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Pages from Patricia’s
Journal
February 12, 2002
Home . . . I love the idea of
home. I built a whole course around that theme one year: what home is, what
makes home matter, what we feel when we’re not at home. In my own life, the
“idea” of home has become more real. I spent so much of my life moving, and
even when I was settled in an area – a convent or parish for a period of
time, I always felt somewhat unsettled. And the convents where I lived – I
couldn’t really make them my “home”; one simply had to move into a décor
(usually bad) – bland, neutral, colorless so as not to offend anyone’s
sensibilities. Lots of beige and white. Maybe this is why home is so
important to me now – and color. I’ve been relishing my decisions about hues
and tones in the new addition – vibrant or muted – color!
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Above: Dr. Patricia Dwyer (left) with
student
Anna Hughes (photo by Linda Tate)
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I walked around Shepherdstown tonight recalling my job
interview here. That was not my first visit to Shepherdstown, but certainly
the one that changed my life. Interview with Linda and Betty, break at
what is now the Blue Moon, teaching a class on, of all things, Gulliver’s
Travels. Walking around this very familiar little town tonight. I am
aware of how different it is now eight years later. Memories fill every
space I see – the shops where I meander, the little house on Princess
Street where nieces and nephews have roamed, the first apartment I lived
in, the building where I teach, the street where
I have my wonderful home.
What
does a sense of home do for a writer? Why is place important? I remember
going to Brazil and Nova Scotia to Elizabeth Bishop conferences and
seeing the terrain in both of these countries. I remember thinking . . .
that’s why Bishop wrote about this type of house, or those little cobbled
streets, these steep hills or those window sills. I saw it as she may
have seen it – I felt the chill or noticed the “slant of light.”
Does
home make one feel more settled? And then really able to notice? Or is
there the danger of Not seeing because the place is so familiar? There is
something about home and settledness that is freeing at the same time. It
makes for a settledness inside.
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February 20, 2002 – in response to class discussion on
Whitman
All
are one: all people, all regions, all life.
All
are different: all people, all regions, all
life.
Whitman
notices! What makes us one and different at once (reminds me of
Elizabeth Bishop’s “In the Waiting Room”). He screams out the “yawp” of
individuality, yet he speaks of such a common experience. All the parts
of life that attract and excite us: love, voice, sex, democracy,
divinity. And all the parts of of life that we try to cover over, erase,
hide – the outsiders, the rejected. All of this is part of Whitman’s
divine energy. “I am divine inside and out.” Do I believe that? Do I see
that in myself? In others? I would love to have Whitman’s energy – his
courage – to be as free as he seemed to be. To be OUT THERE! To take all
the confinements, the internal checks, the norms that society deems
important and just blow them to bits.
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March 20, 2002
Emily . . . what
a thrill to be in your home today. To imagine you in your room, at your
desk, looking out the window at your garden in Amherst. It snowed here
today and we could hardly find the path to “Evergreen,” where I imagine
you also gazed often. Your relationship with Susan, the excitement you
must have felt to have her so close. One of the highlights of the day
was standing at your grave with our group while the snow was coming
down HARD, and reciting the poem that has always so inspired me . . .
“After great pain a formal feeling comes.” I remember studying that
poem in high school with Sister Helen Anthony. What a teacher she was –
really made your words come alive for me. What fascinated me about this
poem was that you so “got” that feeling of numbness, the shock, the
mechanical way one proceeds after a loss. As I look back at myself now,
I don’t really think I, myself, really got that feeling as a junior in
high school. At that point, my life had been relatively undramatic. But
now that I’ve lost a parent and close friends, I know all the more how,
you Emily, so clearly articulated grief in such few words.
I decided to teach English because of this poem,
Emily – so thank you. I love my job that gives me the chance to teach
and learn about literature with the students I meet. Gives me a way to
talk about values that I believe in – that are radical and inspiring. I
have you to thanks in large part for that Emily. It was good to be in
your home today. I felt your spirit – and I’ll try to remember that
feeling each time I teach your words – after great pain. . . .
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April 15, 2002
A Reponse to Wendell
Berry’s “An Entrance to the Woods”
“It is only beyond this lonesomeness for the places
I have come from that I can reach the vital reality of a place such as
this. Turning toward this place, I confront a presence that none of
my schooling and none of my usual assumptions have prepared for me:
the wilderness, most unknowable and mostly alien, that is the
universe. Perhaps the most difficult labor for my species is to
accept its limits, its weakness and ignorance. But here I am. This
wild place where I have camp lies within an enormous cone widening
from the center of the earth out across the universe, nearly all of
it a mysterious wilderness in which the power and the knowledge of
men count for nothing.”
Berry raises so many issues here that remind me of
our Transcendental writers. Of course, Emerson’s ideas about
rejecting conventional education and knowledge in favor of the
intuitive – those insights we don’t learn from books or in a library.
And then there is Berry’s encounter with “the wild” that makes me
think of Thoreau’s “A Winter’s Walk” – the wild as exploration of the
west that we don’t know rather than east we do, choosing the
mysterious over the conventional. But something Berry brings up that
I don’t sense in these other writers is the uneasiness one feels with
the unfamiliar – a certain lonesomeness one experiences for what one
knows. He refers to the garden, his house, the
woods near his home – and he names his void a “loneliness” that one
must feel and move through in order to really understand that
mysterious place that is wilderness.
I’ve written before in my journal about wanting to
enter that wild zone of Whitman and Dickinson and Thoreau. But does
loving and longing for the familiar keep one from getting there? Keep
one (me!) complacent? Dickinson certainly stayed in familiar
surroundings yet her work was so on the edge. So how can that
translate in my life? Perhaps the wilderness can be a state of mind
as well? That one needs to be able to be open to unfamiliar ideas, to
acquire a willingness to push ideas to the edge. I remember in
meditation I have tried to acquire that ability to keep emotions,
viewpoints in balance. (Not always successfully.) Berry writes later
in this work about the need for simplicity – leaving behind the
“baggage” and coming to the woods “naked.” Perhaps that’s one way to
move into that realm of the unfamiliar – let go of all the “things”
(ideas and materials) that I cling to so tightly and let the
possibility of new ideas and fewer things enter my world. But what
about the passion one feels for one’s ideas (like mine!). Is it right
to be “disinterested”? Maybe I should start with simply taking a walk
in an unfamiliar place – see how it feels – really BE THERE. I was
going to try to bike the C & O canal last year – maybe that would be a venture to try this summer. It’s
not exactly the experience that Berry describes, but perhaps would
give me a taste of the wilderness he experiences – but it’s a step in
the direction of “wild.”
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May 1, 2002
A Response to “Moose” by Trudy Ditmar
“Moose can be difficult. You try to give them a
wide berth. But at the same time, they are unpredictable – there’s
no standard m.o. with a moose. Despite all the bar and café
stories, and despite those few times when I felt I was about to be
grist for one of those stories myself, in the gamut of moose ways
the moments of bluster are far less rule than exception, and almost
all my encounters with moose have been very different from the
stories they depict. They’ll surprise you by what they do, but what
they won’t do can surprise you more. A moose is enigmatic. A
moose is, at times, a bottomless thing.”
Last year was my year of the moose. I say that
because I was with friends on New Year’s Day (2001) and we each
picked an animal card that described the spiritual and psychic
benefits and pitfall the animal each chose. Mine was the moose. I
was thrilled. The moose was described as the most unusual of animal
totems. She is a feminine force that symbolizes death and resurrection.
(Is this because she can go underwater for great lengths of time?
Could that be right?) The moose appears gawky and uncoordinated,
but in fact is quite strong and graceful. She is solitary and,
according to the card, can teach the ability to move from the outer
world to the inner world.
The moose also reminds me so much of Elizabeth
Bishop – that great poem of hers called “The Moose.” A female
presence that is wonderful and otherworldly – homely, surprising
those in the traveling bus with her dramatic entry onto the
macadam. Bishop’s wonderful line in that poem – “‘Yes . . .’ that
peculiar / affirmative. ‘Yes . . .’ / half groan, half acceptance /
that means ‘Life’s like that / We know it (also death).’”
After that New Year’s Day I began to see moose everywhere.
Signs on “Moose” halls, pictures in magazines. I went to Canada
that summer and saw moose on t-shirts, in souvenir shops, on bumper
stickers. I even bought a picture of a moose that is somewhere in
my attic at the moment. It wasn’t until this winter that I sensed
the presence of the moose in my inner world.
Out of my home for seven months, health issues in
my family, job and personal issues that have surfaced – I counted
on my moose for some comfort or inspiration – or something.
I have to say, as spring rolls around, I sense a
feeling of resurrection after many darker days. This class and the
people in it have been so wonderful – I treasure this time. I’m back home again, my mother is on the mend – I’m
feeling strong, having gone through so many upheavals. And then I
read Trudy Dittmar’s “Moose.” I loved her detail – especially about
watching the moose try to get out of the mud. They are bottomless
creatures – what does that mean? To me their mystery, their
enigmatic nature, keeps you wondering about the possibilities.
Maybe that’s what I’m wondering about myself at the moment. I’ve
felt several small “deaths” – but now the space that has been
opened wide seems less empty – seems more like potential. It’s spring – I’m grateful. And I want to see a
real moose in the worst way. Maybe in Vermont this summer. Maybe
never. But the possibility keeps things exciting.
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