Circum-Intro-Retrospective by Galen Green

Galen Green
Kansas City, MO

Thursday
October 25, 2007
(the late poet John
Berryman's 93rd birthday)



GALEN'S ONFLOWING CIRCUM-INTRO-RETROSPECTIVE



Dear Shannon,

Although seamlessness would be too much to hope for in our present flow, let us begin by recalling that when we last left us we were leaning on the windowsill in Miss Robertson's 1st grade classroom at the south end of the 1st floor of (the now demolished) Fairmount Elementary School in Wichita, Kansas. It was a shiny blue & gold October day in 1955, a mere half century ago, but much like the shiny blue & gold October day that today has been here in Kansas City. Then, we were 6. Now, we are nearly 60. Anyway, there we were, leaning on our dear, anachronistic, inspiring Miss Robertson's windowsill, gazing out into a world we'd only just begun to attempt to figure out.

This voyage backward in time that I've been allowing myself to indulge in, over these past few days here in the year 2007, has put me in mind of a couple of imaginary moments created by two of my favorite contemporary writers, Woody Allen & Donald Barthelme. One of the most memorable scenes in Woody's absolutely brilliant Annie Hall (1977) is when he takes us, in a surrealistic Bergmanesque style, into his grade school classroom in Brooklyn in the late 1930's and among his dim-witted teachers and phlegmatic classmates, a few of the latter of whom stand up at their little desks and recite one-liners as to what they later became in adult life, such as: "I used to be a heroin addict. Now I'm a methadone addict."

Even though Allen is nearly a full generation older than us, this scene really resonates with me -- not that all that many of our teachers were entirely dim-witted nor our classmates all that phlegmatic. But there were for me (and, I'm guessing, for you as well) all too many unbearably dull hours and days at a time, throughout the 19 years I spent absorbing my formal education, when it did indeed seem as though I was the prisoner of some sort of tribe of zombies for whom I was nothing more than an heretically inventive little egghead, bent on exposing their somnambulism with my inconvenient gift of x-ray vision. As much as I admire Woody Allen's work, however, (which is a lot), I can't say that I share his evidently boundless disdain for America's public schools or for the souls whom dumb luck forces to inhabit them.

The Donald Barthelme prose piece which has kept swimming back onto my memory screen as I've traveled deeper and deeper into this Fairmount Elementary School reminiscence exercise is his 1964 short story entitled "Me and Miss Mandible." The quickest description I can offer you of what it's about would probably be to share with you my own personal take on it. I first read it in a collection of his stories and surrealistic essays sometime in the 1970's.

"Me and Miss Mandible" is composed of twenty-seven diary entries chronicling the experiences of a thirty-five-year-old insurance claims adjuster who, for reasons never entirely clear to either himself or the reader, finds himself transformed into a student back in the 5th grade, but in the body of a full-grown man. In this sense, Barthelme's piece is classic surrealism; you know: the thought-provoking juxtaposition of things not ordinarily found together in nature -- the "fish in a tree" motif. But, for me, what makes the piece especially delightful is the adult male narrator's naive tone combined with his attitude of deadpan acceptance of this bizarre turn of events.

Rather than spoil Barthelme's brilliantly experimental short story for you entirely, I'll simply say that this recent exercise in systematic remembering has similarly transported me back to the time and place I've been inviting myself to remember. Since you're the psychotherapist here, let me say, too, that I'd be interested in any insight your professional experience has taught you as to how this process of a person's being transported by the act of systematic remembering actually takes place. Or is it merely a metaphor, which we in our culture employ without giving it a second thought?

While we're on the subject of psychotherapy, particularly with returning soldiers, I have a question about something I happen to remember from Miss Allen's kindergarten class (1954-55) at the south end of the "garden level" there at Fairmount. (Do you happen to recall, Shannon, whether or not you were in my kindergarten class -- or vice versa? Because I may have this all wrong.) But my rememberer has kept coming back to a moment when I was seated on the floor of Miss Allen's garden-level kindergarten classroom with my tiny classmates, and Miss Allen was relating to our class (in that pre-privacy act era) that one of the little girls in our class was very excited because her daddy, who'd been a "Prisoner of War," had "recently been released" (sic) and would be coming home that very day. I even remember which little girl it was; I mean I can see her face in my mind's eye, though I was never much good with names.

Nor was I ever much good with arithmetic, because the Korean War had, at that moment, been over (or at least as "over" as was ever going to get in our lifetime) for 2 or 3 years (depending on how one figures it). Surely, this little girl's father would have long since been released in some prisoner exchange with the North Koreans -- if, indeed, he had been held prisoner by them. What I theorize, having puzzled over this for more than half a century, is that one of two realities obtained in this case: 1) The father soldier had been released by the North Koreans or Chinese in 1951 or '52 and had needed some form or other of psychotherapy, deprogramming (a la The Manchurian Candidate) or physical rehab, before he could return to civilian life -- or 2) What Miss Allen was telling her kindergarten class that morning was the product of one of those conspiracies by grown-ups to hide embarrassing truths from children. In this case, the inconvenient truth may have been that the father had been incarcerated or (And this is my personal pet theory.) may have been involved in some sort of covert Cold War military intelligence mission abroad. What are your thoughts on this, based on your professional observations and experiences?

(For a couple of years during the early 1960's, the neighbors directly across the street from our family's house at 1737 North Lorraine were a Japanese "war bride" and her dashing uniformed husband stationed at McConnell AFB who was somehow attached to military intelligence.)

But time is slipping away from us, Shannon, and there remain so very many parts of Fairmount Elementary yet to be remembered and sketched: the school library, the so-called "Resource Room," the annexes surrounding the main building, the restrooms, the fire escapes, the boiler room, Mr. Cron's office and his secretary's (later his wife's office), the music room, the PTA meetings, the "the paper drives," the physical education room, the art room, the staircases & drinking fountains & asphalt playground & the expansive slanted playing field, which has become such a powerful metaphor in recent years for all manner of inequity and injustice in American life.

I can still remember, of course, that day in Miss Robertson's 1st grade classroom when my willowy, swanlike classmate named Shannon Mandle, following a brief introduction from the teacher, performed for us an heartbreakingly graceful medley of acrobatic, gymnastic and modern dance moves. I honestly don't recall exactly what she called what you did. But I'd never seen anything like it in my young life. Not even on television or in the movies. (Can you refresh my memory?) It's possible that I may have seen someone on "The Ed Sullivan Show" do "the splits" before, but never with such lithe elegance. I could not, quite frankly, get my mind around the magnificently un-Wichita-eque beauty of my talented little classmate's movements. I'll just leave it at that.

And of course I think often of my other close friends from those early days, the ones I haven't mentioned yet: Steve Sowards, Mike Simons, Gary Short, Wayne Porter, George Moore, and a dozen more. But especially Mike Simons and Steve Sowards. Looking back, I believe that those two friends in particular probably had a more profound and lasting impact on my personal development than did any of the rest. And yet, even as I say this, my mind flashes back to all those whom that generalization omits: Jeff Corbin, Ricky Bell, Walter Reed, Allen Simoni, Bobby Christian, Tommy Glen, Ted Wright, Kenny Meyer (sp?), John Ashbaugh, Jimmy Sours, Steve Townsend, Jimmy Green, J.L. McClure, etc. Of course, when we went to Brooks JHS, much changed. But that's another subject for another chapter.

I've often explained to various adult friends, over the past several decades, my belief that the single factor from these early years which determined how different from my adoptive family I would turn out to be was my growing up in such close physical (and cultural) proximity to a university campus. (I shudder to think what might have become of me otherwise.) It's hard to say for certain which "peak experience" changed me the most: Jeff Corbin's mother (the Vick heiress) inviting me to lunch at the university president's mansion with its library filled with Harry Corbin's travel memorabilia . . . or Steve & Mike Sowards' mother inviting me to dinner the first time at their house on Harvard and my meeting their illustrious father, Dr. Kelly Sowards, in his boxer shorts, finishing an abstract oil painting in his study, taking a breather, as it turned out, from compiling the textbook on Western Civilization that I'd be studying from, a few years later as a freshman at Wichita State University.


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My inclination at this juncture is to spiral outward and then back inward, both in time and in a more broadly encompassing map of my world as a child. Specifically, I'm hoping that you might find it illuminating for me talk briefly about some of what was going on in my life at First Methodist Church in downtown Wichita, between 2nd & 3rd Street on Broadway. (I promise: this won't be a theological declamation.)

Harry & Margaret had been active members there since they'd married in her parents' parlor in tiny Richmond, Kansas, and moved to Wichita in 1941, so naturally I grew up at First Methodist with a collection of kids who ended up attending East High with us, even though they were from far-flung corners of the district. The three who come most immediately to mind are Rollie Enoch, Tommy Boyle and Enid Clinesmith. I'm sure you were familiar with Rollie and Tom, but less sure as to how well you may have known Enid. She had long, straight red hair and lots of freckles and was -- among other things -- a concert-grade classical pianist. I recall that she -- like Eugene Wood -- performed an entire classical piano concert for us at Assembly on at least one occasion. Sophomore year at East, Enid and I used to walk each other downtown to choir practice at First Methodist after school on Wednesdays, in order to save our bus fare for French fries (with lots of ketchup) at the greasy spoon directly across Broadway from the church.

(Parenthetically: each voice section (SATB) in our Youth Choir had a paid soloist from the university to help us along with our sight reading and pitch. That year, the bass section leader was a young man named Sam Ramey, who went on, as you probably already know, to become the foremost operatic basso profundo on the planet -- the Pavarotti of the bottom register, one might say. He'd started out at Colby High School, way out in western Kansas, before coming to Wichita to get his degree. Small world, huh.)

It was interesting to me to grow up -- literally from infancy -- with Rollie Enoch and Tom Boyle. As Bill Clinton said of one of his closest advisers: we used to eat each other’s crayons. For a while during the mid-1980's, Rollie was my family physician, but that just got too creepy. Tom and his wife gave me a lift home from our 20th Reunion dinner dance at the Broadview Hotel in the summer of 1987. The three of us sat outside under the stars and talked for an hour or so. That night was the last time I saw Tom or Rollie. Come to think of it: the Class Reunion Picnic in College Hill Park the next afternoon was the last time I saw you. Remember? You've always been so gracious to me, even when I obviously have nothing much to say. (Like right now, for instance.)

Part of what's motivating me to share this outward spiraling with you, Shannon, is to invite your reciprocation -- if and when Time ever allows it. As you know, one of the popular false constructs in modern cultural anthropology is the one whereby Family, Faith & Flag are what shape the individual. Insofar as this notion will hold any water, I thought it perhaps worthwhile to employ it for our present purpose. Over the years, I've already written a considerable tonnage on both Family & Faith. In my understanding of lives like ours, "Flag" would seem to manifest itself, as much as in any form, as what we as a people seem to have agreed to call the educational system (which is, itself, largely a euphemism or code word for "socialization" or even "initiation" [in the broadest anthropological tribal sense of that word]).


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Speaking of what Time allows us: it's probably getting to be time now for me to come to another pausing place. I'm eager to fire these most recent few pages off to you to give you . . . well, time . . . to process what I've said and what memories, images, questions, comments, analyses, etc. you might wish to fire back at me. Again, I'd like to express my appreciation for your willingness to participate in a conversation such as this. As is probably glaringly obvious, I'm finding it to be helpful on a number of levels.

You probably remember these lines from a song on The Beatles' White Album, which happen to come to mind as I'm saying this:

The deeper you go, the higher you fly.
The higher you fly, the deeper you go . . . .

I believe it's from "Everybody's Got Somethin' To Hide, 'Cept For Me An' My Monkey" -- but that's neither here nor there. For a long time now, the idea expressed in this image has become increasing integral to my own understanding of psychotherapy, spirituality, aesthetics, and a great deal more. I mention it here, Shannon, because I find it delightfully applicable to this process I've diven into as a result of your recent letters. I only hope that this third installment of my onflowing circum-intro-retrospective hasn't turned out to be a disappointment to you because of its emphasis on the process of systematic remembering, rather than on the memories themselves.

I also hope that it hasn't contained overmuch name dropping for your taste. My justification for all the names I've dropped here and/or will probably be dropping in coming installments is twofold. Firstly, each of these names will itself inevitably trigger a flood of memories for any of us who grew up with the flesh & blood human being belonging to that name. Secondly, because this series of letters to you is intended to be refined (eventually) into an early section in my book length memoir aimed at a broader general audience (most of whom haven't even been born yet), what I say in these letters is intended to serve as "exposition," as groundwork for what will come next and next; and any such exposition or groundwork must needs include the introduction of "characters" (as in a novel) likely to be "referred back to" later on.

As I was saying earlier: the notion that what shapes the individual in any given time and place in human history can be legitimately analyzed via the superficial categories called Family, Faith & Flag pretty much constitutes, in my own view, a false construct. As I'm sure you discovered in the process of composing your doctoral dissertation (if not even earlier in your career), the social sciences are shamefully more replete with such false constructs than are the physical sciences. Call me a heretic (and many people have), but one of the fundamental principles which informs my own understanding of the social sciences (the universe of human interactions) is that everything is one thing. (I stole this phrase from Arthur Miller's 1960's play After the Fall.) I believe that the concept that everything is one thing applies particularly well to any analysis of what forces shaped us into who we've become and what we're continuing to be and to become.

When I voyage in my imagination back to the years 1954 thru 1964, spiraling back inward just as I'd promised you a few pages ago I would . . . spiraling back inward to refocus on that period in history between our entering kindergarten and our entering high school . . . I can hear Elvis Presley singing "Love Me Tender" and "Teddy Bear." And I can hear that wonderful male vocal ensemble which sang on TV, in the background, over the opening and closing credits, that stirring theme song to "Wyatt Earp":

Oh, he cleaned up the country, the Old Wild West Country.
He made law and order prevail.
And none can deny it: the legend of Wyatt
Forever will live on the trail.

(Or words to that effect.) This is, of course, a reflecting pool of pure nostalgia in which one could wallow for hours and days at a time. (Which is not an altogether bad idea, if you ask me.) My point being simply that our generation grew from infancy to adulthood under the intoxicating (as well as enlightening) influence of more than -- far, far more than -- Family, Faith & Flag.

I can no more listen to a recording of Elvis singing "Hound Dog" without being transported to that night he appeared on Ed Sullivan, there on our fuzzy black & white TV screen in my family's living room in 1956 than I can listen to a recording of Bing Crosby singing "Where the River Shannon Flows" (available on several collections on CD, by the by) without being transported to the times and places I sang it "back in the day" (as my Black friends might say) for family and friends, including my childhood friend named Shannon.

But Time is getting away from us, and before I go I wanted to be sure to pass along to you the dial-ups for three more of the blogs I've been trying to construct. From something you said recently, I'm inferring that you've already taken an initial glance at these two:

galengreen.blogspot.com

thetoolmakersotherson.blogspot.com

Correct? But I have added a couple of new posts to each, in just the past day or two. In addition to those first two, I thought you might enjoy glancing at:

Happy Peasant Heretic happypeasantheretic.blogspot.com

Ecclesiastes 9:16 (KJV) ecclesiastes916kjv. blogspot.com

Mythoklastic Therapy Institute mythoklastictherapyinstitute.blogspot.com

Let me know what you think, when you get a minute. Admittedly, there is a bit of overlap among the five blogs I've told you about, but not much.

A few pages back, I probably misspoke as to the pleasantness quotient in my rememberings of my years at Fairmount Elementary School. Now that I put my mind to it, I can recall a goodly number of unpleasantnesses. But in the aggregate, my elementary school education was probably about as OK as any working class boy (any toolmaker's other son) could reasonably expect, there in Wichita, Kansas in the 1950's.

Remember the two brothers who rode unicycles to school everyday? They lived less than a block away, at the bottom of that relatively steep hill to the north on Lorraine. They were both older than us and both were quite adept with a unicycle, even on that hill. Their story is a good example of the many mysteries which will forever haunt my memory of grade school. As curious as I was (and still am) about all manner of human goings on which are none of my business, I never got around to finding out what was up with the unicycle brothers.

And remember push-button automatic transmissions? It seems like they came out on the 1956 or '57 Dodge. But I'm probably wrong. Was it your parents who drove one of those? I have this visual stuck in my mind of someone's mother shifting gears on a Dodge station wagon with what I guess would have to be called a push-button gearshift. Just another of those memory mysteries it does no earthly good to fret about.

What interests me far more is what you were able to learn about your prairie ancestors in the course of researching your doctoral dissertation. Were you able to uncover a sufficient amount of primary documentation to satisfy your curiosity as to their lived story? Someday soon, I want to hear all about it -- about what you were able to learn and what research methods you found most effective in getting you to where you needed to be.

Until Next Time, Stay Well,

Galen

October 29, 2007