I have no introductions to review and revise, but I will write today and tomorrow about what else is happening at Pacific.

This morning was cool, which I appreciated during my two-mile run. [I have already registered for the Bridge Crossing again, a 10k over the Columbia River, but I will begin building to that next month.] If I run east from Gilbert Hall, south on Cedar, west on highway 8, north past Old School Hall, that’s about a mile, but I run a few loops just in case, and then a huge couple of loops through campus. Shower and ready to go again, though not so late. I was up at 3am and found a message from a student who graduated more than 30 years ago. She’s a writer too.

Chris Abani presented “Listening: A Deeper Craft” this morning. “The purpose of craft is to lead us to intimacy.” [There was so much, and I was emotionally so open to it all that I cannot begin to transcribe my notes.] He created an analogy between the repairperson bringing the small toolbox into our home to diagnose what is needed to fix the problem. That’s craft, “Tools are not craft; tools are what we employ in service of craft.” He distinguished between many assumptions, such as: “Literacy is often confused with the ability to read deeply… to interact… to feel…” “The why of craft might seem obvious… but perhaps [those easy answers] are too easy” and miss the work we do, that we need to do, entirely. “Any question that yields an easy answer is not really a question” but something else that wants only confirmation, acquiescence, a reassurance. “What we’re seeking is the heart of intimacy” and that is gained only by listening because “what we’re seeking is the heart of intimacy.” This demands time and rushing will take us to the wrong destination. “Every locked door responds to time.” …so you see what I’ve written is something he warned again, aphorisms. sigh “Cultivate the listening; you have this ability.” You are listening for the heart of your words’ intentions, that revelation and exposure of intimacy.

I told him he had me “crying, several times, but that’s a good thing.” He said it is a good thing.

Today was the “Alumni Social and Book Sale” and “20th Anniversary Celebration.” Gary can attend those, as he has the evening readings since they were all open to the public.

There was much talk about inclusivity and diversity, the panels and advisory boards that have helped make that possible, continue to pursue goals, and appreciation for the welcoming character of the program. The word “kind” has come up often in the program. Shelley Washburn talked a bit about the early years, told a story about Jack, and ended: “Honest and artful writing is, in the end, an act of love.”

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I was teaching high school English while I was in the program, and working 60-70 hours on that plus the program. I had an insane schedule: rise early to run, to school, teach, complete as much of my student’s homework as possible during my prep, and take lunch off. I was on my computer until about 8:30pm, when, like Ursula, I become a little stupid, and after which phone calls from students were forbidden—I blamed Gary for that cutoff. That made for 10-11 hours of thinking, an hour to run, an hour of staring at the television or not, usually not. There were no cell phones, no Pinterest, no thirty emails arriving twice a day.

[One student called almost every weekend for the two years she was in my classes. Her entire class would call her and they pooled their questions about assignments. Eventually all my assignments included a handout. But when Megan went off to college, she called me from another state because she missed my voice and our conversation.]

The weekend was busy too. I needed at least Sunday to score papers because the only way for students to learn how to write was to write, and among the ways they became better at it was for me to respond. I had learned shortcuts as a writing teaching, but the only break I gave myself was that I continued to write in class, but I no longer wrote all the assignments I gave my students. I wrote freewrites and exams, “Off-the-Tops” and RUGs, and the first story, but skipped the essays (I apologized for this, but teachers rarely do the student’s work, so most did not see why I bothered to tell them). I did not complete the first term project (a terrible, terrible assignment that students routinely returned to thank me for having made them do), but I compiled the portfolio required in second term. I posted my writing from my MFA. I developed or worsened my habit of rushing to the end—what everyone reminds us this week that we should not do.

[I have to say, regarding Oklahoma where half my husband’s family is from (my great grandmother, Rosa Garcia, came to Oregon via Texas), that I kept a Bible (King James translation) in my classroom and a Qu’ran in the original and in translation, American Indian Myths and Legends by Erdoes and Ortiz (my most stolen book, probably because I taught two stories from it most years), 70 story collections, a shelf of literary journals, eight feet of poetry, and at least fifteen feet of novels. Most books came back to me, but the Erdoes and Ortiz collection and the large compilation of Neruda in both Spanish and English often went astray.]

I have 101 books in the annotated bibliography from my MFA, which I can still open. Other documents would take some work to access. My exchanges with Valerie Miner, Claire Davis, Jack Driscoll, and David Long were all on paper. While in the program, I “completed” enough stories in my first two terms to choose from two completely different sets: the “grown-up” stories, including “The Promised Hour” I used to apply to the program and finally published last year in CALYX Journal; and a set of stories based on my husband’s Arizona childhood, including the very first story I ever wrote as an adult, “Baptism.” I chose the latter. A few of the “Blond Indian” stories have been published—Ursula sent me poetry the winter I used one of “I Remember Snow” as my holiday mailing.

All of this to say, my time in the Pacific University MFA program was too fast and too rushed, and I would do it over again in a hot minute, if I could afford the tuition. Being here this week has been a treasure, a gift, and utterly exhausting.

Several people have asked me how the program has changed. About that tomorrow…