The Change Is Now

          

           Be the change you want to see in the world.— Gandhi

 

Gandhi’s simple, but powerful advice, well describes the way I planned and lived every music class I’ve taught in my life, be it with kids or adults. I wasn’t ticking off lists, but trusting my intuition as to what felt right, what seemed to bring happiness and joy and connection. Testimonies abound to affirm that indeed these classes were—and are— something notably different than business as usual, in ways that echo on in people’s lives. Of course, my own included. 

 

This past week I’ve noticed that life in San Francisco is indeed the change I want to see in the world. Of course, the 70-degree weather and flowering magnolias and budding cherry trees and blooming daffodils helped. As mentioned in the “Small Gestures” post, people are out and about on the streets and mostly not hunkered down into their devices. I’ve spent much time in Golden Gate Park as I often do, but now with new eyes after going to our friend Marta’s book-release reading at Green Apple bookstore. Seeing it all with fresh appreciation of its many remarkable trees, its gardens and groves, its ponds and lakes, its each with their own character, the remarkable variety of active sports available—lawn bowling, bocci ball, pétanque, cornhole, ping-pong, frisbee golf, real golf, archery, horseshoes, handball, racquetball, baseball, basketball, volleyball, pickleball, tennis, rollerskating, skateboarding, fly-fishing, not to mention the playgrounds, the art studio, the Lindy Hop Dancing, the pianos, the Senior Center, the Art Museum and Academy of Science. In short, innumerable ways to awaken the senses, exercise the muscles, feed the imagination, nurture intelligence, all of it three-dimensional with textures and smells and sounds and most of it in company and communion with fellow human beings, people in all shades and sizes and ages and not a single one excluded. 

 

Yesterday, I led singing at the Sequoia’s Senior Living and accompanied a resident who came forward and surprised us all with her artistic rendering of My Funny Valentine and this afternoon, a regular at my Friday Jewish Home music sessions requested Amazing Grace in C and brought the room to pin-drop silence with her soulful singing. In the next few days, I’ll bike to a church to attend a free singing event featuring Gospel, Old-time music, Broadway tunes, jazz singing, Balkan singing, Body Music and more, go to a house concert honoring a singer/songwriter, shop at the Farmer’s Market. All of this is par for the course for my life in San Francisco, but it struck me today in a different way. 

 

Because outside of this bubble, a war has begun, Gestapo ICE agents continue to tear families apart and hurt and terrorize for no justifiable reason whatsoever, spineless politicians keep feeding the monster with their compliance with no consequences. When I asked to sing some songs for my nephew’s children’s class in Portland next week, the first response was I had to submit to a 10-day-to-process background check. (I refused and they relented). But if I have to do so out of some fantasy of protecting the children, shouldn’t the President have to submit to a thorough background check to see if he’s safe to assume power? Every day, people who have chosen to care are feeling their hearts trampled, their sanity threatened, their outrage fueled, their sorrow deepened and we’re all crouched down in a defensive posture wondering “What’s next?” Not an easy time to understand that the change we long for is already here with us. 

 

But that’s what I felt today. I—no one—can’t dismiss the horror, but on a level, the life I long for us all to enjoy is already happening right here where I am. We don’t have to wonder about how much better it could be or how to make it better— it’s happening right here, right now, side-by-side with the needed efforts to topple the monsters of indifference and greed and hatred. If you’re wondering what that life could be like, come walk with me in San Francisco.

 

Of course, we are far from immune. Our unsolvable homeless crisis, our garbaged streets, our relentless AI billboards and armies of Waymos roaming the streets are most definitely not the change I want to see in the world. But the parks I walk in, the people I know, the things we do, are indeed precisely what we all could be enjoying, all available for you to try and test right here, right now.

 

When I was a college freshman at Antioch College back in 1969, there was a cool class titled “The Future Is Now.” None of us had any idea what that meant, but we just thought it sounded profound and enigmatic. But now I get it. The future we could have is indeed happening already, right here, right now. And of course, not just in San Francisco. Wherever people are gathered and committed to leading happy, caring, connected lives. Let’s go. 

 

Problem Solving

Back in my old college days, fresh from reading Alan Watts and looking into Zen Buddhism, I wrote: “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” How wise I thought I was!

 

But now it seems to me that life and all its daily demands is indeed an unending series of problems to be solved. And that’s what keeps it interesting. 

 

For example, the series of roadblocks that recently all appeared at once in my Pentatonic Press business. At first maddening and had me discouraged and throwing pity parties and complaining to the universe, but once I calmed down, it has simply become a complex problem to solve and miraculously, I seem to be making progress. Life’s obstacles can beat us down, suggest we give up, feed that little voice constantly telling us we’re unworthy or undeserving or not smart enough. Or they can renew our determination to persevere, to claim our intelligence, to let the world know that we care about this enough that we’ll follow every detour to arrive at our destination. Problems are the guardians at the gate that measure how much we care and when we face them with our full intelligence, resolve, grit and strength of character, things start to move.

 

My SF School colleague Laura Burges kept a quote on the walls of her 3^rd grade classroom for some 30 years—“In effort, there is joy.” So when we make the effort to solve problems, there can be great pleasure in the undertaking and give a satisfying shape and design to the day. 

Some problems feel overwhelming— the current dismantling of American democracy, for example— so good to start where you are. What dinner can I make from the food currently in the refrigerator? How to get Susie to soccer practice and Jamal to his piano lesson when both are almost the same time? Who should I invite to my party and who would feel left out if I didn’t? You know the list.

 

But it gets larger. Whether through therapy, reflective solitude, heart-to-hearts with dear friends, how to clear away the problematic obstacles that seem to get in the way of my happiness and sense of well-being? How to practice piano consciously so I’m not just playing notes, but discovering what needs work, isolating it and improving? Even Zen practice presented a problem. In the Rinzai tradition my teacher represented, solving the unanswerable question called the koan is the centerpiece of meditation. 

 

I start each day with my 3 morning Solitaire games and then an afternoon Crostic puzzle— problem-solving as a way to keep the wheels of the mind oiled and smoothly running. I read and watch mysteries for the satisfaction of problems presented—mostly murder— and then problems solved—“He done it!” I write this Blog almost daily with the problem of deciding what’s on my mind that’s worthy of attention. 

 

What problems are you working on today? 

Howl Revisited

Does anyone read Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl anymore? It made quite an impact when Ginsberg first read it at the Six Gallery reading in San Francisco in the year 1955. He was one of many poets reading that night, that included Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure and Philip Lamantia, with Kenneth Rexroth as the Master of Ceremonies. Ginsberg’s reading came like a thunderclap that cleared the sky and spoke the unspeakable. As described by McClure: 

 

"Ginsberg read on to the end of the poem, which left us standing in wonder, or cheering and wondering, but knowing at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America...." 

 

The next year, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, himself a fine poet and owner of City Lights bookstore and the publishing house City Lights Books, published Ginsberg’s poem and the next year, they were all taken to trial in 1957 for disseminating “obscene literature,” but the judge finally ruled that the poem was not obscene. In many ways, it indeed tore a hole in the wall of the prim and proper 50’s mainstream culture, helping to launch the Beat movement, initiate live poetry readings throughout the country, partner with jazz in its counter-culture ways, bring homosexuality out of the closet and give poetry permission to speak in different rhythms and with more daring. 

 

The poem was partly inspired by a vision Ginsberg had looking out a n apartment window in San Francisco and seeing the façade of the Sir Francisco Drake hotel wrapped in fog as the monstrous face of a child-eating demon from the Old Testament (Leviticus) named Moloch. In Part 2 of the original poem, he intones (excerpts): 

 

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their 

  Skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?…

Moloch! Moloch! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the

crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch the vastsStone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose

blood is running money!…

 

On he goes for some 11 more stanzas. 

 

In 1997, I was leading some meetings in my school about the creeping advent of computers in schools and tired of all the rational talk and rationalizing excuses, I followed Ginsberg’s idea of letting my outrage out and giving free voice to my anger about how we were choosing to let the machines “eat up the children’s brains and imagination.” Ah, little did I know what was to come. Now Moloch has fully arrived in its most monstrous form with the demon of AI stomping through schools like Godzilla while we calmly say, “Well, it does some cool things.” Instead of updating it yet again, I’ll present my version from almost 30 years ago. My little slingshot against the Goliath. I suggest reading it out loud with passion and rhythmic energy to get the full effect. Heck, read it out loud at the next school board meeting! You have my full permission.

 

HOWL REVISITED (with apologies to Allen Ginsberg) 

                © 1997 Doug Goodkin

 

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by techno-madness, overfed calmly Gap-clothed, 

surfing through the electronic web at dawn looking for a hit

pseudo-hip youngsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of cyber-space,

who riches and bleary-eyed sat up staring into the cold blue light of flickering images contemplating Windham Hill stress-busting muzak

who bared their brains to pentium chips in Silicon Valley and saw fractalled angels staggering on color screen illuminated

who passed through universities with cold, uncommitted eyes ignoring Blake

who ate sushi in forced-air rooms and purgatoried their torsos in Nautilus work-outs

who talked continuously seventy hours on cellular phones of softwares and hypercards and hard drives and rams and megabytes

who were fried over endless circuits amid vomit of empty verse & mindless clutter of titillating porn

who prayed to icons & wandered lost in drunken hallucinations of Virtual Reality

whole intellects disengaged, who gave up metaphorical and metaphysical musing, gutted their guitars, gave Coltrane away in garage sales

what sphinx of silicon bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Clean, dry ugliness! Children screaming inside numbed by 100,00 acts of television violence ! Moloch! Whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch! Whose eye is a thousand blind Windows TM Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out from a screen!

Visions! Omens! Miracles! Ecstasies! gone down the American river polluted with computer solvents!

Speed! Progress! Information! Togetherness! Accessibility! Power! the whole boatload of techno-bullshit hurtling us towards oblivion

While the children watch it all with wild eyes. 

Small Gestures

I’ve been speaking out against selling our souls to machines for most of my adult life and even in my liberal paradise of San Francisco, it’s a lost battle. Driverless cars clog the streets, AI billboards are everywhere, people here, like everywhere, are wandering about the streets in zombie-like trance staring at their phones. This long-held fantasy that machines will save our souls has been gathering strength for centuries, like a snowball rolling down hill, each moment larger and larger until the avalanche of consequences is upon us. 

 

And yet. On a rare hot San Francisco night, the streets in my neighborhood were abuzz with humans gathering and talking and laughing and eating and drinking. After a lovely meal in a Japanese restaurant with no music blaring or distracting screens on the walls, my wife and I walked the fifteen blocks on Irving Street toward our home, loving the energy in the air. We passed the Game Room, a place devoted solely to three-dimensional no-plugs games and it was filled to overflowing, each table with a different game and not a phone in sight. Heaven. 

 

Yesterday I walked in the park and passed a couple speaking Spanish and looking in their phone. I asked them (in Spanish) if they needed help finding something and when they told me, “The Japanese Tea Garden,” I said, “Follow me,” and walked with them. Found out they were from Galicia and I told them the cities I had visited there. Turns out that they were elementary school teachers and that opened up a whole other round of connection. My personal contribution to reminding us all that conversation with strangers is often more satisfying than Google maps. 

 

A minute after bidding them goodbye, a young woman passing said “Doug!” Didn’t recognize here immediately, but the moment she told me her name, I knew instantly who she was, even though it had been twenty years since I had taught her. Her brother, also my former student, was with her and didn’t we have a delightful chat about what they’re up to now and who they’ve kept in touch with from their classes and what their parents are up to. And yes, I pulled out my phone for a group selfie, but only after we had visited. 

 

Walking back through the park, people were walking, jogging, biking, rollerskating, playing volleyball, tossing frisbees, throwing balls to their dogs, gathered in circles on lawns, admiring the daffodils or buds on the cherry trees, all mostly eyes up with phones away. Life on a lovely Spring day as it’s meant to be lived. 

 

So yes, I will continue to rant and rave about the devils we’ve sold our soul to—probably in the next post! But the best antidote is to live well, to connect with each other, to smell flowers and hug trees, to choose to ask directions of passing strangers, to look up as we walk and nod to the people we meet, a small gesture that says: 

 

“Hey! I’m a human being and so are you and we pretty much share the same sorrows and joys and it’s a beautiful Spring day, so let’s make a little eye contact and let each other know, even for one passing instant.”

What Would Mr. Rogers Do?

When the unthinkable becomes our everyday thought, when cruelty is applauded and kindness mocked, when a little sniffle of wrongdoing explodes into an epidemic of uncommon indecency, where can we turn for a little teaspoon of solace? Who will remind us that we are gifted with life so we can learn to love and laugh and light the way for each other? 

 

This poem by Emilie Lygren offers the spoonful of sugar that helps the healing medicine go down. With just a slight taste of bitterness that we have allowed ourselves to forget what really matters. Come take off your shoes and put your feet in the water where Mr. Rogers can wash them:

 

“Mr. Rogers, what would you say to us now?

I miss your soft voice and slow smile.

 

Somehow you would remind us of what it means to share a neighborhood—

How our breath travels farther than we think,

but so can our care. 

 

You would’ve made the puppets of tiny cloth masks,

Had them ask all the questions children need to ask like, 

‘Why?’ and ‘How Long?’ and “Can’t we…?’

Let Daniel Tiger feel sad and antsy, itchy under the ear

  straps.

 

You would have explained it all patiently and thruthfully:

   ‘ No, we don’t know how long.’

    ‘ Yes, it’s okay to feel afraid.’ 

    ‘ This is how we care for everyone right now.’

 

Maybe the adults would have listened, too.”

Flowers and Thorns

The calendar page has turned yet again and here I still am, scribbling on the sands of Time on this daily blog. Doesn’t matter much what I say, either to me or the reader. Simply a daily reminder that I’m here and this is what I notice, this is what I’m doing, this is what I’m feeling. All of it means nothing and everything at the same time. 

 

At this moment, the beach I’m walking on is strewn with stranded starfish, some 15 or 20 waiting to be returned to their element. So on my “to-do list” is figuring out how to pick each up and get it back into the water. Which sounds easy, but almost every one involves a discussion with someone who has misunderstood our conversations and blocked the way to the ocean. Conflicted understandings of hotel arrangements for the summer course, clarifications with book dealers, confused expectations with workshop hosts, unanswered e-mails, the maddening financial discussions with voice-mail-robots of mega-corporations— a veritable wall to be climbed over, walked around or knocked down. The simplest tasks made so much more complex than need be with QR codes and security codes and the 35 voice mail options and people more and more incapable of clear conversation and handshake agreements— the whole catastrophe and increasing absurdities of modern life. Not to mention the daily news of tsunami warnings that has us all on edge. Maybe I really should retire and choose to make my biggest challenge of the day reserving a pickleball court. 

 

But the quote on my March calendar insists that it’s up to me to choose flowers or thorns and yes, up to a point, I think that’s true. So after wisely beginning the day with this daily check-in, my little footprints in the sand, a deep breath and on I go to meet each of the little monsters one by one. 

 

Wish me luck!

Birthday Card

 

Today is my wife’s 76^th birthday. It’s also my beloved colleague James Harding’s birthday (62), former student who I taught in 1972 Julie “Ralf” Gottschalk’s birthday (66), Eddie Corwin, SF School alum student and son of the former cook (40) and three or four other folks I know personally. Can’t think of any other day of the year that has so many friends sharing the same birthday!

 

It's no secret that my wife Karen loves to walk out in the natural world. In the past two weeks, she, Talia and I snowshoed near Yosemite, then a group of 14 family and friends did our annual “New Year” walk in Marin (Talia included), then Karen and I and three other SF School alum teachers hiked down on the Peninsula and today, on her birthday, she, Talia and I went south again for a 7 mile walk with lush green hills, sweeping views, intimate California chapparal. 

Then back to Talia’s house for a little cake and ice cream and yes, I did write her a card and before giving it to her, read out loud this Mary Oliver poem: 

 

The Whistler

Mary Oliver

 

All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden
I mean that for more than thirty years she had not
whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was
in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and
she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and
cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds war-
bled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.

 

Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she
said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can
still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled
through the house, whistling.

 

I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and ankle-
Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too.

And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin
to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with
for thirty years?

 

This clear, dark, lovely whistler?

 

Then read out loud my little note on my card, revealing my choice of this poem. Also it should be noted that we also learn new things about people when we discover that they can’t do. A few years back, it was revealed that Karen can’t whistle. Hence, the last line:

 

I chose this poem as an example of our capacity to surprise both ourselves and each other. While holding fast to the marvelous gifts and passions that define us, it’s good to keep the windows open to new possibilities. 

 

Just in the past two weeks, I discovered that you’re pretty good at the game of pool, both good and capable of enjoying jigsaw puzzles and that you’re a budding botanist who taught me about the Goldback slap, the leaf that makes an imprint on your pants because of spores. Surprises all! Like Mary Oliver, it makes me wonder “Who is this I’ve been living with for fifty-two years?!!!”

 

Next step—whistling!

 

Happy birthday!

 

PS After reading all this, Karen reminded me that she also doesn’t know how to snap her fingers. 

PSS Here's what the imprints look like: