Northwest Inland Writing Project Summer Writing Retreat: Interlude

I have done a little bit of reading about what I can do to encourage readers to come to my blog.

Surely one of the cardinal rules is to post once a day so that a reader doesn't have to go beyond the post at the top of the blog to read my most recent pieces.

To hell with that. If you are reading this Interlude, and if you are wondering what I've been up to, just go here to read about what I presented at Day 1 of the writing retreat and go here for Day 2.

Okay. Now. I have a few things I'd like to write and reflect upon regarding my role and preparation as the Inland Northwest Writing Project's Summer Writing Retreat's Visiting Writer.

First of all, in the field of writing, I'm not a big shot. I haven't published a book; I have published a couple of essays and a few poems. I told at least one person at the retreat that when I got hired to lead workshops, the Inland Northwest Writing Project hired a little shot.

I'm definitely a little shot.

I don't think I bring anything special to my role as Visiting Writer because I'm a little shot. I'm happy, however, that the Inland Northwest Writing Project was willing to take a chance on hiring a little shot.

As a community college instructor, I work with little shots. While some of us have presented at national conferences and a few have been published by national publications and one will be publishing an enormously compelling memoir, overall we spend the majority of our time focused on teaching, not building a scholarly resume.

Over the years, I have developed an unusual way of developing pedagogy.

I don't read and haven't (much) read books about teaching writing. I don't read books about teaching strategies. I don't assign my students books explaining how to write. Many excellent poets and fiction writers and memoir writers have written what I hear are wonderful books on writing in these genres. I just haven't read them. Or even looked at them.

When I came to work as a Visiting Writer, a small, but strong voice inside me says I'm a fraud because I haven't read Writing Down the Bones or any of Anne Lamont's books or Julia Cameron's and I've never taken a creative writing course and my reputation as a writer is pretty much limited to those, whom I deeply appreciate, who read my blog.

Oh! And those who have heard me preach. I think some of my best writing happened in the handful of sermons I've given at St. Mary's Episcopal Church.

What I'm getting at here is that much of what I've learned about writing came from sources that weren't dealing with writing at all.

For example, a book that has shaped much of my thinking about writing and has helped me understand my mindset as a writer is Thich Nhat Hanh's Being Peace. His insight into connectedness, non-duality,being awake, and consciousness shapes how I teach writing and how I've tried to discipline my mind as an observer and agent in my life and has greatly expanded my imagination.

Likewise, Robert Grudin's book On Dialogue is not a writing handbook. Grudin's book explores the power of dialogic thought and the copious ways the mind can work in its pursuit of truth. His book encourages us to give our minds over to expansion, to seeing things as many ways as possible, to give ourselves over to the copious ways the mind works and to delight in the fertility of ideas, not to narrow them or reduce them.

As I write, I try to give myself over to the delights of copia. In my writing instruction, I encourage my students toward the freedoms implicit in thinking dialogically, of writing copiously.

Furthermore, when I read poems or stories or memoirs or philosophy or religion or the Bible or any other piece of writing, I always ask this question: what is this piece of writing telling or showing me about the act of writing itself?

For example, when Jesus instructs his disciples to be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves, that's a solid bit of writing instruction, especially when I listen to Martin Luther King, Jr. who said that in these words Jesus was instructing his followers to be tough-minded and tender-hearted.

Again, solid writing instruction.

In the poem, "Her Right Eye Catches the Lavender", found here, the speaker of the poem describes Judy Rock's way of being with the gulls:

Knowing her as I do

I know she chose one of them and pursued him

relentlessly—her eye is part of her mind –

and though there would be patter she never would lose him

until he was gone.

Here's what writing demands of us: to zero in, pursue, to do it relentlessly, to unite the eye (and the senses) with the mind, and to commit oneself not to lose the subject of the mind's and sense's focus until it is "gone".

A good lot is going on in Stern's poem. A good lot is going on in the ruminations of Robert Grudin. A good lot is going on in the writings of Thicht Nhat Hanh and the teachings of Buddha. A good lot is going on in the teachings of Jesus and the preaching of Martin Luther King. A good lot is going on in the poetry, stories, memoirs, histories, and other genres of writing in the world.

In one way or another, these writings and teachings, at some level, are instructing us in the ways of writing, or at the very least, giving us models for writing.

So far, it's been reading and thinking this way over the years that has informed my ideas about and practice of writing.

As the Inland Northwest Writing Project Summer Writing Retreat's Visiting Writer, I tried to invigorate those who came to the retreat with the inspiration and knowledge I've drawn from such sources.

It's a Buddhist thing: I've learned the most about writing from sources that weren't about writing at all -- at first glance.

Three Beautiful Things 04/27/04: Germinal, West and East, Strolling

1. I read and graded essays all day today. They were wonderful papers. My World Lit. students are wrestling with the fatalistic Zola novel, Germinal. It felt risky assigning it. Would my students read a 500+ page novel about coal miners striking in France in the 1860's? Many did. Class discussions have been vibrant and their papers have been right on the mark, many animated by enthusiasm for Zola's close to the bone grittiness, dark as it is.

2. My WR 122 students are learning about how to expand their critical thinking by thinking non-dualistically and copiously. We are looking at how traditional Western thought and Buddhist thought overlap and merge with their commitment to seeing the world as fully as as possible, from as many different perspectives as possible. My students essays reflecting their understanding of this overlapping and their examples of thinking this way themselves were fully of vitality.

3. Snug and I took a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood after I finished grading papers and the fruit blossoms around the neighborhood nearly intoxicated me.

Acting and Writing: It and Not It

In his book Being Peace, Thich Nhat Hanh explains how a thing is not so much what it is but what it isn't. Take a piece of paper. It is made up of a tree, and rain that fed the tree, the clouds the rain fell from, the logger who cut down the tree, the food the logger ate, and on and on. When we look at a sheet of paper, we see everything. But none of it is the piece of paper, but without all that the paper is not, there would be no piece of paper.

This Buddhist way of looking at reality informs my teaching of writing. I try to help my students see that what they do when they are not writing is what makes them writers. Do they read? Are they awake to the world around them? Do they get good sleep? Are they curious? On and on. None of these things is actually writing, but without reading and being awake and getting good sleep and curiosity, there would be no writing.

Similarly, the non-acting elements of acting are what make actors.

In my involvement with the theater, I've seen actors' performances suffer because they treat acting as only what they do when on the stage. They don't understand that whatever they are doing when not acting affects their acting.

The examples are obvious. Sleep affects acting. Getting drunk affects acting. Actors need to be sharp and sleep deprivation and intoxication dull an actors' sensibilities and their gestures and movements. I wish I could see one performance of the plays I've been in when each actor came to perform and had not been drunk the night before or had not stayed up late partying or even playing video games.

This came to mind because a very troubled man was playing a role in the Sixth Street Melodrama's production of "Nightmare at Dream Gulch...or Wake Me When It's Over". Now, while technically he did good work in his role, I watched him, not knowing the trouble in his life, and could tell his performance had a bitterness to it; I experienced him as a dark cloud or even a black hole in the cast.

A couple of weekends ago, he ran afoul with the law and was put in jail and had to be replaced in the play.

I saw the play today with the new actor playing his role. The whole performance was better, despite the fact that the new person didn't have the talent the troubled actor did. The cast's energy was freer. The show had a lighter feel and the cast seemed much more relaxed. They seemed more trusting of each other. The new actor did not bring the brooding elements of her non-acting self to her acting or to the play.

It wasn't the troubled actor's acting that was hurting the play. It was the non-acting elements of his life, which, ultimately can't be separated from his acting.

Often the Buddhist idea of everything is connected is scoffed at as a weird idea that teaches a kind of false and dreamy harmony.

It doesn't teach that at all. It teaches, in fact, that one of the most difficult and demanding elements of life is our connectedness with each other and with the world of nature and with inanimate things.

It's a philosophy of consequences. We just cannot do what we do and expect it to be isolated from others. Everything affects everything else.

Studying and learning more about the it/not it reality of life has heightened my moral sense. It's also sharpened my writing and my acting. It has helped me understand myself as a steward of my life as a teacher. What I do when I'm not teaching deeply informs my work as a teacher.

I'm always writing. I'm always acting. I'm always teaching.

Even when I'm not.

Three Beautiful Things 01/24/07: The Boss, Connections, Slurpy DP

1. At the end of the Research Writing/Literature of the American Working Class course two years ago, I dropped Sam a note and offered him my Bruce Springsteen LP's. I never heard from him and forgot I made the offer. I ran into Sam today outside the Blue Door Theater and he asked me if the offer still held. You bet it does. We'll make the transaction soon.

2. I enjoy the way we are seeing how Martin Luther King, Jr., the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, and the writing and thinking of Robert Grudin and the idea of copia all interrelate in WR 122. I'm hoping my students begin to see that when ideas are profound, there's a way they have deep commonality.

3. I purchased a Diet Pepsi from the machine that sits outside near the theater. The machine is subject to the elements. My Diet Pepsi was slushy and I pretended like I'd bought a slurpy and enjoyed the icy can of soda.

Three Beautiful Things 01/17/07: Hanh, Herman, Copia

1. I hadn't met with my MW Writing 122 class for a week and it was wonderful to see them again. I was surprised how familiar they seemed to me, how many of their names I remembered, and how well we seem to be getting along. They collectively seemed excited about studying a little Buddhism and Thich Nhat Hanh's "Being Peace".

2. Herman told me he won $600 at Luckey's playing video poker. Herman's always proud of the way he takes his occasional video poker winnings straight to the bank and pays bills. Herman is also very proud of a ukelele tape he has. He told me this guy makes the ukelele sound like an opera singer. He promises to let me listen to it.

3. It's been a year since I've introduced students to Robert Grudin's ideas about dialogical thinking and his application of the ancient rhetorical trope "copia" to contemporary practices of critical thinking. I could tell his ideas were stimulating to my class. We are starting to roll.