The Reluctant Immigrant

Every once in awhile one of my students' immigration stories starts to haunt me. Prakesh's maybe has the makings of a novel.

(Prakesh is not his real name--I Googled a list of common Nepali names.)

He stayed after class to explain why he had come in late and didn't have the assignment done, and little by little the story unfolded.

He is from a working-class family in Kathmandu, and never seriously thought about leaving. One time, as a passing lark, he and a bunch of his friends all put in applications for the U.S. immigration lottery. By one of those random twists of fate, Prakesh won.

After that, he didn't have much choice. The family pressure to go to America and make money was overwhelming. He had no contacts in the U.S., but picked San Francisco as a place that sounded good, got a job driving a cab all night and signed up for school during the day. I had him in another class a few years ago, and remember that his work was pretty good, but often late. Apparently he then got overwhelmed with loneliness and homesickness, and decided to give it up and go home. But after he got back to Kathmandu, his father became sick and money was needed for his medical care, so Prakesh had to return to America make more.

So here he is, living out a lonely and exhausting adventure that sprang unexpectedly from a long-ago joke.

Eating the Seeds

Work is depressing these days, watching and even being expected to participate in the dismantling of the California public education system. In traditional agrarian societies, everyone knew that in times of famine you should not succumb to the temptation to eat next year's seed corn. By doing that, you delay starvation for only one more year, and then your death will be inevitable. If we jettison public education to save money, we only delay for one more generation the collapse of our civilization.

Political Uncorrectness Alert--Cultural Stereotypes Ahead

Every semester we read Jack London's "Love of Life" or rather, this being quite a low-level ESL class, an ESL adaptation of it.

In this story, a gold prospector in the Klondike becomes injured, separated from his sidekick, and lost. He comes very near death--in his exhaustion and confusion, losing all his possessions, his gold, and his tools. He and an old, sick wolf stalk each other for days, each hoping the other will die first. Finally, summoning his last strength, he kills the wolf with his bare hands and sucks the blood to stay alive. Eventually he is rescued by a scientific expedition and cared for on their ship, where he is a bit of a nut case, hoards food and cannot believe he is safe.

For a writing assignment, I always ask the students to imagine this man a year later--where will he be, what will happen to him ("what will have happened to him" being too advanced a verb structure for this class.)

Well, most of the Asian immigrants like to see him safe at home with his family, his health regained and his trauma left behind. But the Mexicans and Central Americans, the male students anyway, say he goes right back to the Klondike to find his lost gold, or to prospect for more.

Maybe gives you a clue what the U.S. Border Patrol is up against ...

Fire Tide

At Candlemas the Fire Tide flows, and this season until the Spring Equinox is called the Time of Change. In this time the God born at Yule grows to manhood, and that mystery of change informs all others. It is a time of great creative power, when all projects of art and making, will and change, are carried forth on their most auspicious tide.