On Obi-wan

I had a teacher - one of those remarkable teachers that you know at the time is remarkable and know every moment you are in class, you are learning more than you know.  She taught us and cared about us: the tough love you need as a high school sophomore and the actual love you need as a graduating senior.  She was young, but she got sick during my senior year, when my friends and I had her for AP English (many of us taking that class just to have her one more time before leaving), and she died the next year.  And that day was ten years ago today, though it was late when she died and I would not find out until ten years ago tomorrow.

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Today I taught class and planned some college events and lived life as I normally do.  I got home and saw the memorial on facebook, and that's when I remembered.  Then people started posting stories.  Memories.  And it hit me: she had written a poem for my class, and likely she did it for every class, but we were the last ones, the last ones to have her for the full year.  I have carried this poem with me always, because its truths become more self-evident with each step towards what I guess is adulthood, or, maybe more accurately, life.

I went to the spare closet, where I keep four liquor boxes full of paper-stuff.  This paper-stuff has traveled with me through the decade, accumulating with each new location.  Every new zip code and mailing address I'll tell myself, "I am going to sort through this."  But I never do.  So, I had to dump it on the floor, knowing that the poem was somewhere, because I had typed it up to tape up in my first office, the first moment of the first day of the first year that I had to teach.  I typed it painstakingly, making sure to keep the same punctuation and format, and proofing to make sure I typed "swift," which I rarely wrote, and not "shift" or worse, "shit."  I typed the poem and carried it with me because she taught us all so much and even if I didn't want to teach, or thought I didn't want to teach before I actually had to do it, I still wanted to be just like her.  It was a good reminder.

So I unearthed the paper-stuff and with each new layer, there was more to remember.  More than just her.  People found in clippings I'd kept.  These others had left too, checked out early either by their own choice or something else's.  Papers I'd written as a college student, a graduate student, a teacher, with handwritten comments left by individuals I respected.  Pictures of friends who had long since left, or whom I'd long since left.  Boxes of this.  All part of a past I'd collected for over ten years, and still don't know what to do with.

Why hang on to it, why cart it around from state to state?  It should all be recycled, it should be burned, it should be thrown away.  I know this.  Papers are not people.  Pictures are not memories.  But eventually they are a physical representation of who you are.  With each new face, I saw who I'd become since knowing them, since last seeing them.  Who I am still becoming.  Who I still was. 

So it remains a reminder, for now.  Not a shrine.

"Armed and Dangerous"'

May 7, 2001

By: Sherry Godsey

I have given all that was mine to give-

Knowledge 

Love,

An example of courage, and

Swift kicks in the shorts.

You are not ready for the real world...

(I know this, for no one ever is).

You are as ready as you will ever be, armed with your-

Faith,

Resolve,

Thirst for independence, and

An education fit for queens.

You are dangerous now,

Ready to take on the universe.

Try to remember the universe is also ready to take YOU on, with-

Lions, Tigers and Lovers,

More knowledge than will fit in your brains,

Sleepless, worry-filled nights, and

Demands that will scare you awake.

Remember.

Remember.

Remember.

It is all you really have to sustain you.

Mixed Metaphor Jamboree: What I think about when I think about writing

I couldn't run for shit five years ago.  Despite always being active and relatively in shape, I could not run.

That sounds weird, I know.  Running is basically fast walking, and people typically nail that down before they can remember.

But it's more than that, apparently, and if you're thinking about things like distance running, everything matters.  Like how your feet hit the ground and how far apart they are and where your arms and hands are and even how you breathe.  That stuff all matters.  The little stuff you never notice, it determines whether you'll get it or not.

Which is why it took me about four years to get it somewhere near "right."  And I only know it must be right - right for me, maybe - because I can do it regularly and I don't hurt after or feel like I'm going to pass out.  This is success.

All this to say, when I think about writing, when I think about teaching writing, I think about running.

Part of the problem of teaching is that we teach things we are good at.  Things we enjoy.  And unless you wind up teaching graduate courses, you will have classes that half of the students do not want to be there.  I've watched colleagues battle this and even thought it myself: they love the content, so why don't the students?

Because writing is like running.  Some people can do it naturally.  Some people can't.  If you can't do something easily, chances are it becomes something you do not care for.  Hell, I took a grade reduction in middle school gym any time we had to run the mile, because I didn't want to deal with the hassle of not being able to do it right (or do it at all).  And again, I wasn't the inactive kid - I was good at sprinting and biking and swimming and sports.  I just couldn't run.

But running is like writing, and the idea is that you have to start small and apply it.  You don't run a mile, you walk for five minutes and jog for one minute.  Then repeat.  Then repeat again the next day.  And you don't write a full essay, you write a paragraph.  Then repeat.  And repeat again the next day.

The trick is, you have to actually do it, because maybe half of these skills is mental but that's not the half that actively produces anything.  It's just the inspiration and motivation.  We're all authors in our heads, but the "real authors" put words on paper and show it to people.  That's a big step, but you gotta walk for five minutes before you can jog for five.

And those of us with the pen on the other side of the table?  We're the ones with the stopwatch, maybe not keeping time at first , just acknowledging the success of another lap as the runner passes by.  Because writing is like running: it gets easier with practice, but you gotta get your feet on the ground.