making the fun scene / and making the love scene

The World Is a Beautiful Place

--Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The world is a beautiful place

to be born into

if you don't mind happiness

not always being

so very much fun

if you don't mind a touch of hell

now and then

just when everything is fine

because even in heaven

they don't sing

all the time

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you

Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen

and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all

for a lot of such things as

making the fun scene

and making the love scene

and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues

and even thinking

and kissing people and

making babies and wearing pants

and waving hats and

dancing

and going swimming in rivers

on picnics

in the middle of the summer

and just generally

'living it up'

Yes

but then right in the middle of it

comes the smiling

mortician

I first encountered this poem—yes—on my friend Brian Meissner’s Facebook profile. I love telling the story of how Brian and I met three years ago and how, as I put it, I knew we were destined to be friends.

Brian and I were in the same cohort in the School of Education, which meant that we and 10 other (supposed) future-English teachers took all of our classes together and were either going to love or hate each other for it, dammit! Brian and I hardly knew each other when we were assigned to be teaching partners at Huron High School, but before our first visit, he enthusiastically drew me a complete map of Ann Arbor and our route to HHS, and that was all it took. I knew that we were going to be friends...because he drew me a map.

During that winter semester, Brian and I went to HHS at least twice a week to observe and teach and hang out with our kids and our amazing teacher, GJ. Some mornings, I was late to pick up Brian at Markley; sometimes I would sit in the parking lot waiting for him to stagger downstairs; sometimes he would bring me muffins from the cafeteria; and sometimes, the emergency helicopter would land on top of the hospital as we drove past and Brian would get really happy. We almost always listened to Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism on the drive because that was the only CD I had in my car. I can’t listen to it now without thinking of those mornings.

Over the last three years, Brian and I have roadtripped to New Orleans, watched two of our friends get married, explored The Detroit Yacht Club and Belle Isle together, rode his go-kart around his parents’ backyard, and spent New Years in Chicago. But there’s one particular moment I love, that by now he has probably forgotten because we are both perpetually late, hyper, forgetful people (but also charismatic, goofy, adventurous, fun ones!)

It was at 3am after the famed Happy Hour That Lasted Nine Hours. I was always arranging Cohort happy hours back in the day, and that afternoon we all made our way from the SOE across The Diag to The Heidelberg and, much later, ended up at Alexis’s apartment. The remaining few of us decided to walk to Ashley’s and brought along containers of brie and hummus and tahini; I don’t know why. I just remember Brian trying to give away the plastic tubs to people on the street, yelling “please, take my hummus and tahini!”

Hours later, he and I sat on The Diag at 3am, on one of those blissfully cool, perfect fall nights, when Indian summer and autumn are dancing around each other in a circle. I have no idea what we were talking about—senior year things—when, all of a sudden, the Ann Arbor unicycle man rode past us…

Sometimes, there are amazing, real metaphors in this world. And sometimes, there is just delightful nonsense.

Since then, I dropped out of the School of Ed—not destined to be a high school teacher, after all—and Brian had an awful student teaching semester and isn’t in a classroom either. But he is working for an incredible literacy non-profit, pairing professionals with children who need reading partners, in magnificent, downtown Chicago, where he is making the fun scene and making the love scene…walking around looking at everything…and wearing pants and waving hats and dancing…and just generally ‘living it up,’ like he always does.

I can’t read this poem without thinking about my dear friend Mr. Meissner, and how much less silly my life would be without him.

nosilla, mr. meissner, and woman schwartz: we make our own fun.

or not wearing pants, as the case may be...

we thought we were going to Alexis's wedding, but we found ourselves at the NOLA zoo!

the cohort happy hour that lasted nine hours.

All mimsy were the borogoves

The flurry of Alice-related articles that surrounded the release of Tim Burton’s latest film was probably the best thing that happened to me in early March and, of course, inspired me to post this zany, mythical poem.

I have a long-standing attachment to the Alice books—they are like old friends, entangled with mom and math and my time in England. When I studied in London, I visited Oxford and saw the tree under which Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and the Liddell girls often sat, and the river where they went boating; at The British Library in London, I stumbled upon Carroll’s original Alice manuscripts and was enchanted by his scritchy notes in the margins, trying out different titles for his book; and the following Christmas, Mom gave me her ancient copy of the definitive Alice-work, The Annotated Alice, with notations by acclaimed mathematician and puzzle-maker, Martin Gardner.

When speaking of gyring and gambling in the wabe, I should also probably mention the first day of my advanced geometry class at Michigan, when my professor put this poem on a PowerPoint to demonstrate sets, and how promising that class seemed then during my rocky mathematics career. Thinking about all of it now still makes me a little sad. But even after abandoning math and teaching, and after seeing Burton’s ill-fitted Alice sequel with the Gholz brothers, I still have a soft pocket for Carroll’s works—and for anything that merges the lines of art and language and math. (See M.C. Escher and my favorite read, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, narrated by a lovable British boy who happens to have autism and who labels his chapters with prime numbers.)

The week Burton’s new movie came out also coincided with a wonderful, wacky reunion between me, Alex, and Sasha, who neither Alex nor I had seen for 10 years since we graduated from Covington and all went to separate high schools. Alex started playing Facebook-tag with Sasha back in December so, when she came home from Peru because her sister was having a baby, we all finally caught up in person. The last time I saw her she was a thirteen-year-old and now…she’s an aunt!

Somewhere during the course of the evening, Sasha turned to Alex and I and said: it’s funny how, even after 10 years, we all somehow ended up on the same page—she in Peru with the PeaceCorps, Alex recently returned from a year in Taiwan, me with my stints in China. And when a group of people—I kid you not—came into The Black Lotus dressed as The Queen of Hearts, The Mad Hatter, The Rabbit, and Alice, all three of us were whipped into equal flurries of excitement. The nonsense of our day-to-day lives…there is no language for it. But sometimes, people just get you.

So here is Lewis Carroll’s The Jabberwocky—full invented, blended, portmanteau words—and some excellent photos of me, Sasha, and Alex at my Bat Mitzvah in 1999. Because where would we all be today without a little absurdity, a few awkward slow dances, and the words chortle, burble, and galumphing?

"When I use a word,” says Humpty Dumpty, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

The Jabberwocky

--Lewis Carroll

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought --

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'

He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Little Me and Little Sasha

Little Alex

All three of us are in this one!