from Trevor’s window - a novel in progress

“You always ‘a askin’ questions,” said my Poppa to me early one morning as I walked my shoeless feet through the freshly turned soil. 

His hands were on the plow and he was following our old mule Charlie and I was following him.

“That’s a good thing, askin’ questions. 

Did you know questions drive the world forward, like I’m drivin’ ol’ Charlie down the row? 

Well sir, they do.

Did you know questions can turn the world upside down, like the plow turns the hard, rocky ground into soft, helpful soil? 

Well sir, they do.

Did you know questions are like the seeds we’re gonna plant in these rows? 

Well sir, they are.

It takes a long time to get from seeds to vegetables that make a difference for our supper.

And it takes a long time to get from questions to answers that make a difference in the world. 

But seeds change to food that can feed people and questions change to answers that can make the world a better place. 

You keep ‘a askin’ questions always, Carter. 

Always keep ‘a askin’ questions.”

I’ve always tried to do just that, to ask as many questions as I can ask.

Yes sir.

Notes from public school - day 45

Wow. 

The first quarter of the 2019-2020 school year ended today.

Can you believe it?

We celebrated Acts of Kindness today.

What does kindness mean to you?

To me, it means this picture one of my students drew and colored for me.

As you can see, the picture is of her heart.

Ah, the heart.

Brian Doyle wrote an essay for the American Scholar titled Joyas Voladoras in which he considers the capacity of the heart.

“The biggest heart in the world is inside the blue whale,” he writes. “It weighs more than seven tons. It’s as big as a room. It is a room, with four chambers. A child could walk around it, head high, bending only to step through the valves...There are perhaps ten thousand blue whales in the world, living in every ocean on earth, and of the largest animal who ever lived we know nearly nothing. But we know this: the animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles.”

The heart of my little student is like the blue whale’s heart.

The hearts within her pictured heart are all the small acts of kindness she practices each day at school - sitting beside a lonely student at lunch, catching tears on her shoulder of a student who has fallen down and skinned his knee on the blacktop during a dodge ball game, and straightening up all of the chairs and tables in the classroom when she thinks I’m not looking.

The stars within her pictured heart are all the dreams she carries of all that she can be in the world - dreams that could heal the sick, stand up for the underdog, and make the world a better place for all of us.

The hearts of all of my little students are like the blue whale’s heart.

They have the biggest hearts in the world.

I’m thankful to be building a classroom community with them.

I’m thankful to be listening to their hearts.

from Trevor’s window - a small story

For one week they had made their way west across the island toward the great city, finding clothes and shelter in the homes of friendly, frightened campesinos along the road, eating sugar cane and drinking water from rivers and swamps, sleeping in the swamps covered with mosquitoes but surrounded by stars by night, making their way to where they would continue their work in the revolution. 

Now they body to body, breath to breath, heartbeat to heartbeat, in the morning light of a rainy day in the city. 

     

Gabby sighed and began to stir. 

There were times when their lovemaking was like a thunderstorm. 

He would come home from the University or the barrio and as soon as he walked through the door she would push him down onto the couch and take him into herself as if he were a deep breath of air. 

Or he would take her hand at a gathering and lead her to a private place and lift her dress and take her from behind as if he were a strong gust of wind across the land. 

There were times when it was like a hurricane. 

They would crash upon the bed and lose themselves in time and space, rolling across, under, above and into each other until they were left soaked and silent in each others arms. 

And sometimes it was like a soft rain. Their fingers would gently tap, tap, tap across each others skin, their lips would brush against each others lips like a soft breeze, and they themselves would move into each other as if they were leaves twirling down from a tree in a spring shower. 

"Tomás," Gabby whispered as she opened her eyes. 

"Mi mariposa hermosa," he answered. "Estoy aqui, estoy aqui." 

Though their bodies had been broken by the revolution, they made love to each other tonthe rain that fell softly out the window on the city.

Notes from public school - day 44

(This is the kind of teacher I try to be, and the kind of community I try to create)

the school in the tree

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there was a school in a tree.  

The tree was gigantic, with a hollow trunk that could hold 100 people standing hand in hand in a circle and 6 branches that could each hold a classroom.  

The classrooms were full of wonder.  

They were covered with canopies of green leaves from the tree and were open to the world outside so cool, gentle breezes could blow through the rooms.  

Small, colorful birds could sit on the floor and tap out a beat for all of the drummers and tappers in the classes.  

The tables were carved from hard knots on the branches and were large enough to comfortably sit four students.  

The teachers wrote on bright wood below stripped away bark with pens they had created with colors from the flowers of the tree.

Mr. Bark was a teacher on the 4th branch at the school.  

His heart was full of love and care for the twenty students in his classroom, and his mind was spinning with ideas about ways he could help them learn. 

At 7:45 a.m. on the first day of school, a giant woodpecker landed on the office branch and pecked the tree to let the teachers and students know it was time for the school day to begin.  

The twenty 4th branchers in Mr. Bark's class had climbed into their room and had stopped and looked in surprised silence.  

Mr. Bark was at the front of the classroom standing on his head.

- Good morning! I’m so glad to see you! What nice feet you have! You can learn most about people by looking at their feet. You can understand how hard they work by seeing if their feet are calloused and worn. You can understand their hearts by seeing if they can walk in someone else's shoes. 

Join me! All of you, stand on your heads!

The students were stunned.  

At first, no one moved. 

One of the students remembered the school rule that you received a letter "N" if you did not follow your teacher's directions, so she placed her hands and head on the floor and pushed her feet toward the ceiling.  

The other students followed her lead and soon there were twenty heads on the floor and forty  feet in the air.  

The students thought Mr. Bark should receive a letter "C" for craziness.  

- Isn't this great? It’s good to look upside down at the world every day. I want to teach you to look at things upside down. You might have problems that you can't solve when you look at them rightside up but that you can solve when you look at them upside down. This is true for reading problems, writing problems, math problems, or any kinds of problems. Learn to look upside down at your problems!

Suddenly, one of the students screamed.

- Ouch! This is crazy! You can't make me do this!  I'm not standing on my head for anybody!

The screaming student was lying on his back.  

He had tried three times to get his feet in the air and had fallen with a "thud" each time.  

After his third fall all of the other students laughed at him.  

He was angry, not at his giggling classmates or at his eccentric teacher, but because, no matter how he tried, he could not stand on his head.  

Mr. Bark looked at him with calm eyes and spoke to him in a quiet voice.

- Please try one more time.

He looked down at the floor and reluctantly put his hands and head on the ground again.  

He tried to move his feet toward the leaves and began to wobble back and forth, around and around.  

He grimaced and prepared to hit the floor. 

The last sight he saw before he closed his eyes was of Mr. Bark's wiggling foot.  

He expected to hit the floor and have his breath knocked out of him, but instead he felt a gentle tug on his ankles.  

Instead of falling down, he was being pulled up.  

He opened his eyes and saw with astonishment a miniature elephant flying by flapping its ears.  

The tiny elephant had its trunk around his ankles and was holding his legs up straighter than any of the other legs in the room.

The students could not believe their eyes.  

Mr. Bark had a magic elephant that could fly to them and help them when they needed help! 

They learned that their new teacher also had a magic pen.   

Whenever he wrote with his magic pen they immediately understood fully what he was trying to teach them, even difficult math and science problems.  

Occasionally, when students were having a tough time writing a story, he would let them use his magic pen and they were able to write in perfect form and with perfect grammar the thoughts and feelings that were inside of them.  

They learned happily ever after.

love poem #3

naked 

on her back,

naked

between her thighs, 

kissing softly,

lips brushing skin.

like drops of rain

on petals

of wild flowers

Amo el trozo de tierra que tú eres,

porque de las praderas planetarias

otro estrella no tengo tú repites

la multíplicación del universo.

I love the handful of the earth you are.

Because of it's meadows, vast as a planet,

I have no other star. You are my replica

of the multiplying universe.

Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown eyed girl, 2019

from Trevor’s window - a novel in progress

She had been there at the mass rally at the university in the week before the struggle began to overthrow the regime. 

He had been there, too. 

Their voices joined together with the voices of hundreds and thousands of students, campesinos, professors, and rebel leaders and rumbled across the night sky to the furthest reaches of the island. 

"We ask for a fair price for beans and rice!”

“We ask for a fair price for a place to live!”

“We ask for a fair price for shirts and shoes!”

“We ask for schools for our children!”

“We ask for care from doctors and hospitals!”

“We ask for work so we can build up these things for our people!”

“We need them to live!”

“We need them to live!" 

It was then that they had seen each other for the first time. 

Their fists were clenched and raised to the sky.

Their brown eyes glistened under the lights of the stadium where they shouted and sang their hopes and dreams for their country, their poor families, and their people.

Their eyes could not leave each other.

Their hearts could not forget each other.

They knew then that their courage and compassion would draw them together as friends and lovers. 

In those first days, they wondered what it would be like to be with each other, to hunger and thirst for each other’s bodies.

What would it be like to listen to the stories of each other’s  childhoods?

What would it be like to be naked with each other?

What would it be like to know to each other deeply?

They wondered.

from Trevor’s window - a novel in progress

She had lived with her landless family on a farm in a neighboring village. 

Her weathered Father was a campesino, with wrinkles on his face for all of the times he had walked down long rows of beans in the hot sun to hoe away weeds. 

There was a kindness in his eyes that welled up from the deep feelings he felt as he worked to keep his family alive. 

His hands and feet were calloused and gnarled for they had been blistered and broken and used as tools all of his life. 

He had worked from the time he had toddled beside his papí and the workers of the plantation of his childhood until now, in the time of the middle of his life, when the same land, the land of the wealthy owners, had bent his back to make it appear as if he were continually genuflecting to God, or to the wealthy, or to the land itself. 

He was not a political person. 

She had observed his life, however, for she was a gifted girl who saw deeply into the lives of people and knew, simply knew, the inner workings of their minds and hearts and the true meanings of their words and actions. 

In that observation, she saw the life of her papí speak eloquently, 

"I am a human being. 

No person is better than another. 

My family has a right to food, shelter, clothing, school, and medicine. 

We are human beings.”

Those words grew with her.

They were watered by the laughter she laughed with friends she was playing with in her village.

They were watered by the tears she cried as she laid in bed each night hungry from only one meal from the day.

Those words grew into action.

Those words grew into love.