Wednesday, July 13, 2016:Paradise

Wednesday, July 13, 2016: Paradise

Another beautiful day in paradise. We had a great group meditation and a good breakfast. All the classes switch times midweek. Ours, for example met in afternoons on Sunday and Monday, skipped Tuesday, and now will meet in the mornings on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Janice Fuller is a master teacher who empowers and validates each of us while imparting pieces of her vast knowledge about poetry. I hope to imitate some of her teaching techniques when I get back into the classroom.

The tomatoes—oh, the tomatoes! Several meals this week have included big, red juicy sliced tomatoes. They are obviously garden fresh, and their flavor is rich and sweet.
The compliments about my reading have continued to come in. My reaction has been interesting. My ego is lapping them up and making me think I am a terrific writer. On the other hand, my inner critic is dismissing all the kind words, thinking, oh they are just being nice and trying to make me feel good. I hope I can come to rest somewhere in the middle.

In the evening, we had more student readings in the auditorium. We really have some very talented writers here. Later that night I sat with a small group in the amphitheater, watching the stars and talking. Later still, I sat in and listened while Luke, Will, Debbie, and Jack played guitars and sang into the wee hours.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016: Free day

Tuesday, July 12, 2016: Free day

Tuesday morning after breakfast I continued my Buddhist-Christian interfaith dialog with Emily from Asheville. We sat on the swing outside the dining hall and talked for about an hour. We talked about David Steindl-Rast. Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton, Pema Chodron, our own callings, and poetry. It seemed an ideal fulfillment of I.D. Blumenthal’s vision for Wildacres as a place for interfaith dialog.

* * *

I spent some time before lunch doing some freewriting. I just mused about what is important to me. It was great to just let it flow. After lunch I had a nice long walk with a writer named Kathy from Boca Raton, Florida. Then I sat on my porch looking at the mountain and ended up meditating for a long time. Wild acres had a temporary interruption in the water system for the whole retreat center, but somehow they still managed to serve a delicious turkey dinner. In the evening, we had the first of two nights of formal student readings. I signed up to read tonight, and as I write this, I am a little nervous, even though it is a warm and receptive audience.

* * *

And, of course, the readings went beautifully, there were many excellent pieces. People were extremely kind and complimentary about my piece. My favorite was by Patrice, and African-American woman who wrote about saying goodbye to her African-born husband, as he left Wildacres a week before she did. She made the racial situation in America very personal. It was powerful.

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, July 12,2016: Twists and turns

Tuesday, July 12, 2016: Twists and turns.

The other day, when I was in the nearby village of Little Switzerland, I shot this picture of an asphalt diamondback rattlesnake in the parking lot of the Little Switzerland Café. It is located at the top of a famous motorcycle ride up the mountain from Marion to Little Switzerland, Route 226A. I probably won't take the time to ride the rattlesnake this trip, but I have certainly had my fill of similar winding roads.

Tuesday morning after breakfast I continued my Buddhist-Christian interfaith dialog with Emily from Asheville. We sat on the swing outside the dining hall and talked for about an hour. We talked about David Steindl-Rast. Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton, Pema Chodron, our own callings, and poetry. It seemed an ideal fulfillment of I.D. Blumenthal’s vision for Wildacres as a place for interfaith dialog.

Monday, July 11: Good Vibrations

 Monday, July 11, 2016: Good vibrations

Morning meditation was excellent today. We had about eight people sitting together. One of them is a wonderful woman who practices contemplative prayer and is “unapologetically Christian.” At breakfast we had a delightful talk about the connections between Buddhist and Christian practice. 
Sitting on this mountaintop paradise, I am reminded of how beautiful the world is. I hope I can bring that sense of joy with me when I return to the real world.

Freddy, Jack, Mike, and Luke jamming Monday afternoon.

We had another excellent poetry class, and after that, a group of musicians gathered in a meeting room down the hall. There was Jack and Mike and Freddy and Tim and Luke.  They alternated leading songs, and they were very good.

In the evening, five more faculty members presented readings. I was particularly impressed by a hilarious short story by Tommy Hayes, who teaches at UNC Asheville. Apparently there was a great party that went on until midnight, but I went back to the guest house and went to bed early.

Sunday, July 10, 2016: An American Song

Sunday, July 10, 2016 Sunday morning

Here is the poem I wrote yesterday.

 

 

An American Song

 

Now they’re shooting cops in the street.

It’s got to have been getting worse

I don’t remember this when I was young.

Yes, they shot JFK, but that was bizarre.

We just didn’t have such violence over here.

Except on TV, where the cowboys shot the Indians

And the white hats shot the black hats.

Of course, there have always been shootings

From the Boston Massacre to Wounded Knee.

And Gettysburg and Antietam:

Mass American shootings.

Assassinations in the ’60s were more one-one:

Malcolm X and Medgar Evers,

Martin Luther King, and RFK,

Some guy in a tower in Texas shot a lot of people,

But it was an anomaly, wasn’t it?

We don’t really act like that.

Then the Kent State shootings,

Four Dead in Ohio.

And Jackson State,

where the victims were black.

And it was cops killing students.

Then some nut shot 22 people in a McDonalds.

You want fries with your mass murder?

Over 10 billion served.

There was Columbine in ’99,

students killing other students.

Moments of silence,

our thoughts and our prayers

 

Meanwhile, in the cities,

cops are quietly killing black men

Pulled over for “driving while black.”

Nobody pays much attention;

black lives don’t matter.

Then Virginia Tech scares everyone to death;

The freaky image on the Facebook page.

How many likes for mowing down classmates

Then it seemed to be everywhere.

Breaking news; broken lives.

Gabby Giffords seemed so nice.

Sandy Hook made it all the worse:

Little children shot in school.

Now we teach them to shelter in place

in the safe zone away from the windows.

Like duck and cover drills in the Cold War.

Then more black men are killed by white cops:

What’s going in here?

Michael Brown and Eric Garner,

Walter Scott and Freddy Gray, and …

 

Oh my God, what’s happening now?

They’re shooting folks in a famous black church.

More black lives; what’s the matter?

How can you shoot people when they are praying?

Then Orlando took us over the top.

Fifty Pulses ceasing to beat

How can you kill people while they are dancing?

Blood spills all over their rainbow flag.

When is it terrorism? When is it a hate crime?

When is enough enough?

When is it just plain crazy?

When is it just the norm?

Films about Rambo, superheroes and super-killers

First-person shooter video games

Then these videos start going viral

More white cops killing more black men

It’s on video again and again.

Outrage explodes into marches

Demonstrations explode into gunfire

A lone sniper mows down five cops

who were trying to keep the peace.

Now that they’re killing cops in the streets,

Where do we go from here?

 

--James W. Kershner, Wildacres, July 1016

 

 



The inspiring view from the Guest House at Wildacres.

 

Sunday morning was terrific. We had tem people at meditation—double our previous level. At breakfast I sat beside Jack McGregor, who asked me all about my motorcycle trip. Jack is a longtime Wildacres regular, but this was my first extended conversation with him. What a nice guy!

After breakfast I went to the lodge, where there is a limited Internet connection, and updated my blog. I also took the time to reread the poems we will be discussing in class this afternoon.

The afternoon poetry class led by Janice Fuller was stimulating. We talked about our favorite poems by other poets and why we liked them, and then we critiques one poem by each student in the class. Mostly we identified those special passages when the phrases sing or shine with beauty. I got some good feedback on my poem about phragmites. It is more universal than I thought.

 

 

 

Saturday, July 9, 1016: Changeover Day

 

Saturday, July 9, 2016: Changeover Day:

Today was the end of the Wildacres Writers’ Retreat and the beginning of the Wildacres Writers Workshop. They ask that we vacate our rooms so that they can be cleaned. So I went to Little Switzerland, the quaint little village with the great bookstore and café. After I finished a great chai tea latte at Beans and Books, I saw that the cable connecting my cell phone to the battery on my motorcycle was not functioning properly. That’s not a problem while I am at Wildacres. I can just plug the phone in beside my bed. But I may be camping on the way home, so I rode the 10 to 12 miles into Wal-Mart to get a new charger cable. Returning to Wildacres, I had to endure the mile or so of rough gravel road. That short stretch has been the least favorite part of the trip for me. The road is so rutted that I feel I’m going to drop the bike at any minute.

After dinner, we had an orientation meeting with the new larger group. About 60 new writers and six instructors joined us, so there are now more than 100 of us for the workshop week. We also had a first, brief meeting of the classes. I am looking forward to the class. The first regular class is Sunday afternoon.

In the afternoon, I wrote a poem. It is a reaction to this week’s news, so I am sure it is a little raw. Still, I like it. I’ll see how I feel in the morning.

Friday, July 8,2016: Finished MyBook

 Friday, July 8, 2016 Finished My Book

After meditation and breakfast, I went straight back to my writing desk in the Guest House, and finished what I set out to do. There wasn’t all that much writing. I had already finished writing the book four years ago, when I first came to Wildacres. Since then I had tried to rewrite it twice. This week, my goal was to assemble all the parts beck into a coherent format. I think I have done that. By lunchtime today I had completed one final read-through, and then I made a copy, saved it to my hard-drive and to a thumb drive memory stick, and I also emailed a copy to myself.

After lunch, I took a pleasant walk around the Mountaintop Trail with Katie and then returned to finish my homework for next week’s poetry class. We have to critique six poems from each of our nine classmates. I am having a lot of trouble figuring out what to say about one of my classmate’s poetry .Celisa’s poems are so beautiful, so perfect, so exquisite that I am reduced to writing banal comments like ”Wow!” Everyone’s work is good, but hers is so exceptional that I just feel inadequate to critique it.

I also took time to take a shower and do some laundry, which always makes me feel better. I wish a poem would come to me, but it ain’t happening!

After dinner, Will broke out his guitar and did a few songs. He is very talented and I enjoyed the music. It reminds me of days in the '60s, hanging out with folksingers.