Liam and a Girl's Imaginary Friend

I met a man no more than three years old named Liam. I call him a man because he possesses the understanding I believe adult human beings should possess. But then, not many of us do.

With two hours free of college work and meetings, I sat alone in a small coffeehouse in middle Minnesota, Small-Town, USA—trying to pacify the stress, the ferret gnawing my stomach and lungs. This particular coffee house had come under new management lately, and the décor had transformed in a matter of days. It reminded me of Europe, casual yet deliberate lighting flickering brightly and tangled string lights wrapping around wooden ledges. Each table had a small candle, unlit, stranded in the middle. Classical music whispered in the background. At one of these tables, sipping Earl Grey tea, I hunched over my book of essays, distractedly reading of a life rejecting technology and making notes in the margins, when this little man sprang up and sat across from me. He introduced himself and asked my name.

“I’m Liam. Will you be my friend?” he asked, not as if he needed a friend but as though I needed one.

“Well, of course, I will, Liam,” I replied without comprehending the true meaning of his question, thinking he only wanted someone to entertain him while his mother ran errands. I even chuckled a little at his desire and unashamed self-assurance. We shook hands on our agreement to be friends. Liam then abruptly leapt from the seat across from me.

“I’m gonna go hide.”

“Okay.”

He tumbled behind a wall and hid. I laughed quietly and returned to my reading. In my younger years I would have known to seek him, but my child memory faded not long ago. A couple of short minutes passed. I had just finished reading the line “My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can”[1] when Liam returned with a green balloon in his mouth. I could sense his mischievous grin lay behind the balloon. The green balloon shot past my ear. Liam laughed a boisterous laugh. I laughed, too.

Liam found the balloon, crawled underneath my table, and scrambled up onto the seat across from me again. I surrendered to Liam’s persistent exuberance. Liam devised a game we both could play with the balloon. I held up my hand and if Liam hit it I awarded him a point. Eventually we started devising odd rules for more points. The number 45 fascinated Liam so he designated most odd rules as 45-pointers. My favorite rule was the 60-point-off-the-head rule where if Liam managed to hit me in the head he received 60 points, the most of any rule. We played that game together for nearly an hour.

Liam’s mother arrived after that hour. She had always been there, in that coffeehouse, but she had been busy doing errands in other rooms. She was the new manager or owner. We shook hands as she introduced herself to me as Deirdre. I said it was nice to meet her. Then she turned her attention to Liam, who sat beneath the table as part of an odd rule where he could receive extra points if I could not see him. Deirdre told him to get out from under the table.

“I’m a bear in a cave, mom,” Liam explained bluntly, as if being under the table were perfectly natural for him. I felt two emotions at once: embarrassment and resentment. My embarrassment came from knowing Liam was acting unacceptably. My resentment came from wanting to crawl under the table, too. Perhaps the emotions and their reasons mixed a little.

“Remember the agreement we had about listening?” Deirdre replied. Liam apparently remembered because he started to emerge from his cave. Deirdre left again to do the last of her errands. Liam crawled back into his cave and shot the balloon at me. Liam’s resolve amazed me. At first I tried to tell him to get off the floor because his mom had asked it of him. He acknowledged me but remained under the table. I surrendered again to his enthusiasm, and we continued our game.

I complain about time. I do not have it. College students complain about time, about its pace and its scarcity. We utilize and worship every second of free time. We assign it slots in our planners and clock the minutes spent doing personal things like watching a movie or going out to the bar. Some go as far as to write what they plan to do with that time, rather than simply remembering it. Others who are not students seem to have less time, even with planners and electronic calendars. Even those who do not schedule time plan something to occupy the mind—television, video games, internet chat rooms. Perhaps we combat boredom with these seemingly infinite distractions. Somehow boredom does not seem dangerous enough to demand a constant bombardment of distractions.

There’s a three-year-old girl in New York with an imaginary friend. She’s like Liam, which makes me like the imaginary friend. This little girl’s friend has no time for her, stuck in meetings and ever-occurring business conventions. Eventually the friend needed a secretary to take the little girl’s calls. She tries to get her imaginary friend to play, but he never has the time. This story is from the New Yorker, from about a year ago. Perhaps this little girl created this friend to suppress her loneliness. Perhaps he’s like every other child’s imaginary friend, except he’s never around. He cannot cure her isolation when he too isolates her. This little girl created her imaginary friend for something very different, something more meaningful.

The father of this girl (the author of the New Yorker article) saw the positive effects this strange imaginary friend had on his daughter: the increased sense of self and the evolved imagination. He even notes that eventually his daughter, instead of explaining the exploits and missed opportunities of this imaginary friend, describes her day and her accomplishments—how she had been too busy to worry about her imaginary friend, though they grabbed lunch together. But does that not make her like her imaginary friend? Does that not mean that she will simply fall into the pattern and have no time for another three-year-old girl? The world seems horrendously backward when a child fills her schedule with imaginary appointments to pacify the loneliness of an imaginary friend too busy for her.

I did not finish my essay until Liam left with his mother. When I had finished my reading and my tea, I thanked the lady behind the counter and told her to have a nice day. I stepped out into the dreary cold, a miserable Minnesota fall day.

I checked my watch. Ten minutes until the bus left, ten minutes to get to my meeting on time. I cupped my hands and breathed hot life into them, as all cold fools do even though the sensation is temporary and of little use against the chill. No one else endured the sleet and gusts of wind. Only one car passed me, lights and wipers on low. And for some reason I noted the lack of animals even though squirrels and birds rarely scamper through town streets. Though almost late, I did not hurry. The little ferret in my chest had quieted. I crossed the nearly empty street, back onto campus. The wind picked up and sleeted hit harder against my face, but I did not put up my hood. Had I covered my head, I would not have seen out of the corner of my eye a small sparrow, with a broken wing. He stood alone in the middle of the road, either waiting for the storm to end or a car to end it for him. In either case, he did not seem to know or care which would occur. I took one step slowly toward him; he did not move. I took another step, and the bird jumped back. We stood staring at each for a while, seven minutes maybe, surrounded by wet dreariness and asphalt. He finally let me pick him up, and I cupped him in my hands. He bit me at first, though not convincingly, as I breathed on him with warm breath. I escorted him to a nearby pine tree, off the road and mostly sheltered against the weather. I’m not usually the type to save small woodland creatures, but I felt his lonely vulnerability as much as if it had been my own. For a moment, we were not lonely.

Being alone and being lonely do not represent the same state of being. How the words alone and lonely came to be related is not exactly a mystery. Alone actually derives from the words all and one. Lonely is the adjective form of lone, which is simply a shortened form of alone. Yet the two words have very little to do with one another besides their linguistic history. They differ distinctly in a couple of ways. Solitude, away from all humanity, on the Irish shores or in the Colorado Mountains rarely necessitates loneliness, and then only when isolation accompanies it. Indeed, solitude can be a solace for many, a reprieve from the chaotic world. Being alone does not create loneliness. And neither is the reverse true. Walk down a crowded street for an hour or perhaps through a mall. Look at the faces. Loneliness exists there. Loneliness does not require being alone. Third, loneliness comes from a feeling of loss, of detachment, of isolation from a loved—being alone does not.

I had reclaimed nature: the physical dirt and real air, the sleet in my hair. The loved ones I had lost or forgotten were earth, flora, and fauna. Liam’s play had reminded me of an old version of myself, a version I thought lost. He redeemed my child memory, a recovery that ended my isolation of nature.

That’s when I realized what Liam had understood and what the little girl tried to show her parents. They knew video games and televisions were only distractions. They knew schedules plans were not an attempt to utilize time but an attempt to stave off loneliness, loneliness created by isolation from nature. I had not gone to the coffeehouse to relieve stress but to forget my isolation. Liam’s and the girl’s loneliness had begun with busy parents who were too tired to fight their own disenchanted disconnection. The three-year-old girl had tried to communicate this to her parents by reaching out to an imaginary friend as Liam had reached out to me. Her attempt failed, and instead she chose the path of the parents, the path of distractions. But she still desired her imaginary friend’s attention. Every night she whimpered quietly his name, asking him to do lunch or to walk to the park with her. Even following the path of distractions, the girl wanted something else. Liam understood that something. He understood that to be distracted is still to be lonely. He felt my lonely vulnerability. He picked me up, cupped me in his hands, and placed me in a pine tree.

---

[1] Berry, Wendell. “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine”

Film 2

The editing in my clip really shows the ability of a director to show a fairly complex idea with only repitition of simple techniques. The director uses many alternating shots to show the transition from one memory to another. The change is subtle at first, a brief cut to a small boy playing in a puddle. The boy sings "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," which is then played over the entire scene to provide adhesive to the transition. Even the characters begin to sing the song to signal the transition.

Then pieces of each memory begin to overlap into the scenes. The bike begins in the young boy's bike makes its first appearance in the young boy's scene. The bike then appears in the other scene, in the apartment. The shot begins on Joel, the protagonist, and then pans to the bike, creating a sort of normalcy for the bike's presence.

Then other pieces begin to overlap. The table that the older Joel crawls under mirrors the shed that the younger Joel plays under in the rain. It starts raining inside Joel's aparment to mirror his memory of that other day as well. Strangely, the scene takes another turn when the table apparently sparks a different memory of when Joel was four. The table becomes the kitchen table. Several alternating shots begin to overlap these two scenes together, creating a nicely choreographed dance between two very contrasting scenes.

Film Clip 1

I have chosen as my clip as scene from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Eternal Sunshine is sort of an exploration of the breakup between two people, Joel and Clementine, and what would happen if one were capable of erasing that other person from one's memory. The scene I have chosen actually takes place within Joel's dream during the erasing process.

This scene occurs just after Joel thinks of a way to stop the erasers from deleting Clementine from his memory. The idea is for Joel to hide Clementine in a memory that she does not belong in. The first shot begins on a stuffed skeleton (a reference to an earlier scene) and pans over the window showing the rain. Then there is a medium shot of Clementine, a quick shot of Clementine's underwear, and then a medium shot of Joel and Clementine from the opposite angle. This sequence is characterized by the a shaking camera. The effect is that the viewer feels like an observer rather than a participant in the events. Much of the camera work centers around this idea of observing from the outside.

Directly afterward, there is a quick shot of a boy stomping in a puddle and then cuts back to Joel and Clementine back on the couch. This shows that Joel is changing to another memory. The next shot is of the boy, presumably a young Joel, looking at his bike. The shot is mainly focused on the bike itself. Then there is a cut to that same bike back in the apartment where the scene began. The quickness of the shots, as opposed to a dissolve shot, provides a sort of overlapping transition between memories. It gives the viewer a chance to keep up while still showing a radical shift in scene.

Joel then runs under a table to get away from the rain, which is now inside his apartment. The table looks very similar to the overhang of young Joel's memory. There is yet another cut to young Joel watching the rain from under the overhang. This then comes back to adult Joel under the table and cuts quickly to baby Joel running under a kitchen table. This sequence connects us the the scene in a very indirect, yet eerily memory-like, fashion. The effect is that the view feels like he or she is remembering yet is still outside as an observer.

Passing Along the Splinters

During an arts festival in Clifden, Ireland, an erudite if not pompous genteman introduced Seamus Heaney and awarded him a prize in poetry. Dr. Heaney said during his acceptance speech that what one needed to write was the right place to put his lever to turn the world. Subsequently, he said that he was luck enough to have Ireland as his fulcrum. Lucky bastard. Suffice it to say, my fulcrum is nothing like Ireland. In my attempts to find such a place as Heaney implied existed for all good writers, I experienced what can only be described as utter failure. Failure, that is, until I learned how to use the lever's splinters and let others turn the world for me.
At first I had hoped to be as lucky as Dr. Heaney to have Ireland as my fulcrum, the beautifully green and sometimes drearily wet country in which I had so dearly fallen in love. This love prompted a writing dry-spell for nearly my entire stay--save several academically required essays, which felt horrendously beneath my talent. Love, it would appear, can inspire and diminish the writer.
But in my attempts to write, I discovered Ireland was the place I was to craft my lever. Ideas and theories were plentiful in Ireland. Equipped with a somewhat dull axe and weak arms, I scoured the land for a powerful tree from which I could craft this lever. Three months of searching led to my discovery, a great and powerful tree, bark too thick for my axe and branches too high for my arms. A druid's tree. I swung my axe wildly, desperately. Sweat ran into my eyes, my arms grew numb, and my axe's handle began to splinter. Greatness lay before me, but I was ill-equipped to manage such a tremendous task. Instead, I picked up a dried-out branch, which had broken off long ago either from storm or creature, and made my way home.
Having accomplished my first goal, attaining a lever--even if it had been less than a success--I returned to America. Now that I had my lever, I hoped to find my fulcrum. St. John's University of Collegeville was the first fulcrum I tried. I used my lever to write essays, poetry, short stories, reports, anything. The leer was brittle and nearly broke several times, but it managed to survive a year and a half of overexerted force. The world, however, did not turn with my lever as Dr. Heaney said it could. Even with teh assistance of some of the most capable and intelligent people I have ever met, the world did not turn. Failure gained another vistory.
Dismayed and depressed, I graduated. I attained work and moved to Moorhead, MN, the Red River Valley. Even if I had not lost the motivation to write, the vast emptiness that is Moorhead would have provided few places to put a lever. I could look to the horizon and see the back of my own head. Periodically, I still took up the old lever, which continued to dry and by then seemed nearly rotten, and attempted half-heartedly to gain leverage over the world. My writings were fiew and of little depth. At times I wondered if I had ever had talent or insight, or perhaps all was due only to asture assistance attributable to greater minds than my own. I set aside my lever and began the arduous task of learning not to write.
Soon I rarely wrote, opting to tutor others in the art I had foresaken, or had foresaken me. I taught students to utilize outlines, create theses, draft and redraft, revise and revise and revise. I taught students about adjectives and their differences from adverbs. Few of these students would write outside of college and so learning to write a paper was less important to them. But I tried to explain that the purpose of learning how to write is not to write but to develop a way to see the world, a way of thinking. Some learned; some did not. I decided, however, to count even the near-misses as successes.
And so it was a very small piece of the world moved. A very small piece. It did not move far but it moved. So long I had tried to turn the world with all the force I had, and suddenly, it had just moved. Anger struck through me when I first realized it. How dare the world move so easily! How dare it do so when all I wanted was to do my job! But it was then I realized my eariler error. I could never turn the world by writing to turn the world. And neither could Dr. Heaney. Instead, we write to teach, to show a way of seeing the world, to show how we see it.
I dug out that old, dried-out, rotting branch, broken from a druid's tree. I had hidden it away out of shame and disgust, but now I knew where and how to use it. Taking out my old dull axe, I struck the branch until it cracked and splintered into many pieces. Now when I tutor a student, talk to a friend or a stranger, or, yes, write an essay, I give a splinter, hoping others will make levers of their own and turn the world when I could not.
Still, the writer's desire never totally left me, and though one of my levers is shattered out of necessity, I have begun to craft new ones. They are made of lesser trees, but they may yet show their worth. I read as much as I can to sharpen my axe and write as often to strenthen my arms. Someday, perhaps when I think the axe is sharp enough and my arms strong enough I'll search out that druidic tree and craft the lever I had first sought out to make. Until then, I'll just pass along the spinters.

Teaching Media Literacy

Neverexisted School District is beginning to emphasize what the school board calls "back to basics" instruction. Improving reading literacy and math compentency test scores is a high priority. As a result, many resources once reserved for media literacy courses are being funneled into other "more important" areas. One member even mentioned that media courses are a superfluous luxury because many students spend the majority of their time learning about technology and media independently. I, however, would tend to disagree.

With the recent trend in "back to basics" teaching, a very important aspect of our ever-evolving society is being ignored: media literacy. Neglecting this crucial and prevalent element of our world is shameful and possibly even dangerous. Our young people are deluged with advertisements, movies, television shows, music, internet websites, and other various media.
Teaching people, particularly our young people, how to manage this new, intense media super-sphere will be critical for the future of our world.

First, student-use of media is at an all-time high. And who can blame them? With all the new technology to connect people, students are finding new and exciting ways to socialize and entertain themselves. They are only responding to two of the strongest drives for young humans: socialization and stimulation. But how can we direct these uses in a manner that can aid these students when they reach adulthood? And how can we be sure to provide every student with access to this new technological world? A good friend of mine works as an engineer, and he says that over 50% of his job is spent communicating through various methods including emails, instant messaging, and online postings. Such a prominent aspect of the working world will certainly be useful for students to learn. Providing students a class in which they can study these elements and learn to communicate in the necessary multi-modal fashion will help provide some of the solutions to these problems.

Second, the all-encompassing media world is now no longer something to be sought out as it was in generations past. Now media is streaming straight into their bedrooms at cable modem and DSL speeds. Teaching our youth to comprehend the complexities behind media (motivations, methods, and biases) will improve their ability to make rational decisions rather than simply succumb to media influence. For example, certain advertisements suggest that every one needs an SUV because they provide the power, roominess, and safety crucial to living in America. A person could accept this assertion and go out to buy an SUV; however, minivans and larger sedans are typically more than enough for the average American. Investigating the truth behind the advertisement and connecting that with one’s actual transportation needs is an important skill, one that is not easily developed. Equipping students with the necessary skills to combat the overwhelming effect of media influence will help students make more rational decisions about their lives.

Third, media has had a powerful effect on our perception of reality. According to Dr. Richard Beach’s Teaching Media Literacy (n.d.), “Helping students understand the fact that realities of their lives are constructed encourages them to critique these constructions, for example racist construction of people of color” (p.4). Therefore, students’ ability to participate in critical thinking can be improved through analyzing media constructs. This effort will have the positive side effect of increasing societal awareness and improvement. De-constructing the media creations will help our youth see a different, and possibly truer, reality.

Finally, certain aspects of media can simply improve students’ literacy in other areas. Media is entertaining, and students are accustomed to these types of stimulations. Reading a book (particularly a textbook) does not necessarily provide the same level of stimulation necessary to spark students’ interest. Utilizing the various media to teach about literature, history, and other academic areas can help student gain a better understanding in those subjects.

Teaching media literacy provides students with many significant skills. First, guiding current student-use of technology down a constructive path is important for career success. Navigating through the media super-sphere will become increasingly vital to living as it continues to expand. Deconstructing media constructed realities will help students make more rational and informed decisions for the future of our society. Finally, media can benefit students’ learning in other areas of academia. Teaching media literacy is of the utmost importance in our ever-expanding media world.