "wide" road, a road many can take, and many religious disciplines have adopted it. The Orientals do not call it meditation, but "sitting". If the body sits in a room for an hour, quietly, doing nothing, the reptile brain becomes increasingly restless. It wants excitement, danger. In oriental meditation the body is sitting in the fetal position, and this further infuriates the reptile brain, since it is basically a mammalian position.
        Of course if the sitter continues to sit, the mammal brain quickly becomes restless too. It wants excitement, confrontations, insults, sexual joy. It now starts to feed in spectacular erotic imagery, of the sort that St. Anthony’s sittings were famous for. Yet if the sitter persists in doing nothing, eventually energy has nowhere to go but to the new brain.
        Because Christianity has no "sitting," fewer men and women in Western culture than in oriental civilizations have been able to experience the ecstasy of the new brain. Thoreau managed to transfer a great deal of energy to the new brain without meditation, merely with the help of solitude. Solitude evidently helps the new brain. Thoreau of course willed his solitude and he was not in a reptile city, but in mammal or "mother" nature. Once more the truth holds that the road to the new brain passes through the mammal brain, through "the forest". This truth is embodied in ancient literature by the tradition of spiritual men meditating first in the forest and only after that in the desert. For the final part of the road, the desert is useful, because it contains almost no mammal images. Even in the desert, however, the saints preferred to live in caves - perhaps to remind the reptile brain of the path taken..
        To return to poetry, it is clear that poets, like anyone else, can be dominated by one of the three brains. Chaucer is a great poet of the mammal brain; clearly St. John of the Cross and Kabir are great poets of the new brain. The reptile brain seems to have no poet of its own, although occasionally that brain will influence poets. Robinson Jeffers is a man with an extremely powerful mammal brain, in whom, nevertheless, the reptile brain had a slight edge. His magnificent poems are not warm towards human beings. On the contrary, he has a curious love for the claw and the most ancient sea rocks. Every once in a while he says flatly that if all human beings died off, and a seal or two remained on earth, that would be all right with him.
        Bach makes music of new brain emotions; Beethoven primarily out of mammal brain emotions. Blake is such an amazing poet because he talks of moving from one brain to another. His people in "the state of experience", after all, have been pulled back into the reptile brain.

The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

        When we are in a state of "innocence", Blake says we are feeling some of the spiritual ecstasy of the new brain. The industrialists, as Blake saw clearly, are in a state of "experience", trapped by the reptile brain.
I think poetry ought to take account of these ideas. Some biological and neurological speculations are marvelous, and surely that speculation belongs in literary criticism as much as speculation about breath or images or meter. A person should try to feel what it is like to live in each of the three brains, and a poet could try to bring all three brains inside poems.
The First Paper
        Confused and angry, he stared at the red marks on his paper. He had awked again. And he had fragged. He always awked and fragged. On every theme, a couple of awks and a frag or two. And the inevitable puncs and sp's. The cw's didn't bother him anymore. He knew that the teacher preferred words like "courage" and "contemptible person" to "guts" and "fink." The teacher had dismissed "guts" and "fink" as slang, telling students never to use slang in their themes. But he liked to write "guts" and "fink"; they meant something to him. Besides, they were in the dictionary. So why couldn't he use them when they helped him say what he wanted to say? He rarely got to say what he wanted to say in English class, and when he did, he always regretted it. But even that didn't bother him much. He really didn't care anymore.
        How do you keep from awking, he asked himself. The question amused him for a moment; all questions in English class amused him for a moment. He knew what awk meant; he looked it up once in the handbook in the back of the grammar book as the teacher told him to. But the illustration didn't help him much. He got more awks, and he quit looking in the handbook. He simply decided that he oughtn't awk when he wrote even though he didn't know how to stop awking.
        Why not frag now and then, he wondered for almost thirty seconds. Writers fragged. Why couldn't he? Writers could do lots of things. Why couldn't he? But he forgot the question almost as quickly as it entered his mind. No sense worrying about it, he told himself. You'll only live to frag again.
        Damn, he whispered. He knew it had to be damn. He decided that the teacher didn't have the guts to write damn when she was angry with what he wrote. She just wrote dm in the margin. She told the class it meant dangling modifier, but he was sure it meant damn.
        Choppy! He spat the word out to no one in particular. He always got at least one choppy. "Mature thoughts should be written in long, balanced sentences," the teacher said once. He guessed his thoughts weren't balanced. Choppy again. But he didn't care anymore. He'd just chop his way through English class until he never had to write again.
        He stared at the encircled and at the beginning of one of his sentences. The circle meant nothing at first. Then he remembered the teacher's saying something about never beginning sentences with a conjunction. He didn't know why she said it; writers did it. But he guessed that since he wasn't a writer he didn't have that privilege.
The rep staggered him. The teacher had drawn a red line from the red rep to the word commitment. He had used it four times. It fit, he thought. You need commitment if you believe in the brotherhood of man, he argued with himself. Why did she write the red rep? He didn't know. But there were so many things he didn't know about writing.
        Why do we have to write anyway, he asked himself. He didn't know. No good reason for it, he thought. Just write all the time to show the teacher you can't write.
        Most of the time he didn't know why he was asked to write on a specific topic, and most of the time he didn't like the topic or he didn't know too much about it. He had written on the brotherhood of man four times during the last four years. He had doubts about man's brotherhood to man. People really got shook about it only during National Brotherhood Week, he had written once in a theme. The rest of the year they didn't much care about their fellow man, only about themselves, he had written. The teacher didn't like what he said. That teacher, a man, wrote in the margin: "How can you believe this? I disagree with you. See me after class." He didn't show up. He didn't want another phony lecture on the brotherhood of man.
        That wasn't the only time a teacher disagreed with what he wrote. One even sent him to the principal's office for writing about his most embarrassing moment even though she had assigned the topic. She told the principal he was trying to embarrass her. But all he did was write about his most embarrassing moment, just as she had told him to. And it was a gas.
        Another time a teacher told him to write about how a daffodil feels in spring. He just wrote chilly on a piece of paper and handed it in. The teacher was furious. But he didn't care. He didn't give a dm about daffodils in spring. He didn't care much about what he did last summer either, but the teacher seemed to.
He looked for the comment at the end of the theme. Trite. Nothing else; just trite. He usually got a trite. It would probably mean a D on his report card, but he didn't care. It was hard for him not to be trite when he wrote on the brotherhood of man for the fourth time in four years. He used all the clichés. The teacher wanted them, he thought. So he gave them to her. But he was never sure just what the teacher wanted. They said they knew what kinds of words, what kinds of thoughts, and what kinds of sentences she liked. They said they had her "psyched out"; that's why they got A's. But he didn't have her psyched out, and he wasn't going to worry about it anymore.
Every week she told the class to write a theme on some topic, and he knew that she picked out the topics because she liked them. Every week --- "Write a theme on such and such." Nothing else -- just those instructions. So he gave the topic a few minutes' thought and wrote whatever came to mind. He thought in clichés when he tried to write for her. They were safe, he once thought. But maybe not. Trite again.
        He wadded up the brotherhood of man and threw it toward the wastebasket. Missed. He always missed --- everything.
         Drop out, fink, he told himself. Why not? He didn't know what was going on. A dropout. He smiled. Frag, he thought. Can't use dropout all alone. He knew it was a frag. At least he had learned something.
         The bell rang. No more awks, no more frags, no more meaningless red marks on papers. No more writing about daffodils and the brotherhood of man -- until next week.
Edward B. Jenkinson and Donald A. Seybold, "Prologue," Writing as a Process of Discovery, p. 3-6.

Presentation
        You are going to teach the class. The class will be divided up into teams of 4-5 students per team. Your team should
1. decide which essay you will teach
2. create a writing assignment for the beginning of class
3. run the class for an hour
4. create and grade the in-class writing assignment.
        First, come up with a writing topic that will 1) let your classmates demonstrate that they have carefully ready the assignment, 2) direct their attention to important issues in the readings, and 3) prompt class discussion. You should also have some questions to ask of the class as a whole, after they’ve finished their writing, that further explore the content of the reading assignment.   Do not let the class get side-tracked into complaints about the reading, or become the Jerry Springer Show, but establish the essay’s significance first.
        But just asking questions of the class is not a presentation. You need to make the assignment more vivid, providing background, adding another dimension to their reading, and involving all the members of the class. This might include:
· using visual or audio aids (maps, pictures, slides, videos, recordings, objects, etc.)
· creating a different classroom environment
· helping the reader re-vision the assignment with an exercise, a puzzle, game, etc.
· dramatizing or illustrating some aspect of the reading
It should be obvious that you will have some planning to do with your teammates, and that you should do research to deepen your understanding of the subject and put it in some kind of context. You should know more than the rest of the class about this subject. You might want to select a leader, but the work, including the actual talking in class, should be distributed evenly, with delegated tasks. Organize your presentation beforehand so everyone is clear about his or her task.

Grading Criteria

1) Writing Prompt (5 points)
2) Discussion (30 points)
3) Research (5 points)
4) Visual, Audio Aids (5 points)
5) Participation (5 points)
50 points total

I think over again my small adventures,
My fears
Those small ones that seemed so big
For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach
And yet, there is only one great thing,
The only thing,
To live to see the great day that dawns
And the light that fills the world.
      Old Inuit Song

     O our Mother the Earth, O our Father the Sky,
     Your children are we, and with tired backs
     We bring you the gifts you love.
     Then weave for us a garment of brightness;
     May the warp be the white light of morning,
     May the weft be the red light of evening,
     May the fringes be the falling rain,
     May the border be the standing rainbow.
     Thus weave for us a garment of brightness,
     That we may walk fittingly where birds sing,
     That we may walk fittingly where grass is green,
     O our Mother the Earth, O our Father the Sky.
                                                Pueblo Song

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