After Time Away

I have been away from my blog for ten days. By now I imagine I have no readers for “blog world” depends entirely on daily writing and links and RSS feeds and some kind of cyber buzz that I confess to not understanding. But I’m back after a sojourn teaching creative writing at Pacific University’s low residency MFA program where, along with an excellent faculty and terrific students I heard talks about writing and literary readings in a seaside hotel while a relentless rain, a week long rain beat at the windows like some “Weather Golem” and in turn we were all grateful for the readings and talks. (By the way, the “Weather Golem” is fascinated by the small windows of seaside hotels and he pokes at them like a child popping the frosting on tarts.)

Now that I am back home I feel the faint stirrings of optimism that come from knowing that people still long to write. They write not merely to entertain others (though there’s nothing wrong with that) but also to make sense of our time and this deliberative process is the the most hopeful thing in the world for as Whitman said of his own book, “who touches this touches a man”–we are bonding by means of our sometimes ungainly or remarkably lovely efforts to explain this ambiguous world and these improbable bodies.

Meantime I’ve noticed over the past few days and perhaps owing to my own fatigue that I am happiest when I have a good book to read and a warm dog by my side. This means that in the impure and disorderly universe I have a zealous purpose which is to read of the impure and disorderly universe. I may never get over this. No one who writes will ever get over this. The weather in Iowa is cold and the sidewalks are glazed with ice and fog has settled over the snowy hills. But there are books and disorderly words and more books to hold them. I refuse to believe that books are leaving our lives.

I do believe in the Weather Golem. He has a book under his tongue. He pokes at the windows without art.

S.K.    

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto