Tilting the Trajectory

I awoke this morning to the news that Jean Valentine has died, and I'm reading various tributes to her.  I feel the same way that I felt when Marvin Bell died recently.  I had an inkling of both of them as people who were kind and opened poetry doors for students, but I hadn't read much of their work.  More names to add to the list.  Likewise the writer Barry Lopez--such losses for the writing world.

When I saw that Jean Valentine was born in 1934, my first thought was, well, at least she had a nice, long life.  Then I realized, as I often do, that my parents were born in 1938 and 1939, and I don't think of them as ready for death, as already having had a nice, long life--although they have.  

And thoughts of my own mortality are never far away.  Let me think about my own long life that grows ever shorter.  Let me think of my writing--I've been feeling that I've been somewhat neglectful.

I turned in grades on December 15, and I was full of ideas about how to use the time.  It's one of the few times in an academic year when I have more than a week off.  Sure, I need to do the prep work for spring term--choosing due dates and entering them into several places in the course shell.  But that still left lots of time.

Now I have one week left, and I'm trying not to fall into the spiral of self-recrimination about all I haven't done.  Instead of listing all the stuff around the house that got done (cooking, washing windows, hanging lights, sorting, sorting, sorting), let me focus on the writing that I have done, the insights that I have had:

--When I was looking through my blog to find my first mention of the new virus (late January, not December) that would upend our lives, I saw mention of a poem I wrote about Noah's wife going to work and having a boss that was focused on ARC (average registered credit).  This morning, I pulled that legal pad out of a pile.  I thought that I hadn't written much poetry this past year.  But that's not true.  How much of it is publishable?  These days, I'm less concerned with that question and more concerned with the practice of it.

--I have done some poetry writing--mostly shorter, and then a start at my menopausal Jesus poem.  There's still time for a poem or two.  And time to type some work into the computer.

--Let me also remember that the job at the Ft. Lauderdale campus of my school was posted, which means I've spent some time composing a cover letter and thinking about the application.  My job that I have now will be transitioning into a campus director position when the sale of my school is finalized, but my campus will be closing.  My counterpart at the Ft. Lauderdale campus has moved on, so her position is now available.  It's clear to me that if I want to stay with this school, I need to apply for that job.

--I had thought I might return to my apocalyptic novel.  I wrote the first 70 pages in a white hot heat in summer of 2019, and then I lost steam.  I returned to it in January of 2020, and then the virus happened, and I wondered if my novel was doomed--part of the apocalypse in my novel is political, part is a virulent flu.  

But as the virus has progressed, I've figured out how to change the novel to incorporate this virus and the next virus.  So I decided to read the novel again, to see if I was remembering it correctly.  I'm happy to report that it's got potential.

And if I'm being honest, I also stopped writing because I wasn't sure what happens next.  I've got my main character reunited with a grad school friend who is now working as part of the police force of the repressive government--what now?

It's time to find out.  Next semester I have a reduced teaching load because enrollment is down at Broward College and at least one of my classes has been reassigned.  I'm expecting to lose another.  Let me claim this time for writing.