Leaving on a jet plane…

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Tomorrow night I leave for Boston — two days walking around where Nathaniel Hawthorne once walked — and ten days at the Gell Center in upper state New York. Scary!

I worry about my daughters. Aren’t I completely crucial to their well-being? How will they survive without me?

I worry about my students. Yes, I’ll be “on-line” with them, but is that really enough? Don’t I HAVE to sit in my office for several hours every day being present with whatever little dramas I can cook up with them? (Am I not abandoning them?!)

Can I REALLY write for most of every day for ten days and segregate my coursework into a mere two or three hours?

Will I be able to travel comfortably with this cold? (Will my sinus-y head explode at 35,000 feet?)

Will I get lost in Boston? (Will I find a hotel?!)

Will it take a million hours to drive from Boston to Naples, New York, and back? Shouldn’t I have flown into Rochester?

The only advice that fits is that old chestnut: “Do it afraid.”

Here’s what I can control: take a novel to read on the plane; take a cleanish copy of my manuscript with me; take a map (buy a new one if that one gets lost); put one foot in front of the other and see what happens; listen to people; take my camera with me and take lots of pictures.

Oh, and whatever happens? Write it down.

The Fence

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I have been gifted this quarter with students who argue with me. Try writing every day, I suggest. “I can’t do that,” they say. Try using a little dialogue, let us hear this character’s voice, I suggest. “I never remember what people say.” I felt confused by this sentence, I tell them in workshop. “I meant for it to be confusing,” they patiently explain. I don’t think that’s a word, I point out. “It is now,” they say.

Rather than spending any additional energy today trying to get these students to let down their defenses, I wonder if maybe they’re here to remind me to let down my defenses? What am I resisting? What am I afraid to learn?

I want to remember today not merely to think outside the box, but to remember that there is no box.

Cold Meds

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Despite a sleepless night (couldn’t stop coughing), I decided I had to go to class today. Standing in the kitchen with my cold meds in my hand I said aloud, “If I take these I won’t be able to think straight in class. If I don’t take these, I’ll spread my germs to everyone.”

One of my teenagers said, “Take them. Your students will find it entertaining.”

This quote from my desk calendar felt appropriate:

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.” -Henry Miller

Nag, nag, nag

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“Intimacy is anarchic and mutual and definitionally incompatible with control.” Jonathan Franzen

I’m sick, sick enough that I felt justified in calling in sick to the college and going back to bed. I thought I would get up at ten or eleven and work on-line. Instead I slept nearly all day. But I also did some reading (when the meds were at their best and I didn’t have a crushing headache on top of this sore throat and cough). Somewhere — I can’t remember where! (I blame the meds) — I came across a comment about nagging. This is interesting, I thought. It’s a theme! When we nag, the comment ran, we don’t make progress. Did so! Did not! Did so! I thought of an exchange with Pearl not too long ago. I was giving her a ride to church, and as I parked in the lot, I patted her knee and said, “I’ve enjoyed this talk.” She pushed open the car door and jumped out, then leaned back in and said: “Actually? It was more of a lecture.” Slam.

When you negotiate you keep your options open. You agree to try some things, experiment and see what happens next. When that voice in your head says, “I can’t do that,” try to answer with another voice that says, “Well, could you do this? Could you just take a baby step toward that?”