Barrett Dorko
11-09-2006, 11:57 PM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
“This week I encrusted two tables with shells.”
Not something you hear every day, is it? The speaker is my twin sister, Leah, and the voice, while very familiar, carries with it now the rhythm and tone of South Philadelphia where she has lived for decades. She didn’t sound like this when we spoke to each other while doing the dishes each evening in a western suburb of Cleveland, but I’ve adjusted, and it no longer shocks me.
Seated with my oldest brother Drew and his friend Diane at a table on the sidewalk outside a restaurant in Leah’s neighborhood I listened to her talk and thought about how unusual an evening this was for me, and how welcome. From the moment I finish lecturing in one city until I begin in the next I ordinarily speak very, very little, and I listen even less. I am naturally a silent, solitary and sedentary man working in a profession that encourages none of that. The long silences that my travel permits are usually all that I need to satisfy my need for such a life. But when I have to I can speak for hours and I know this appears effortless. I behave and appear as if it is. Believe me, it isn’t, and I suppose I’d know.
The listening comes even harder. Often my mind handles information in a way that doesn’t lend itself to some sort of linear relationship between what I hear and what I then know. I seek in the voices of others that which goes unsaid but is most definitely part of the intended message. In the car from my hotel I heard Drew say, “No damn cat. No damn cradle.” We’d fallen immediately into the realm of common reading the Dorko children share and this line from Vonnegut was what he remembered most clearly from a novel we’d both read over thirty years ago. Drew’s life has had its share of promises unkept, much like the string game this line refers to. When I think about it – whose life hasn’t? Still, what he remembers of the book is this single, stark line, and when he speaks, I hear the sub text. When Leah speaks of her latest artistic endeavor I am drawn to her passion for the creative act. I understand how much courage it takes to produce your own art. Her work is eclectic and avant garde. I love all of it, but I might not be able to live with it as she does. That doesn’t matter.
The next morning I began my class at a hotel out near the airport and was deeply into my opening lecture about the role that our culture plays in producing and perpetuating painful dysfunction when a woman stopped me with the following question: “How can you ignore the role that the fascial system plays in all of this? After all, it forms the support down to the cellular level. Every aspect of our being blah, blah, blah… (see any MFR practitioner for more details. It’s always the same speech).
As she spoke I found myself forced to listen for a change – something I’m even worse at than speaking, especially when it’s something I disagree with much less have heard countless times in the past. A passage from Fierce Conversations ( http://www.amazon.com/Fierce-Conversations-Achieving-Sucess-Conversation/dp/0425193373/sr=1-1/qid=1158001234/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-7213658-3536738?ie=UTF8&s=books) came to mind: We often find that discovering someone else’s authentic self can be complicated by our increasing cynicism. (As the author Phillip Roth points out), ‘By a certain age one’s mistrust is so exquisitely refined that one is unwilling to believe anybody.’ Yet we must learn to rebuild the links that connect people and that provide an effective antidote to cynicism and disaffection.
I knew what this woman was going to say next and I knew that when faced with evidence to the contrary she would play the “Well, I get great results” card, so I didn’t listen to what she actually said too carefully. (She did exactly that, by the way) What I heard was her obvious exasperation with my unbelievable ignorance and her contempt for my refusal to drink the Kool-Aid. At least, that’s what I think I heard. Later in the day she brought forth the stock lecture about “memory in the tissues” and displayed the same attitude toward me. This was reinforced by another MFR fan who claimed that “fear is a right brain activity and psychology is left-brained so counseling won’t help.”
"Fascinating," I thought, and, without question, a comment like that feeds my cynicism. According to the communication experts I can only solve this conflict by “finding the links that connect” me with those that adhere to another theory. Unfortunately, I can’t find those links to their satisfaction, mainly because I find that other theory, well, nuts. To my credit, I never actually say that to the class, nor do I say anything about the Kool Aid. This requires some effort, believe me.
As I headed to the airport and the flight home I thought of what I heard from my brother and my sister and how I connect it to their way of being. But I know them. I love them. And there’s nothing they can say that will change that.
I will always hear my students in another way.
“This week I encrusted two tables with shells.”
Not something you hear every day, is it? The speaker is my twin sister, Leah, and the voice, while very familiar, carries with it now the rhythm and tone of South Philadelphia where she has lived for decades. She didn’t sound like this when we spoke to each other while doing the dishes each evening in a western suburb of Cleveland, but I’ve adjusted, and it no longer shocks me.
Seated with my oldest brother Drew and his friend Diane at a table on the sidewalk outside a restaurant in Leah’s neighborhood I listened to her talk and thought about how unusual an evening this was for me, and how welcome. From the moment I finish lecturing in one city until I begin in the next I ordinarily speak very, very little, and I listen even less. I am naturally a silent, solitary and sedentary man working in a profession that encourages none of that. The long silences that my travel permits are usually all that I need to satisfy my need for such a life. But when I have to I can speak for hours and I know this appears effortless. I behave and appear as if it is. Believe me, it isn’t, and I suppose I’d know.
The listening comes even harder. Often my mind handles information in a way that doesn’t lend itself to some sort of linear relationship between what I hear and what I then know. I seek in the voices of others that which goes unsaid but is most definitely part of the intended message. In the car from my hotel I heard Drew say, “No damn cat. No damn cradle.” We’d fallen immediately into the realm of common reading the Dorko children share and this line from Vonnegut was what he remembered most clearly from a novel we’d both read over thirty years ago. Drew’s life has had its share of promises unkept, much like the string game this line refers to. When I think about it – whose life hasn’t? Still, what he remembers of the book is this single, stark line, and when he speaks, I hear the sub text. When Leah speaks of her latest artistic endeavor I am drawn to her passion for the creative act. I understand how much courage it takes to produce your own art. Her work is eclectic and avant garde. I love all of it, but I might not be able to live with it as she does. That doesn’t matter.
The next morning I began my class at a hotel out near the airport and was deeply into my opening lecture about the role that our culture plays in producing and perpetuating painful dysfunction when a woman stopped me with the following question: “How can you ignore the role that the fascial system plays in all of this? After all, it forms the support down to the cellular level. Every aspect of our being blah, blah, blah… (see any MFR practitioner for more details. It’s always the same speech).
As she spoke I found myself forced to listen for a change – something I’m even worse at than speaking, especially when it’s something I disagree with much less have heard countless times in the past. A passage from Fierce Conversations ( http://www.amazon.com/Fierce-Conversations-Achieving-Sucess-Conversation/dp/0425193373/sr=1-1/qid=1158001234/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-7213658-3536738?ie=UTF8&s=books) came to mind: We often find that discovering someone else’s authentic self can be complicated by our increasing cynicism. (As the author Phillip Roth points out), ‘By a certain age one’s mistrust is so exquisitely refined that one is unwilling to believe anybody.’ Yet we must learn to rebuild the links that connect people and that provide an effective antidote to cynicism and disaffection.
I knew what this woman was going to say next and I knew that when faced with evidence to the contrary she would play the “Well, I get great results” card, so I didn’t listen to what she actually said too carefully. (She did exactly that, by the way) What I heard was her obvious exasperation with my unbelievable ignorance and her contempt for my refusal to drink the Kool-Aid. At least, that’s what I think I heard. Later in the day she brought forth the stock lecture about “memory in the tissues” and displayed the same attitude toward me. This was reinforced by another MFR fan who claimed that “fear is a right brain activity and psychology is left-brained so counseling won’t help.”
"Fascinating," I thought, and, without question, a comment like that feeds my cynicism. According to the communication experts I can only solve this conflict by “finding the links that connect” me with those that adhere to another theory. Unfortunately, I can’t find those links to their satisfaction, mainly because I find that other theory, well, nuts. To my credit, I never actually say that to the class, nor do I say anything about the Kool Aid. This requires some effort, believe me.
As I headed to the airport and the flight home I thought of what I heard from my brother and my sister and how I connect it to their way of being. But I know them. I love them. And there’s nothing they can say that will change that.
I will always hear my students in another way.