I have no introductions to review and revise, but I will write today and tomorrow about what else is happening at Pacific.
RESIDENCY, day 8
Uncategorized
THE TRUTH
The truth is, I do not want to sell my family home on the coast. The truth is, this would feel like the failure of a lifetime.
CLOSET SPACE
“56% of U.S. survey respondents would prefer to receive tickets to a live experience rather than more stuff. Women in particular prefer experiences over physical gifts. So, wrap up those tickets, and give the gift of making memories.”
—according to Eventbrite (a ticketing venue)
BLOG posts are now found under BLOG in the menu
And also under TEACHING WRITING—I haven’t found the text that actually belongs under that heading. I’m hoping that post is… someplace.
WHINING
Gary has gone to the store to get chocolate chips so that I will make cookies. Otherwise, I am sitting with knitting, staring at the ocean, and fussing. (I have completed two gifts and begun knitting a third.) I am going to whine in a way only a spoiled person would so you might not want to read further.
REMEMBERING ANN
In grade school, I wanted desperately to have a best friend. I knew girls who had piano lessons, dance, modeling, swim classes. I did none of those things. My best First Grade friend moved away and for a long time I had friends, but no one “best.”
DONE so far
THE LAST DAY OF NOVEMBER
“The Last Day of November” by Jack Ridl by Rattle
Jack Ridl
THE LAST DAY OF NOVEMBER
My wife is at her spinning wheel. She
first cleans, dries, and combs the fleece,
then dies the wool. She will spin yarn to make
a shawl, stocking cap, socks. She disappears
into her gentle quiet. I am a third of the way
through reading four books, but I don’t want
to read any of them. I want what I know you
want: to be happy, actually happy, to love
in a happy world. Today there was yet another
school shooting. Some students felt it coming.
Three kids who thought they were grown up,
dead. One more thought likely to die, did. The
others will live. The news dares to say recover.
Tonight we played Christmas carols for the first
time this season. Yes, ’tis the season. This morning
surgeons at three different hospitals awakened
assuming yet another routine day of rounds and
operations. When they were seventeen, did they
imagine advent would offer them the inevitable
impossibility of saving the assumption of a future,
that they would never again be able to say, “Happy
Holidays,” “Merry Christmas,” “Happy Hanukkah,”
“Happy New Year” without being caught in an ambush
of memory? Tonight thousands of parents will be unable
to sleep, or tomorrow, or on into ever. Teachers
who each day hope it will not, cannot happen again
will think again about construction or an office job.
And guns? They will sleep in the garage, a cabinet,
on the top shelf. They will rest and be at the ready.
No, I don’t want to read; I don’t want to hear again
about God’s mercy, the peace that comes from above
or meditation, Calvin’s endlessly facile legacy of blame,
the need for prayer and legislation. I am tired of pursuing
happiness. I want to breathe it in as ubiquitous as air.
And while we’re at it, I want the curriculum revised
to teach sentimentality, that it is not any more false
feeling than the unguarded synapses in the shooter’s brain.
Scholars, put away the safety of secondary sources. Sit
with your students, abandon the inhumane hideaway of
objective distance. Throw open your hearts. Let sentiment
break our shielded souls before another rifle and surgeon’s
words have to. My wife never asks for the meaning. She
sits in silence at her wheel twisting a lamb’s wool into
yarn to knit whatever it takes to keep another warm.
Our dog is asleep, head on his paws. The twin sister cats
curl together. I’m not going to pick up my books. I’m
going to begin to trim the tree wondering how many
five-year-olds will sit on Santa’s lap and when he asks
“What do you want for Christmas?” will answer, “A gun.”
—from Poets Respond
December 5, 2021
__________
Jack Ridl: “The news story is the school shooting just outside of Detroit. Our daughter is an art teacher. Her room is the first room after the huge entry at the school. Not a day goes by that this father doesn’t fear for her. She tries to believe all her students would never carry out a killing.” (web)
Rattle | December 5, 2021 at 3:00 am | Tags: Jack Ridl, Poets Respond | Categories: Poems, Poets Respond | URL: https://wp.me/p7dbSF-9xv
Three things:
- First, I no longer spin, but it is a skill I own along with a spinning wheel that was my step-grandmother’s.
- Second, my students, even the ones who threw chairs at the wall (two) or a padlock (once), were never so scary as the parents. [It’s true there was the teacher/football coach who made me cry after I asked him not to use the term “ragheads” when talking to students in the hall and he screamed at me until I went running.]
- And third, I do not have permission to reprint this poem, but you might check out Rattle. For absolutely no fee, Rattle will send you a poem every morning. “Poets Respond” is one of those posts that is included about once a week. Sometimes they send out poems by children. They are always worthwhile.
Poetry is free from many sources. It usually costs nothing to receive poetry online. Instead it pays you.
WOMEN’S WORK
“I’m not being facetious or anything, but I think I’ve never said this before: for a dyed-in-the-wool feminist, you know a lot about traditional ‘women’s work’.” Gary had just asked me how a damask tablecloth should be washed and so I told him. (The key is pressing it after washing with a very hot iron while it’s still wet.)
Many women of my generation, eager to embrace a life unbound from traditional women’s roles, rejected those skills traditionally acquired by housewives. They chose career over homemaking, and actively avoided cookery and sewing and other domestic arts.
I went the other way.
Continue readingBACK TO THE GARDEN
Starting with a Joni Mitchell lyric always feels like a good idea, whether the garden holds a sea lion on the beach (it does) or a rose.
We are stardust We are golden And we've got to get ourselves Back to the garden —Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock"
