WAKE UP!

I’m trying to write something meaningful, and I’m failing. Mostly because I’m falling asleep at my desk.

I could write down the stream of consciousness I face when I sleep, but there is a green field far away/I hope to find it some fine day* (repeat and fade) and I’d rather sing along (repeat and fade) than be inspired at the moment … zzz …

My drowsiness does not seem to understand Robert Frost’s words: ” … and miles to go before I sleep …” I know he was talking about death, morbid spirit that he was, but I’ve got a full day today and naptime doesn’t seem to understand that. I’m dressed up, I’m ready to teach, and — zzzzz …

I am falling asleep sitting up. Sitting up. It’s a good thing I can’t sleep standing up, otherwise class today could be very … different. Zzzzz …

I’ve had two cups of coffee. By cups, I mean 12 ounces, or about 2x the amount in those styrofoam shot glasses they call a coffee cup. This means that I’ve had a total of a pint and a half of — zzzzz …

Can I sleepwalk through work? Not an option — especially since teaching has a touch of acting in it, and I must show my true enthusiasm for this topic externally, which can’t happen if I — Zzzzzz …

It’s okay, I’ll wake up as soon as I have to drive to work. It’s not good sleeping while driving — Zzzzz …

*Waterboys, “The Return of Pan”. Great song.

Settling in

Second day of the semester, and I’m struggling to write.

It may be that I need to put away Whose Hearts are Mountains for another work, perhaps a new work, but I’m not inspired yet.

I’m not panicking yet, because I blame my lack of inspiration on the energy it takes to start a new school year. Once I get settled into the year, I’ll be inspired to do something — hopefully a totally new thing — when I have space in my head.

In the meantime, I’ll give myself time to do the blog almost every day, and sit for an hour with my computer screen,waiting for the ideas to come.

I’ll let you know when something happens.

I love you.

I’ve gotten off track in my life. There was a time I held those three words in my mind when encountering everyone.

I learned that trick during a massage class years ago with Patch Adams (yes, that Patch Adams for those in the know). He saw massage as a way of giving to others and not a way to get into someone’s pants. (“If you want to get into someone’s pants, tell them, ‘Hey, I’d like to get into your pants.’ If you want to give them a massage, ask to give them a massage.”) He also told the class that if they held the thought “I love you” in their minds, it would make the massage better. And I did, because at that age it was easy for me to love.

As I got older, people seemed less approachable than they were when I was in college. I forgot how to give massages. I forgot how to hug. I forgot to hold “I love you” in my mind when interacting with people. I found myself burdened by grudges, jealousy, all those adult feelings that get in the way.

Last night, during my meditation, my wiser self reminded me of those words, and included others that would help people’s souls:

I love you.
I thank you for being here.
You are beautiful.

I will not say them out loud, because there’s so much baggage with these words, as if we were trying to get into someone’s pants rather than give a massage with no strings attached.

I love you.
I thank you for being here.
You are beautiful.

The Rituals of a New Year

Tomorrow is the first day of my 25th fall semester as a professor.

I could say it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, but I’ve been doing this long enough that I don’t remember not going through the rituals of the beginning of the semester — writing syllabi, preparing course sites, figuring out what I need to say on the first day of the semester to keep from sounding like an idiot.

I don’t remember a fall semester where I haven’t had the nightmares born of the fear that things will not go well on the first day — the A/V equipment fails, the classroom is made up of walls and nooks such that some of the students can’t see or hear the lecture, I’m late for class, the students get frustrated and leave, I’m standing in front of the class in my underwear … dealing with the fear spawns its own ritual, that of re-preparing in the last minute so that nothing goes wrong.

What I wear to my first day of classes each year is its own ritual. It’s one of the few days I wear a suit, to remind myself that I’m not going into class naked like in my dreams.

Twenty-five years teaching, and in some ways it’s like my first day, when I stood in front of my class in a navy blue suit. One of my students, in a thick Long Island accent, asked “Are you lost?” (It sounded to my midwestern ears as “Awwe yew Lawst?”)

“No, I’m the professor for this class,” I said.

“Ohh, I thought you were a student,” she proclaimed.

Getting back into writing

I haven’t written much in the last few weeks, what with working with my dev editor, traveling for New York Hope and training in advanced moulage, prepping for work, and finishing my first semester of grad school. Now it’s two days before the beginning of the semester, I’ve got no prep to do, and no excuses to do nothing. (I don’t watch tv well, and there’s only so much looking at cats on Instagram I can do.)

So I’m taking the advice I’d give someone else — write something every day. This means in my case to get reacquinted with Whose Hearts are Mountains. I don’t know how I feel about that book at the moment. It’s in the Archetype universe, and I’ve had such trouble understanding how to improve the first book(s) in that universe, Mythos and Apocalypse (which I am thinking of putting together). I don’t know if it’s sellable, and I don’t know if I care.

It might be that I keep working on Whose Hearts are Mountains, send Mythos to my dev editor (Hi, Chelsea!) and figure out things from there.

But I need to write. Every day,

Siren

This poem is about the dark side of me I don’t indulge:

I would enthrall you with words
That fade into thickets green,
Tangle you in grasping vines.
Tease you with hints of heat
then saunter away.

The ugliest truths about the fairest of them all

Our fairy tales can destroy us.

If you think of it, fairy tales are usually not about fairies per se, but about magical thinking: “If only I were __________________ (for males, powerful, strong or rich; for females, beautiful — it’s pretty limiting, isn’t it?) then __________________ (happily ever after).

In other words, if we’re not happily ever after, it’s because we’re not (for males, powerful, strong, or rich; for females, beautiful) enough. We’re not enough.

The implications of fairy tales get uglier, though. Beautiful women get rescued from evil stepmothers, ravenous wolves, and wicked witches. By implication, if women are left in harmful and abusive situations, they’re not beautiful enough. And women who find their own ways out are not honored with stories. (To be fair, recent Disney fairy tales, among others, have found ways to honor strong heroines. But they’re still beautiful, and a guy is still involved in the picture.)

The most basic, ugliest implication of fairy tales is this: If you are beautiful, someone will love you. If you are not beautiful, you will not be loved. Obviously, in real life, people who are not beautiful find true love, and many beautiful people get stuck in superficial relationships whose narratives sell movies and other media. But we still stick to the fairy tales as informing human experience.

What if we didn’t have to be beautiful, strong, powerful, or rich to be loved? What if we didn’t have to do anything but be ourselves to be loved?

Why aren’t fairy tales like that?

Magic in the morning

Yesterday I made Richard stop at the Farmers’ Market while on our way to move my office things back into place for the school year. Little did I know it was to be a magic morning.

First, I should point out that I was wearing my writers’ shirt as I so often do — a t-shirt that says “I’m getting dangerously close to killing you off in my next novel”. That got attention from one woman in her thirties who self-publishes romance novels, a woman my age who dabbled in writing, and a young woman who writes for herself. So we stood around and talked about our experiences in writing, in what it means to be a writer, in dreams and realities.

Not the sort of conversation I expected in Maryville. Which is why it never happened before.

Later, as I walked around the ring of merchants, a little girl on her mother’s lap looked straight at me and said, “That bird over there is singing to you.”

I need no greater magic than this.

Making the Best

Despite the repeated dreams for years that I go back to teach at Oneonta, I am back in Maryville, MO, setting up for the new school year at Northwest Missouri State University. Unless I can find a way to afford the housing costs without having a mortgage in my retirement, I will likely retire here in Maryville.

The difference between a dream and a goal, however, is a plan. At this point the plan depends on two different external factors — whether the college will be hiring for someone in my position or whether I will wait for the way to open, as we Quakers say, and if it doesn’t, I wasn’t supposed to live in Oneonta.

Meanwhile, I am working to make the best of my life now. What have I missed about Oneonta? An atmosphere where differences are accepted, if not embraced. A place where I can be myself and feel accepted. In other words, in words misattributed to Thomas Paine, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

I feel like I haven’t gotten this in Maryville, but how correct are my observations? I have experienced reactions that feel like censorship when I talk about my bipolar disorder, for example, but I have also received support, mostly over Facebook from my Facebook friends, many of whom are in psychology and social work. I have felt awkward talking to people here, because I feel passionate about writing and the obsession of the day, but I felt awkward in Oneonta because I was the only one around me not passionate about something (other than winemaking, which was my thing while I was in Oneonta).

As much a haven as Oneonta has been, I didn’t start writing in earnest until I had spent some time in Maryville, where the writer’s circle skews children’s, Christian’s, and cookbooks. (I’m literally scared to go to their meetings because my works question the current state of Christianity, as do I)

Do I really need a haven? Or do I need to push against something to create and grow? Do I need to feel like an iconoclast? An outsider? I don’t know; I’m thinking.

And in the meantime, maybe Maryville is the best thing for me because I don’t have what I need here.

In-Between

I gaze out the window at the Toledo train station, watching the rain bead off the windows. The train has been in the station for a while — a half hour, a day, forever — I’m too tired to figure it out.

This train ride will carry me from the joy of discovering home to the duty of another year teaching college. It will be my 21st year at Northwest. One of my first students is sending her kid to college. I still feel like I’m in my thirties despite my arthritis, and all my memories jumble into a timeless mist.

I will return to an abrupt transition to beginning of the school year meetings. But for now, I’m on the train, in-between everything.