First Taste of Summer

found myself on a beach
skimming flat stones
on the surface
against the inrushing north atlantic
one threatening august afternoon
while smelly kelp wrappers clung to my heels like memories of you to my head
and broke
with a hiss on the sand
stealing pebbles unnoticed
leaving flotsam jetsam driftwood and more
than it could ever take
while smelly kelp wrappers clung to my heels like
memories of you to
me.

(from "Found Myself On a Beach" by Gerard Collins, August 2002)

At least for now, it feels like summer. It’s been the warmest and sunniest Victoria Day weekend we’ve had in a lot of years, and I took full advantage. We didn’t go camping or anything silly like that. As much as I love the outdoors, the idea of sleeping on the ground has lost its appeal for me. It just doesn’t make sense to me like it did when I was younger. Back then, I didn’t care where I slept—the more uncomfortable and less familiar, the better. But now, I like familiar, comfortable sleeping accommodations, preferably a good motel or a five-star hotel.

Sure, I used to see the appeal of camping. There’s nothing like a couple of days of getting away from civilization and all its trappings to remind you of your place in the world, of who you are, and you who started out to want to be. There’s also the wide open space, the big sky, and, of course the fishing—trouting, to be more exact. Even though I haven’t eaten red meat or poultry in over ten years, I still love a good meal of trout, preferably cooked over an open fire or at least on a barbecue. Of course, there’s also the time alone, without cellphones, iPods, cameras, computers, or four-slice toasters. Yeah, right. I’m sure most people still take all of those thinks with them when they camp, especially if they’re travelling in a recreational vehicle.

I think it’s mostly the lack of rules, the breaking of the daily tedium that appeals to most people. That said, my wife and I went to the beach Sunday morning, just because it was early and we figured no one else would be there. For close to an hour, we had it all to ourselves. But it was a beautiful day and by the time we left, there were dozens of people and their dogs, all trying to capture a little bit of the outdoors, all looking to break up the routine and get some sun on their faces. Can’t say I blame them.

There is nothing like a beach—unless it’s the quiet of the woods (which I actually prefer)—to help you get your thoughts straight and help you shed a few layers of civility. Beaches never fail to make me nostalgic and to clarify my thinking about something I’m working on or didn’t know I was working on. With their proximity to the ocean, and the surf rushing in on the tide, there is something cleansing and spiritual about a beach. I don’t mean “God” exactly; I mean, if I was looking for my soul, I think that’s where I would find it. I could sit for hours, just listening to the rush and hiss of the water to the shore, and the receding of the waves back to where they came from. And in the process, life somehow looks different. Either sillier or less important, or just different.

After a day at the beach, a pancake brunch at my sister-in-law’s, and an evening barbecue at my brother-in-law’s, I feel tired but revitalized. I’m writing this week, as I have been for the past couple of weeks. I had a novel that I thought was finished, but had a sudden epiphany about it, and so I’m working on that. Sometimes you just don’t know where life, or summer, is going to take you.

Peace.

First Week

Where was I? Oh, yeah. It’s the end of the semester, and I can’t believe the end of April is in sight. The last couple of weeks have been a blur.

After grading the final exams, I have to say that, overall, I was very impressed. A lot of students wrote the best essays they’ve written all semester, which made me feel good. Believe me, it was hard keeping that information to myself. If I wasn’t forbidden from doing so, I would have e-mailed you just to say, “Guess what you did?”

Granted, there were others who were verging on a crash all semester long and who did a free-fall on the day of the exam. For some reason, people sat for two and a half hours and only managed to write a few lines for both essays. As I’ve said from the first day of classes, I can only grade what’s on the page, and if you didn’t give me enough to justify passing you, then I’m sorry. I have to live with my decisions and to be able to sleep at night. I don’t take these matters lightly. But, on the other hand, if you’re one of those students who knows in your heart you just didn’t give it your best effort this term or on the final exam, you are hopefully adult enough to understand that there are no free passes. There is only a certain amount I am willing to take responsibility for. What’s mine is mine, but sometimes there’s stuff that’s not mine. That’s what helps me sleep, especially when I’d prefer to just give everyone an automatic pass anyway.

But that wouldn’t be fair to those of you who worked awfully hard right to the very end of the term. For some of you, the final exam was your chance to show all that you learned in three months. If you attended classes nearly every day and always came prepared, tried to have an opinion on the literature, honestly tried to understand and to come and talk to me if you were having a problem, then you passed. It’s just natural selection.

Enough of all that. I’m tired. You’re tired. It’s time to move on. Grades are available on line this week (possibly today, though I’m not completely sure), and my part in your life will officially be over. I can’t say I’m always happy about that. I like for the semester to end so that I can get on with other things in my life. But I like it when students maintain a connection over the years ahead. It happens a lot, but not nearly enough.

A special note for my English 1080 class this semester: You were easily one of my favorite classes of all time. Most of you, I will never forget. You know who you are.

For those of you whom I got to know this term on a more personal level, it was absolutely my pleasure both to help in any way I could and to get to know you. I enjoy that part of my job more than any other.

It’s been about a week since my grades were finalized and my part of the winter semester of ’09 was done. Since then, I’ve been shredding papers, organizing files, getting my life together. It all tends to be put on hold while I’m teaching and now is time to move forward, into the great wide open.

I attended a book launch last week. Mike Heffernan’s astounding book , Rig: An Oral History of the Ocean Ranger was officially released. I had the pleasure of introducing the author, as well as speaking to many fine people in the local publishing and writing community that evening, including the indomitable Helen Porter (writer), the gracious and talented Lisa Moore (novelist), the affable and also immensely talented Russell Wangersky (writer and publisher), and several people with direct connections to the Ocean Ranger itself. The story these latter people have to tell is still just as enthralling and just as vital as it would have been twenty-seven years ago, which is why Mike’s book is so important to our culture. Mike has become a friend in the past couple of years and I hope we can find some other project to work on in future. I also met his father at the book launch, and he reminded me a little of my own father—a quick wit and a twinkle in his eye, he seemed like a very kind man.

Attending this event was important for me in another way, too, though. It means I am getting back to my other self—the self I am when I’m not teaching. I’m a writer, and sometimes it’s good for me to surround myself with people who think the same way (more or less) and understand what it’s like to be someone who aspires to put the world into words, to dress it in the language that best describes it.

I will be a writer all summer long. It’s been slow going in the past week, but today I’m off to a good start. Just writing this blog entry is a sign that the fog is beginning to lift from my brain and I’m beginning to see things more clearly. Clarity is necessary in order to write well.

And, of course, writing is necessary in order to achieve clarity sometimes. At least for me it is.

Over the coming weeks of spring and (dare I say) summer, I’ll be writing more about writing. I have a couple of novels to finish, as well as a short story collection that still needs a good story or two, and, if I’m lucky, I have another story that needs telling in the form of a novella. More on these as the days go by. I’ll also likely have a few observations and opinions to share about life, politics, culture, t.v., sports, the movies, and anything else that comes into my head.

For now, I’m just glad the sun is shining and fleeting time seems to have paused for a while.

Have a fantastic summer. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

GC

Famous Final Scene (A Twice-told Tale)

Maybe you don’t need a pep talk at this point.

Maybe you've seen too many of them lately.

I mean, who could put it better than William Wallace in Braveheart when he tells his battle-ready troops before heading off to war with the British: “Every man dies, but not every man lives.”

Of course, I guess he meant women too, but then, who knows what lurks in the heart of Mel?And then there’s Aragorn at the final battle in The Return of the King, leading his weary fellowship against Sauron’s fading might: “I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you, stand, Men of the West.”

Or, a couple of years ago, Mats Sundin to his battle-scarred Leafs on the night of the season’s last game: “There’s nothing left to say. We’ve got to just go out and play hard and try our best to win.” Of course, we know how that test turned out.

But then there’s the wise and magnificent, Yoda: “There is no try, only do or do not.”

Which brings me to me. What advice have I left? Do I even have it in me to say the words that you need. (Imagine me saying this with a half-smile on my face, while maintaining an air of earnestness.) What can I say at this point that will make a difference?

Let’s try some sports clichés, shall we? It’s do-or-die. Backs against the wall. No holds barred. There is no tomorrow.

Except there actually is a tomorrow. And nobody ever died from writing a mediocre exam. And your backs won’t be against the wall. Your seats just past the middle of the gymnasium, to the right, really. So, no, sports cliché’s won’t do. You’ll need something more.

The thing about English is this: just speak truth. Know your characters (or, in poetry, know your speaker), but know yourself first and how you respond to those characters and the truth that they represent.

That’s better, but not quite it.

How about this: when I was your age….no, no, no! Can’t say that. Can’t even think that.

Hmmm….If I was writing either of these exams tomorrow (either 1101 or 1080), I simply would know the novels, stories, and/or poems really well. You can pretty much guess what the questions will be, more or less.

Go through each character in each story and ask yourself what they stand for and how can you possibly prove it. Get inside the minds of these characters and ask yourself what they most want, what they most fear, and whether or not they get what they want. Or, as the Stones would sing, do they sometimes just get what they need? That goes for the good and the bad characters. In 1101, that's the Draper Doyles and the Aunt Phils, the Dr. Jekylls and the Mr. Uttersons and the Edward Hydes. In 1080, that's the Grandmothers and Misfits, the Elisas and the tinkers. And who are all those minor characters? The thieves in The Road and the Father Seymours? The Henry Clervals and the Elizabeth Frankensteins (1101), not to mention (in 1080) Mangan's sister and the Red Sammy Butt! What do they all desire, and do they get it? What do they each fear? I think, in the end, we all just want……truth?

No. Truth can hurt sometimes. We often can’t handle the truth.…could it be...freedom?

Maybe? Is it freedom we want more than anything? Freedom to do what? To be what? Freedom to choose, to be who we want to be, without restrictions, without anyone else playing the authority figure over us, telling us what to do and how to do it, or what to be. Freedom from persecution. Freedom from lies. Freedom to face the truth on our own terms and decide for ourselves how to deal with, what to do about it. That’s what these characters want, isn’t it? Self-determination! Freedom! Peace of mind! As elusive as it is. As impossible as it is.

It might even be that the thing we fear the most is freedom. Because that would mean we are also responsible for ourselves. We can blame no one for our state of being, whatever is, but ourselves. And yet we invent ways to give our freedom away. To a certain extent, as in Blake's "London," we are born into it--like the Harlot's Infant (or, appropriately, Draper Doyle in The Divine Ryans) in that poem--but we are also slaves to our mind-forg'd manacles, to our ideas of right and wrong, God and faith, good and bad.

Sometimes a character attempts to go beyond his boundaries (Young Goodman Brown and the boy in "Araby," or Victor Frankenstein and Henry Jekyll), and what they find is that there are no boundaries--no actual limits, but the transgression of percieved limits comes with consequences. Of course it's only a transgression if you think of such self-imposed or culture-prescribed limitations as moral boundaries. Freedom of thought and action comes with built-in responsibility--unless you're The Misfit or the bad guys in McCarthy's novel. But there still is freedom, if only you can see it. The manacles are forged by the mind, for sure, but when the institutions to whom we've entrusted our freedom fail us, where else can we look to for answers but ourselves? That's what most characters, of novel, of poetry, or of story, face: when you look into the deep, dark woods, who is looking back at you?

And if you see yourself looking back, judging, assessing: who are you, exactly? What does Gabriel Utterson see when he looks into the mirror, in the form of Henry Jekyll? Who does the Grandmother O'Connor's short story think she is? Who is the man in The Road, really, and why does Young Goodman Brown really go into those woods? They are seeking and yet all hiding, at the same time. What we all want most to be understood, but what we all fear most is to be understood. Even by ourselves. Do our thoughts decide who we are, or do our actions define us?

Speaking of which, tomorrow you'll be asked to illustrate comprehension about some stories and/or poems you've read, as well as about the human condition. Seize the opportunity. Carpe diem! Don’t be afraid to say something wrong. Say what’s in your heart to say. But say it in an intelligent, controlled, articulate way: otherwise, it’s like a king in the back row, a bullet that never gets fired, a staff that never gets taken—power that’s wasted. You’ve spent the last four months improving your powers of communication. So now’s the time to just say what you’ve been wanting to say all semester long about these pieces of literature. If you’ve got nothing to say, well, you’re just not trying (or "doing," as Yoda would say). You know these novels, stories, and poems by now. You’ve lived with them for weeks. You know who their characters are, what they want, what they fear, and how they live. So what do you have to say about them?

“This is no place for Hobbits,” Gandalf the Grey has said. And it’s true.

The exam is meant to offer you the chance to show what you know, not what you don’t know.

So write what you know.

See you tomorrow. Have some fun with it. And use your nervous energy to blaze truth, fork some lightning, and wager philosophy. Do not go gentle in that good exam room; rage, rage against the oncoming darkness. Mostly, though, rage against your darkest thoughts and reach for a sliver of greatness.

Don’t play defensively. Come fully armed and ready to wrestle truth to the ground. But then, I’m not much for speeches.

May the force...oh, never mind.

Gerard

Office Hours Monday

I'm having office hours (SN-4062) Monday, April 13 from 1 o'clock until 2:30 p.m., in case anyone has questions about the exam.

The exam for both 1080 and 1101 is Tuesday, April 14 at 12 o'clock noon in the Physical Education gymnasium. Sleeping in will not be accepted as a reason for missing it. Few things would be.

GC

New Rock the Vote!

I just posted an updated version of the poll at the top right of this blog. If you were one of my students this semester, I'd really appreciate you taking the time to answer the few questions that are. Some questions are meant for either 1080 or 1101, exclusively, so if the question doesn't apply to you, just skip it. Oh, and it's all anonymous. I can't tell who you are, so please be honest with your answers. Thanks! :-)

GC

Famous Last Words

Oh, and I don't know what my own last words will be. I haven't thought about it, to tell the truth. But on my metaphorical tombstone, it will say: Back in a Minute.

I say "metaphorical" because ain't no one buryin' me in the cold, cold ground.

Checking in

Lots of people appear to be checking out this blog while I make my way through the mountain of essays I have to grade. In the next couple of days, I'll have conquered it, I suspect. Until then, my mind has turned to mush and I can think of nothing witty or of any consequence.

Oh, I did manage to mangle a quote from Dylan Thomas in class this morning. His supposed last words go like this: "I've had eighteen straight whiskeys; I think that's a record. After 39 years, this is all I've done."

There's much debate over his actual last words, but these will do.

In the next day or so, I'll be posting a new poll, asking students to comment on various parts of the courses I've taught this semester. Hope you'll play along. Right now, I've got a poll from last semester still up there. Feel free to look, but don't vote until the lines are open. :-)

Back soon.

GC

Launch of Rig cancelled

Because of the crash of the oil rig helicopter off the coast of Newfoundland today, the book launch for Mike Heffernan's book, Rig, has been cancelled, to be re-scheduled.

GC

Book Launch

In my 1080 class today, a student (you know who you are, Brad) read a poem from a young man named Greg Tiller who was one of the 84 men who went down on the Ocean Ranger oil rig when it sunk in 1982 off the coast of Newfoundland. It was a day that those who were alive in this province will never forget. It changed a lot, not only in the oil industry but in the lives and the very soul of this place.

Greg Tiller was an extremely young man and a pretty good poet, who dreamed of something better in his life. I had the pleasure of reading some of his poetry as I read the manuscript by Mike Heffernan, who launches his book, Rig, tomorrow night at Bianca's on Water Street (7-9 p.m.). It's an incredibly moving and important book that tells the stories of those who were left behind, those who knew someone and/or was related to someone who went down on the Ranger on that stormy February night. One of the stories told, though, is that of Greg Tiller, and I thought it was either incredible synchronicity or a sign, or both, that Brad read the poem in class today. I was going to mention the launch anyway because I'll be introducing the author (and, of course, it means one night when I won't be grading essays, which means a pretty late night in the hope of getting those 1080 essays back on Friday, a few days before your next assignment). But in the rush of it all, I almost forgot to mention the launch...until Brad steps up and reads his poem.

Amazing. Even more amazing, Brad used to work on the rigs himself in Alberta and has entered university with the hope of a different life for himself than the one he had. I don't know what he thought of life working an oil rig, but I know he wants something different. I admire anyone who can do that for a living. It's hellishly hard work, from what I know. But I also admire anyone who can foresake the good money and dream of something else, then act upon it. Greg Tiller never got that chance. I can't speak for him. I don't know what he would have done. I just know what he could have done, and he had a poetic soul. All that remains, though, are his poems and his story. Ever since I read the chapter in Mike's book about Greg Tiller, I've been planning to write something in his honour. Something about his young, creative spirit connected with who I was around the time of the Ranger sinking, and how different my life, and my future was from his. So maybe this was another sign to me that maybe Greg's story needs to be told in yet another way. Maybe. I just hope to be up for it and worthy of telling it.

So anyway, yeah, fate's a fickle thing. Hope to see some of you at the launch. It's an unusual launch in that it's a celebration of the talent and efforts of the brilliant young writer and editor, Mike Heffernan, but at the same time, it's a commemoration of the souls and lives touched by the Ocean Ranger, and a single night that binds so many together in ways that can barely be expressed.

GC

Reminder for English 1101 essays

To emphasize the point I made at the beginning of class today, in writing your essay about Frankenstein, even though it's meant to be an argumentative piece, that doesn't mean you need to write things like "It is my opinion that" or "I think" over and over. In fact, your essay will suffer from the use of such useless language. Such words generally don't mean anything. It is understood that what you're writing comes from your own mind and, as such, represents your opinion.

Consider the difference between the following two statements:

1. In my opinion, Victor Frankenstein is a neglectful father and scientist.
2. Victor Frankenstein is a neglectful father and scientist.

Sentence #2 says the same thing as #1, except the second one is leaner, more straightforward, and more forceful. It packs more of a punch. When you say "in my opinion" and "I think," you are weakening the impact of your statement (or so I believe). See? When I add "or so I believe," it suggests I have doubts about the strength of my position, when I really don't.

There's nothing wrong, per se, with putting yourself into the essay, though I truly don't see why you need to. It's just wasted words, and when you only have 900 words at your disposal, you can't afford to wasted thirty or more of them telling me what is already implied: your words are your own. You don't need to remind me of that.

Or so I believe. :-)

GC