“I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.” -Henry David Thoreau
“To focus on what you don’t want and don’t like is like getting into your car and programming into your GPS the exact location of where you don’t want to go.” -Jacob Glass
Fifteen–or sixteen–years ago when I was in the application process for my current teaching job, I came across a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn about meditation. I couldn’t see that I had time to meditate. But he insisted that it wasn’t hard. He suggested meditating while walking or driving. He suggested a tree meditation that appealed to me. Just look at a tree (I don’t have the book with me, but this is what I remember) or a group of trees and ask, “What is my path?” We had recently moved to our house on a greenbelt, and so I had trees I could look at. In the early morning, before my daughters woke up, before the day’s routine began, I would pour my cup of coffee and step onto the back deck, look at the trees, and ask, “What is my path?” I don’t know what role this meditation had on my getting a tenure-track teaching job, but I know it relieved my anxiety.
Fifteen minutes a day on the manuscript, no matter what else is going on. As July dawns–a new on-line class to teach (and a new on-line system to learn), trips to take, daughters and their birthdays–that is the path I intend to follow through these trees. I want to remember to enjoy the trees and the path. I want you to remember, too. Just stop, look at the trees. Ask “What is my path?” Breathe.
Early spring quarter, a Book Rep dropped by my office, blustered into my office a little out of breath, her paisley shirt pulled out of kilter by her immensely professional bookbag. Her name was Simone. Prompted by her breathless entrance, I did something I never do with book reps; I invited her to sit down.
Simone began telling me about how she had taken a few years off, but perhaps I knew her from before–I seemed familiar to her? I didn’t think so, but, yes, I’d been at the college eight years ago, so maybe. What was I teaching? What books do I currently use? What might I like to see? And then Simone’s eyes lit on one of my bookshelves, and she burst into tears.
“That book,” she said, pointing vaguely. “That’s my mother’s book.”
The book was Writing Poetry by Rico and Guth. I took it down from the shelf and handed it to Simone, along with a box of tissues. Then, instead of talking about books, we began talking about our mothers. Simone told me about her mother’s other book, Writing the Natural Way, and how she’d been in graduate school when Simone, the youngest of three daughters, was a little girl. She told me how she had gone to classrooms with her mother and drawn pictures on the back of her mother’s homework.
We talked about what I am writing, and about my three daughters. We talked about my mother. When Simone left my office, I hopped onto amazon.com and ordered a copy of Writing the Natural Way.
When the book arrived a few days later, I found that it is all about mapping and clustering, those damnable little bubbles all over the page, brainstorming. In the 80s, my teachers were daft for clustering, which I found annoying. Wasn’t I in school in order to stop being natural? Wasn’t I in school to learn something, well, brainier?
Holding this book in my hands, I remembered Judith Werne and Pat Nerison, my very first English teachers at Edmonds Community College. They must have read this book or attended a conference workshop with Gabriele Rico. I saw it differently now. It was an invitation. For another thing, there were drawings in the book labeled, “Simone, age 2 3/4,” “Simone, age 3 1/2.”
I read a chapter. I got out my notebook and I drew a cluster. And then I wrote.
(If you have time, I highly recommend this video, which Simone forwarded to me and gave me permission to share. It is a tribute to Gabriele, but is also a visual poem about love, aging, and death. You can visit Al Young’s blog for additonal information. )
Remember my spring quarter students and their life-changing small changes?
Of all my my students’ projects this quarter, this one was probably the nearest and dearest to my heart. A__ decided that for her one-small-change she would commit to reading aloud to her young children. Being a pretty serious English major, I’ve always read to my kids, but as I read her end of the quarter report, I found myself reflecting on when my husband and I decided to start having family meals–at the table–with our almost 3-year-old twins. I am here to tell you that it is very, very hard to change the routine of toddlers. A__ and her husband did not read for every one of the 40 days, but without checking her log, I would guess she made 45-47 of the days (which is awesome). It took some flexibility on her part (she had to give up her strict 20-minutes per day goal to begin with and go for “any” reading), but like my twins with family dinners, A’s children not only embraced this change, but began to love it. After the first week of logs, I suggested that A__ jot down the titles they were reading, and the whole class enjoyed this trip down memory lane. The project reminded me of that old axiom, “When you rock your baby to soothe her, you are rocking yourself, too.” So with reading aloud.
A__ shared “Mem Fox’s Ten Read Aloud Commandments” (Fox is an Australian writer and educator), which I hadn’t seen before. I want to share them with you.