Inward Bound!

I'm taking this 6-week course at the Richard Hugo House (Writing Center) called Inward Bound. I'm taking three classes total this Fall, but the other two are single-day Saturday classes. All of them are of the most esoteric nature, focusing more on finding stories than craft or marketing or getting published.

Before the end of the two-hour class, six out of the initial fourteen students had walked out, presumably for good. I have to admit the first hour or so was a bit awkward.  The teacher spoke in a completely random fashion about his life experiences teaching writing in prisons and surviving cancer, most of the time with his eyes closed and his head bowed, and all of the time mumbling.  There were no sylabii or reading packets or even a general idea of what the class was about, except that he advises us to mine our pain and despair.

He read a prose poem about manually extracting dead piglets from a sow who then dies.  He had us read aloud a story written by one of his prison students about clubbing two new-born puppies to death, rather than letting them die slowly. This was a true story from when his student was 12 years old.

Of course, I had the thought... why am I paying $285 for this class when I could spend this time writing and not have to think about dead puppies?  I'm sure those six students who left answered that question for themselves.  I still feel that there's something to be gained here. Situations that are at first uncomfortable are often rewarding.

Before class and a bowl of soba at Boom Noodle, our entire office went to see Religulous, which is one of those good thought-provoking-yet-humorous documentaries. The outcome is: religion (of all varieties) may be ridiculous and reassuring to some, but the propogation of religious ideals is allowing us to really fuck up life on earth.  This is the life that counts, whether there's an afterlife or not, and too many people are seeing this life as a sort of preparation for the next.  This is a cop out.  As Bill Mahler says at the end, "grow up, or die."