Summer Syllabus in Retrospect

Summer Syllabus in Retrospect Today is the eighth day of fall and the first day of winter in my head. The warmth, which had faded, returned, and lingered over the past month, is decidedly dead. The sky is white and my bed is very warm. So I can now see the summer as something whole and fully past. Back in May, I made a syllabus for my summer. I gave myself goals and intentions, reading assignments, projects, and permission not to follow through with any of it (recognizing it as idealistic, possibly self-centered and a little cheesy). This is what the syllabus looked like: Summer 2015 Syllabus Areas of Development 1. Intellectual 2. Physical 3. Artistic 4. Aesthetic 5. Practical Readings Disclosing New Worlds, Spinosa, Flores and Dreyfus Writings, W.E.B. DuBois Food Justice, Robert Gottlieb and Apunama Joshi Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow Good Citizens,  Thich Nhat Hanh Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig Nobody Better, Better Than Nobody, Ian Frazier Sustainable Urban Metabolism, John Fernandez Everything and More, David Foster Wallace Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler The Tupac Amaru Rebellion, Charles Walker Black Elk Speaks, John Neihardt Almanac of the Dead, Leslie Marmon Silko A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn 1493, Charles Mann Journals of Susan Sontag and Anais Nin Projects drawings and paintings essays, stories, and poems handstands pottery Evaluation Keep notes from reading. At the end of the summer, review them. Reread journal entries. Compile drawings. List the lessons you’ve learned. Evaluate on these three measures: i) how much fun you had ii) how much progress you made iii) how that progress contributes to your overall development as a human being Mornings wake up before nine climb firepole tea and journal and plan read a little bit, daydream a little get to work Every Day lift or run practice handstands write something not for yourself Eat mostly vegetables and fruit very little refined sugar coffee only once or twice a week Guidelines “The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead. To love, to be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of the life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.” Arundhati Roy “Living simply makes loving simple.” bell hooks “To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.” James Baldwin “First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether youre inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration wont. Habit is persistence in practice.” Octavia Butler “When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.” James Baldwin So: tear this up, feed ambition to the wolves, accept the contradictory nature of everything. Seek discomfort, live well in uncertainty, make the people you love feel loved. Have rituals, not routines. I spent the summer mostly in Cambridge, with trips home to Oregon and New Mexico and a stint in Stellenbosch, South Africa for a workshop hosted by the Urban Metabolism Group, within which I have done research since last January. I made no progress on handstands, and stopped climbing the firepole when I realized it gave me lots of bruises, but I ate well, slept well, wrote, read, did some pottery, and got older in a good way. What I Actually Read Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates The Jump-Off Creek, Molly Gloss East of Eden, John Steinbeck Giovannis Room, James Baldwin Jimmys Blues and Other Poems, James Baldwin The Woman I Kept to Myself, Julia Alvarez All About Love, bell hooks Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow Citizen, Claudia Rankine This is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin Free Food for Millionaires, Min Jin Lee Love Me Back, Merritt Tierce Killing Rage, bell hooks Meditations on the Future of Food and Seed, Vandana Shiva What I Actually Ate fried plantains, the lunch buffet from Desi Dhaba, huevos rancheros, grapes Evaluation A for fun. B- for progress. Incomplete for development as a human being. There is a Baldwin poem I love, called Inventory/On Being 52, which begins, My progress report concerning my journey to the palace of wisdom is discouraging. I lack certain indispensable aptitudes. Furthermore, it appears that I packed the wrong things. I am 20, not 52, and I have not fixed my sights on any palace of wisdom. I am not sure what I have packedperhaps Im still packingand which aptitudes I lack, I have already dispensed with, or still hope to develop. My progress report is encouraging or irrelevant. I cant tell which.