Again

I used to play the above game, Moon Cresta, when I was just a young undergrad. Today I happened upon a YouTube video of it. In the era of games I really can't play well (I haven't even saved the princess yet in Mario One), itt was nice to see dear old Moon Cresta again, in a time when my health has yet again given me challenges. Sort of like the visualization of "good" cells getting rid of the ornery ones.

Still, I am back at work, happy to see my students and ready to start a new year, however creakily I am doing it right now. I went through months of recovery from pneumonia and other respiratory problems and am now recovering from a life-threatening asthma attack last week (ambulance, hospital, intense IV prednisone and a long high-dose course of prednisone also). I am grateful, inordinately so, to be alive right now. Each day is precious, and for me, each day is Zen as well. As a Buddhist, perhaps the images on a long-ago video screen may be in appropriate (I took Dharma vows which include nonviolence), but the little cartoonish images of meteors and rockets are a bit silly and goofy, and so I allow even this little thing from long ago to be part of my healing. Healing is merely the willingness to forgive and invite goodness in, after all, and anything can symbolize it. The personal symbol is something I really like to explore and talk about as a professor, too--we will be doing a lot of that as I work with my new batch of folks this year.

And grateful for learning the preciousness of the moment, the real life, this gift of having my footsoles fastened to the earth a little while more. One day at a time.


A monk asked Chao-chou, "I have just entered the monastery: please give me some guidance."
Chao-chou said, "Have you eaten your rice gruel?"
The monk said,"Yes, I've eaten."
Chao-chou said, "Then go wash your bowl."

Watching It Happen

I'm tempted to start out my Creative Writing class next semester with a disclaimer that the decision to embark on "growing" one's creativity, particularly through writing, is a dangerous and a courageous act, because it changes one's life, subtly or overtly, in nearly alchemical ways. I saw so many of my students' lives change during my summer course (and it had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with their decision to open up their willingness). I am getting like a kid in a candy store as I think all I want to teach, all the writing exercises, and a semester of absolute wonder and fun (hard part is getting them to buy into it at first, but they warm up quickly).

Summer Draws Nigh

I apologize to my faithful readers for being away from Blogville for so long. I was dealing both with end-of-the year stuff and a worse-than-usual flare of lupus. I dreamed about the flare-up before it happened (the dream involved looking at my face in a mirror and seeing half my face covered with a bright red rash). A few days later, my body did just that, but not much on my face beyond the "butterfly" rash that is typical of lupus--I broke out in a huge rash that covered all my large joints, and became rapidly very sick. When I went to the doctor, she put me on a course of prednisone, which I was very upset about--it makes me feel good and it does bring the illness down, but it has bad side effects (none of which I ended up experiencing this time, though).

I felt better within a few days, but it was a reminder to take care of myself, get enough sleep and exercise, and generally be a lot more mindful of my health.

In the wake of this, I said goodbye to my beloved class of engineering (and a few other) students, most of whom have been with me all year. It has been, I think, one of the most challenging years of my entire life, incorporating the grief of losing family members and accepting that it was going to take time to feel anywhere in the realm of normal again. I think as time goes on, I miss my sister and mother more, but in different ways and with less of the acute grief.

I also was very stressed about work, as I had not gotten word of being re-hired, and would have been very happy with a composition course again. However, my appointment was well beyond anything I had hoped--I was given Introduction to Creative Writing!
I was so happy that I went to the department chair (who deserves some sort of medal for all he's done to try and save jobs in the wake of horrific budget cuts) and thanked him. Of course, it's going to be a challenging class and different from the one I taught in Summer '08--I have almost no memory of what I taught in that class because my sister died during the session and I went on automatic pilot. Still, I am grateful to have work, as much as my illness will allow me to do, and I am glad to still be at the alma mater, teaching wonderful students.

I have a visualization I started doing when I got sick with this flare-up. One thing I've noticed is how I will often not believe good things are supposed to happen for me. This is an old, old thought, something that comes from childhood and has lingered in my adult life. My visualization involved seeing all my hopelessness, lack of self-worth, anything negative I still carry in my heart, as a wall. During the visualization, I was guided to start seeing cracks in that wall, through which blue sky and sun begin to pour through, as a metaphor for hope and trust that the universe is not hostile and that there are good things in store for me. This gave me a lot of comfort when I thought for sure that there would be no work for me next semester, and with other things.

As for an update on agents--they are still looking at the book! Yes, it does take time--I've accepted that wholeheartedly! :)

The Fool

In Tarot, the Fool has many meanings, but I especially like the interpretation of the Fool as a blissful innocent, fully open to whatever the universe brings. There are some tensions at work due to the impending Fall budget disaster in the California state university system, and I do not yet know whether Dr. X (my alias for the director of my department) will be able to hire me again. I do know, directly from the source, that he wants to...but no one really knows how everything is going to shape up moneywise.

So, I just make like the Fool and balance on the edge of the unknown. I don't worry. There has never been a time in my life where options were not revealed to me, where I was unable to make a path for myself. It would be very sad for me to leave my office with its beautiful view of the campus. It would break my heart not to have students to teach next semester and next year. I never really know how my illness is going to go, so every semester is precious to me anyway...but I know if my job becomes a victim of the California state budget, there is little I can do about it.

I must say here that there have been some students of mine who have gone directly to Dr. X and to the head of my MFA program and made sure to praise me as a teacher--these things do a lot of good and Dr. X always lets me know when this happens. Still, there would be no good teaching without a whole lot of excellent students and, no matter what happens to me at the alma mater, I can still count myself as blessed to have been part of many wonderful lives.

So, I keep dancing on the edge, knowing that it's possible to look into the abyss without fear.

A Haiku For My Students From Previous Courses Who Have Not Picked Up Their Papers

Essays cry sadly,
Abandoned by their authors,
Orphans on my desk.

After All

Looks like my Intro to Creative Writing class is going to make its enrollment after all. Better keep working on my syllabus--also, I need to shop for summer teaching clothes, which I don't have. Details, details.

why I am invisible

...because I am finishing my final grading (yes, I am definitely a slowpoke). AND--I am working on my syllabus for Intro to Creative Writing--which may not be held after all, as its enrollment is at 19 students now, and "they" need as close to 25 as possible. I'll likely know this week. Still, even if it gets canceled, the offer meant everything to me. Really. Thanks, Dr. X!

As for the fires, they are getting contained. I do not know if the beautiful house I rented on Browns Valley Road in Corralitos is still there. It was up near the top, close to the junction of Hazel Dell Road, where a lot of the fire happened.

I have heard absolutely nothing in the news regarding Michael McClish, either, as the story probably got shufffled aside due to reportage on the wildfires.

Back to grades, back to the syllabus, and so the day ends.

And the Readings Are....

For the fiction segment of the class:

Daniel Halpern's The Art of the Story

For poetry:

A Book of Luminous Things, a terrific poetry anthology edited by Czeslaw Milosz

For creative nonfiction:

In Brief by Judith Kitchen (if I had time to find another anthology I could read in time before June, I would have used a different book, but this suffices for a summer class).

And, of course:

Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott (thanks, Lynn).

I was a little shocked, when Internet surfing and trying to find books, that international anthologies are so hard to find--there is not one I can find for creative nonfiction which doesn't feature mainly North American writers. Maybe it's a peculiarly American genre (I know it's not, but it seems so).

Now, let's just hope that the class fills!
I've never been so excited about going to San Jose in the summer, ever.


And now, the syllabus....


It is my eldest son's (known here as The Eldest) 26th birthday today. He has turned out to be a wonderful, hardworking person, with a terrific job and a wonderful life that he deserves--so happy birthday, Eldest! You're a great guy and I am very happy that you chose me to be your mom.

Wireless

The Highway 17 bus, which I take when I go to the alma mater, now has wireless access. This makes things easier in some ways (for one thing, I can check email from students and so forth before I get to my office), though most of the time I put on my headphones and listen to any one of a number of meditation CDs that take about 45 minutes to run (that's how long the commute takes on the bus). Due to the usual ailment, I no longer drive Highway 17 (driving for any distance longer than about 30-40 minutes just about takes the wind out of my sails for the rest of the day--so I am very grateful for the Highway 17 bus, which makes it possible for me to be a lot more mobile and have far less sun exposure than when I drive a car).

I have to say that, though it has not been easy at all for me physically and I probably should not push my illness by teaching, something always keeps me trying to go back. I currently teach 2.5 hours a week (one class), and it is pushing me to the very limits of my physical abilities (for those of you who don't know, I was diagnosed with lupus and fibromyalgia in 1993). I have very much been reminded every day of my illness since I returned, and it takes a lot out of me. I moved up a tiny notch, from teaching associate to lecturer, and am content with the fact that, because I cannot teach very many classes, I may always stay a lecturer. Just being a teacher again, in whatever capacity, is good for my spirit. It did make finishing the book more difficult (actually, my illness is the biggest reason it's taken me 7 years to finish this book), but at least I have a quiet office to work in sometimes, with a nice view.

It was very disorienting to go back after two years of relative freedom, and yet I really believe that my Higher Power had some sort of plan for me--the decision felt more right than wrong. At first, I wondered if I had made the right decision--but then I saw old friends and professors, and I got a wonderful class with whom I have bonded tremendously--I shall miss them terribly at semester's end, but most of them are trying to register for my next class, so maybe I won't have to miss them all that much! What happens beyond this semester, I don't know. I hope I can be well enough to go back in the Fall. I am keeping my fingers crossed, as always.

This has nothing at all to do with the Highway 17 bus having wireless access now, except that I am grateful for it, as it makes my life a little bit easier.

Oh--but I did want to tell a story here. My dear friend Harvey Birenbaum, who was my professor of mythology and of William Blake's poetry, always encouraged me to try and find ways to work with my illness and find the gifts within it (he was extremely ill with heart trouble and died of it in September of 2005). Harvey was the most brilliant man I ever met, and yet one day, in our mythology class, I stumped him!
He was talking about how William Blake didn't like circles (circle imagery, etc.), and I remembered a few lines from a Blake poem which I loved:

I give you the end of a golden string,
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate
Built in Jerusalem's wall.

So, Harvey was going on about how William Blake didn't like circles, and I piped up and said, "But what about the golden string, the one that gets wound up into a ball?"
Harvey sat and thought and thought--and finally laughed said, "I do not know!" We had a good chuckle about that.

Upon my return to the alma mater this semester, I sat at my desk on my first day, feeling physically awful (too much sun exposure at State, always, in August). I asked Harvey for some kind of sign that I had made the right decision. Then I opened my desk drawers to put things away and arrange them. When I opened the first drawer, I heard something roll into the far end, and opened it wider to discover that the only thing in that drawer--in the entirety of my side of the desk, in fact--was a rather long length of beige string, neatly wound into a tight and perfect ball.

Not quite golden, but good enough to say, "Thanks."