Learning to sail my ship

My life has been packed of late, mostly with very good things. My days are a mix of work, homework and Write Around Portland that, if only I had a little more time for sleeping, would be near perfect. Making the move was a fantastic decision and the house is working out very very well so far. WAP has been a hoot, especially since I just took a workshop, so now I'm getting a behind-the-scenes view. It's amazing how much planning and forethought goes into the workshop sessions and how many things one needs to keep track of and remember when facilitating. This weekend marks one of our last sessions, when we'll each get a chance to attempt facilitation and see what works and what doesn't. I've chosen a poem to distribute to the group, to initiate a discussion and get them thinking about the writing element I'm aiming for:

Eating Alone

I've pulled the last of the year's young onions.
The garden is bare now. The ground is cold,
brown and old. What is left of the day flames
in the maples at the corner of my
eye. I turn, a cardinal vanishes.
By the cellar door, I wash the onions,
then drink from the icy metal spigot.

Once, years back, I walked beside my father
among the windfall pears. I can't recall
our words. We may have strolled in silence. But
I still see him bend that way-left hand braced
on knee, creaky-to lift and hold to my
eye a rotten pear. In it, a hornet
spun crazily, glazed in slow, glistening juice.

It was my father I saw this morning
waving to me from the trees. I almost
called to him, until I came close enough
to see the shovel, leaning where I had
left it, in the flickering, deep green shade.

White rice steaming, almost done. Sweet green peas
fried in onions. Shrimp braised in sesame
oil and garlic. And my own loneliness.
What more could I, a young man, want.

Li-Young Lee

So sad. But beautiful too, in its own way. I'm taking a poetry class at Marylhurst and I'm becoming a real sap for the stuff. It makes me weepy, some of it. So far I'm doing pretty well in the class despite having no real poetry background or aptitude. I'm a little nervous about an assignment I turned in this week, though. We were to interpret a poem by Marianne Moore called "The Fish", and the interpretation I came up with doesn't seem to be shared by anyone else in the world, or at least on the internet. I suppose there's something to be said about art being open to different interpretations, but I do so enjoy being simply correct instead of having one of many valid opinions (or being way off in left field). I suppose I'll adjust.

Children's Lit is another fun class. We're reading Little Women these first two weeks and, though I'm pretty sure I read it once when I was a girl, reading it now offers a vastly different perspective. My adult cynicism makes it hard to entirely buy into Alcott's portrayal of these four angelic girls but it is sometimes nice to read about people who are largely polite and good to each other. Poor Beth. :(

Remember that entry I wrote last summer about my visit to Marylhurst where I met with my advisor and finally felt like I was in the right place and was so excited? It's real. Every time I step out of my car on campus I feel it, the belonging thing that I've not felt in many (if any) other places. My one on-campus class and two online classes are all filled with students who genuinely want to be there, who don't think trying is for chumps, who aren't just doing the minimum to get the grades and get on with it but who actually want to learn. It's almost like I'm living in my own version of Little Women's ideal universe of earnest nicety. I have to say it's not bad. Not bad at all.