July 15: "Just as the Calendar Began to Say Summer," Important Lessons, Calumet

Mary Oliver on things she didn't learn in school . . . 

Just as the Calendar Began to Say Summer

by:  Mary Oliver

I went out of the schoolhouse fast

and through the gardens and to the woods,

and spent all summer forgetting what I'd been taught--

two times two, and diligence, and so forth,

how to be modest and useful, and how to succeed and so forth,

machines and oil and plastic and money and so forth.

By fall I had healed somewhat, but was summoned back

to the chalky rooms and the desks, to sit and remember

the way the river kept rolling its pebbles,

the way the wild wrens sang though they hadn't a penny in the

     bank,

the way the flowers were dressed in nothing but light.

Mary Oliver didn't learn the most important lessons of her life from a textbook or in a classroom.  Instead, she listened to the rivers and wrens.  Observed blooming flowers.  Those were her greatest teachers.  Sure, you can learn about iambic pentameter and metaphor in a traditional educational setting.  However, studying prosody and figurative language is not the same as whispering a Shakespearean sonnet in your love's ear in the dark.

It's a matter of experience.  You can read every manual available about flying an airplane, but that won't make you a pilot.  Yes, education is wonderful and important.  I've been a college professor for close to 30 years now, so obviously I value classroom learning.  However, everybody doesn't learn in the same way.  I've had students who thrive in a traditional classroom setting and students who struggle and, oftentimes, fail.  Because their brains just aren't wired for learning like that.

I'm still in Calumet tonight.  I just finished performing in a radio variety show, and now I am back at the hotel, dead tired.  There's not a whole lot of wisdom in my head right now.  I sort of feel like I used to feel at the end of a school year or semester of college:  completely and totally devoid of brain power.  I've taken my final exams, and now the switch in my head has flipped to "off."

And that's okay.  I don't have to tap into my creative spirit until tomorrow evening, when I'm leading a poetry workshop.  Even then, I may write complete and total shit.  And that's okay, too.  Summer is in full swing.  The trip home from Calumet tomorrow morning will be green and beautiful.  Pretty soon, wild carrot will be blooming in the ditches and culverts along the highway, filling the air with lace.  July lessons.

School is always in session for me.  I don't remember the last time I had more than a couple days of complete and total break, unplugged from the university and the library and all my other obligations.  There are no rivers rolling their pebbles or wild wrens singing.  No flowers dressed only in light.  My life is not a Mary Oliver classroom.

Saint Marty is now going to collapse for a few hours before rejoining the living world.