Dispatches from the Underground: Back to School
We’ve never taken a week off before and we may never do it again (jk we definitely will)
Aaaaand we’re back! Ready to jump in with me?
August went down more or less as expected. As predicted, we moved out of the grim and disastrous phase ruling June and July but, on the other hand, did not find ourselves in a moment of actual triumph or even completely settled in a new time.
Looking back, I was mostly able to take my own advice, but I definitely forgot some of the details. Wanting desperately to focus on the positive, I kind of ignored the fact that I was indeed battered and bruised, burned and slightly decreased. That mattered. That got in the way of the free range of movement I’ve been looking for.
The forecast suggested that this would be a time of adjustment and evening-out and it was, and I am now reminded once more that adjustment and re-balancing isn’t necessarily fun. I experienced the disturbances when least expected — including being forced to flee a vacation home due to a cursed infestation.
Nonetheless, I found the advice to be pretty good. The main image presented was that of a mountain with a lake at the bottom. The mountain is strength that can turn to obstinacy and the lake is joy that can turn to unrestrained revelry. Put together, if a little of the lake evaporates and lands on the mountain, it solves both problems. It came close at times, but I can say with a fair degree of certainty that I was able to avoid (just barely!) excesses in both stubbornness and pleasure. We were advised — not for the first time — to approach matters like the water of the river flowing ever on without hesitation. This always works. We were advised to avoid being idiots — this is also pretty universally good advice.
Lastly, we were advised to take some of that angsty chaos and channel it into sensuality, passion, and the love of life, to transcend some of the conflicts and find above them the bliss of the eternal. If you were able to do this, you know — as I do — how powerful an act it can be.
So, back to school it is. My last fall semester of college was back in 2003, so I haven’t actually had a real back to school season in sixteen years. I still can’t shake the “school year scheduling” baked into me, though. I’m not sure this is a fundamental human trait — why would it be? — so much as the influence of about fifteen consecutive years. I suppose that has a way of sticking with you.
There’s just a freshness about this time of year, a sense of new beginnings and of getting back to work. I don’t want to shake it, either. It seems beneficial to me. I even got brand new white sneakers to celebrate.
Nonetheless, there’s still a certain amount of anxiety that comes along with all of this — namely, that I feel extraordinarily behind in all of life. In my mind, summer is paradoxically a time to relax and read books and a time in which I expect myself to get a lot of writing and project work done. It’s very unlikely that both of these things are true and yet I still expect both of them to happen. Ultimately, this year I did a great job engaging in summer activities, including reading, and this means I am behind on all my projects. Hell, I’m not even done with my Lammas series! Lammas is August 1. It’s September 9! So it goes.
In fact, just today as I got some seasonal tasks done around the house, I realized — and accepted! — that fall cleaning and reorganizing is really going to take all of September.
Speaking of back to school, all the children are back to school for REAL. For my youngest, this means he’s started actual kindergarten, and I can’t tell you how lucky we are that he is continuing on at Pine Hill Waldorf School, with the same teacher, in the same magical classroom.
I know he’s happy about it, but for me it’s basically a dream come true. Basically the favorite part of my day every day — for the last year, anyway — has been after I drop him off and I exit the door in the back of his classroom and he watches through the glass as I wave to him all he way down the hill. He’s not sad, he’s happy. And I’m happy. I know he’s in a warm place that is going to nurture his soul and I love the way he watches me going down the hill. I love knowing he’s going to turn around and go play with his friends, some of whom he’s known practically since birth. I love it that within a half hour or so he’s gonna sit in a circle and sing songs and hear magical stories.
We should all be doing these things every morning. But if we all cannot, it gives me great comfort to know that some people get to do it. And I’m thrilled that one of them is my son. He’s going to benefit from this in ways that none of us even know.
But for a while there, last year, I’d get a little choked up in these moments because I didn’t think we’d be able to pull off another year at this wonder-filled school. I was feeling a sense of loss in advance. We were very fortunate and surprised that things went a different way and now, now that school’s begun again and I get these wonderful moments once more, I appreciate them even more because I really didn’t think I would still be doing this at this point.
The thought warms the soul.
Speaking of the Waldorfos, my potential future sister-in-law brought a new podcast to my attention and I need to recommend it to everyone. It’s called Waldorfy. Hosted by Ashley Renwick, the show brings us along for a journey into the world of Waldorf education, along with Anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner more broadly — and does so in a way that is shockingly accessible for those who haven’t grown up in or otherwise been exposed to this unique world.
Hell, I’ve been intentionally trying to explore this unique world for the past five years (if not longer) and I already feel as though I’ve learned more from the six or seven episodes I’ve been binging than at any other point during that time. It’s not that the material is unfamiliar to me so much as the fact that the guests on the program are able to explain specific aspects of it in plain, introductory fashion. To the host’s credit, the episode order is beautifully constructed such that each successive show very subtly advances from the one prior.
In one early episode, for example, I learned the very succinct goals of the Waldorf education process itself: to instill within a person a strong will, rich feeling, creative imagination, and clear thinking.
What’s more important than that?
Anyway, go listen to it. I’m not through with all of the episodes, but so far I can say the back-to-back episodes with a guy named Theo Groh. Like the host (and unlike the other wonderful guests I heard), he’s only a couple years younger than I am and without being inappropriately ageist, there’s definitely something powerful in hearing these things from someone who’s essentially a peer. It gets quite moving; if you get to the part where Groh himself gets choked up and you aren’t also choked up yourself, go have your soul checked out.
Anyway, kudos to Ms. Renwick for this tremendous project — it’s a gift to us all.
I saw Marianne Williamson in Goffstown the other day. I’m not kidding — I think she has a better grasp of history, philosophy, and, perhaps most importantly, the precise nature of this current moment in time than any other candidate. I will not back down on this.
After having taken so much time off from Dispatches, there’s so much I’d like to cover and so much I’m certain that I’m forgetting.
The only remaining thing I’d like to mention for now is that a couple Saturdays ago we attended a party high on a hill at the home of a good friend (and frequent MU contributor). At this event, there was fire, good cheer, and a lot of very dear friends, some of whom were kind enough to play some music. I happened to be in the mood to sing with, shall we say, a very full-throated voice. I have no idea if it sounded good or not, but I can say for sure how good it felt.