The day I came home to find that my wife had moved out, taking the dog and some furniture with her, began a period of unparalleled grief. Shock, sorrow, guilt, regret, grief. I've looked at my brother's and my father's corpses and not felt such pain. Working through that brought me some clarity and roesolve.

I've committed myself to three women; all three have chosen to leave. One for another man. Another because she was done playing with me. The third because of her own guilt, and mine. They've tried me on, worn me for a while, and moved on.

I'm tired of being discarded.

I don't want to do that to anyone else, either. No revenge. No woman hating.

I live pretty well as a single. I get lonely, (isn't it lovely that "lonely" contains "one"? lovely/lonely/one) but loneliness suits me. I'm good at loneliness. I'm pretty good at grief, too, but loneliness has panache, a certain tinge of piquancy made more acute because it can be remedied. There is no cure for grief, but being resolutely single maintains that lovely tang of unresolved possibility.

Again from my paper journal, written during the poetry writing class a few minutes ago:

He enters grades on the permanent records, with a tally of absences and tardies. He takes the posters off the walls. He stacks the textbooks on shelves, making sure the spines are perfectly parallel. He hears voices in the floors. He pulls files from the cabinet, classnotes, handouts, worksheets. He puts the files in the large waste bin in the hallway outside the room. He turns and says "You don't need me any more" to the empty desks. The floors grow quiet.

From my paper journal, written during poetry writing class yesterday:

Crucifixion

a nail is to wire
as grief is to loneliness:
something has been done
a thing that is has been transformed
into something still itself
yet instrumental
the wire now nail will penetrate
as the loneliness now grief does.

loneliness is an itch we feel
we can ease with a little gentle rubbing,
a little more, there under the arm
above the short ribs, a little more,
and more, until that spot gets raw
but you don't quite want to stop
this is love
and more now you're scratching,
wire helps, stiff wire, wire
that breaks the skin, muscle
contracts, clenches around the wire,
and it slides between ribs, penetrates
the chest, stops where the heart
meets the spine. The heart beats
around it. Each breath catches.
Paralysis ensues.
This is love.

Yesterday was crazy. Classes, a thesis defense, a recital, a reception. May is near.

Saturday's Opera Night was great fun. I love to hear these young people I've been working with for four years show off how their training and practice has turned them into polished musicians.

My aria went fine, too. In fact, it was funny to both hear and see reactions to it. There were many people in the audience who had known me for years--in some cases, all my life--and yet didn't know that I sing. When I walked out of the audience and took my place to perform there were audible noises of surprise. When I finished, the response was, well, enthusiastic. After it all was over there were several people who approached me to express their pleased surprise. Fun.

People have a hard time adjusting to a big voice that can roar a low C being housed in such a, hmm, modest sized body.

In the morning rain I spied a giant tire standing next to my head. It had huge treads, ridges wide as my hand and deep as my thigh. It looked ready to do serious work. It could move a whole lot of dirt in a hurry. I noticed it was connected by an axle to a very large machine that appeared to be of equally serious intent. Earth shaking stuff waiting to happen. The effect was muted as the engine wasn't running.

I left the silent machine with the menacing tire and went to work. Then I saw why the machine wasn't running. All the dirt was in my office.

It's crazy around here with theses and setting up thesis defenses and people finishing papers and projects in order to graduate three weeks from now. Then there are the people who are just now trying to do a semester's work all at once in order to get through the term without blowing their grades. Then there's the usual work.

Then there's rehearsing for tomorrow night's choir concert. Then there is rehearsing for Saturday's Opera Night. Then there's rehearsing nearly every evening for the following weekend's Mozart Requiem.

It's all fun. Maybe not dealing with the overstressed students, but the papers and the classes and seeing good students get master's degrees and honors degrees and publication awards is all rewarding. The rehearsing is a pleasure and so is hearing the other singers and contributing with them.

Good stuff. I'm burning pretty hot this week.

For about twenty years, perhaps longer, but more insistently in the last five, people who know me have been asking me to write a book about teaching. My sister asked me to when I was teaching in Cromwell. My methods students asked me to when I was teaching in Cromwell full time and at the University of Wisconsin-Superior part time. Several made the same request when I taught at Plymouth State in New Hampshire. Many over the years while here at Bemidji State. Two textbook publishers have asked in recent years.

This year Jessie the writerartistteachercoffeedogVinnieIndiacolor lover asked. She's the first to actually offer any useful help in figuring out how to start. In a conversation she drew out of me my own notion of what my teacher role is: letting them in. The teacher's role is to open and to be open.

Suddenly I'm seeing everything through a clear lens--one I carry in my teaching but didn't associate with writing about it.

Earlier this year I had a notion I might spend the summer in Utah learning about singing opera and musical theatre. That apparently hasn't worked out, as I haven't heard anything from the director or the company and there has been plenty of time to do that. Now I'm thinking I'll spend the summer trying to write that book.

My computer crapped.

No light. No sound. No blogs. The horror.

It works now. Blessings on the nice people in the Computer Support office.

As is to be expected at this time of year, my morning so far has meant reading one senior project/honors thesis and two M.A. theses, all three of them creative theses combined with scholarly commentary. Thank heaven they are good. A hundred eighty pages of close reading would really suck if the papers weren't good.

This afternoon I will host a poetry reading by a few students in my Poetry Writing I class. They are presenting at the annual Student Scholarship and Creative Achievement Conference. This is becoming a tradition, as this is the third time my students have formed a "Poetry Corner" presentation. I actually had faculty members ask in the last two weeks if the Poetry Corner was going to happen again this year, because they enjoy it so much.

When I take a break from the theses I wander around the building and over to the student union and notice all the serious looking students dressed up and looking professional, the women proud in short skirts and pretty legs, the men studly in neckties and well-fitted suits. It makes me feel much as I did as a high school teacher when graduation came around, or perhaps some less momentous but still dress-up affair occurred and the students brought their appearance up to the level of the event. It's a kind of appreciation, pride, and affection mix that I don't know how to name.

And as convener I am wearing a gray pinstriped suit, white shirt, red tie. I polished my shoes this morning. I will demonstrate I take their work seriously. One participant, a student in her forties, told me this morning that she is so nervous about the reading coming up that she couldn't sleep last night. She has been a performer/singer/actress since childhood, but giving a reading of her own poetry is giving her the jumping yips.

I know how she feels. The atmosphere is highly charged.

I love it.

Saturday I played the accompaniment to "My Man's Gone Now" from Porgy and Bess. I was calm when we walked out and started and then I got nervous. Strange pattern. I settled down though, and was actually having fun until I noticed my soprano was having memory trouble. She sang one phrase three times. Two of them she was supposed to do, the third is for a chorus, which we didn't have, so the piano does it alone. She kept on though, and then I got so wrapped up in her utterly glorious and enormous sound that I forgot what I was doing and had a memory fart of my own. This was in a particularly loud part where the Steinway and I were making as much noise as possible. I banged away until I found my place again, happily without losing or gaining time, so she could finish properly. I managed to get through both sets of glissando runs without screwing up.

Anyway, I've done it.

I had almost forgotten about piano except to figure out my own parts for singing. Back when I was a high school teacher in Cromwell, MN, the music teacher was such a lousy pianist that he drafted me to do the accompaniments for his students competing in music contests. I played so much that I got pretty good. My biggest was the Haydn Trumpet Concerto, which is much more demanding of the piano than it is the trumpet.

The trumpet or the soprano gets the applause. That's the consolation when the accompanist screws up.

A couple of days ago a voice major here asked me to be her accompanist as she performs for the annual vocal major scholarship competition. The performance is tomorrow.

I haven't played the piano in a performance of any kind since 1987. During most of the years in between I've played only a few times per year.

I'm trying desperately to get the keys back in my fingers.

Yike.

At the reading:

Five of us were to read, each with an eight minute allotment, leaving a moment for an introduction and transition between. After three people had read, there were twelve minutes left. I was fourth. I read for four to five minutes, leaving room for the fifth. The fifth then chose not to read.

I read five short pieces. Three serious: "In January," "The end of March...," and "This morning I noticed a twice-jointed birch tree." Two humorous: "I am a student in the Bemidji Choir" and "I am Peabody." The audience looked serious when I read the serious ones. They laughed when I read the humorous ones. They seemed to enjoy thinking of me in a dress or as a wise dog.

Good enough considering the time available.

The faculty reading is today. This morning I read my "Shawn" piece aloud into a recorder. It takes more time to read than I have. Now I have to re-think my part in the reading.

I am Peabody.

A student, Alexis, hereafter to be known as Sherman, decided that I reminded her of Mr. Peabody from the cartoon featured on the old Rocky and Bullwinkle program. She gave me a necktie, a very busy necktie, of Peabody & Sherman.

And so, I am a dog. A wise dog. Utterly appropriate. How better to epitomize a learned but not very frightening fellow than to make him a wise dog? You might come to him for answers or questions and pat him on the head--gently, of course--at the same time.

It's a near-perfect metaphor. Professor as knowledgeable dog.

Woof.

Critic

Doubting suicide:
is the page improved
when the poem's erased?

Today my methods class went mad.

They went away. I couldn't find them any more. They were laughing so hard and for so long that meaningful work was impossible. At the end a student tried to read her paper aloud but was unable to, as each of her first two sentences provoked such hilarity that any further thinking was, well, unthinkable.

Each time I tried to return us to work another bout of spasming began. By the time we were out of time I feared my head might explode.

I noticed my name in the paper this morning.

I'm one of the creative writing faculty giving a reading on April 5. I knew that but long ago forgot about it. It's an annual event. When I mentioned this to Mom, who was sitting across the table as I read the paper, she suggested that this time I read from my blog, as that has been a new creative effort this year.

I'm borrowing an idea from Loralee Choate here: you half dozen people who read the CrustyProfessor, which piece would you choose for me to present as an oral reading?