AFTERTHOUGHTS/AFTERMATH
The Annual Writing Workshop
(The Clearing, Spring, 2005)

Saturday morning, 7:30 A.M. The last goodbye breakfast in the Lodge. Some students have already left, re-entering the varied worlds they left behind for a week of very close community and solitude at The Clearing in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin.. Others hang on well after breakfast, chattering, exchanging information, putting off departure till the kitchen staff begins clearing the tables, turning off the lights. It’s never easy to leave the writing week that was.

The writing teacher looks around the dining room. Old and new faces. Bright, exuberant people. All of them certainly worth whatever insights he attempted to explore in the course of one intense week. After a thirty-some year history of teaching at The Clearing, he knows that writing cannot be taught yet something important transpires in the right atmosphere; that he will never answer the million dollar question of anxious neophytes: “Do I have any talent?”; that some of the names and faces of the new people are already fading, and in a week or two, will be gone completely. And that something about this seems both unfair and haunting : ‘The ones that got away.’ The ones who disappear. Who make little or no effort to be remembered. Leave no traces. Did he disappoint them? Did they not leave their mark on him? Did he have any effect on them at all?

The writers’ week at The Clearing is always a journey through time in a very special setting where much that was personal was written, discussed, hopefully hammered into craft--on the way toward art. Always a unique bunch of students. Especially those who already know, or come to understand during the week, that a good part of the meaning of their life is shaped by words. There’s nothing or something to be done about it. And that they are indeed, `writers’, whether anyone else recognizes it or not. And this is only the first step down a very long and unforgiving road of twists, turns, dead ends, with no assurances whatsoever of success, gainful employment, let alone fame and fortune. If they come away from the week’s workshop learning only this-that is an enormous step in the right direction,

Some (Advanced Writers working on books), will return again next year. Many in the main class (beginners, intermediates), will never be seen or heard from again, regardless of how content and alive they may be feeling at the moment; how sure they are that to write is to live; how convinced they are that this was one of the best weeks (a total writing workshop environment) they ever experienced and would return next year, without a doubt.

But writing is all about doubt. And for this and other reasons, some of the students will never return to this or any other workshop again. A few may never write again. They may have discovered that to want to write and to write are two different things. They may have discovered real writing is a commitment they are not prepared to make. It’s harder than most people realize. It takes too much time to learn to write well. Though they have a glimmer about the real rewards of being alive on paper, the truth of the matter remains: writing is a lot about sacrifice. You give up a hell of a lot to gain very little.

The teacher/writer retreats from his annual week at The Clearing more exhausted than anyone would believe. (“Wasn’t it a great class this year?”) Yes. But they are always great classes, in different ways. (“Can’t you wait to teach again next year?”) I’m never sure there will be a next year. I’m always on the brink of letting it all go (especially in the midst of the writing week when something goes haywire) in the classroom, with a student, or with The Clearing management. But to be at odds with everything is to be alive. The status-quo is death. I DON’T NEED THIS! Too much work. Too much time. Too many conflicts. I think The Clearing management should be doing this. I think they should be doing that. I can’t work with many of these people! I’m too far behind in my own work. I spend a month prior to class in reading manuscripts and making final preparation. I spend a solid week teaching-one way or another, 19 hours a day and night. It takes a week for me to recuperate, put everything away, ‘come down’ from the writing week, resume my normal life/schedule. And it takes a year to prepare for next year. Lemme outa here! Time for somebody else. I’ve been there so long, I’m beginning to look like Jens Jensen (the founder of The Clearing).

As exhausted as I am each year by the end of a week’s teaching, ironically my preparations for teaching the class again next begin within days of that last Saturday morning, goodbye breakfast. In fact, in the middle of the week, while teaching, I find myself thinking about next year, making notes of books and ideas toward all the possible subject areas I would like to explore with writers in the years ahead. (“Writing and War,” Scandinavian Writing,” Three Women Writers: Virginia Woolf, Colette, Gertrude Stein, ” “The Writing of the 60’s,” “The Poetry of Robert Bly,” “The Novel, According to_?” Etc. Notes which I then enter into my main computer files, that first Monday I am back home, somewhat back in place at my desk, relieved to be away from all the ‘community’. A bit in a fog. Staring out the window. Listening to the quiet. I open my Clearing files on the screen and add another ten possible courses to a list that already numbers more courses than I have years left to live, write, teach.

But before I find myself back at my own desk that Monday morning, following Saturday’s last goodbye breakfast, there are steps to be taken before departure from The Clearing.

I bid bye to the last student. Check the Professor’s Quarters one last time to be sure all my things have been removed, then walk (at best, alone) to my car, fill the trunk and back seat with all the books, files, materials I’ve used and accumulated during the week, get in, (sigh?), turn onto the long gravel exit road, and slowly, very slowly leave the Professor’s Quarters, the Lodge, the Schoolhouse, the Cliff House, the incredible views of the bay from the bluff all behind me. I can hear the gravel scrunching under the tires. If I want music to accompany my departure, the only music that seems appropriate at this moment is classical--not jazz, my usual choice. So I tune in the state station and turn the volume down low. Just a hint of the melody, the instruments. I have been around too many voices, too much laughter, too many stories for too long a time. I need to get back to the way I lived before. I need to leave in somewhat of a whisper.

Focusing on the slow drive out, a canopy of trees and broken sunlight, always a lush, vibrant green. Spring in Door County. Plants, bushes, trees, fields bursting in the varied shades of a bountiful landscape. The sun always seems to shine at this time. Which always makes the day of departure even more poignant. I can’t remember driving away from The Clearing on the last Saturday morning with the sky overcast or rain falling.

A good part of the spirit of The Clearing, the spirit of that writing week has to do with Jens Jensen who founded the school in l935. His spirit of place remains the main attraction. Why I began teaching there more than 30 years ago. Why I am there still today. Why I find it hard to extricate myself from the place. Why good friends tell me: “You will never retire from there.”

Ironically, while the premise of the Clearing rests in the concept of a place to slow down, retreat to, renew oneself in a natural environment, experience a ‘clearing of the mind”, I find my week there (by the very nature of what I must teach, and the high-energy people who are part of that week) just the opposite. So part of my own recovery process after an intense week of teaching there, is
to re-establish ‘the Jensen connection’ (land, water, woods, air) in my slow departure from the very place that is designed to provide the balm. Nurturing the quiet he so well understood and honored. By all rights, I should walk out of there, not drive, taking all the time in the world to find my way back home (only a few miles away) through woods and fields, along shorelines.

And I should carry one of Jensen’s two great books: SIFTINGS or THE CLEARING. And I should sit myself down under a large maple or birch, or lie down in a field and open either of these books to any page which I know will
address everything I may have been thinking or feeling-teaching, writing, nature, art---and put me back in place again:

“The artist is a spiritual leader, and his message grows in importance as he comprehends the world in which he lives. He may lead his people into a wholesome uplifting, and forward looking sphere. But all this is a growth stimulated by the message he receives from the creative force out of which he shapes his forms. A simple beetle finding its way through the tall grasses, the bee that hums from flower to flower, the wood thrush singing requiem at sunset, a sturdy tree in the winter landscape silhouetted against the sky and telling the story of many ages, a brook with a bit of rock protruding over its edge upon which a plant climbs in a daring way to receive a little sunlight that simmer through leafy boughs-each is a world by itself, full of mystery, charm, and beauty. Each is a book of great knowledge.”