{"id":236,"date":"2012-01-10T21:53:43","date_gmt":"2012-01-11T02:53:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rittenhousewritersgroup.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=236"},"modified":"2015-08-10T08:53:31","modified_gmt":"2015-08-10T13:53:31","slug":"pennsylvania-gazette-article","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.rittenhousewritersgroup.com\/wordpress\/pennsylvania-gazette-article\/","title":{"rendered":"Essay in Pennsylvania Gazette"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='stb-container-4584' class='stb-container-css stb-alert-container stb-no-caption stb-image-none stb-ltr stb-shadow stb-side-none' style='margin: 10px 20pxpx 10px 20 pxpx;'><aside class='stb-icon'><img src='http:\/\/test.rittenhousewritersgroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-special-textboxes\/images\/alert-b.png'><\/aside><div id='stb-box-4584' class='stb-alert_box stb-box' >\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong><br \/>\nLesson Plan<\/strong><\/em><br \/>\n<strong>by James Rahn<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> Alumni Voices, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Nov\/Dec 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 140%; text-align: center;\"><\/div><\/div><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cI sell love.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>You don\u2019t know Bobby Billio, but he became a star at my schoolyard back in 1968. It wasn\u2019t because of his ability at basketball and football. It wasn\u2019t because he was so good-looking and smart. He wasn\u2019t the toughest guy in our crowd. He was good at telling mother jokes, and he did have a compelling wire-brush uni-brow, but that wasn\u2019t it either. It was all because he got into Bones.<\/p>\n<p>Bones was the baddest high school fraternity in Atlantic City. To get in you had to endure weeks and weeks of physical abuse: paddles and beatings, cigarettes snuffed out on your arms, Heet swabbed over your crotch. Almost any sadistic idea the brothers could invent, they\u2019d apply. And who were the brothers? Half the football team was in Bones; the rest of the membership comprised maniacs, hipsters, and one or two white-bread honor students\u2014who were as nuts as everyone else but managed to give the frat a necessary front.<\/p>\n<p>Bobby, through his guts, his ability to endure pain, and his quick repartee, was initiated into this notorious order. He became immediately separate, and above us.<\/p>\n<p>A bunch of us were playing basketball one warm blustery day in late spring when Bobby came sauntering by the schoolyard. He was wearing the widest, most electric blue-and-white-striped bellbottoms anyone had ever seen, an iridescent blue shirt, and a leather vest branded with an omega sign. Yet his garb was not the most impressive thing. Accompanying him was a huge all-white Afghan hound. The dog pranced beside him on a rhinestone-studded leash. Its fur looked like pieces of lace hanging down. We were dazzled\u2014and aghast. You couldn\u2019t just walk by the schoolyard in this ensemble. Most anyone else would\u2019ve gotten his ass beat. But not Bobby, now. Bobby had become cool.<\/p>\n<p>I knew him perhaps a little better than the guys I was with, and maybe I wanted to add to my own cachet, so I peeled away from the court and walked over to say yo.<\/p>\n<p>Bobby stopped. The animal snuffled on its leash and whined.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNice dog,\u201d I said, upbeat. \u201cWhat\u2019s happenin\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot much.\u201d He shrugged. \u201cYou hear about the shop?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat shop?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn Pacific Avenue.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t hear.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou shoulda.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I felt dumb. I was more peripheral than I\u2019d thought.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a unisex store,\u201d he went on.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s outasight,\u201d I said. \u201cYou sell clothes, right?\u201d I pointed to his bells.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cClothes?\u201d He wore a disdainful look. The uni-brow flexed into a scary V. He shook his head, then finger-combed his long brown hair. \u201cNot clothes. Some people sell clothes. Some people sell shoes. I sell &#8230; love.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The dog jerked the leash, and Bobby strolled.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Forty years later I\u2019m still thinking about that line.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s Thursday night at the psychoanalytic study group.<\/p>\n<p>Fifteen analysts and therapists are seated in the grand room at the Philadelphia Center of Psychoanalysis discussing a paper by the French analyst Sacha Nacht, \u201cThe Curative Factors in Psycho-analysis.\u201d Nacht writes about the attitude an analyst must convey to the analysand\u2014one of sincerity, trust, a genuine desire to help. But the essential thing that the analyst must put forth, Nacht believes, is love. The patient must feel the analyst cares for him, doesn\u2019t judge him, takes him seriously. This attitude is fundamental to set the patient \u201con the road to recovery.\u201d Not everybody finds this paper engaging. Some feel it\u2019s un-analytical, a little too New Age-y. But I buy it.<\/p>\n<p><em>I sell love.<\/em> Bobby\u2019s words resound. I think now about how his line courses through my own work. I sell love too.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m a teacher. For the past 22 years I\u2019ve taught the Rittenhouse Writers\u2019 Group, a private fiction-writing workshop that I started. Often people enroll in this quarterly workshop several times in a row, then take a hiatus, then come back. One reason I think people return is that I make it a point to create a feeling of safety, a holding environment where people can submit their most honest, imaginative stories.<\/p>\n<p>Writing workshops, like analytic sessions, are intimate. They require great courage from students\u2014the courage to be known, the courage to be vulnerable. People can\u2019t reveal themselves unless they feel safe.<\/p>\n<p>Before each class I try to put my self-importance aside. During critiques I try to exist in the moment, \u201cwithout memory or desire,\u201d as the pioneering analyst Wilfred Bion put it. I try to listen, then carefully unstopper my most thoughtful criticism\u2014tempered by kindness, occasional toughness, and an awareness of my own fallibility\u2014to help strengthen each person and his or her writing. I try to consider how best to help each person according to his or her particular vision. I\u2019m careful not to impart my own preferences. And I sincerely respect\u2014maybe love?\u2014everyone there. This attitude is what I think all good teachers, writers, and therapists bring to their effort: an appreciation for each person\u2019s vision and uniqueness.<\/p>\n<p>We all sell love, I believe. And we don\u2019t just sell love; we promote it, or we should. Love of one\u2019s self, of others, of the world and its mysteries. We also recognize that we want love in return. At our best we understand this and reassert this in each session.<\/p>\n<p>I thank Bobby Billio for his remark, Sacha Nacht and the Thursday night study group for re-triggering it in my mind, and the muse for inspiring me to reflect upon it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI sell love.\u201d You don\u2019t know Bobby Billio, but he became a star at my schoolyard back in 1968. It &hellip;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rittenhousewritersgroup.com\/wordpress\/pennsylvania-gazette-article\/\">Continue reading &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-236","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rittenhousewritersgroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rittenhousewritersgroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rittenhousewritersgroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rittenhousewritersgroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rittenhousewritersgroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.rittenhousewritersgroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":670,"href":"https:\/\/www.rittenhousewritersgroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/236\/revisions\/670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rittenhousewritersgroup.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}