Aaron Shurin circles his subject...

Perhaps it is easier to circle your subject when the subject is...you. But I suspect it is not as easy as Aaron Shurin makes it look. Indeed, his beautiful honesty is not easy to come by. And neither is the beautiful portrayal of even life's ugly side. His memories take on a dreamlike, transcendental quality. His lyricism leaves me in a state of awe...and much of the time, at a loss for words.

I have to say, I am thus far completely impressed with Professor Ramos's choice of texts for this class. I feel like we are sinking deeper, with each book, into a writing life with Professor Ramos setting a trail of breadcrumbs for us to follow and gobble as we move along the path. And I am gobbling up these texts. I feel like there is so much to learn from these books. I am generally not a rereader. I am a slow reader and I attempt to make as much sense as possible out of a text the first time through. I have tried to reread certain things and rather than "getting something different with a different reading, " what I got, was bored. However, there are a few exceptions and there are books that almost demand a second (or third...) reading. Cortazar's Hopscotch is one such title. But I also feel that Castillo's The Mixquiahuala Letters, Dillard's The Writing Life, and especially Aaron Shurin's King of Shadows have kernels of truth and secrets of the trade buried within, that upon studying, we will come out  the other side better writers.

Fuck it. I'm trying to get this done with two very loud 10 year olds, a bold 7 year old, and a needy 4 year old running under foot. I am going to scream and it makes Aaron Shurin's summers in garden-surrounded hammocks sound like Paradise. An unattainable fucking Paradise. I can dream though...

I can dream that I will have the time and proclivity to reread this gem. We don't have to steal from Shurin because if we are willing to sit with him, he offers his craft up to us generously. He "flex[es] the page and stretch[es]" right there for his readers to see and absorb. He is daring and puts his heart and his soul on the page, leaving behind remnants of himself, vulnerable yet brave remnants of himself. It is impossible for me to dream of laying myself that bare, exposed. This is something I am struggling with for this creative nonfiction writing. I keep many things to myself out of fear. It is scary to place myself in such a vulnerable place. Shurin's delicate balance of what he shares openly and what he tacitly includes, painted with his precise, transcendental, lyrical prose is "courage and daring trapeze flight without a net." I can hope to rise to the occasion someday. Emerson's epitaph: "We study to utter our painful secret." A student's mode of study, my mode of study, could and should certainly include the works of Shurin. Impossibly beautiful, I could keep reading this book for the rest of my life.
            

  "This, I thought in a rush...is exactly what performing has to be: the generosity, the willful dialectic, the endless acknowledgement of shared meaning or joy. It was a demonstration of how to make art--the outward-seeking contract, the givingness at the heart of creation." 

Professor Ramos--
Where you lead, I will gladly follow.
Wendy