April 2001
Dear S.,
Thank you for your deep letter. I am moved that you would so confide in me, although it is not entirely surprising that you and I might recognize each other.
I am not ready to respond to your letter—that is, your most recent. It is indeed worthy of response, and I don’t want to rush off something of little worth. I do enclose another response, however: No, that’s not a misprint; the enclosed letter really is from last year. I wrote it in response to your letter to me, but this kind of correspondence is new to me; so out of professional prudishness I waited a bit before sending it off. Well, then we had Spring Break, and then, well, you were no longer in my class. It seemed perhaps too forward to deliver it then, especially since I wrote it as much for myself as for you. Since that time, I’ve reread it and found it fine; all that was missing was the occasion.
I do have some reactions to your recent note (which is, by the way, not at all “insane”). Just give me a little time to get the right words.
3a To S.-On Flight
Images & Attributions (in order of appearance)
1. Banner: Rhiannon C. 2016
a) Albion Glyph: William Blake, "Glad Day" or "The Dance of Albion," c.1794
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/47/William_Blake_-_Albion_Rose_- _from_A_Large_Book_of_Designs_1793-6.jpg
2. Photo of the gates of Dachau ("Arbeit Macht Frei") http://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2014/01/dachau-gates-P.jpeg
The Table of Contents below is too long to display fully. If you click to the right of these Lessons,you'll see the primary source documents displayed under each. These original sessions are a world treasure.
March 21, 2000
S.,
I question whether I should write a response like this to your culture essay. I’m not sure what to say or how to phrase things. I am taking a risk. I may be mistaken; these words may not be helpful. Nevertheless, I am bound to try:
First, to say “good job” or “A+” or some other standard superlative would be to trivialize your work. Your effort alone is worthy of a medal; but I will not speak to your effort for I suspect you were driven to this in any case—that writing & the Holocaust for you are an on-going labor of life, if not one of love. Frankly, yours is the single best piece of writing I’ve ever seen by a middle schooler. I’ve been at WMS for thirteen years, and I’ve taught many exceptional kids; but your writing is on a different level. To pretend that you are (in this domain) merely “advanced for your age” is to miss the point. Your gift is rare among all humans, not just sixth graders. I say this not to alienate you from your classmates, nor do I wish to widen any gap you undoubtedly already feel exists between you and others. I tell you because you are deserving of outside confirmation from someone who understands. You are a flyer.
While not a flyer myself, I am a serious student of flight. Simply put, flight is the ability and the means to connect to other worlds, other minds. It is a direct link of the imagination. I might say it’s synonymous with “genius,” but the latter term is increasingly misapplied—either watered-down to the banal (“genius of the toilet”) or elevated to a legendary & unassailable archetype (Einstein = God). But flight is not a matter of mere intelligence, DNA, or knowledge base. It’s intending a connection (perhaps to Poland 1939) and then being there fully. Again, I am not a flyer, but I confess to you I have flown many many times. Even at age forty I still have a very real shot at attaining flight. The difference between you and me, I believe, is a matter of constancy and fluidity. I’ve been there; I understand how all the pieces can just be “obvious” and fall into place; I just don’t live in that realm continually and must work very very hard to get there. (Sadly, of course, most people know very little of flight.)
I offer this as a preface to my real gift to you: perspective. First, though flight is my current goal and something you seemed born to, flight is not an end in itself; it is only a means to an end. The power to travel—in this case, using one’s imagination to go beyond one’s imagination—is merely that. It does not choose for you a destination, nor does it determine why you are traveling. And here is where my experience and distance might be of help to you. You fly, but you must stay clear in your own mind—free from wishful indulgence—in the name of what do you fly? Many flyers fall prey to their own vices and delusions, including even reflections of beauty (Narcissus). It’s easy to convince yourself, as many have, that you write better with a shot (or three) of whiskey, or that you’re just “being honest” when you tell all your family to go to ----, or that you play better guitar when fighting for some cause, or that the well to Truth is best tapped through the horror of absolute Holocaust. Don’t get me wrong—the Holocaust is indeed one of the most important stories to be told. But, as your teacher, I ask you—not for me, but for yourself—to come up for air occasionally and make sure you don’t sink too far. And here’s an undeniable fact: Hitler was undoubtedly also a flyer.
Though not a flyer, I do have talents. And my best talent seems to be the counterpart to your most obvious talent. I have overview, while you own immersion. Both are critical to real mastery. Immersion means you touch down on a world, and you need only look around. It is discovery, not invention: The world unfolds itself to you. And then, as of its own volition, it takes you over, away; words just pour out. Overview, on the other hand, is the ability to see many worlds at once, distances, purpose—to see how the big picture all fits together. Generally overview lacks the emotional intensity of a good immersion roller-coaster, but its strength lies in conviction and understanding. Of course—and here’s the lesson for you—both modes have their respective weaknesses: immersion can degenerate into reverie, private fantasies that exclude all else; overview can dissipate focus into many-mindedness—being drawn into so many worlds at once that you wind up with ADD.
And let’s for a moment turn to that world you seem turned to. When you are fascinated by the Holocaust, what is it that compels you to travel there? You have your family history; you are your family. Do you celebrate their lives or deaths? Then again, it is a world story, bigger than life, than myth; it is an absolute. I am neither Jewish nor Polish, nor even German; but I too am drawn to the Holocaust as a gravity well of incomprehensible inhumanity. I want to understand it; I want to test my own toughness and say, “Given the right luck, I too could be a survivor.” But this is very different from wanting to experience it. (And undoubtedly I am fooling myself.)
I think of the many, many worlds we may visit as planets in space, where we, as souls, may or may not be drawn into these planets’ gravitational fields. The Holocaust is a huge world with a field so large that it warps the space and time around it. Black holes do this too, and from them there is no escape. Flight is the power to connect, but it is equally the power to disconnect and fly elsewhere.
I have two heroes who apply to this discussion: Isaac Bashevis Singer and Primo Levi. Singer you mentioned in your own paper, and of course he does write of the Holocaust in his own way (mostly indirectly). But Singer’s contribution to the world is far greater than illustrating the extermination of millions and immortalizing evil. He gives life to an extinct community. Through his books (and especially for me his short stories) one can visit a timeless Lublin or Krakow, eternal, forever, alive. The Holocaust is but a moment when time stopped and is overshadowed by life’s richness. Primo Levi, on the other hand, lived through Auschwitz and describes it eloquently and without bitterness. He learns its lessons, both personal and global, and is himself enriched by the experience. By the time he writes The Elements, his third memoir, Auschwitz forms but a single chapter. There are few people I would rather meet than Primo Levi.
I welcome your questions and feedback, S., and I intend to show your work to my good flying friend, a world-class immersion poet and scribe. He may have something to add to what I’ve said here. I look forward to your future work.
albionspeak: a draught of language (3.1)
Letters to S. - On Flight
S. arrived at W. Middle School as a sixth-grade Polish peasant. I am not visual, but who could miss her—with her babushka, scarf, and mud-colored overcoat even on the warmest days? Her parents looked normal, like the completely American Ashkenazy Jews that they were. I believe they were both born in the U.S., even though much of the previous generation (both sides?) had perished in the Holocaust. Was it coincidence then that S. channeled the Holocaust? (She believed so, since she felt her connection was much stronger than blood.) Not only did she dress the part, she gave its victims voice by literally losing her own. That is, she seemed incapable of speaking audibly. Only ghostly gasps of air escaped her, and most of her teachers confessed they stopped speaking to her altogether because they could never hear her. I, too, rarely spoke to her, because she didn't have questions and my other students had many. Thus, almost our entire communication consisted of a few deep letters, and never did we address the substance of these letters in person.
I refer below to S.'s culture essay. This was actually a minor component (15%) of a much larger project, a six-week travel itinerary of the student's design, which was mapped onto geographical database software (ArcView GIS). Most students came up with a standard tourist itinerary. Some chose a family reunion tour, while others chose a sports theme, like touring the Bundesliga (German soccer) or the like. S. chose a Holocaust theme, and her rough draft proposal was simply absurd: She planned on visiting 300 camps (distressed that she couldn't see all 40,000+ Holocaust facilities). And this, I believe, exemplifies one of the problems facing a child flyer: If you can regularly accomplish miracles of academic insight or artistic prowess, you tend to forget what limitations you remain subject to, like basic physicality. I had her winnow her list to a mere 30 camps, but nothing could have prepared me for her writing. The essay was supposed to be 2 pages double-spaced (it was a tech class). S. gave me 30 single-spaced pages on the history of Germany and another 30 for Poland! Nor was it her quantity that floored me (though it did tax me). Yes, she made errors, but her vocabulary and the depth of her understanding of history vastly exceeded that of most college graduates.
After an exchange of letters, starting with the first below, S. confessed to me that she believed her detailed visions of the Nazi camps came via a past-life incarnation, which, given the lucidity of her visions, is not an unreasonable conclusion (though I will in a future lesson demonstrate why reincarnation is logically impossible). But here's the clincher: She believed firmly that in her former life she was not a victim of the Holocaust, but rather she'd been a Nazi guard. No surprise, then, that she suffered so.
One last item to report: Several years after S. had gone off to high school, she came up in a casual conversation I had with one of our educational assistants, someone who had known her long before she reached middle school. Apparently as a fourth and fifth grader S. was not a Holocaust girl at all, but rather a loud and aggressive sandlot bully. Loud? I'd never even heard her vocalize her words. This is but another example of a flyer's discontinuity. The lives of flyers are impossible to extrapolate.
April 2000
Dear S.,
Your letter set me thinking new thoughts: This is the highest praise I can bestow. What follows therefore is probably a jumble, since the overview mode, in trying to get its arms around an entire universe of ideas, often takes longer to process than does immersion. Overview again seeks a total picture, a simultaneous perception of all worlds; immersion, on the other hand, being more a linear descent into a single world, a singular idea, has more access to natural language, language itself being likewise a linear process. Thus I apologize if my words do not match my metaphysics or if my ideas themselves don’t make sense; they are largely new and unresolved.
First, let me clarify where I come from with respect to you. Without such clarification what follows could easily be misinterpreted. I am your teacher, and I wish for you exactly what I wish for all my students—indeed, for all beings—that you achieve your potential, that you become your best you. Importantly, I am not your counselor; more, I am not your judge. This means I do not pretend to know what your potential is. It’s easy to see, however, that you have a talent for words, that you are already aimed in certain directions, that your chances for winning a Nobel Prize in literature, for example, exceed your chances at being the next prom queen. Teachers must work within such parameters and must make predictions extrapolated from the data they collect. But I note: To predict a flyer’s future is much harder than predicting the future of most students, since flyers can, by definition, choose at a whim new worlds to latch onto. Today it’s the Holocaust; tomorrow, who knows?
Now you might not like the sound of the last sentence, that the kingdom you feel has sought you out for selection (and not the reverse) might be a passing “phase.” Do not be offended, though; I imply nothing. Tomorrow’s world for you could still be the Holocaust, and your reason for being on Earth may indeed be to give voice to such a dark chapter. I don’t know. But I would be dishonest with you if I said I was totally comfortable with such an immersion.
Let’s face it, if you weren’t a flyer—if you were not so able to connect and beautifully describe, for example, flecks of human ash—you’d clearly just be a screwed up kid. For one thing, the attraction would be only wish fulfillment, fantasy, invention, and therefore false. The motivation for pursuing such a horror could only be antisocial, self-destructive. (I hope you can forgive those benefactors who can only reach this conclusion.) Now I’m not talking about taking any interest in the Holocaust—I refer to the depth of involvement which you show. But you are a flyer, so all such bets are off. This may be your chosen path, but it is, I think, still a dangerous one for one so young. For just because one flies, because one’s connection is indeed authentic, doesn’t mean one isn’t screwed up. And while Hitler exemplifies an evil flyer, there are countless flyers who have, through lost perspective, lost their souls and flying abilities, and are thus lost to humanity—by choosing unwisely.
One aspect of your letter where I think you’re just wrong concerns the issue of choice: Yes, the Holocaust attracts you; yes, you feel its pull. But I insist this is still your choice. You have the power to resist, to go elsewhere. Now I don’t advise this, by the way. I strongly support your immersion and frankly don’t see a better option. I would recommend that you finish your novel and get everything out of it you can. But I would sharply distinguish between your visionary immersion and giving up your identity. You absolutely do not have to become a Holocaust victim yourself in order to gain its essence.
It’s strange how a flight to the Holocaust is so different from other observable flights. A., now a freshman at OHS, is also a clear flyer, but her domain lies in the standard prodigy realms of math & music. No one has a problem with these areas, just as our sports prodigies are handily rewarded. Y., on the other hand—and this is between you and me only—may well also be a flyer (I’m not sure). If he is, his is a domain of prodigious emotional maturity, wise beyond his years. Is there such a thing as a “moral” flyer? I don’t know, but you could learn a lot from studying such people, as I have for years; and I recommend to you strongly such a study for many reasons: First, you will see flyers come in many forms, and each copes with mundane reality in a unique way; you are not alone even at WMS.
Second, if you really want to understand Auschwitz, get to know people first. Auschwitz is perhaps the blackest moment in history not because six million people died there—bubonic plague has done far worse, for example. Nor is it because their deaths came at the hands of evil—you mention the gulags and killing fields; evil happens daily. No, Auschwitz is the worst for its systematic dehumanization of individuals. To say “six million people” misses the point—or perhaps it says it all perfectly—since by the time so many reached the showers they had lost all trace of individuality: Their very souls had been stolen. In responding to my rhetoric, you surprised me when you acknowledged you celebrate not the lives so much as the deaths of your family (both immediate and six million). O.K., but this must be examined further, for the mere moment when the shower lights go out really has very little draw or interest itself. It is but a piece of machinery, a cog in an evil wheel. You know how fathers crushed their own children in these showers trying to rise above the Zyklon gas. But who can blame them? They’re not fathers anymore; they’re not even people, but bones and starved muscles prodded to one last contraction. This moment alone is not worthy of a novel. When you say you celebrate these people’s deaths, you have to give first a glimpse of their lives. For every A., Y., or, for that matter, K. [a beloved special ed girl] at WMS, there were thousands at Auschwitz, many of whom at the end of Endlösung were no longer themselves.
Still another reason to study these other flyers is to get to know your audience for your writing. Now you may be right, but I don’t quite buy your assertion that your writing is something you could give up in your abyssal dive to whatever basis you seek. Perhaps I value writing too much to understand, or I’m just calling your bluff: I think you are a writer at least as much as you are a Holocaust victim (and I hope more). You say writing is your salve; I say it’s your likely salvation. You want to be good, nay great. Don’t deny the healthy ego within you that wants a piece of your gift to the world. Furthermore, how could you honor the memories of the Holocaust if no one read your work? If you really are sent to this place and time to live and experience another, to what end could that be, other than to remind us all of its truth and terror? And how could you do this without writing? And how can you be a writer if you do not know your audience? I do not suggest a sell-out or a commercial calculation, which in my own writing I also find unthinkable; I point to a bridge, a common language, for there is, in fact, no such thing as a private language.
I would/will be thrilled, S., if you win acclaim for your Holocaust novel. I would also be impressed if you followed it up with more in a similar vein. But I could not avoid disappointment if you could not also write about completely different subjects, preferably in different styles and genres, perhaps even connecting to beauties not set against the backdrop of horror. This is my own bias, my personal opinion. Shakespeare, Plato, and Bach are my three greatest heroes not because they’re better than everybody, but because they achieved so much in so many different ways. However, beyond my personal bias (which reflects my overview mode), I think trying new and very different challenges is the only way, ultimately, to stay alive—both as an artist and as a fully-human human being.
Let’s go back to writing as an art. Now no artist can actually recreate reality, and even the best flyer cannot hope to recreate more than a small facet of the true Holocaust. Great art attains its greatness not by what it says, but by its implication, the scope it reflects. (You know already no one can accomplish the feat in fact.) Therefore, in your novel you reduce six million to a few, or even one; you reduce innumerable horrors to a couple and illuminate these so brilliantly that they become symbols that stand for all horrors. And this process of reduction you repeat many times and in many areas, hoping the symbols all tie together in a gestalt or synergy, knowing that you’re always cutting more and more. That’s art. You can and need to do this, but imagine what happens when you go beyond the first novel, the second, or the third. It is inevitable that you as a flyer begin to lose the actual Auschwitz and start to move only in the reduced symbolic realm. Eventually you are cutting from the story not real people, but the symbols of people, until, at some point, enough connections are severed so as even to lose the implied reality. Artists, therefore, need to refresh themselves, to step away. Not to do so threatens the artist’s self (which, in many cases, is of no concern to the artist), but also threatens the all-important art. In your specific case, S., such a possibility would suffer a far worse irony: For in failing to produce real Holocaust characters—creating only caricatures and symbols instead—you would inflict, in a sense, the same evil upon your characters that the Nazis inflicted upon their most real victims; you would dehumanize.
Still there is one more danger to highlight here. You, of course, are not a camp survivor, S., and have no experience that comes close (nor do I, thank God). Your connection, albeit a flyer’s, is derived from the chosen symbols and knowledges of others. You are already one step removed. I do not doubt your authentic connection, but can you be sure you are connected to the real Auschwitz and not to its doppelgänger? Flyer connections make no distinction between one world line (this one we call “reality”) and all the parallel ones (vivid, authentic alternatives). Sometimes, of course, fictions replace the real (who was the real Jesus?); and sometimes the replacement is a better model. Of this process we must always remain cognizant.
OK, S., enough for now. I thank you for making me think. As long as you too can think (and not merely channel or receive), I have complete faith in your future.
Hail aliah
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