LAST TIME (I SEEN THE SUN)
my first post consisting primarily of dialogue wherein i spend most of it talking to myself! read as i try to give as many flowers as possible to the work of those i am positioned downstream from
Hi everyone.
I hope this Substack post finds you well. Have you been drinking water? Sleeping well, eating well, living well? I really miss our chats, unilateral as they may be. My wish is that, by the time you do end up reading this, your year has been kind to you. Me, personally? It’s been phenomenal. What a great start to the year. My life is catapulting towards something great. A bit indiscernible to me as I type, but I have my fingers against the pulse of something bright. That’s what I’ve been telling myself in-between lectures and seminars and closing shifts and TA-ing sessions. Last night, I attended a litany of shows hosted by the MSU-ratified club Mac One Act with my buddy Sam1. This was mostly out of support for my buddy Ben2, though I was pleasantly surprised by a few of the plays we watched. Only a few. The rest were par for the course. There was this one play that was also a musical that was very heartfelt, but the songs laden throughout were played by one of three characters whose whole shtick was being a tried-and-true, live-and-breathe-it musician. The actor who played him was great, really put his heart into it. But man, he cannot play the guitar nor the ukulele at all. There were a few times throughout the night, not just during this play, where I thought to myself: I feel like I can do this, but better. I try not to frequent these thoughts. My ego is big enough as it is, and I already have enough things I aspire to do, enough ways of living that I aspire to have. But maybe in the next few years, you’ll see my work on a stage in some capacity. Whatever that may look like.
I’ve been taking an Enlightenment-era Literature course this semester. As I write to you, my English professor currently has a lovely little fixation on astrology and horoscopes. Amidst all the chatter of Milton and Paradise Lost, it’s clear that the main vehicle for which we as a class are moving through this semester’s texts is that of astronomy, of the ways in which people of centuries past interpreted the stars up above them. I couldn’t help but do a little digging into my own celestial charts. Apparently to r/sagittarians, people with my big three3 are having a very good start to the year. Must be a good year for fire signs, based on a sample size of… whoever uses very specific birth sign subreddits. I try not to frequent these websites.
Speaking of elements - would you look at that! Three posts this year. I’m on track to beat my personal record in Substack posts within a given calendar year. You know how the term ‘lightning in a bottle’ is thrown around to indicate the rarity of an event? How all the stars must have aligned, how every condition must have fallen perfectly into place, for this thing to occur? How one must think, then, that trying to capture lightning in a glass vestibule would be borderline impossible? I’ll tell you what; this intuition is correct. I don’t think my writing is that generative, in the sense that it probably couldn’t turn on a light bulb if it tried. Though, to give myself at least a bit of credit, my blog posts are (probably) a bit easier to read than pure electricity. If not easier to read, at least much easier on the eyes. I’d like to think that my excessive usage of footnotes is nowhere near as blinding. A pretty thing to look at, don’t you think? So tasteful, so… hey, is this thing on? Ah, yeah. Okay, anyway.
The last time I wrote to you, I alluded to me applying to graduate school programs.4 I’m hoping that me posting this doesn’t jinx anything, but I have a pretty good feeling about my odds. When I get in, you will5, of course, be one of the first to know. In the awkward, nail-biting interim between interview and admittance, I’d like to get a few things off my chest. Those of you6 who have had the misfortune of having to deal with me in the week leading up to the interview by now must have heard about all my thoughts about education and pedagogy, and why I hold my relationship with school so close to my heart. I think it'd be good to get at least some of these thoughts on paper.
The fourth chapter of Teaching to Transgress is a poignant vignette that I find myself re-visiting and re-reading7 for pleasure. It’s here where bell hooks provides a fragment of a conversation between her writing persona and herself as she puts forth a candid, heartfelt account of Paulo Freire and how much of an impact his work has had on her academic and (perhaps, most vitally) personal endeavors. When you have a free moment, I’d implore you to seek out this book and read it front-to-back8. My time at McMaster, my independent research, my academic excellence, the very soul of my undergraduate degree - all of these entities owe their existence to her work and its far-reaching, widespread, rippling impacts on higher academia. Let me be explicitly clear: my envisioning of a better future for myself, for those who have come before, and for those who will come after me, would be for naught if it weren’t for the work of bell hooks and her contemporaries9 within the field of black feminist pedagogy. Quite frankly, I look at their work and I think to myself: Shit. I could instill my entire essence into a book, break my soul down into written form and pour it onto a page, and only make up a drop in the oceans of knowledge they have long-since established.
My dearest reader, I am confident in my abilities. I’ve written at-length about this before.10 Every head must bow, and every tongue must confess: the vast majority of my confidence finds roots in cornerstones developed by those who have lived long before I have. Teaching to Transgress is one such cornerstone. The following passage is an homage to the aforementioned chapter on Freire. A dialogue between myself, Remiel, talking with Don Don, my writing voice. Most of it will be a re-hash of answers to interview questions I’ve prepped that I’m also very proud of. Some of it will be newer ideas that I free write as I go along. All of this, for the sake of speaking in glory: for a few brief moments, I’ll try to write in praise of teaching, of education, and of all the giants whose shoulders I stand upon.
Remiel
Just from reading your work thus far, and from having known you for over 20 years now, it is clear to me that you have a deep reverence for education. Could you speak more about this? Where this reverence came from, where you wanna go with it, all that jazz.
Don Don
I would like to clarify how I mean when I use the term 'education'.
Remiel
You think you need to? I think it's pretty obvious.
Don Don
I think it is good to be aware of the constraints of your knowledge base. You know how far your understandings of how things ought to be reach, know firsthand the limitations of knowing only what you know.
Remiel
Yeah you right. My fault. Go ahead.
Don Don
When I speak of education, I speak of the ways in which I have been nourished - by all definitions of the word - through the hands of those who lifted me throughout my studies. As a student, I've had the privilege of being exposed to academia in a wide range of settings. The most prominent of these settings is my time at McMaster.
Remiel
Are you talking about Arts & Sciences, the most prestigious undergraduate program at McMaster University?
Don Don
Like I guess, yeah. It is through the very nature of the program - that of being in a small, tightly-knit cohort, that of being on a first-name basis with all of my instructors, that of having access to almost every undergraduate course - wherein I was able to shape my fascination for the epistemological implications of different pedagogical infrastructures. I do not take this privilege for granted, for it allowed me to be free of a few constraints that restrict the typical undergraduate student.
Remiel
Oh for sure, yeah. There's something a bit dehumanizing about being herded up in big lecture halls. Something cold about being referred to as a student number, about having to include your student number in every e-mail sent to any relevant administrative staff. Compare that to my own experience - I can walk into 3038 right now and sit down with my academic advisor, no questions asked. Don't even have to introduce myself or nothing. Nuts, right? I've heard so much about the logistical nightmare of dealing with advisors and school guidance counselors from my non-ArtSci folks. Engineers especially, they have it the worst. Although that's probably marginally offset by how much more employable their degree is in turn. Ha!
Don Don
I don't subscribe to the notion of pursuing higher education for being more employable. I don't like tying the value of knowledge to capital.
Remiel
You're really preaching to the choir here, I fear.
Don Don
If you were to take a look at my academic transcript, you'll notice how consistently inconsistent my coursework has been. I have course credits dipping into math, into computer science, in community engagement, in English, in art history for some reason; had it not been for how much elective space ArtSci students get, I don't think I would have been able to fulfill my graduation requirements on time.
Remiel
On time. Haha. Yeah man. That was a good one.
Don Don
It was through this interdisciplinary weaving, through the tapestry of knowledge practices I have been able to braid into my subconscious, that I've come to appreciate pedagogy at its purest: the ways in which knowledge is translated, bilaterally communicated and, vitally, co-created within classroom environments. Truthfully, being in this program has done me wonders, for it has allowed me to experience firsthand how life-giving innovative, inquiry-based pedagogy is for a student like me. My passions, my whims, my raison d'etre is a direct consequence of my time here.
Remiel
But... There's something more to ArtSci that strikes you, right? Being able to go down to the Piraeus and practice erotic knowing, or nuance, or whatever privileges a B. A. Sc. affords you - that can only take you so far. You keep alluding to what you want to do in the future. The whole point of this article is to get the ol' grad school shakes out of your system. I know you want to get your Masters in this field. So what? You going to write a really cool dissertation that everybody will read? Change the world, by having undergrad students skim through abstracts you write years from now? I understand you believe well-intentioned education to be a revolutionary, life-giving act. I know how close you hold this school shit to your chest. I know, you know: the future you dream of won't be found in a peer-reviewed article.
Don Don
I mentioned earlier about the ways in which I've been nourished by those I've met through my education. My breadth of educational experiences is also marked in the opposite extremity; I was born and raised in inner-city Hamilton. I went to public school in inner-city Hamilton. I know what it's like to experience an inner-city child's life. I try to shy away from how bad it has been for me in the past - I think a large reason why I did so well in school was a direct response to me actively wanting to be away from my house as much as possible. I can write entire essays on the ways in which my personal and financial hardships have barricaded me from further academic opportunities, how these same restrictions continue to have rippling effects on my life today. This is not even considering the fiscal and staffing constraints that a publicly-funded inner-city education already has, especially when you compare the statistics of my schools to the western side (the actual funded schools, to put it bluntly) of the district school board.
Remiel
Your time away from university is entailed by these conditions.
Don Don
That is correct, yes. It is by God's grace that I have stumbled upon such incredible friends, mentors, and peers, who have showered me with grace, kindness, and generosity in abundance. I can sit here and list off every single teacher who has stuck their neck out for me, but I would be here for hours. There is a part of me that still acts as if I were on borrowed time. My ability to eat, to sleep in a home, to rest on a bed, to wake up having some figment of a day I can look forward to - I owe it all to the collective efforts of the community I fostered, and who have fostered me in-turn, through my education.
Remiel
You're gonna say all that, while still speaking so highly of the trust-fund-baby, rich-kid-inheritance program you're about to graduate from? Be real.
Don Don
That's a bit reductive. ArtSci also happens to be pretty white. The cohorts before me were, anyway. I think the more recent implementation of name-blind supplementary applications has paid off, for the seminars I've attended more recently happen to have much higher ratios of racialized students to zero-melanin folks.
Remiel
ArtSci being white. Who would have thought. Just for the record - we are joking when we say this.
Don Don
Yeah, I am. A little bit, anyway. Truth be told, Remiel, if I told you the reason I'm writing from this position today was solely because of my own merit, I'd be lying to you. I think that much is clear already.
Remiel
That it is, though this confession of your feelings for education is a bit of a newfangled thing, don't you think?
Don Don
No, not at all actually. Everything I speak of, when it comes to academia and its conditions, are ways of knowing - practices of knowledge, if you will - that I've long since ingrained into my psyche long before I had even dreamed of a better life for myself. Do you recall the 50th anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed?
Remiel
Buddy if I had a nickel for every time you brought up this book I wouldn't have had to have written up a whole SSHRC application.
Don Don
In the preface to that edition of the text, Donaldo Macedo brings up an anecdote about a young Brazilian boy who is tasked by his teacher to go and read the first chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The very next day, that boy ran back up to the same teacher, having read the entirety of the book front-to-back. The bags under his eyes were the only indicator that he had been up all night, for he was otherwise filled with a certain joie de vivre that was spilling forth in his mannerisms. Do you recall? The boy said to his teacher, 'This is me on a page!'
Remiel
That boy is me.
Don Don
That boy is me.
Remiel
Well, not actually. I'm not Brazilian, neither are you. I was born after... ah... well, a few decades after that boy read the text. But yeah, no, yeah. I remember that tidbit. That's how I felt reading through the Freire chapter of Teaching to Transgress.
Don Don
My feelings are not too dissimilar to bell hooks, actually. She describes the liberatory theory of Freire like water, and the ways in which she had been dying of thirst for years beforehand. It was upon reading and meeting with Freire that she had been hydrated, given life anew. For me, Pedagogy of the Oppressed gives me a language, a framework, a way of putting into words exactly how I had been feeling about higher academia and the bureaucratic, nauseating, knowledge-banked structures that underpin education. Like I had been voiceless for years, like a dam holding back an unperturbed body of water. As I write, I think about the ways in which I come off as a bit intense, especially within seminars. How surgically precise I try to be whenever I articulate myself in class. There is a part of me that feels like I've been completely possessed by my reverence, as if my tongue has been moving and bringing to life what my soul has been aching to spill forth for decades.
Remiel
Good excuse as any to justify your tendency to yap, though I don't blame you for feeling that way. To me, Freire feels like a late-night confession dressed up as an anthropological text, the kind of book that whispers all the right words. Like church. A lot of quiet, a lot of contemplating, a lot of everything and nothing coalescing all at once, a lot of revelation. Makes you wish this Earth would stay this hushed, this vulnerable, this honest, just a little bit longer...
Don Don
Do you have something you wish to share with the class?
Remiel
There is a part of me that worries, sometimes, the intensity you speak of. I remind myself that my voice in a seminar is one that inherently is a political act, insofar as people with my specific socioeconomic conditions historically do not exist in these spaces. I remind myself that the way I carry myself on a day-to-day basis is one that is intentional, one that actively tries to embody my praise for education. It is one that is a bit polarizing, one that is somewhat isolating, insofar as not a lot of people would completely understand it unless they have gone through similar circumstances - but it is one that is, nonetheless, reflected in kind by the warmth of my friends, and how well-revered I am within my local communities. I think about how I'm on a first name basis with the janitors on campus. How my name is echoed in places I haven't walked. It is a nice reminder that my life is one that I am not living solely for myself. You know, I was walking around downtown on the morning of my grad school interview to remind myself about who I do this all for. I remember distinctly how bright the sun was shining that day. I'm talking sticky sweet nectarine orange, the kind of hues you'd find in the flesh of ripe mangoes from the Motherland. The Universe, the Divine, God, whatever deity or other power you believe in - I know my God, and unequivocally, I know it to be true that this entity acts out their whims through symbols and gestures. Whenever I feel a bit of sunshine, I think to myself - I must be doing something worthy of praise.
Don Don
I think you ought to be a bit more humble than that.
Remiel
I am saying all of this in the most humble way possible. I can only say this because of how much divinity my mentors and loved ones see in me - and I feel confident in speaking it aloud, for I see that same divinity five times over within them. I am my own reason why I sing, and so are they - are you understanding?
Don Don
Good song and dance. That makes sense. Do you remember what that pastor said to you last month, at work? The one who works across the street?
Remiel
'Pride is only a sin, if you're really bad at what you do.' Yeah. Yeah, it was a really funny joke.
Don Don
Was he joking? I suppose he was trying to come off as joking. I'm unsure. You know, it is difficult to parse people through the brief glimpses offered over coffee shop conversations. Nonetheless, I took his joke to heart.
Remiel
Mm. I dunno. Don't really matter too much.
Remiel
We're approaching the e-mail length limit of this newsletter. Let's wrap up this conversation. Tell me more about why you want to pursue this academic venture.
Don Don
Naive as it may sound, my ultimate goal is to work towards a future where kids like me have ample opportunity to go on to exist within the academic spaces I've been able to exist within. In Freire-speak: more of the oppressed should be within the spaces where big decisions happen. I hold the statistically-anomalous nature of my positionality with a sense of responsibility. I've seen too many kids, just as capable as myself, slip through the cracks. I know how life-saving this education is.
Remiel
How do you suppose we get there?
Don Don
When I think of the educators who have blessed me, the lowest common denominator amongst all of them are the ways in which they were aware of the limits and constraints of the classroom environment. All of them were acutely perceptive of the ways in which academia tends to silo our identities - the ways in which children are reduced to student numbers, how they are left to leave all of the baggage they have going on outside of their school lives at the door before they step inside. This 'baggage', these identities that indeterminately influence the classroom experience, is fundamental to the future I envision, for I believe that the responsible intermingling of these outside influences within the classroom is the way for which truly liberatory educational praxis is achieved.
Remiel
You wish for a classroom that pays careful attention to the identities and conditions of the student, of the teacher, beyond the scope of the classroom infrastructure.
Don Don
I do. I think the way to scale that en-masse, at a policy level, is one that is a bit lost on me. I have spent plenty of time in my life documenting the constraints of standardized curricula, the ways in which children continue to be dehumanized. I have experienced firsthand what occurs when these conditions are actively resisted, both within higher academia and within publicly-funded education. i think the way forward, towards a future, is within this tenuous gap I've been pressing my fingers up against throughout my undergraduate degree. There is a space between pedagogical research and theory, and on-the-ground day-to-day classroom operations, a disparity that I've felt ever since I stepped foot onto McMaster.
Remiel
You want to be in the spaces where this gap ceases to exist. You propose that the way forward is praxis, en masse. Education, as a practice of freedom.
Don Don
Education, as a practice of love. I think the only way forward is to work towards this future. I can't quite parse what this may look like, yet still I feel myself catapulting towards all the same. I know it to be true that this pursuit of critical pedagogical praxis is my fundamental center of gravity. Everything I have been doing has all been orbiting, ceaselessly, around the very heart of this cosmology.
Remiel
Fire. Yeah. I guess that's about it. Any closing thoughts you wanna share?
Don Don
Written word fails to properly evoke exactly how I feel about Freire, about hooks, about critical pedagogy. I think that's par for the course. It would be a bit silly for my heart to be found on some pieces of paper. You're better off keeping my two cents in your pocket. Years from now, when you find yourself throwing some change into the next park water fountain you come across, I'd like you to take a close look at your reflection. See the ways in which the surface of the water ripples, ebb and flow, becomes still. You can find my heart there, I'm sure of it.
of Sam’s Vanity Plates, although we did end up running into Lee that same night
a phenomenally written script, a well-directed stage play, acted out by an electrifying cast. nothing but praise from me
for the nosy: sagittarius sun, sagittarius moon, libra rising… i don’t… i don’t know what any of that means, but do let me know if that makes sense for me
refer to footnote 23 from DON’T SWEAT THE TECHNIQUE
i’m speaking to the familial ‘you’ here, the reader that also happens to know me as a dear friend
i’m speaking to very specific ‘you’s here. thank you to Dr. S, to sam lee, to laura, to danielle, & to carissa for helping me get better at the medium by listening to me practice in the medium (there are a few more names i’m definitely missing)
this is huge praise. i hate reading. i’d rather be watching instagram reels over reading books. this is MASSIVE PRAISE. the entirety of teaching to transgress is gospel to me, as vital of a canon to me as matthew, mark, luke, and john are to the roman catholic church
if not front-to-back, at least the intro and chapters 1, 3, and 4. mind blowing stuff
Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, Nzotake Shange, June Jordan, Nikki Giovanni - to name a very select few.
“Let me be clear: I believe in myself so hard that you’d think I’ve gone mad.” don don, EVERYTHING MUST GO
I have so many fond memories of 69 South Oval … MACRA forever !
Libra rising twin, we continue to rise and rise up to the challenge. Glad to see you’re drinking the water reverently and intentionally. “Whenever I feel a bit of sunshine, I think to myself - I must be doing something worthy of praise.” What a line. Congratulations, my dear, dear friend.
i think i witnessed at least 4 different song titles for this piece before you settled on last time (i seen the sun) and of course it couldn't be more perfect