Friday 3 pm marked the start of Autumn vacation, which I hope will give me a much needed chance to catch up with my writing. I know a lot of us have jobs that, in part because we love them, spill over into our private hours—where our writing happens. After a year of what they call “active” cancer treatment, and the chronic pain in my joints that will accompany every day of the next 7 years, the value of those private hours is now more immediate than theoretical. Life isn’t more uncertain that it was, but I’m much more aware now of its uncertainties.
I see that this year’s students don’t have any idea who many of the celebrities of the past were. I’ve been watching this gradually happen over the years. Expecting it to happen. Lady Gaga is already an “old” singer to them. It’s fascinating how few know even who Marilyn Monroe was. She’s in their heads—what the Norwegian’s call silent knowledge—the way we are vaguely aware of the different kinds of flora we pass by when we’re hiking. “Oh, yeah, that. I’ve seen it. I can’t remember what it’s called.”
We, meaning myself and the students, and they, meaning the students among themselves, struggle to find common cultural footholds. Maybe we see only what the algorithm dumps into our feeds. While the passive consumption isn’t that different from the narrow media we had 30 years ago, it wasn’t personalised in a way that secludes us in our own cultural bubbles. Then again, we share. We forward. We say, look at this, it will make you laugh.
I hope it will make you laugh.
I think I gave up on the idea of being famous a very long time ago. These days I’m grateful for that. Grateful for the previous failures that didn’t catapult me into Susan Sontag’s living room (as was vaguely promised to me so long ago—when I was “promising”). It all fades away, so I am glad I am trying to write in the present, not for posterity. I have little stories. But stories so deep that they will sink into the mud like stones under boots, and become a tiny part of the earth itself.
I’m amused by the arbitrary artefacts of humanity. Ancient Greece thrived for over a thousand years. And we have but 44 plays, written by a handful of men all living in the same few decades. Shakespeare, who is a marketing ploy (among other things). What of Fletcher, Marlowe, Jonson? My students know who Shakespeare is. But not Roswitha, not Aphra Behn. And any and all of it is nothing but artefacts, the stuff that dreams are made on, but not the dreams, not the dreamers. I believe I’ve lost all sense of reverence, and have found an enormous peace in doing so.
Today Egil and I walked with the hiking group. Two hours up past the tree-line, then over along the sheepback and the mires. Another two hours down, trying not to slip on the black lichen. I kept an eye out for lemmings, but didn’t see anything moving except the sheep. No eagles this weekend. No wasps. No insects at all.
There was only us, the sheep, the sedges, the bog cotton, and the spots of red lichen that sometimes look like blood.
I like walking with groups, but prefer to walk just the two of us. I want to go slowly, watching the wind pushing the heather. I want to take it all in.
Coming to the end of the trail, a gentler slope toward the parking lot, I had to step carefully to avoid a dead mountain pipit on the ground. I think I made a small gasp, or sigh of some sort because the woman next to me asked what it was and looked around. She’d nearly stepped on it. This perfect, recently dead bird.
I always see dead animals on hikes. Mostly mice. This time a bird. I should expect it, right? Because I look. And I would much rather look than not.
If today’s hike was any indication, all the wasps queens are hibernating now. I wonder if they dream at all. Rehearsing their nest-building. Going over and over it, in images, in smells, or in whatever wasps may have for words to organize their experiences.
Thank you for taking the time to read or listen. I’ll be back later this week with an audio poem. And again next Sunday with another Process Journal Entry.
Until then, have a great week!
Warmly,
And hoping you will laugh:
Acts of a Recovering Drama Queen
Writing against Melodrama by Engaging with the Natural World
Give some love. It only takes a little ❤️.
Realizing that everything passes (or almost) and swiftly was liberating for me.
Beautiful writing x