Saturday afternoon and I'm in a usual place- CM 143. Odd you might think, but let me explain. My eldest, Jon-Mark (Mark is part of his first name, not middle), attends the Japanese classes from 2 to 4:30 in Kettler. I use the time to "do work" or at least that is the excuse I give. I've brought my work along which consists of files of papers from IVY Tech students to grade nestled in a green military type bag. The military type bag is a give-away of my era, that of the immediate post-Vietnam War, the era of non-camo army fatigue jackets, air-cooled VW Beetles, jug wine before it became fashionable, and the movies Jesse likes, of holding in living memory the race riots, the '68 Chicago Democrat Convention, and young men scheming to avoid the draft. My number was too high in the lottery so I didn't have to worry. My military service came in later, 1979-83, and I had a fatigue jacket long since lost. Not lost, but remaining, is a fondness for an era that still clings to the psyche of which army surplus (or pseudo-surplus since much of what passes for surplus was created to feed the surplus trend) remain a part. And in that bag remain a file of papers. I haul the papers around as a form of penance, letting their combined weight dig into my shoulder and pain the bag. Penance for not having graded them all and returning them to students who may or may be present to take them, students disapppointed or elated depending on the numerical scratchings I leave for them to receive as a moral judgment. Moral judgment because students percieve grades in highly moralistic terms--good grades equal a good person, bad grades equal a social reprobate. Salvation hangs in the balance. The A-level heaven is the prefered place; the C-level edges close to purgatory; receive the F and you will pass the slothful, the gluttonous, and the depraved on the way down in the Inferno. I see the judgment in the student's eyes and feel it in their hearts, and judge it by the level of engagement in the class discussion. Perhaps I avoid grading papers because I don't like passing judgment on anyone. I could ignore the papers for another day, grade them on Sunday, or do the minimum for the week.
That and grading is boring and depressing. More boring than depressing. I can create depression on my own. Like Churchill (and others) the black dog of depression hounds me at times. Not simply getting down, but the full blown, diagnosible clinical depression that makes the world dark and ugly, and set me in the pit on heavily clouded days so that the only light at the bottom is the remnants of sunshine soiled through their passage in the clouds, dirty, colorless. As of late I've eased off the meds in the hopes of tapping into a greater creativity that may have been dulled by the SSI's effect. Still in the experimental stage and wondering where it will go.
There, I've let out a bit more of myself. We seem to be in the self-exposure mode in the blogs. Put the heart on the sleeve. Bare the pain and let the others see the vulnerablity, becoming human in contrast to???
Let me pull my jacket back over my sleeve to hide the heart left bare. We all have more secrets than we want to admit. Hidden lives that we are uncomfortable with. Little bits of data about health and morals and marriage and future and past.
We'll be all right. We've made it this far and we can make it the rest of the way, so long as we don't pass by the destination without noticing it.

Tuesday morning, almost 9. Awaiting students who will break my dawning. I've been considering writing a parable that would go something like this: Once a man walked out onto a frozen lake, but neither the ice, nor the lake was normal. The ice was warm to the touch and crystal clear. Beneath the ice the man could see what he is yearning for. He lays down upon the warm ice to get a better look at what is going on below the ice and yes, there it is--his hopes, his dreams, his being, his now. He knows it is there but he fears breaking through the ice to gain his dreams. He has tried to measure the costs of staying above the ice versus breaking through the ice by making a rational list on a yellow legal pad with one side pro and the other con. The list tells him that life is better above the ice for it is more secure, more familiar, and more comfortable. Almost comfortable, that is. The world below the ice carries great dangers as well as his dreams. On impulse he grabs a pick-ax and gives the ice a good solid whack. He feels it shiver beneath his feet and a crack spreads out from the point of impact. From the crack a delightful, beckoning aroma arises. He is about to make another whack at the ice when he hears his name being called from the edge of the lake. His friends and family are there entreating him to stop and walk back to them. He has the pick-ax in his hand. He raises it up...
Does he break through or does his stop and set it down? Or is there a third option (and a fourth, fifth, sixth, on to infinity) open to him.

This is my attempt at a speed blog. Coffee is rushing through the system, calling the body to certain biological functions which, if neglected, will demand embarrassment. So how can I write as quickly as possible with the fewest number of mistakes on matters of great importance. I'm sitting at IVY Tech, Rudisill, having finished a remedial class on writing. I wonder if grading all the remediation will have an effect on my writing, on my quality, on style. Would I need remediation or is all education a form of remediation of what we should have learned but didn't or didn't learn when the opportunity arose, or never had the opportunity. If no opportunity, then no learning and hence no remediation. No re- can't go back to what never was; which opens the doors to what will be - ever the hopeful door. Read Jesse's depressing blog on sitting at Panera's watching couples that have fallen out of love, or at least are not gushing over each other (or mooning over each other, as my dad would say-- but mooning has taken on a whole new meaning bringing a very different mental image to mooning over each other). Relationships change, shift, and move. Some couples have little to say because it has all been said before and the pair relax in the comfort of the other without the need to entertain the other with dry wit or jokes or gossip or the rest. Being relaxed and comfortable in another's presence is also a type of communication. A communication of not being put on the spot, or not being required to be anything other than what we are, that is, at the root of what we are when we are in the bathrobe, or less. I have seen this between old people who have to take care of each other. Helping your old, wrinkled, incontinent partner in and out of the tub, off the toilet, wiping their ass, are all forms of communication. To be sure, a CNA could do this, but then it would be done by reason of employment. When I am older, more wrinkled, and not much to look at in the nude (not that I ever was) and in need of tiresome care, how will it be? I have no idea. My dad, at 93, still cares for himself in a very independent way. No one needed to wipe the ass, thank you very much. Will he need it someday? Not for me to say.
A breather. Yesterday, when I was bowling with the family, only the third time I've gone bowling in about 20 years, I had the most remarkable experience. I felt like I wasn't there but was somehow seeing it, feeling it from a distance, that I could have stepped out of time and place and been somewhere else for the moment and then return back and not have been missed. Time had no meaning. Rolling the ball had no meaning. That I could have willed the outcome, somehow. And no, this was not the effect of medications or the like. Have you ever felt that? Someone once said that writers occassionaly percieve such moments, that they are more observer than participant. How does this fit in with the two charts on the blackboard? Could I be both observer and participant at the same time, which would either be some sort of synthesis, or not being either one. Perhaps I'll blog more of this in the next posting. (Posting is a great word, have you studied its roots?)

Acceptance is a delightful word

Acceptance is a delightful word. Except for the few hardened hermits who have completely turned away from the company of others, we seek acceptance from some community, be that a community of one other or several. For writers this is critically important because writing is both creative and solitary. Creativity, as has been discussed, puts one on the fringe of the culture, if not out of the circle altogether. When the creative act is done in solitary, a fear of the May Nots lurks about the corners. It May Not be truly creative, but shallowly derivative. Consider the young man Mary Ann mentioned in class on Thursday. He assumed he was creative when he was not. Or the work May Not be any good, but merely banal. It May Not within the boundaries of understandability but so idiosyncratic that it moves Finnegan's Wake into the realm of clarity. (I had one Joyce scholar tell me that no one could understand what Finnegan's Wake was about. I haven't read it, still trying to work through Ulysses.)
Against the May Nots comes Acceptance. Yesterday I received news that a piece I had submitted to a literary review had been accepted. The review is wordriver out of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Late last semester some one had posted an announcement saying that wordriver was seeking submissions from adjuncts. I submitted a story; they accepted. Which means that my writing has some value and validity. That I'm not what I feared- a banal hack so cut off from the judgements of the world that my writing is less than valueless. A mediocre writer so disconnected from others' writings that the mediocrity is presumed greatness. Yes, I realize I write in hyperbole but this is how the untamed mind tends to go.
Being accepted is bit like hearing, "well done, good and gentle servant," only it is the Muse who is speaking through the editor. Being accepted is working to revitalize a flagging spirit. Yes, the spirit flags in the face of "reality" (a term with so many variant meanings that I wonder if it has any meaning at all outside an economic one and even that is suspect). I will receive more rejections- some are probably in the pipeline, but not always. Notices of acceptance are also out there, wondering about, looking for a home, looking for my home. I will welcome them.

Poetry:reading,marketing, creating

First, a note about the Grind- it's not closing. The shop has a new owner who's trying to get more up and running, including poetry readings. I have become the de facto organizer. You know the routine- if you want to get something going, do it yourself. I wonder if this would count as a public project? Reading reams of poetry to a near empty room except for for folks bribed in off the streets (and family members who have a certain obligation). I suppose I could make a requirement for my IVY Tech and IPFW students to attend since we all know how much students will do for a grade.
Second, Saturday afternoon ramblings. Much of the post-nap afternoon has been spent doing internet research on finding places to send off poems and stories. I realize that a good portion of the marketing is a numbers game but I hope the chances of acceptance are better than making a sale via spam (one sale per 12.5 million spams) [A side question: why is it called spam? I personally like the canned ham product and don't care for its name being besmirched. Slide the loaf out of the can, stud with cloves and pineapple chunks and back for 20 minutes. {not sure why a recipe came out}]
I had mentioned in one of the reaction papers that most of my writing has been done off on my own without benefit of too many classes or workshops which tends to feed the insecurity already present. This may be one of the difficulties of having such a scattered education consisting of seven undergraduate institutions, two graduate, and now I'm off on a third at IPFW. Why all the schooling? Why not? I enjoy learning and the academic environment. And it provides a level of acceptable purpose.
That last phrase is one I want to play with for a moment: acceptable purpose. Is creative writing, the production of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction (a category I have little familiarity with) an acceptable purpose beyond the notion of "hobby"? Yes, I know that we have attacked this notion in the class every time it comes up but it continues to nag. While we rail against the notion, don't we have to live in it? Jesse said that she would take any shit job provided evenings and weekends remained for writing, but isn't trying to fit writing in the edges of life turning it into a past-time? The idea of taking any shit job is a romantic one which becomes leads to disillusionment. Life moves in and writing moves the corner of the room. I have now written myself into a place I hadn't intended- a place of grumpiness and curmudgeondom. Scrowls grow upon the brow making intense the signals of delusion. I'm going to stop now and get on with something else. And I have yet to resolve the issue of acceptable purpose. Check back again, if you like.

Poets Wanted

Wanted: Poets willing to give public readings for the promotion of poetry and their own writings. My son and I stopped in the Grind Coffee House on Maplecrest this morning shortly after 10 and after realizing that the layout could easily fit an open mike reading, I asked the owner who quickly went along with the idea. Anyone interested? Nothing concrete as of yet, but if you are interested, let me know. See you Thurs.

A pot of soup

Sunday afternoon. The chicken carcass is on the stove, boiling with its vegetable buddies. The chicken, before becoming a carcass, was dinner, with roast vegetables, and Irish soda bread I baked Saturday morning as a break from the usual pancakes. I didn't have to go to all the trouble to roast a chicken whole, carefully tending it so that the bird was neither raw nor dry, basting it with olive oil and herbs. An easier meal could have been had and, more than likely, would have been appreciated as much. Boiled hot dogs. Instant potatoes. Crock-potted cut up chicken rendered down to mush with a can cream of chicken soup reminiscent of countless church recipe collections and "easy meals for the hurried and harried homemaker." Such food would have been eaten with about as much bother, and would have given necessary nutrients for the day, sufficient calories to feed the internal fires of human life. But I didn't. I took the more rigorous way and, before you give too many accolades to the love and care of family demonstrated by such devotedness, I did it from very selfish motives. I did it for me because I like to eat good food, food prepared, (nay, crafted) to taste a cut above the average. I cook for myself and my family sort of tags along with what's set on the table. My dislike of the mundane drives me to do what may take a bit more time but tastes so much better. And this is why the carcass is on the stove being recrafted into chicken stock. Thanks to a modern gas range (and not hot coals on the hearth) the task will be accomplished without much help from me. Let her simmer! Let her steep her flavors into the water, magically changing Fort Wayne tap water into something delightful. Not quite turning water to wine, but still delightful.

Why whine about the wine

This blog is inspired by the glass of mediocre merlot sitting three inches to the left of the computer. I could go in greater detail but I fear I would be going the way of certain French hyperrealistic literature of 20 years ago. Such activities are to be refrained from. I had lunch with an old friend with whom I meet about once a year in January. He comes to Fort Wayne for an annual business meeting and we make sure to have lunch. Old friends with whom one can speak openly are to be cherished for they are rare. Brenda Ueland wrote a piece on our need to find someone to tell our stories to and without those listening ears, we tend to move away from our deeper humanity (or our truer humanity) and into the conventional realm of polite, yet stulifying discourse. I would not go so far as to call it conversation because conversation has a much deeper effect. True conversation can change both parties. The opposite of true conversation is a hurling of doctrines at each other in the pattern of "I'm right and if you refuse to agree with me you must be wrong." I've experienced far too much of this sort of discourse over the years to have any ear for it any longer. Civility is a lost art which, I hope, is making a slow comeback. One more point of hope to lay upon the new President.