Monthly Archives: February 2011

Cheryl Unruh in her wonderful website, Flyover People, wrote a feature on Kelley Hunt, who I co-write music with, and Kelley’s new CD, Gravity Loves You. Take a look (and listen) to what Cheryl shares about music that not only loves and celebrates gravity but how to fly a little too. You can also hear Kelley sing and talk about one of our songs, “These Are the Days” right here. And read a longer piece about our collaboration at Worlds of Change.

When did I wake up? A long, long time ago when the alarm went off. And then? It’s hard to remember, but so much: advising group with my eight marvelous students, individual meetings with students, a quick lunch while discussing consciousness practices and potato chips, a short meeting with people at the college about the Goddard blog I do, a longer meeting with fellow faculty that included passing arouns a plastic bag of chocolate balls, more meetings and intense talks, a workshop I presented on mythopoetics and changing our lives, a long stretch of individual meetings with students that morphed into meatless Monday’s dinner, and eventually eating applesauce with a fork while sitting at this desk. Over the course of the day, I’ve conversed deeply with people about peace, language, our innate goodness, the stifling conditions of culture, myth and poetry, trauma and wholeness, self-care practices, spiritual and ecological education for adults, the work of the faculty council, how good the sweet potato soup was, and the difference between therapy and art.

Some of the students the didn't speak with today (but did obviously take their picture)

This desk? It’s in room 202 of the Community Building, where my office has been for over a decade. Facing south with no shades, it gets so hot in the afternoons, even in subzero stretches, that I have to open the windows, and the computer is often broken, making loud wailing sounds or moving slower than frozen molasses. Yet it’s my room, my little home of work and talk and heart and soul, a place often buzzing around me as I keep listen to people tell me of work they’re doing that is changing everything.

Now the office is quiet. There’s nothing left to do for the day, except exhale a little more slowly, feel the slow fatigue in my eyes and the great comfort of the chair. The world is calm for a few moments, and I return to myself, satisfied, tired, grateful.

After a few days at the residency, we’re firmly down the rabbit hole, burrowed deep and low in this parallel universe that’s reignited — much like Brigadoon — each time we return. Occasionally, I hear people standing outside the rabbit hole, saying words such as “Obama spending cuts” and “Wisconsin,” but for the most part, I can’t and don’t pay that much mind. I’ve deep in the dark openings beyond reach, explaining what study plans, making jokes about how Ralph and Francis are beginning to look like each other, and racking my little brain to explain how to merge transdisciplinarity, the notion of a gift economy and strong-enough coffee to stay awake for the next thing.

Residencies make their own magic, and I would even say their own reality except this reality is quite real: what happens here is a thunder of pebbles dropped in the center of people’s inner deep-forest ponds. The ripples go on forever. There are fierce and tender talks to be had, understandings to be garnered, hugs to accept and give, meatless Mondays to meander through and occasional singing from just out of view when walking up hills through the hard-driving snowy wind. The winter residency particularly brings me down into a cozy space of contemplation, connection, confusion and coexistance.

The conversations I’m enjoying in this rabbit hole with students and faculty often concern sleep (which it’s hard to get quite enough of when our minds are buzzing and hearts are zinging), health (ditto), and what we need to learn or unlearn to fulfill the call of our passions. The wind roars, the sun shines surprisingly, the snow falls, and I crawl in deeper to see what I can see in this old cave, a kind of tribal return that will, eventually, lift me up to the surface in about a week, right into the lap of a taxi and then onto the plane where I’ll be zoomed out of this rabbit hole and back to the above-ground expanse of my life.

A steady bright rain falls past all the windows as the bright blue of the sky shines through. It’s 58 degrees and February in Vermont, and this thaw day is melting the icicles that cling to all these buildings while the tall pines and firs sway in a spring-like breeze. The residency where I teach in the Individualized MA Program has started, and everyone I meet is giggling, throwing their arms around someone (and sometimes me), and shaking their heads in wonder at the weather and at being here.

Maybe it was our opening session when our program director declared, rightfully too, “We now know the faculty is totally nuts” while we laughed almost off our chairs. Maybe it was my student from last semester, Kao, singing out Kelley Hunt’s song, “Breathe in. Breathe out” at the opening session. Maybe it’s just that sense of arrival, all of us getting buckled in for the journey that will take up through the mountains of what we want to learn most and how best we can find out for ourselves what it all means. But whatever is happening, I’m caught up in the the giddy, springtime clearing of this moment, especially since I know snow and long days, too much coffee and not enough deep sleep, is on the hoof.

Sitting around the round table with my students from last semester speaking of what the last half-year’s turnings have brought us, I’m landed right in the center of this gratitude, this love for being alive and able to walk cleanly in the sunlight, this gift that keeps giving more of itself as I look toward the trees and falling water, the sky dimming at the edge and the beautiful faces, the world as it’s actually happening.