Time to Get to It in Everyday Ramblings

It is raining, but even wet, the early clematis is beautiful.

Walt wanted a poem for the current issue of peace, love, happiness & understanding. I have been thinking a lot about what it must be like to be incarcerated and what would be helpful, supportive, interesting, and enlivening for them to read. About half the people that get the dialogues monthly are in prison.

I had started a poem, came up with a decent opening line but then there was pressure to get it finished. The trick for me was to get it to a point where I was okay with sending it off less than finished. One of Walt’s best friends is the poet Kim Stafford, (William Stafford’s son). He writes a lot. He posts to Instagram almost every day. After teaching writing at Lewis and Clark College for many years he has a different approach to getting work out into the world than I do.

He is okay with posting things that are not complete, not worked over, not finished. He provides something for every issue. One of the guys in the group sent me a video link last week called “How Ambition Kills Great Writing”. He did say, “this is not advice aimed at you personally”. But it is something I think about. How much is wanting my work to be perceived of as “good”, keeps me from making it. Even getting started.

We got started on a topic early in our get together this week. We went around the group one after another and were tasked with coming up with a topic and a theme for a commencement speech. We were all laughing because not one of us would ever be asked to do this other than theoretically.

A couple of the guys have taught college, a number have published books but still we are not what you would call top tier in any way. I was completely baffled by the question. In the end I said that I thought what might be helpful to young folks graduating today to know would be it really isn’t what you know, it is who you know. The relationships you developed in your time in college will be very important to the rest of your life.

This is something that became apparent to me in my professional career, (such as it was) right away. The guys seemed unimpressed with my words of wisdom. One of them said his advice was to wonder and wander. One said, very creatively, the only commencement speech he would give would be to a women’s college in Mendocino County. One guy said he would ask for questions and in that let the students develop their own wisdom on the spot.

Walt said no one teaches love, and happiness, and peace and he would encourage graduates to explore these areas of a life well lived. This isn’t technically true anymore; I think the class on happiness at Yale is one of the most sought after. But that was beside his point. That led us into a conversation about what it is okay to say to children these days and then a group appreciation of Mr. Rogers.

We talked about the environmental catastrophe of the vultures dying off in India and about the history of the song, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. That led us to talking about Pete Seeger and later that day I watched a documentary in The American Masters series on Pete Seeger which I mentioned in my Weights and Bands class.

Sometimes I bring up totally unrelated things to what we are doing in class to distract folks while we are doing challenging things.

This sparked something for one of my students though and after class was over, three of us kept talking and had a deep and engaged conversation about the current student protests, family history, the war in Gaza and the history that led to it. I think many of us have a real hunger to talk through what is happening and try to make sense of it to ourselves. It doesn’t seem enough to follow the news.

There was League stuff this week too, but speaking of that, as we vote by mail here in Oregon and I now have my primary ballot, I need to decide who to vote for as our long serving Congressperson is retiring.

Time to get to it.