from this side (personal narrative as illustration of H.T.I. Theory.

Thomas Krawford (dedicated to Dr. Dennis Beagen)

ENG 408

C. Fleischer FA 2007

10/22/07

 

"A Moment of Comfort in Uncomfortable Things."

This is how the life of writing for me began like an experiment in thought. It started with my question: how does one find comfort in uncomfortable things? I have found there is no single answer to that question, but there are transformations: transitions where you believe in something without knowing what that something is and in the next moment, realizing something is missing or forgotten, you find yourself in an unknown place, neither comfortable nor certain. Transformed from rote acceptance of the greatest common general circumstance to looking beneath the least common face value of a given subject, the truth of things becomes more than just a one way perspective . My theory is that this liminality, this uncomfortable place is why I write. For me that's the comfort I have found in uncomfortable things.

Thinking about the single moment when I knew I was a writer, I have to admit two things: one, what a writer was for me was mainly a guess, a hunch if you will and two, that moment was and is a non-linear event. I guess by that I mean I am still working on what I think a writer does and how the discovery-by-doing connects to my thinking as a teacher and a man. This is where the idea of transformation comes in, a shift in my perspective of circumstance and subject: the melding of many faces into one: a haunting voice echoing from the back of my mind:

"None of this concerns you, and don't tell anybody."

 

Sister Patricia David was my science teacher when I was an eighth grader at St. Hugo of the Hills. St Hugo was a normal school in Bloomfield Hills: a Catholic school where quite a few kids came from well–to-do families and they knew it. My mom and dad had wanted my sister and myself to go to a school like this because we were supposed to make connections. This place with its incense and ritual originally engendered the motivation of my writing: this comfortable place; the feel and taste of comfortable things.

I liked Sister Patricia David, no, I admired her because she would often stand up to the rich boys and their parents for what she felt was right even if that meant disregarding the important things that people in Bloomfield Hills considered sacrosanct: like money, power and prestige. She made the principal Sister Marie nervous. At least that's the impression I always got whenever the two conferred in the hallway after Sister Patricia had disciplined an unruly student who had cussed out one of the three black kids in the class. Back then with some of the boys, the "N" word was cool, so for me, my place was a multiple layered comfort amongst uncomfortable things.

Standing up at her podium, Sister Patricia stopped what she was doing and looked at me with those piercing blue-grey eyes of hers. From behind her clear framed horn rimmed glasses, her eyes went right through you. If Leonardo DaVinci did indeed put his smile on the Mona Lisa, he must've been thinking about Sister Patricia: her sardonic standing saunter threw you off balance if you weren't ready for it and with Sister Patricia, you could never be ready for anything.

"What am I doing standing up here?" she quipped all the while looking directly at me. "Why don't you come up here and tell them what I mean?" She put the chalk on my desk and walked to the back of the room.

Something like this had happened before I thought. I gave Mrs. Thomas a laughing fit in seventh grade English. When she read a story I wrote to the class, all the kids thought I was crazy. I wrote a story about Portugal the following year I half believed caused the Marxist Revolution of 1974. My writing, in fact all my school work at this time was an exhibit that left no room for what I felt or thought.

"Go on, get up there," Sister Patricia urged.

"Yes Sister." I could never say no to her. But as I looked out at my classmates like Cathy Cowden a girl I always stuttered trying to talk to or Jim Smith, who told me once during recess he wished he had pulled the trigger on Martin Luther King Jr., I suddenly remembered something I had until that moment, pushed from my mind. The face of a boy at night that past summer at Ozanam Summer Camp flashed behind my eyes like a jump cut in a bad movie. This, I thought, was the price of comfort amoung uncomfortable things.

"The law of Conservation of Energy and Matter," I began, stumbling for the right words. "Creation and destruction are transformations of energy without loss or gain."

Jim Smith, who sat on the opposite side of the room squirming in his seat suddenly, raised his hand. "No! That's all wrong! It says in the book, energy cannot be created or destroyed, simply transformed, right there." He thumped his book for emphasis. "You don't know what you're talking about."

I didn't answer him. I felt a heat on the sides of my neck as a few beads of sweat formed on my upper lip. I looked down at my science book and my mind flashed back to Ozanam that summer night four months before and that same haunting voice:

"None of this concerns you, and don't tell anybody."

The face of that boy four months earlier turned my heart inside out. I remembered the pleading urgency in his eyes as my mind's eye blinked and focused on that night. I didn't care about that boy when he came to me and asked me to switch bunks with him. When he repeated his request, I finally agreed, still not really thinking anything strange was going on. Later that night I barely noticed but didn't care about the counselor who came and nudged the bunk I was sleeping in, thinking I was the boy whose bunk I had switched with. I woke up and almost decked him until I figured out where I was.

"Sorry," he apologized moving from the bunk I was in over to where the boy with whom I had switched earlier slept. I tuned that out too. But something else got my attention. I looked down at the end of the cabin where the counselor's rooms were and saw several boys being awoken and led or dragged inside: the light from within casting a drunken glow throughout the cabin. I climbed out of the bunk I was in and looked around. They were all still wearing their underwear and rubbing their eyes.

Then something crept into my mind: a picture that I couldn't tune out: of the counselors and those boys in that room late at night.

"You go on and get in your bunk," the counselor who awoke me said leading the boy with whom I had changed bunks by the hand to that room. "None of this concerns you, and don't tell anybody."

I just stood there in the middle of the stone floor and stared as the door to that room shut and the rest of the cabin went dark. I could hear the rest of boys in the cabin rustling in their beds but no one said anything.

All the other boys in the room just sort of shrugged, rolled over and went back to sleep. I stood there in the middle of the cabin, the cold stone floor creeping into the bones of my feet and silently went back to my bunk. I got in and under the covers and tuned everything out. I tried to shut the image of those boys in that room out of my mind: I think we all did. We all just went back to sleep like nothing in the world had happened. I don't think any of us ever told anybody a thing about that night. We all had our comfortable things: our blankets, our truths, and the things no parent or teacher would ever believe. I closed my eyes and heard the counselor's words: "None of this concerns you, and don't tell anybody." On the surface, I actually believed nothing happened.

How do you find comfort in uncomfortable things? In that moment at the podium of Sister Patricia's class, Jim Smith's face became the face of that boy I ignored and ultimately didn't help. I remember feeling lost and defeated looking at him as if I had just taken a test and failed miserably. I wanted to run away somewhere and hide and then I thought: "What if this were my story? What if I were in control" I looked up from my science book and caught Jim Smith's eye. "Yeah, you're right," I said finally. "That is what the book says, but can we question it somehow?" The words just fell out of my mouth almost as if by accident and I stood there for a moment surprised.

 

 

"All right Tom that will do. Thank you." Sister Patricia unfolded her arms and strode over to where Smith sat. "And as for you Mr. Smith, maybe if you would speak up more in class, I'd ask you to go the podium and speak," she taunted. He just sat there and looked at his hands.

How does anyone ever find comfort in uncomfortable things? I don't know.

I've looked and discovered how dreams can be populated with questions with more than one answer. At that podium that day in Sister Patricia's class, I didn't want to write or speak to please my parents or my teachers anymore because in that moment none of that made sense. As Jim Smith's face and the faces of my classmates became the faces of those boys that night back at Ozanam, I felt a sudden emptiness inside reach out from me like a floating balloon trapped by a stucco ceiling. I hypothesized that if writing could help me figure out why that kid chose me to switch bunks with and why I did nothing to help him, then one day I would know God and the Devil a lot better and they would in turn know me: maybe I wouldn't feel so helpless. The experiment I suddenly wanted to see, the only kind of science or law I wanted to investigate were the words I still haven't found yet, but believe exist. Is that kind of faith transformational? I don't know.

"You know Tom," Sister Patricia said as she walked past my desk loud enough so the whole class could hear. "The next time you need help from someone, don't be afraid to ask. Even the good Lord had to have help every now and then."

"Yes Sister," I replied, cold comfort on my mind and the words of that camp counselor haunting my thoughts: "None of this concerns you, and don't tell anybody."

I'm still looking, still changing, still writing. The experiment isn't over yet.

 

 

 

An Experiment in Thought...

 

P.T. Quinn

Author Notes.

"When I stop and seriously look at things, I have to admit my path up until now has been one long thought experiment," teacher, writer and performer Thomas Krawford observed in a recent interview. The Ann Arbor resident and Michigan native has written and work shopped a number of plays over the years (Word, The Accused Stands Ready and Rhyme of Raven Thyme Dancer, to name a few) all of which have been read at various playwriting groups in the area. He has also tried his hand at video production with two twenty minute essays, Before the First Breath and For Its Own Sake, produced and edited at the Community Television Network in 1998 as well as a full length screenplay loosely based on a family myth told him by his grandfather from Oklahoma. However, when asked to explain his Thought Experiment idea, he just smiles and shrugs his shoulders.

"Well, it kind of explains why I haven't published anything yet really or competed for any prizes. You see, years ago, I wondered if something like a transactional imperative could guide one's life and actions and that's what I set out to discover."

For the reader who is not familiar, Krawford attempts to clarify. He explains that he originally began with some of the teachings of Immanuel Kant and later added Nietzsche and a few other writers and made the word up to describe his view of communication, language and knowledge. When asked about what he has found he is quick to add "Teaching, whether it's this stuff or the basic connection between the written word and the visual image: teaching is what really brings all the far flung wanderings home."

A Compilation of Krawford's work along with a foreword from the author concerning the implications of his transactional imperative model on education, science and industry, are due to be published in the fall.

Stay tuned for further details.