Why Getting Home Again Takes So Long

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are”

-       Anaïs Nin

            Although transitions and paradigm shifts are always tough to get through, I find that dealing with perceptions may be even more treacherous. I am now in my second year of “beginning” to transition from teaching overseas to coming back home to the United States. I have read and been aware of what is called “reverse shock” when you come back to the life you once knew, but I could never understand how rugged that terrain was until I began walking it.

            Heading home, after 17 years working overseas, began almost a year before any decision or announcement was made. Inside I knew it was time to head home, but making the physical leap into the unknown world of repatriation has proven much more taxing to me than when I began my travels so many years ago. Every day your mind debates whether this is the best move you can make at this point for you and your family. Some days, you long for home; and others, you opt for the security of what you have come to know. It is then you realize that your wanderings have produced a wonderful adventure that you would never have traded for the world, but traveling is not a preparation for coming home at all.

            And it feels foreign and strange. It is difficult to explain to people as they wonder what is so hard about coming home. What you begin to realize is not that the world or you have changed that much, just that you are now more misunderstood. Seeing things and living among so many different cultural, social, and political perspectives may broaden your own, but it doesn’t really change your core identity. But try telling that to others.

            Living in South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and China helped me understand these cultures more but it hasn’t kept me from putting people into stereotypical boxes in my mind (even if I don’t say it aloud). I know that the “typical” Korean, Middle Eastern, or Chinese student is anything but typical, but that doesn’t seem to have changed my deepest perceptions any more than my quick judgment of someone being “so young,” “so liberal,” or “so uneducated” still affects the way I perceive a person. If anything, I have tried to quiet those bias a bit more. What is hard though, is when I realize that I am returning to my home and will now be perceived as “an international teacher,” “a world traveler,” or “more of a free spirit.” These labels may well be true, but what I cannot control are the connotations associated with those words in other peoples’ minds or even how those labels are perceived.

            As I face coming back into teaching in the United States, I seem to be bringing a lot of perceptual baggage that I was unaware I would be charged for. Although never overtly voiced, there is a quiet dismissal of resumes with too much overseas or international teaching listed as experience. One international blogger writes that “five years teaching overseas might as well be a blank space on your resume.” I can only imagine how utterly confounding my 17 years overseas must be to employers who receive my applications.

            And that’s how perceptions can be so incredibly damaging. The things that may broaden our horizons sometimes places us in even more confined boxes because we dared to push the envelope. It is something I experienced while overseas as well when I found that I was suddenly the minority, and I was being judged unfairly because of the cultural milieu I was a part of. But what I never expected was how silently marginalized I would feel when I began to return home.

            When I was unable to get any teaching positions last fall, I decided to take another year overseas. This time in Denmark. Alone. I have always enjoyed traveling and going to new places, but the perceptions of me as an American, who has spent most of his life teaching in Asia, and is now in Scandinavia, has created too many labels for the people around me, and I seem to have become a curious anomaly. It has helped me understand more deeply the outsider-like feeling that consistently haunts all TCKs (third-culture kids) and global nomads. And I realize even using those labels create perceptions in those of you reading this as to what kind of people I am talking about. And perhaps that is the root of the problem – we react too often based on our perceptions and feelings rather than an acceptance of people who may well (and almost always do) defy labels.

            So, as I once more attempt reentry into this American life, I will be fighting for recognition as someone who is trying to push past the perceptions. But don’t be too quick to label me naïve or even rebellious as I do so because like everyone else, I believe understanding is greater than perception. And I will continue to teach that lesson in every classroom I find myself.

The Art of Creativity

One of the most challenging aspects of creating art, whether it be visual (paintings, drawings, sculptures), auditory (speeches, songs, symphonies), or written (stories, poems, essays) is the actual process. The more you invest in something, the more it begins to define itself. Although I believe creativity can be taught – otherwise I would not be teaching a Creative Writing class – I have found that the art of creativity must be caught, and not everyone grasps it.

The art of creativity involves knowing exactly why you used a certain brush stroke, or key change, or literary image and being pleased when your instructor or critic notices that thing you worked so hard to achieve. Sometimes in the process of learning, we stumble on greatness and have to have it pointed out to us. “That was a beautiful merging of two complementary colors to emphasize the dark tones in this painting.” “I love how you had the sopranos go for the high note at this point in the piece to really make us feel the rising intensity.” “How insightful of you to break the rhyme scheme at this point in the poem when you are illustrating the confusion of the moment.”

If what that instructor or critic is pointing out was in fact intentional on our part, we feel even better that our artistic efforts were seen as successful. If not, we either learn from the experience or count ourselves lucky for having hit on something we were not even aware of.

Art though doesn’t tell us what we are supposed to get out of it, but it certainly expects that its creator knows. The same can be said of God’s creation. He carefully constructs his masterpieces with a purpose for each talent, quirk, and gift he puts into His creation. As human artists, working on our creations, we owe our art the same kind of attention to detail, the same kind of creativity.

When we do not know why we do something, the product – the art – suffers. It lacks the identity it needs to survive as an artistic creation. An art student once told me that the hardest reality he ever faced was his first semester in art school. Each piece he created was scrutinized and questioned by the instructor. As an artist, he was forced to justify ever choice he made in the work as well as the disapproval of a highly critical professor. He watched as many in the class were worn down by the constant criticism, and he found that that same criticism made him a surer artist, ready to answer his professor with a reason for every decision he made because he learned no longer to doubt his own creativity. Theologian Charles Spurgeon put it this way: “The same sun which melts wax hardens clay. And the same Gospel which melts some persons to repentance hardens others in their sins.”

We can all create art, but some of us by believing in the art become artists. We can all appreciate music, but some of us by dedicating ourselves to it become musicians. We can all put words on a page to communicate a message, but some of us by striving for what is right become writers. And, as spiritual beings, we can all believe in God, but some of us, by answering all of our doubts become believers.

In art, as in faith, it is harder to believe than not to.

Welcome to a New Year

Since Concordia International School Shanghai has finally found a way to unblock blogspot sites, Munsonsminions is back in existence as a place to post ideas and theories. Let's see how many of this years's APEs take the bait. Use the comment space on last year's Flannery O'Connor post to leave your comments. The next post will deal with East of Eden.

Although Good Country Men Shall Enter First, They Are Hard to Find When They Are Displaced in the Rising Convergence of the River of Symbolism

Now that you have immersed yourself in some wonderfully powerful texts from Flannery O'Connor, I invite you to leave comments here so you can have further debates about her work with your fellow APES. Accessing this site may give you some secret insights or it may just be a little fun. The Misfit may say "there is no pleasure in it," but that's why he's a Misfit.

Here's one of her quotes to get us started:
"The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location."

Has Flannery, in the stories you read, found that location? Have you?

Emily Dickinson Redux

THIS STUDY HAS NO ENDING

by Mr. Munson, in deep respect to the queen of verse

This Study has no Ending

The Grade has not been earned—

Ephemeral, as Essays—

But tangible, as Learned—

It calls and it cajoles—

Answers—don’t show—

And with conversation, scattered

Insights, still flow—

To conclude it, troubles teachers—

To comprehend, students say

Requires hidden Genius

And Creative Word, play—

Attention wanes—and ceases, and redoubles—

Chimps, are losing sleep—

Grab hold of any Meaning—

And beg the Ape for A’s—

Much Pressure, from the Parents—

Who cannot know the Pain—

Conclusions will never satisfy

What minds cannot explain—

Keeping Women in Mind

“Darkness.We hear the sound of a woman moaning as she regains consciousness. As she opens her eyes, there is bright, afternoon garden sunlight. Throughout the play, we will hear what she hears; see what she sees. A subjective viewpoint therefore and one that may at times be somewhat less than accurate.”

And with this stage direction, Alan Ayckbourn begins his play Woman in Mind. All of Ayckbourn's plays are a challenge to stage but deeply rewarding with their decidedly British sense of farce. In Woman in Mind, Ayckbourn sets out to detail Susan's descent into madness in a very clever and funny way. Mental illness is never something to laugh about, but with Ayckbourn writing it, the play becomes a bittersweet journey of discovery for the characters and the audience as well.

Ayckbourn once observed about the production: "I think the women in the audience stop laughing long before the men. I don't stand there gleefully watching but there does seem a quite concerted rush to the Ladies at the end. There's a line in Woman in Mind, `When I think what we could have done with our lives if we hadn't decided to talk abouteverything first,' and there is a universal groan of recognition from the audience - especially from women and children."

Let's see how IB students react as you will be called upon to do some production work on scenery, costumes, or lighting and sound for this play. You will also be designing a new playbill. You may not use the design for the current show in London (see picture above) or any of the past designs used.
For further information, you try wikipedia (not too much there), or a review of the show, or, better yet, Alan Ayckbourn's website where he details so much about the play (click around this one for help on your project). If it helps, I have also included a link to the way a woman's mind works. Enjoy!

Franz Kafka airport

The Onion, a satirical newspaper has taken the definition of kafkaesque to a new impersonal level with a very clever news report on how the Franz Kafka International Airport in Prague has been named the "Most Dehumanizing Airport" in the world. Very funny, check it out, and be sure to read the clever embedded jokes in the background as well. Click below:
Onion report on Franz Kafka International Airport.