more contemplative writing for my professor

 

2010

I remember conflict between me and other students, because of how I approached the world then. I remember a young woman named Brittany who was a Quaker who argued with me a lot. I remember arguing with Adam even though I wanted to be his friend, both of their friends.

Experiences that stand out

Folding a paper crane at Snug Hollow bed and breakfast

How everyone interacted in that moment

How I felt separate from others then especially but still was somehow glad and grateful for the experience.

Walking on the snow down to the sport fields on day one

Coming back and making a haiku

Feeling emboldened because you kept encouraging my abilities

I felt zero apprehension about whether or not I could do contemplative writing for the first time

I just remembered a guy named Michael Huckstickler. Was he in that class? If so I remember him much more clearly in my peace and justice class. I barely remember him in CW.

I remember a really nice short haired woman whose name I have forgotten. She was from Knoxville. She was very encouraging. She told me if I’m afraid of the end, know there will always be a next chapter.

I remember Rachael from Dominican Republic and how there was a terrible storm affecting her family while we were in Loretto.

So these impressions of people have specific places and memories too. The woman from Knoxville, I remember she saw a deer and Rachael Parker referred to it as God’s Creation. I wasn’t with the others on the walk where they saw the deer, echoing my thing I said earlier about being separate. I was in the gift shop or outside it I think the whole walking time because I didn’t feel like walking much. I am certain it would have been a wonderful walk. I remember the smell of intense because a monk was having his funeral.

I remember different things about writing too, but the major first memory for me now is people. I was living in Beth Curlin’s spare room and I was trying to think up what to write about on the first day. I called my friend Lauren and asked her for her writers opinion, and I think it was around that time that I came up with the word ritual.

What I meant was routine, unless it was a Freudian slip where I was trying to expand my knowledge my using the wrong word.

Basically my first idea was to think about routines, like drinking tea, and routines within the writing process like keeping a notebook of ideas or drafting incredible first lines or having a writing practice of an hour in the morning before anything. I think the last one may have been what I really had in mind.

I wrote a lot back then. Maybe more than I do now but I really am not sure about that. I think it was the same amount, just more compared with peers. There were differences regarding how I wrote between now and then, in terms of how I loved to write on paper if I was in a coffee shop or getting ready for a class or sitting in a lecture before it started. That is the one and only thing I don’t do as much of now. The reason is because I am more social now. So I would talk with my friends and socialize if I was at a concert or even a cafe, and that preempts writing to a point.

But I have a time and place for writing now and I do it abundantly. I write also in a group that I am part of and I write and read regularly in it. We were reading a bell hooks poem just yesterday. My writing group is very interested in African American writers especially poets like Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou. We read a lot of classical poems but mostly we just write and share our writing together.

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