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.

July 12: His Own Image, Queen Anne's Lace, Later Summer

He looked about in that very place for his own image; but another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured in through the Porch.  It gave him little surprise, however; for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out in this.

Scrooge is gazing into the future at this point in the story, looking for some new and improved version of himself, a Scrooge 2.0.  He has already resolved to make changes in his life, and he's hoping to see those changes reflected in whatever yet-to-come Scrooge he may glimpse.  Of course, the twist of this stave is that the future Scrooge is dead.  The only glimpse he receives of himself is a corpse, draped in a sheet, stretched out on a bed.  Abandoned, forlorn.

We all hope that future versions of ourselves will look like George Clooney or Susan Sarandon.  Fit, attractive, and ageless.  That's what Scrooge is looking for.  If you live in a small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, this time of later summer is dominated by high school reunions and softball tournaments.  Basically, all these old people get together to relive the glory days of yore.

I avoid class reunions.  I prefer to think of myself as perpetually young.  However, reunions are exercises in trying to identify former classmates and friends who have gained weight, gone grey, and lost hair.  The one class reunion I ever attended, I spent the evening trying to put names and faces together.  I wasn't very successful.  I was like Scrooge, wandering around some Christmas yet to come, trying to find myself and my life.

This time of year makes me a little reflective, if you haven't noticed.  As I was driving home yesterday afternoon, I noticed Queen Anne's Lace sprouting along the highway.  For some reason, Queen Anne's Lace makes me think of getting old.  Perhaps it's because it usually crops up in August, when summer is getting long in the tooth and the yellow of autumn has started appearing.  It could also be that the blossom makes me think of a great aunt who used to create beautiful patterns of tatted lace.  I can still see her pale fingers working the thread like white spiders weaving in a corner.

Whatever the reason, I feel old and tired this morning.  I just want to sit in a field of Wild Carrot and watch the white blooms bob and dance in a July breeze.

That's the future Saint Marty wants to see right now.  Quiet.  Warm.  Lazy.

Care to join me in being a little lazy?