Teaching Thomas

Vermont

I arrived in Vermont on a snowy night in Burlington.  My flights had been fairly uneventful, with a short layover in Washington, DC.  The journey is as much of the residency as actually being there, and on the way to school, I took the opportunity to try to unwind.  I was in full-on anxiety mode, as I had barely slept the previous night.  I was whisked away to a little cabin on a lake near school, where I spent the first night back in New England in probably the most coziest of spots on earth.  My roommate’s aunts, an adorable couple of middle aged women, invited me in, provided me a space to relax, and along with the menagerie of animals, I found myself completely at home, completely in awe, and able to find my bearings.

The following morning began the residency, and Evan and I ended up on campus really early.  This was to our benefit, as it gave me a chance to let my presence there sink in.  I did a little anticipatory writing, which was really my way of opening up my mind a bit, and unplugging from the life I’d put on pause back here in Denver.  I simply let the worries of my day-to-day go, and took some deep breaths of fresh Vermont air.  What struck me the most, and became the thing I found myself fixating on, was the feeling of being back in a place I was very familiar with.  I don’t know if it’s home.  I do know that vibration, that resonance, with the sound of chickadees and the crunch of wet snow under my feet, of being in a place I know in my core.  As my friend Jonah suggested, I was there to fill my root-tank, and renew my sense of purpose.  In those first few hours of alone time, as the other writers began to arrive on campus, I could feel that tank, that sense of history and connection, coming to fruition.

Of course, all week, I was dealing with a massive head cold.  Never before had I gone to Goddard and experienced a residency through the fog of a cold or illness, and sadly, it did take away from some of the experience.  I shut myself off for a couple of days, not attending workshops or readings because I didn’t want to be the sniffling, coughing guy in the back that annoyed everyone else in the room.  Still, I took advantage of two days of being good to myself, eating my fill and drinking lots of tea, and in the end, I managed to get over the initial awfulness of the cold.  I was still very snotty, very congested, and coughing a lot, but my head cleared, and I could participate fully in the workshops that remained during the week.

One such workshop was on writing the trauma narrative.  Though it was focused primarily on fiction writing, the faculty member delivering the workshop was a memoirist, and in the end, we did discuss how trauma fits into the story of a memoir.  For me, personally, my memoir hinges on an event of trauma that I’m trying my best to navigate and discuss with clarity and honesty.  Recognizing my place in the story, and how it might relate to a wider audience, and how to be sensitive to the experience and moment of trauma was an important thing to wrap my head around.

The second workshop I attended that spoke to me deeply was about the Inner Life.  The premise was a discussion about how we, as writers, fuel our inner selves in order to keep a balance between our writing life and day-to-day life.  What fascinates us? What feeds our desires? What are the things that we are mildly (or not-so-mildly) obsessing over.  For me, the idea of motion and movement coupled with a confusion about the idea of ‘home’ was where my head was at, and remains.  Through some pretty honest and forthright conversation between the attendants of the workshop and the faculty member leading the discussion, I got some pretty good insights as to where my writing should go for now, and what sort of things I might want to explore.

For me, the idea of home has become a central movement.  What defines ‘home’ for me? What would it take for me to feel like I’ve ‘come home’ or am ‘at home’ in my daily life.  Because I’ve spent the last fourteen years pretty much as a vagrant and traveller, I have lost a sense of place in my life.  It stemmed from my first experiences as a gay man, but why do I continue to behave in such a manner?  Why do I persist on seeking newer and different places to reside, in the hopes of my life improving?  Why do I resist putting down roots and making a specific geographical place my home, or whatever?  See? I’m still unable to use the word ‘home.’  It’s a loaded word for me, and clearly something I need to wrangle with in my writing. This is coupled with the idea of constant motion.  Movement, either by running on my two feet, or traveling miles and miles in my car, has always been a thing for me.  I enjoy it, I get lost in the idea of simply moving, and am not one who can really sit still, or stay in one place for too long.  Why is this? What part of me feels the constant need to be in motion?  What does this provide me? What does it take away from me?

Perhaps one of the most intriguing workshops I attended had to do with a Tarot card reading.  I drew a card that was super powerful and meaningful to me, and though I’m a little hesitant to go into details here, it’s sufficient to say that it fed into the ongoing story and saga of me, and my reasons for being where I am.  Letting go of the old, and ushering the new was the general reading I got, and it’s something I am actively embracing.  I’ve said it time and time again, but now, as I’m back in Denver, and facing down the future ahead of me, I need to do just that.  It’s a new year, a new chance to do things better, and a chance to reinvent myself.

On top of all of these thoughts are the practical details of my upcoming semester.  My first packet is due in a month, and I have a new advisor who, by all intents and purposes, will kick the shit out of me if I don’t provide him with the effort that is required.  I need to raise my own standards of what is acceptable, what is considered my best, and present him with what I’m fully capable of.  No longer can I simply put down in words what I’m thinking, breeze over it with a light editorial pen, and be done with it.  No longer can I simply avoid doing the work I need to because I’m too scared, or it’s too difficult.  Writing is not meant to be easy.  It’s not simply filling pages on the screen.  It has value.  It has merit.  I need to bring to the writing the sort of respect and honor it deserves.  This semester, with all my editing and filling in the gaps in my manuscript, I intend on cleaning up my act, cleaning up my language, and getting down to the brass tacks that my story requires.  I intend on being brave.  I intend on rising up to meet the personal challenges I’ve put in place for myself.

For me, this begins with pulling back from things here in Denver.  I learned, as I spent the week in Vermont, and then during my three days after school touring around New England visiting friends and family, that Denver is not my final destination.  This place, this mountain city, is where I am now to complete a lot of things that have been at loose ends in my life for a while now.

Finishing my MFA, getting my personal house in order, accepting the person I am now, and letting go of the adolescent that I once was, all while making deeper connections to those that matter and improve my life here and abroad are all the tasks set before me while I live in Colorado.  I know that I will again return to New England, or even New York City.  I belong at the water’s edge.  The sea is me, and I am part of her.  I recognize this, and it’s my desire to be back at the coast that fuels me now.  If I want to return there, to that place where I felt most alive and most myself.

I am homesick, as I sit here on the Front Range.  I admitted this yesterday to a friend of mine here, and was stunned by how my body reacted to actually admitting this about myself.  I choked up, and nearly broke down.  It gave me pause, to say the least.  I’ve never had this feeling so strong inside me.  I know I need to explore this, and let my writing and instinct guide me through these emotions.  That, at least, I’m capable of doing.  In order to focus, I’ve pulled back from being social.  I’ve pulled back, again, from making new connections here in Denver.  Those I have reached out to upon my return are those who have enhanced my life and are positive people that I want to be around and learn from.  Hopefully, it will help.  Hopefully, being more reflective and insightful, rather than simply avoiding the work I need to do by making myself as busy as possible with things of little matter or consequence will work.

I traveled though Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.  I knew those roads by heart, only needing my map for the intricacies of Boston.  That place, those familiar roads and faces, are where I belong.  I still need to earn the right to go back, though.  I intend on returning as a better version of me.  It’s that metamorphosis, that change, that keeps me here in Denver, for now.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2012 at 7:03 pm. It is filed under Blog, Personal, Writing and tagged with future, reflections, thoughts, Vermont, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.