2009-08-27 - 11:21 a.m.
Summer is almost gone and so I'll need to put together a syllabus to try and trick this new batch into thinking I know what I'm talking about. It's the same, for me, every time. First I remember about the class and then a quick shock as I realize that I'll need to have a pretty decent plan. Then, done with the shock, I tell myself: you've done this before and you're not terrible at it.
So, calendar down from the wall, I scratch a brief plan on a piece of paper, get the readings together for each week, and then stand over the abyss as I realize that, for each week, the options really are limitless. People have been writing first-person stuff in English for a long time and over that time, some amount of it has turned out to be pretty good. So you try to match up whatever it is you're trying to teach that week with one or two of these shorter pieces, hoping that you can remember to point out that this particular writer did this particular skill here and can you all see how that was done? I've never really learned how to do proper lectures and so sometimes I fear that if it weren't for the frantic, last-minute scribblings on their stories and the informal, once-a-week off-the-cuff lessons, I'm not really doing all that much.
This is not about writing, at all, but instead about art. I am not an artist but if I could, I'd do a series of paintings (or maybe just one painting) of man-made futuristic-looking contraptions out in the middle of a completely natural setting. A space needle poking out of a copse of redwoods, or a very civilized and refined, say, chair, in the desert. Art in the woods, basically, and I've been thinking about this a lot. I like that implied tension: How'd it get there? Who takes care of it? What's it used for? And, mainly, this one: Does anybody but me know about this? It pokes at that child-like sense of wonder you get when you're 12 and walking through the woods and find a rusted-up car, or some other kid's treehouse, or now, in the city, when you walk down Eager Street or Howard Street and see a little gallery or coffee shop, its entrance below street level, and you see its little light burning and wonder if anyone at all is onto the scent like you're onto the scent? And you hope, for a moment, that no one is.
1 comments so far
