Needle in the Camel's Eye

Few things are more satisfying to me than closure, especially the variety that involves some sort of ritual or commemoration. I'm clearly not the only person that feels this way, as evidenced by memorial services, graduations, goodbye parties, and so on. Though these ceremonious events are often intended as benchmarks, the weight of expectations piled upon them often crushes their effectiveness. The other sort of closure, the "I've forgiven my ex/parent/estranged best friend" type, often happens gradually and without the participation of the other person. Though this is a beautiful thing and illuminating as to the ways we heal ourselves, I've often felt that it doesn't create quite create the closed-loop current of connectivity that being witnessed in our endings does.

As a teacher, the last day of class provides the opportunity for that closed loop, but the risk of failure in organic closure is high, especially with notoriously guarded teenagers. It was thrilling today, therefore, to end my year as a beginning creative writing writer-in-residence in such meaningful way. 

The school district and I hired my partner, the artist Michael Braithwaite, to spend a week handmaking book covers for my students' individual twenty page projects. The covers looked beautiful and the projects, created by mostly ninth graders, included: a graphic novel about an abusive father, a short story about a man who loses his job during the Cold War and behaves as if the world is about to end only to find that it does not, urban fiction about a woman and her boyfriend on the run in Miami, a short story about two girls trapped overnight in a creepy department store, several poem collections, and a heartbreaking nonfiction story chronicling the life of the uncle of one of my students. Something you should know about these projects: other teachers said it couldn't be done, that my students were not capable of this kind of output. Many of them did not have computers, printers, or the internet; several did not know how to type. To receive beautifully bound copies of their work today was a tangible sign of their achievement, and it showed. They passed the books around excitedly, volunteered to read their work aloud with double the usual level of enthusiasm, and made thoughtful and kind comments about each others work. 

When I handed my students their books, I called their names and had them receive them like diplomas. For some of these kids, this is the closest to a diploma they'll get. Some will receive full ride scholarships to fancy schools but some will drop out next year, others will repeat the ninth grade, and others still will transfer to better funded schools. Two of my students have spent at least part of this year homeless, one has watched her mother dying, one has tried to kill herself, and others have been bounced between parents who seem to take only a passing interest in them. One of my favorite students, a delicate bird of a girl who I composed a reading list for, did not show today and I doubt I'll ever see her again. After class, I gave the kids my email and told them to contact me with their achievements or their questions. Five or six kids came up  to me as I packed up and hugged me, suddenly articulate in their emotions. One, very formally and fittingly, shook my hand. 

Leaving campus, I knew I would not return next year. I will probably not hear from most of these kids, who will go on to lead lives as tragic and full of possibility as my own. They are a scrappy bunch, and my identification with several of them--those bearing the most potent brew of defiance, passion, and honesty--reminded me regularly and painfully that we are not ever that far from the person we used to be. 

I like closure because it means that, just before the new beginning begins, there is a sweet moment of transcendent assessment, a little window into the world you're leaving. I think music exists for these moments, and I have a full repertoire of songs stemming from times when loss and movement twin  (relatedly, "I Shall Be Released," by Bob Dylan, is the song I hope will somehow play for me as I die). 

As I walked down toward the MUNI, the fog clearing and the air rich with the quintessentially San Franciscan scent of Eucalyptus trees, "Needle in the Camel's Eye" by Brian Eno burst through my headphones. I was suddenly transported to my senior year in high school, driving around Pittsburgh with my best friend in his crappy car, aimless and also full of a giddy, chest-bursting sense of the life I was about to leave for the alien world beyond it. We were all teenagers once, all so desperate and wise and wrong, simultaneously. It was a moment of poetic symbiosis at the Forest Hill MUNI stop, and I couldn't have asked for a loop more closed, an ending more electric, than that.