We welcomed 18 people to participate in our workshop’s close reading discussion of an excerpt from The Swimmer, a short story by John Cheever. Although the title and author had been withheld, some participants recognized the passage from the larger work. Others were unfamiliar with it, and this allowed for a variety of observations and perspectives. An initial response connected depression, seeking, and an unhappy life with the sense of running away exemplified by the odd goal to “swim across the county” by way of one backyard swimming pool after another. Our readers noted the disparities of a “stubborn autumnal fragrance… strong as gas” that conjured a toxic atmosphere. In addition, the analogy of a life being looked back upon through this self-imposed challenge was highlighted by phrases like, “looking over his shoulder he saw, in the lighted bathhouse, a young man.” Was our swimmer reflecting back on his youth when he recognizes the aging of his own body where “the strength in his arms and shoulders had gone”? 

There was “a ridiculousness” of this journey/challenge noted, and also the revelation that though we may set a goal and strive to achieve it, the achievement may not result in exaltation and a sense of triumph. It may sometimes result in the question “now what?”

Our writing prompt was an invitation to “Take us on a strange journey.” Four writers read their work. We entered the catacombs of Paris via a strange entrance, led by a cousin (referred to as a “loser”) wielding lanterns. This writer asked the question, “If we go into the depths can we be transformed?” The next writer took us on an immigrant journey where we heard “cries lost among others” where a great grandmother is embodied in the bowels of a ship, a visceral journey that makes vivid the depth of heritage. In the shadow of Cheever, the striving for a goal but not yielding triumph evoked a familiar feeling. Our next writer described how when walking the streets at night, she liked seeing “trees towering up to the heavens.” Then one tree struck by lightning smashes to the ground. In this turn of events, what started as NOT a strange journey became one. The writer’s repetition of “tomorrow/tomorrow/tomorrow” created a connection to the unknowable future. Our last reader personified a 2-year-old boy reflecting in a mirror where he saw “sclera lined with ripples of red,” a use of lens language that went beyond literal to metaphorical of how when we look at ourselves we may not actually see ourselves.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday, September 21st at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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Originally published in The New Yorker, July 18, 1964. Reprinted in The Brigadier and the
Golf Widow (1964) and in The Stories of John Cheever (1978). Copyright © 1978 by John
Cheever

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I’m swimming across the county.”

“Good Christ. Will you ever grow up?”

“What’s the matter?”

“If you’ve come here for money,” she said, “I won’t give you another cent.”

“You could give me a drink.”

“I could but I won’t. I’m not alone.”

“Well, I’m on my way.”

He dove in and swam the pool, but when he tried to haul himself up onto the curb he found that the strength in his arms and shoulders had gone, and he paddled to the ladder and climbed out. Looking over his shoulder he saw, in the lighted bathhouse, a young man. Going out onto the dark lawn he smelled chrysanthemums or marigolds—some stubborn autumnal fragrance—on the night air, strong as gas. Looking overhead he saw that the stars had come out, but why should he seem to see Andromeda, Cepheus, and Cassiopeia? What had become of the constellations of midsummer? He began to cry.

It was probably the first time in his adult life that he had ever cried, certainly the first time in his life that he had ever felt so miserable, cold, tired, and bewildered. He could not understand the rudeness of the caterer’s barkeep or the rudeness of a mistress who had come to him on her knees and showered his trousers with tears. He had swum too long, he had been immersed too long, and his nose and his throat were sore from the water. What he needed then was a drink, some company, and some clean, dry clothes, and while he could have cut directly across the road to his home he went on to the Gilmartins’ pool. Here, for the first time in his life, he did not dive but went down the steps into the icy water and swam a hobbled sidestroke that he might have learned as a youth. He staggered with fatigue on his way to the Clydes’ and paddled the length of their pool, stopping again and again with his hand on the curb to rest. He climbed up the ladder and wondered if he had the strength to get home. He had done what he wanted, he had swum the county, but he was so stupefied with exhaustion that his triumph seemed vague. Stooped, holding on to the gateposts for support, he turned up the driveway of his own house.

Two new people joined thirteen “regulars” from India, Mexico, and the United States to discuss an excerpt from Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The setting in the scene is a Clearing were Baby Suggs, holy, gathers people together and exhorts them to dance and cry and laugh. Even more, she tells them they must love themselves because “yonder” they are not loved.

We loved the group’s observations and associations. Together we celebrated the woman sitting on a flat rock, directing and encouraging men, women, and children and echoing gentle preaching akin to the Sermon on the Mount, in the New Testament, and the recitation of the Beatitudes. Other intertextual references included Kahil Gibran’s The Prophet and St. Francis’s “Canticle of the Sun.”

We talked about Baby Suggs’s command to love their flesh–their skin and lungs and liver and heart–visceral references that seemed uncommon. More than one person talked about skin as what holds our organs and bones  together. One informed us that the skin–weighing (on average) 8 pounds and covering 22 sq. feet–is the body’s largest organ, and can bind not only an individual body but also a community. We talked about the color of skin, identity, and difference. One person typed into the Chat that the final paragraph of this excerpt “could be an anthem for the movement Black Lives Matter.” 

One participant commented, “There was hope in this space.” Others named the space “a safe harbor” and “a sanctuary” and “a place to be free.” A space in which there is self-compassion, we observed. A space in which “it is possible to find joy and exchange roles,” one in which we appreciated the fact that “the characters were not asked to clean up their lives.”  

We praised Toni Morrison’s writing. As one person said, “It’s absolute craft” and pointed to her use of rhythm and alliteration. Others pointed to how the writing was able to speak to the “viscera” of each reader, both through the creation of this clearing and through the celebration of the flesh.

We wrote for four minutes, prompted to begin with the words: “You got to love it…”

Four people read aloud what they wrote. The first began by reproducing drums, echoing the beating of feet and hands in Morrison’s Clearing, and praising nature, and words and songs that lift us, as well as reminding us that all life will die and “pass into history.”  

One piece praised “life given” with its peaks and valleys, and the glory of sunsets.

Another gave the story of a man who identified as a sweeper–a legacy that had been handed down in a family of sweepers–his job was clearing trash in the park.

Moved by writing that referred to a “loud noise ringing out from the trees” reminded some of the band “Live“ and the song “Lightning Crashes” which we added as a processional upon leaving the meeting.

Thank you for returning to our clearing this week. We look forward to gathering in our clearing again next week!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Wednesday, September 16th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 1988. (First published 1987) New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Pp. 87-89.  

After situating herself on a huge flat-sided rock, Baby Suggs bowed her head and prayed silently. The company watched her from the trees. They knew she was ready when she put her stick down. Then she shouted, ‘Let the children come!’ and they ran from the trees toward her.

         ‘Let your mothers hear you laugh,’ she told them, and the woods rang. The adults looked on and could not help smiling.

         Then ‘Let the grown men come,’ she shouted. They stepped out one by one from among the ringing trees.

         ‘Let your wives and your children see you dance,’ she told them, and groundlife shuddered under their feet.

         Finally she called the women to her. ‘Cry,’ she told them. ‘For the living and the dead. Just cry.’ And without covering their eyes the women let loose.

         It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping for breath. In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart.

         She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or the glorybound pure.

         She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it.

         ‘Here,’ she said, ‘in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ’cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I’m telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver—love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your lifeholding womb and your life-giving parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.’ Saying no more, she stood up then and danced with her twisted hip the rest of what her heart had to say while the others opened their mouths and gave her the music.”

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text was the poem “The Decision” by Jane Hirshfield, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about a hesitation.”

More details will be posted on this session soon, so check back!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

We will be breaking with our usual schedule next week in honor of Labor Day on Monday September 7th. Please join us for our next session Monday, September 14th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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The Webinar that was mentioned during the session is tomorrow, with details as follows!

Join a conversation with Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, JD, who, at a time of rising inequality, is reimagining philanthropy less as charity than a tool to advance justice. The event is the 2020 Ewing Halsell Distinguished Lecture.

Date: Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020
Time: 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. CDT
Place: Virtual (Zoom Webinar or YouTube Live)
Free and open to all. Register at FromGenerosityToJustice.Eventbrite.com.

Mr. Walker calls for “all who work in industries that serve others and the greater good, from philanthropy to education, health care to social services” to unflinchingly examine fundamental root causes of structural inequality and consider whether their own longstanding practices reinforce it. He will detail ideas outlined in his book “From Generosity to Justice: A New Gospel of Wealth.”

The conversation will be moderated by Raul B. Rodriguez, Associate Vice President for International Affairs at Monterrey Tech in Mexico.

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The Decision by Jane Hirshfield
 
There is a moment before a shape
hardens, a color sets.
Before the fixative or heat of   kiln.
The letter might still be taken
from the mailbox.
The hand held back by the elbow,
the word kept between the larynx pulse   
and the amplifying drum-skin of the room’s air.
The thorax of an ant is not as narrow.
The green coat on old copper weighs more.   
Yet something slips through it —
looks around,
sets out in the new direction, for other lands.
Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed.
As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road:
it cannot be after turned back from.

Source: Poetry Magazine (May 2008)

Our text today took us to a 1970s jitney station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where a husband and wife (Darnell and Rena) discuss a recent surprise home purchase. The excerpt from Act 2, Scene 1 of the play Jitney by August Wilson, was read by two different pairs of readers without stage directions, so they “performed” solely through dialogue. We began our exploration of the exchange by asking who is present in this conversation beyond Darnell and Rena, the two characters who actually speak. There are quite a few, including a child named Jesse, Darnell’s friends Ba Bra and Earl, someone named Peaches, and Rena’s mother. One participant noted that each of them influence the dynamics between the two speakers. Others commented that Darnell also refers to his old self, so the past Darnell also becomes a factor in the present day. Beyond those other characters, we thought about whether gender roles are at play. One person saw a male aspect to the way Darnell seemed to be seeking affirmation with his grand gesture, trying to win Rena’s approval but coming up short – again. Some of us found the conversation uncomfortable to hear and wondered if Rena was being too hard on Darnell, while others thought Darnell’s gift of the home was actually for himself rather than for Rena. We commented on how the two have different desires: Rena focused on practical concerns like whether the yard has a fence, while Darnell imagined how nice it would be to have a den in the basement. We picked up on the subtext in the conversation, which was about more than just the house but about their entire relationship; we had the feeling these two people have had this same discussion many times before.

Participants wrote for 5 minutes to the prompt, “Write about slipping” (inspired by Rena’s last line: “I know people change…but I know they can slip back too”). Five readers shared their work, and everyone had a chance to respond. The one reader reflected on “Unpacking this year and all the disturbing things…what has happened to the world? What has happened to my world?” As the narrator situates herself in space and time, she does so with a sense of exploration (and a tropical beverage). Another reader also explored memory, but in extreme conditions of another sort: “Montreal is cold…Not once, twice, but thrice — slipped on ice. Canada is free, but frozen.” The group appreciated the humor, and drew connections between the good intentions of the husband in the writing and Youngblood in Jitney. We were intrigued by a reader describing how a slip tests both friction and gravity, where metaphorical back stairs “permit myriad sins, not all even pleasurable but rather necessary, filling in holes from the past that you’re supposed to pretend don’t even exist but – if you do that – they chew out your entrails like a fox.” One reader crafted her inquisitive position with alliteration (“Curable inmates: what do they wake up to? Slipping into wakefulness has poisoned their minds…constantly conscious careful”). This reminded one participant of patients in an ICU. Lastly, one writer’s piece clipped along with conversational energy and conflict with much like what plays out in Jitney: “It’s so damn easy to judge, isn’t it?…Don’t throw a stone, unless you’ve never broken a promise.” An overarching theme to the discussion of the scene and subsequent writing was bias — how it shows up, plays out, and is mitigated (or not) by reflection and communication.  

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

We will be breaking with our usual schedule next week in honor of Labor Day on Monday September 7th. Please join us for our next session Wednesday, September 9th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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From “Jitney” by August Wilson New York: The Overlook Press, 2001.

YOUNGBLOOD: You want to know what I was hiding from you? I’ll tell you. I been hustling … working day and night … while you accuse me of running the streets … and all I’m trying to do is save enough money so I can buy a house so you and Jesse have someplace decent to live. I asked Peaches if she would go with me to look at houses, cause I wanted to surprise you. I wanted to pull a truck up to the house and say, “Come on, baby, we moving.” And drive on out to Penn Hills and pull that truck up in front of one of them houses and say, “This is yours. This is your house baby.” That’s what she was trying to hide from you. That’s why Turnbo seen her riding in my car all the time. I found a house and I come up a hundred and fifty dollars short from closing the deal, and I come and took the eighty dollars out the drawer.

RENA: A house? A house, Darnell? You bought a house without me!

YOUNGBLOOD: I wanted to surprise you.

RENA: You gonna surprise me with a house? Don’t do that. A new TV maybe. A stereo … a couch … a refrigerator … okay. But don’t surprise me with a house that I didn’t even have a chance to pick out! That’s what you been doing? That’s the debt you had to pay?

YOUNGBLOOD: You always saying you don’t want to live your whole life in the projects.

RENA: Darnell, you ain’t bought no house without me. How many times in your life do you get to pick out a house?

YOUNGBLOOD: Wait till you see it. It’s real nice. It’s all on one floor … it’s got a basement … like a little den. We can put the TV down there. I told myself Rena’s gonna like this. Wait till she see I bought her a house.

RENA: Naw, you bought a den for Darnell … that’s what you did. So you can sit down there and watch your football games. But what about the kitchen? The bathroom? How many windows does it have in the bedroom? Is there some place for Jesse to play? How much closet space does it have? You can’t just surprise me with a house and I’m supposed to say, “Oh, Darnell, that’s nice.” At one time I would have. But I’m not seventeen no more. I have responsibilities. I want to know if it has a hookup for a washer and dryer cause I got to wash Jesse’s clothes. I want to know if it has a yard and do it have a fence and how far Jesse has to go to school. I ain’t thinking about where to put the TV. That’s not what’s important to me. And you supposed to know, Darnell. You supposed to know what’s important to me like I’m supposed to know what’s important to you. I’m not asking you to do it by yourself. I’m here with you. We in this together. See … house or no house we still ain’t got the food money. But if you had come and told me … if you had shared that with me … we could have went to my mother and we could have got eighty dollars for the house and still had money for food. You just did it all wrong, Darnell. I mean, you did the right thing but you did it wrong.

YOUNGBLOOD: No matter what I do it’s gonna come out wrong with you. That’s why you jump to conclusions. That’s why you accused me of running around with Peaches. You can’t look and see that I quit going to parties all the time … that I quit running with Ba Bra and Earl … that I quit chasing women. You just look at me and see the old Darnell. If you can’t change the way you look at me … then I may as well surrender now. I can’t beat your memory of who I was if you can’t see I’ve changed. I go out here and work like a dog to try and do something nice for you and no matter what I do, I can’t never do it right cause all you see is the way I used to be. You don’t see the new Darnell. You don’t see I’ve changed.

RENA: I know people change … but I know they can slip back too.

Twenty people from Canada, England, Greece, ME, PA, MI, NY, WA, and RI chatted in their geography and, with their presence, showed an interest in puzzling together possible meanings in Lucille Clifton’s ”blessing the boats.” This poem, written entirely in small cap and sans punctuation, furnished a gentle feeling for many participants, who heard “a prayer for these times,” “an Irish prayer with ‘the wind at your back,”’ a blessing, a sendoff to another place, perhaps even to a time and place beyond death. We selected this poem mindful of the transition of going into September, into the fall, and – for many – into the school year. In the shadow of the poem, each of us identified a transition in our own lives, envisioning ourselves collectively “in our boats”. As someone observed: “we are now beyond our initial understanding of what COVID is all about”, getting “glimpses or brightness” and yet still navigating the unknown. The word “may” (appearing four times in the body of poem) suggests uncertainty, possibility, permission and, in that way, allows readers a freedom to sail the poem at their own pace and understand as they will. For some, the poem exuded “gentle simplicity”. One person offered that water in literature suggests baptism and beginnings.

Many highlighted the physicality embedded in the text. The word “lip” (the lip of our understanding), was a stumbling block, a “halting” for some and, for others, an evocation of an edge, a cusp, a beginning. The “back” makes us think of a “concrete body”. One person mentioned that she had expected to read the reciprocal “love you back” but remembered to read closely (narrative’s MO) and read that the “you” (addressed in the poem) could turn from the wind and expect the wind to “love your back.” Oh, the many discoveries we make when we close read! Another participant expressed their experience of physical sensuousness that included feeling hands laid on the back of passenger(s) embarking from a place as nebulous as “this” to an unnamed “that.”  The word “innocence” called to many, who paired the word with ideas of trust, energy, and the protection of not knowing.  

One participant remembered spending time, as an aspirant to medical practice, at St. Mary’s, the geography pointed to by the poet Lucille Clifton, steering a craft on the “lip” of waves in Chesapeake Bay. Like others he brought into the discussion the trust needed to turn one’s back on the wind and allow/expect the wind to love your back.

The prompt “Write about turning from the face of fear” brought creative writing that described snorkeling in the Pacific Ocean; feeling fear (“cold, pressing “) by night and day and respite from this fear that prayer brings; choice/options depicted by Door 1 and Door 2; and references to current events and the promulgation of a fear-based culture. Together, we reflected on how fear takes on different forms, including based on the stories we tell ourselves and others.   As we adjourned (knowing we will have a holiday hiatus on September 7 and be together again on September 14), participants chatted words and phrases expressing what they were taking with them this evening: beauty, bravery, gentle transition, hope, letting my back be loved, stillness, surfing gently, and trust. Thank you for sailing with us, and see you soon!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Wednesday, September 2nd at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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blessing the boats
BY LUCILLE CLIFTON

                                    (at St. Mary's)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back     may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that


Lucille Clifton, "blessing the boats" 
from Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000. 
Copyright © 2000 by Lucille Clifton.