Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing through Other Patterns

by Nora Bateson

Looping through eras, our intergenerational conversation is reflecting in what sometimes feels like an infinite mirror. The image defies family trees, it gets watery.

In the mirror, any man or woman might recognize the flickering beginnings of identity in a young girl just now realizing that she will be objectified by her culture.

I do not want to be a broken object. But all objects are broken.

Standing down from the need to claim my own ground I am reforesting the generations, as they are reforesting me.

In the Galleria Borghese in Rome I wandered into a room with a Bernini statue that rewrote me.

Greek myths these days are wholly half forgotten, at least.

I would want conquest to be put aside.

One of Apollo’s hands is wound around Daphne’s waist. The statue captures the last minute, when his fingers hover just above her navel, excruciatingly soft, holding her. She is beginning to transform into the laurel tree, Apollo’s touch returns her to her body. In the same moment she is bound to the forest. Bernini delicately sculpts this cold marble into the mythology of the potential of humanity’s engagement to the natural world in verse between beloveds.

cf Delany’s Dhalgren

We are nature, and we can also be besotted by nature.

I realized I never wanted to hear the terms ‘resources,’ ‘stewardship,’ or ‘sustainable’ ever again. For all the good intentions those endeavors have on their side, they do not describe any relationship I would want to be in. In those words we see control, possession, objectification, and manipulation. Ache and tenderness are another approach altogether.

Cupid was small and mischievous, wise and difficult. He was not to be one-upped. He shot a golden arrow into Apollo’s heart. As it pierced Apollo a poison of desire was released into his blood, making him lovesick and obsessed with Daphne. Then Cupid shot Daphne in the heart with a leaden arrow, rendering her incapable of loving again. The evolution of their courtship was contaminated by two unecological corrosives; greed and cynicism. Daphne was unjustly written into Apollo’s punishment, you might think.

But ask anyone, such is the nature of relationship. We carry each other’s pain. We learn together, or we do not learn.

Longing is lost in having. It is an art to ache. It requires stoic strength and unshakeable trust matched by equivalent portions of impatience and naked vulnerability.

The poetry of creation is necessarily incomplete—always unobtainable. It is emerging, dying, defining boundaries, and breaking them, contracting and expanding in controlled chaos, or chaotic control. This is the uncrackable code of evolution.

Even though fall comes, even though death exists, even though the nature of nature is to change, we set aside eternity for love. Until we are broken. Then we either soften or harden.

“If you cannot handle the connections, avoid the endpoints and be connectivity itself. Merge.”

To go into a bond, and form linkage with another, is to dangle in the ravaging sea.

Niels Bohr said that “the opposite of a great truth is also true,”

Avoiding it, altering it, fighting it, and changing it are not easy mandates.

The crisis we face now in education is not really about what is or is not provided in the curriculum; it is not about test scores, nor is it about which universities are the most prestigious. It is, in fact, not even about knowledge. The issue is more diffused. Simultaneously, it is more acute. Though nearly invisible to most eyes, the problem lies at the level of thought patterns.

The prescribed mode of thinking that is generated by our educational systems is not conducive to the sort of thinking that ne...

Stories were relegated to fluff.

Most rebels are eventually broken.

As the school bus rolled away I could see from my seat out the window that my father was weeping. He would say to my mother, “They are going to ruin her mind.” But they never did.

To begin with, the dinner conversation protocol was premised on the notion that anyone, children included, was perfectly capable of making (and even expected to make) valuable contributions to the discussion.

They were asking the wrong questions.

Good questions do not have answers at all, let alone right or wrong ones.

“What is the pattern that connects the crab to the lobster, the orchid to the primrose, and all the four of them to you and you to me?” It’s a good question.

What my father did not know was that the tears he cried for me formed a shield.

I am not sure exactly how to alter the educational system to incorporate a study of the overlapping patterns in life.

The ambiguity we need is unacceptable to the requirements of notions such as ‘authority,’ ‘credibility,’ and ‘expertise.’

The violence of breaking the world into bits and never putting it back together again substantiates the kind of blindness in which we have separated ecology from economy, and psychology from politics.

They need a sci-fi grandmother—wise with humanity and rich with intuition, but a warrior of the digital, and adept in urban professionalism.

They need elders who are willing and able to think in new ways, and admit when they are wrong.

Our job is to weep at the bus stop.

We have to allow this generation to make mistakes we could not afford to make, to let them play with the edges of our frames while we leave a trail for them, with baskets of the most magnificent examples of humanity we can find.

Reasons, great art, incredible mathematics, beautiful science, heartbreaking poetry, tales of history’s turning points, all told from multiple perspectives.

Context Produces Possibility

cf the production of creativity out of double bind frustration in the porpoise cg GB Double Bind

mutual learning between generations; it is also about how to make change in a stuck system.

This story is about the disaster of the education system, and a young man trying to survive it. This story is about my love for that young man (my own son), and the unexpected treasure we found together, which helped get him through the maze of hypocrisy that middle school epitomizes.

This echoes the tears at the bus stop

My parents never got emails. But I sure did.

Emails from teachers, counselors, and administrators began to pop into my inbox. They each arrived with a tone of both blame and concern. “Trevor is being disruptive.” “Trevor is being disrespectful.” “Trevor is not listening.” “Trevor is horsing around in class and causing distraction.” And then, after a few weeks, “We would like to meet with you about Trevor’s behavior.” “Trevor will be scheduled to see a school counselor.” “The principal would like to discuss a plan for what do to about Trevor’s behavior with you and Trevor’s teachers.” “Have you considered that Trevor may have ADHD, and may require medication?” And so on.

The underlying message I was being given through these emails was that my kid needed more discipline, and that if discipline was not ‘effective,’ perhaps it would be necessary to consider medication. While I cannot speak for other parents and their children, I knew in my bones that neither dis...

Meanwhile, Trevor kept talking about zombies.

I thought nothing of it. Until, finally one night Trevor came into my room at four in the morning in tears; he had had a nightmare.

Instead I took his hand, gave it a kiss and told him we would talk about it in the morning.

Avoid parental autopilot, that is my motto.

The next morning I asked, “Trevor what is a zombie for you, because I have a feeling that the zombies in your head are not the same as the ones in my head?” I will never forget his answer. Trevor at age 12 said: “Zombies are people who cannot think for themselves, they want you to be like them. …And, if you do what they say, your dignity flies out the window.”

These kids are engaged in perhaps the noblest battle there is: the battle to protect one’s dignity.

In truth when Trevor delivered his description of his zombies I knew immediately that he was going to be fine.