Miley on walk in the May of 2010. Just after a nice spring rain.
When I started writing this blog, I had no idea that it would take me places.
I had studied creative writing in undergrad. It was something I always wanted to do, and it wasn’t terribly difficult for my undergrad advisor to allow me to take these classes.
“It would be good for law school” — that was my line.
And he didn’t even try to argue with me.
I was one of his top students. I already had a full semester’s worth of credit before I came to college, so he let me sign up for these classes.
Most of the classes I took were in poetry writing. My first poetry class was taught by the then West Virginia poet laureate, Irene McKinney.
Her classes were of the workshop format and very airy and loose. They were designed to bring creativity out in the students, which can’t really be accomplished in a formal lecture format.
I must admit that I am no poet. My diction demands more freedom than verse can provide.
But one thing that poetry class taught me was how to listen to my own words. Are these words really necessary? Are they really the words you need?
My undergrad education was of a liberal arts type. With the exception of math and science, writing was a major emphasis in every class I took. I bet I wrote at least a thousand words a day during the four years I was at that college.
When I graduated and entered law school in hopes of perhaps becoming the next Clarence Darrow, I put away this kind of writing. In law school, I wrote boring crap that made no sense, using such strict rules of grammar that my sentences had no life to them at all.
From that time on, I was a lifeless writer. I wrote only when I needed to, and when I did write, it was banal and soulless.
And it was this way until I started writing here.
I know that my earlier work has the residue of that leaden prose, and my diction was not as clear as it is now.
But over time, it began to awaken with in me again.
Over the years, I’ve had several muses. My first golden retriever is and always will be a major inspiration for this blog. Dark-colored, lightly built, and modestly feathered, she was a gorgeous animal. Able to run with speed and agility and retrieve just about anything she was sent for, she was everything a golden retriever should be.
Another muse is simple anger. Anger is a major focus of my writing, even though the anger doesn’t drip from every word. I am angered at the absolute stupidity of humans. Dog people in particular. Dog culture has become like the Balkans. Each faction blames the other ones for the problems that are ruining dogs. Each faction has its shibboleths and talking points, and very few people are able to think critically about his or her own faction. It’s always circling the wagons, and it’s never thinking about how to solve the very real problems dogs face, even if it means dropping some of the ideology that holds the faction together.
Nature is a muse unto itself.
I am a creature of the forests. The German romantics always claimed that the Ancient Teutons, their ancestors and mine, were spiritually connected to the forests. Germans were a forest people, who needed to spend time in forests in order thrive.
I must say that am similarly disposed, but whether such a connection to the woods is cultural or inherited from my Germanic ancestors, I cannot say.
But I do know that if I had my way, I’d spend the rest of my life in the woods, perhaps seeing another person only once every couple of days.
This though crossed my mind Saturday, when I spent all day running around without a shirt on. It was so hot that even a thin t-shirt caused me to sweat profusely, so I went shirtless. As walked in the forest alone, I felt strangely pagan or perhaps a bit prehistoric. I somehow connecting back with some ancient human ancestor who once wandered the forests of Europe, hunting wild game and dwelling in caves. As someone of European ancestry, I am partially (though only slightly) Neanderthal.
For that day, I became a wild man, or at least my somewhat overactive imagination turned me into one.
It strangely moving to feel this way. I hadn’t run around without a shirt on since I was young boy. I don’t even take my shirt off at the beach. (I hate swimming in salt water.)
Perhaps I was also taken back to those more innocent days, when the hot summer sun beat down upon my bronzing skin and blond hair and I walked alone in the woods and fields with the family dogs.
Innocent, wild, and free.
Like a beast and not a man.
My writing has been a revelation in a way that I had not realized it ever could be.
You might come here to read what’s on my mind.
I come here to reveal myself to me.
The truth is that I have grown up and have been educated without a good knowledge of who I am.
I know that most people have no idea about their own identities. To a varying degree, all of us must subordinate ourselves to the needs and desires of others. We all want to be loved, accepted, and needed, and in order to have this acceptance, we hide a bit of who are. We start making compromises early on, and by the time we’re in our 20’s, we’ve usually compromised a huge chunk of ourselves.
Very few of us really get to explore who we are and what we’ve lost through our constant compromise.
“What the hell am I?” and “What the fuck am I doing here?” are two questions that can never really be answered. They are as infernal as they are eternal.
Yet I’ve discovered through writing that little bits and pieces of them can be answered.
I see the traces of the truth revealing themselves through the fog.
I grasp at them. I marvel at them.
This is me that I’m seeing for the first time.
And I am at once humbled and a bit terrified.
What sort of being am I revealing to myself?
This is a journey that began with a simple poetry workshop at a liberal arts college in the middle of West Virginia.
The journey has taken me places I’ve never thought were possible.
I continue to hone my craft as I become more aware of who I am.
My prose becomes more artful, more clear, less muddled and rambling.
I am becoming the person I am meant to be.
I just don’t know exactly who that is yet.
Self evaluation clears the track to focus on bigger and better things. Small minds talk about people. Medium minds talk about things. Great minds talk about ideas. Like you got into personal studies due to the love of one specific dog. Issues and old theory filled with myth were so empty of truth.. I wanted a better breeding program for not only the beauty but the health of my choosen breed companion. This goal has driven me to grow iknowledge and ways that I even surprise mysefl. Warm Regards –Love Laugh and Keep Learning
Amazing the wonderful vistas writing opens to us. Every word seems to reveal something new – about ourselves, about others, about the world around us. I really apreciate your willingness to share your musings; I find them inspirational. And countrymae, I appreciate the Eleanor Roosevelt quote – I’ve had it on my Facebook page for years.
California we hear too much of blaming someone else or something else for our problems in a socially deterioating society. We all have moments when the frustrations of ignorance which hits us in gut as we grow angry from the energy core of our bodies. As we mature mentally, the stopping and viewing from the inside out in my opinion cleans the mind to focus on the real issues.
Consider that once in the dog world a nasty reply would have been that an individual would have “Put you bull dog mouth in front of your Chihuahua ass?
Considered to be the ugly of the dog world bar none.
It was something used when people are tearing the heart and soul from thier latest victim of gossip.
I grok you brother. In my 40 years working for Uncle Sugar I had to write on a daily basis. As a result I was treated to creative writing classes thru the U of MD. I learned a great deal from them. But when I tried to apply lessons learned, I promptly got my hands slapped. The Gov’s gods of reporting weren’t interested in active voice, present tense, etc, etc. They had their shibboleths and nobody dare violate them.
In re poetry, I was a very active poet at one point in my life–I particularly liked the Haiku format–so I know a bit about poetry. I have to tell you that despite lacking standardized rhyming/meter schemes, much of what you write is indeed poetry. Poetry is much more about how words work together to make the reader/listener think or feel–word pictures–than it is about structured schemes and rules.
Also, many years ago, I read a naturalist (please don’t ask me his name, its been too long), who wrote that one of the ways that humanity can be divided is into ‘forest people’ and ‘savannah people’. He made no value judgements regarding either group just noted their existence. I, like you, have always been a forest person. If I don’t have a forest, I plant one. The year after we moved into our current home, we hosted a tree planting party and invited all our friends to participate. I bought about a thousand seedlings from the state forestry dept. and we planted them along with about 30 good-sized spruce trees. I now have my own little forest. Some of my savannah-type neighbors hate it, while other, forest types admire it greatly. Is the tendency to be one or the other genetic? Could be. That my German ancestors came from the same part of N. Germany that yours did could certainly be considered circumstantial evidence for the possibility.
Retrieverman,
Great post, especially the latter part beginning with, “Nature is a muse unto itself.” That locked-in my attention, and you kept it rapt for the rest of the way. May I reblog that portion (with full attribution/link to the source) at thebalsamean.com? I might also write some kindred comments on it. I have many of the same and similar thoughts and musings, as an amateur naturalist living in the woods for over four years now, the first two in a little camper, the second two in a little house, immersed in the woods, after many more years a forest-lover. As an inveterate scribbler, recently I started a blog for some of my scribblements. You might enjoy it. You have won follower here.
– Dennis a.k.a. The Balsamean
Reblogged this on The Balsamean™.
Thanks for reblogging.
Reblogged this on The Balsamean™.
By the way, in addition to the shirt, toss the shoes and socks. The earth delights to feel your feet, or something like that according to Kahlil Gibran. You can feel its delight. Then as opportunity permits, join the ranks of Walt Whitman and John Muir, “au buffo.” in the woods. Fortunately I have my own private trails.
(I just learned about reblogging.)
Massugu is right. Your strings of one liners are poetry, even when you are talking facts. And Peter is right, I do use some of your rhythms and techniques, not on purpose, they just work to help organize my writing into better rhythms.
I am glad you are out there, pondering…….and willing to share.
And my mtDNA also came from the Harz mountains.