31/50

I had the best experience with my fiction workshop today.

Last night, I read the two stories that would be up for discussion. One story was about a young woman whose father is in the hospital dying of cancer. The other was about a young woman who is living with a group of friends who are deadening themselves with cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, sex, and even school. Both stories were very richly detailed.

So last night, I had a dream that embodied both.

I dreamed about my own father's death at home, from cancer. I dreamed I was much younger than I am now. I returned home from school to find my father out of his bed and lying on the floor. I helped him back into his bed. He immediately turned into a piece of firewood and the bed turned into a smoldering "bed of coals." I thought how the fire was going to purge my father's pain, and, selfishly, my own grief, for I was tired of sickness and waiting for the end. Then I felt guilty and used a poker to separate the wood (my father) from the coals. This dream portrayed the conflict in the student's story, the conflict between loving her father and hating death.

The other story involved a bear. Now, there are erotic overtones in women's stories about bears. In a wonderful book by Marian Engel called Bear, a female character actually has sex with a bear. I thought my student's story also sexually charged. The story was about characters who were all essentially "dead." Spirituall dead. The story involved the narrator's moment of awarness. This moment came through a special interaction (not sex) that she had with the bear.

So the other part of my dream had erotic overtones. But that part of the dream, I will keep to myself!

Anyway, the discussion in class today was a lot of fun. Two strong stories. A great day in workshop.

30/50

Last night on 60 Minutes, Al Gore talked about his disappointment about losing the 2000 presidential race with George Bush. But he also talked about how that disappointment had led him into his new direction as an environmentalist. He said that we grow wise as a result of our disappointments and suffering.

I am reminded of Siddhartha, who was shielded from human suffering but who willingly left the fortress of his home and his imagination in order to experience it. He wanted to understand. He wanted wisdom.

I think that literature can also give us the experience of human suffering. Literature can make us more empathetic, more wise.

Like everyone, I've had many disappointments, and I can truly say that I don't regret them because I've grown as a result of them, not grown into bitterness but into a fuller realization of the human experience.

Today I will talk with two of my classes about the documentary The Bridge. I hope I can do a good job of it.

29/50

Rainy and cold today.

A male and female mallard have been swimming in our little back yard pond. They know it is spring, whether it feels like spring or not.

Animals are smart.

28/50

Friday afternoon, I saw a buzzard in the field beside our house. He was on the ground, holding his wings out, drying them in the sun. He was so cool.

27/50

I had a good day at the university today. The students seemed to be in a good mood. They exchanged stories in the workshop and talked genially with each other. Then we spoke truthfully to each other about revising.

The Native American Literature students had a test and got response papers back. Even these tense happenings did not squelch their apparent good mood. Indeed, many of them wrote essays that had inspired me, and they mowed through the test quickly and efficiently. They are a good class.

In my last two classes (response to literature), I had some serious things to go over. We discussed Ovid's Icarus and Auden's "Musee Des Beaux Arts," and then we watched the first half of The Bridge, a documentary I've discussed here before. I thought it might be a downer for students, but the class seemed to open a lot of them up and I had an outpouring of writings waiting for me in my university Internet inbox by the time I got home. I can see that they are really making connections between all the literature we have read this semester and also connections between the literature and themselves. That always makes for a great day.