Several of my students went on to Pacific University, but that is not the reason I am fond, of course. Today is the last day of events scheduled for the MFA residency.

There is the last craft talk, and then classes today and graduate readings. The big event will be graduation late this afternoon followed by a farewell dinner. People will laugh and many will cry, and all of us a little bit stocky from the intensity of the week. I did not run this morning because I usually do not on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and I have run eight days straight. I will post early and say goodbye.

Once again: it has been a privilege and honor to emcee this week. I am grateful to have been asked and to have spent the week here. Thank you.

Cate Kennedy’s craft talk, “The Tightrope,” began by reviewing common themes in talks this week, and then went to Charlie Chaplin’s final silent film, The Circus. The metaphor of the tightrope act wound through, bobbing its head up over and over. Cate was nothing short of spectacular—so was her talk.

Cate reviewed advice from the residency to fictionists and nonfiction writers, and told on herself over and over, connected 911 to circus clowns and contrasted artifice with embarrassment, surrender to epiphany, and reminded us of “part of this is just luck” having its say in our journey. The Tramp performs a tightrope walk with the aid of a belt around his waist connected to a line supporting him, and then the belt comes loose and he doesn’t notice at first… The analogy to our own writing, with support and then entirely on our own, because we need to “develop an immune system; it’s our job to fix our own words.” She displayed edited pages. She played songs we sang along with and danced to. I cannot begin to do justice to her analogy with a balance pole, Chaplin’s onstage persona, her life, her work, how publication in The New Yorker changed her life, how writing truth changes ours… I cannot replicate here all she said. I was writing as fast as I could—no auditory memory here, and she talked for an hour (and it’s not my place to steal her thunder—it was a firestorm of reassurance and a deep dive into our writing journey), but one line she repeated over and over: “This is your circus; these are your monkeys… embrace your monkeys … enjoy the show” and with monkeys come serendipity and the mess you must plow through and accept, to find your truth and get where you are going. “Don’t allow others” to direct, amend, shame or stop us. “You develop muscle memory about drafting… pushing forward” because “even if it’s crap, it’s your crap” and at the end of it is your writing goal. As we work, she reminds us, “You’ll always be alone, but we are alone together.”

Every talk I attended—and I attended them all—was about the need to keep going, to find the truth that our story/essay/memoir/poem demands for us to tell, to get right. Every talk was positive and useful and inspiring. Cate’s was the right talk for the end. She got people dancing.

Tomorrow morning we will all be gone from the Pacific University campus, and I will awake at home in Arch Cape, drink coffee in the cool dawn, go for a short run, and post about my novel. My own words have taken my imagination forward in time to a story I began more than six years ago. I have taken on an enormous risk and so does the press that will publish my novel. … more tomorrow.