Remembering

One of the things I love about my life and the purposes and people it includes, is the potential for convergence--between...what? ...plotlines? ...themes? When one's life is dominated by story, a certain intertextuality just seems to occur more often. I suppose the same happens for other folks with other jobs, but the frequency of those moments just seems higher due to my life as a teacher and a reader.

Tonight, during (literally) a couple minutes of reading while I was waiting for my wife, who was waiting to switch laundry before coming to bed, a couple of plotlines intersected. And in this case, as in many others, Wendell Berry helped usher me to the crossroads.

First, as part of the board for the Midwest Writing Centers Association (MWCA), I'm working on the proposal review stage for our conference in October 2007. My own proposal focuses on literary worlds and how literary places--like Berry's Port William--might generate questions or perspectives that could inform our work in writing centers.

Second, even though there is still a solid month and tons of grading and a million other things to be done before this semester is over, I've been wrestling with that melancholy which arises when I realize students whom I admire, respect, and treasure--students who come as close to being friends as the barriers of age and institutional position will allow--are on the verge of leaving campus. Such melancholy is wholly selfish, of course, but I suppose that is part of what makes it notable.

Then, tonight, I picked up Berry's collection of short stories titled This Distant Land, mostly to preview quickly before bed, in hopes of getting an early start on actually developing the project for the conference. I got through the epigraph, and now I'm staying up late to write this blog post. Here's the epigraph, which will probably end up becoming an inscription on a graduation card or two. The epigraph is a passage from Berry's novel titled Remembering, and the formatting is in the original.

Oh that I should ever forget We stood by the wagon saying goodbye or trying to & I seen it come over her how far they was a going & she must look at us to remember us forever & it come over her pap and me and the others We stood & looked & knowed it was all the time we had & from now on we must remember We must look now forever Then Will rech down to her from the seat & she clim up by the hub of the wheel & set beside him & he spoke to the team She had been Betsy Rowanberry two days who was bornd Betsy Coulter 21 May 1824 Will turnd the mules & they stepd into the road passd under the oak & soon was out of sight down the hill The last I seen was her hand still raisd still waving after wagon & all was out of sight Oh it was the last I seen of her that little hand Afterwards I would say to myself I could have gone with them as far as the foot of the hill & seen her that much longer I could have gone on as far as the river mouth & footed it back by dark But however far I finaly would have come to wher I would have to stand and see them go on that hand a waving God bless her I never knowd what become of her I will never see her in this world again

Having typed it out, I wonder if it seems a bit too much for the wholly expected and not-nearly-so-permanent departure of students from a university. But it resonates somehow. It reminds me of E. A. Robinson's poem "The Sheaves," which always dominates my thinking during times of seasonal change.