and then a second splash.

Deep in a dreamless dream on the front porch of the Canadian cabin, early morning rays slant and play reflections of the rippled waters like glittering trails lapping across the ceiling. that is the first 1/2 second of consciousness.

A woofing snort of a huge exhale.

Tom is sleeping beside me. I push him awake and simultnaeously sit upright my attention riveted outside.

This is a place of peace and ultimate luxury. The luxury is in the air-clean,fresh, ffillinf my entire body with each intake of breath with life-giving excitement. The cabin lies 3 miles from the nearest road. Three water miles. To get to this place of harmony you take a boat past high granite cliffs, Alligator Rock, Wheeler Island, through the narrows at Pickeral Point where the view opens up to the distant LaCloche Mountains. Continue past Blueberry Island filled in July with fat berries, past the falls coming in on the left where the Whitefish River enters Charlton Lake. Rounding the cliff opposite Horseshoe Island you can see the tiniest outline of The Lookout on the bluff above the cabin.

The land is high, rocky, wild, free. Moose I’ve seen here plunge into the water from a beaver lodge and swim across the lake.

The cabin sits on the north shore, right at the water line. A mere50 feet separate it from the point across. We sleep on the porch,our bed just under the windows.

As I sit upright, I see the deer hrul itself up on the land and scramble up the bluff. It is followed by a seond buck plunging headlong upward.

What have they seen? What frightens them?

I look across the 50 feet of water to the peninsula and see clearly.

I push Tom again.

Urgently I whisper, as if it makes a difference,

I point, as it that makes a difference. He sees as quickly as I. WE are rigid in attention,

“A wolf!”

Teachers as Writer:

Community of writers rationale and experience makes us better teachers of writing

Goal: produce a piece of writing by the fall to be includeded in a technological anthology

Writing Prompt: Sounds handouts and experience

Instructor produces souonds without visual aides; students write.

As follows:

Sounds

Unseen sounds: what does each one evoke? emotionally? personally?

1. tamborine: monks from the far east, lines of them in orangesaffron robes, shaved heads

2. cow bell: swiss mountain top, meadow looking down with hot blue sky and cool shivery breeze, seeing the ahripins turns flowing, fadding in the distnace as far as the eye can wander peaks of the Alps snowy

3.marble rolling: Rio, my granddaughter and I sit together and amke a ring of rubberbands. She is four years old. then we shoot marbles, using the boulder as the shooter. We are carefree, intent, together touching

4.baby rattle: gentle, tiny sound emitted with a hush behind it.

5. small bell: tinkles like a bike bell. I’m riding in the neighborhood in Deerfield, Ill. Stratford Rd. I’m eight years old. It’s a brand new bike. New wheels. A sense of freedom.

6. wooden blocks clapped together: pounding in pegs on the floor of the beautiful house of my parents. My mother remarried, step-dad-they’ve bought the home of my high school best friend

7. triangle: some old chuckwagon guy is calling together the cowpokes for a dinner of beans and bad coffee, better but bitterer than nothing. The sun has almost set, long shadows.

8. Dice roll on the table: We sit, a group of seven or eight, at the table on the porch at the cabin on Wheeler Lake. Under a big stained glass lamp and we’ll play until we laugh ourselves hoarse.

9. The wooden push duck rolls on rubber feet. A series of toddlers push it across the old wooden floor at the cabin. It is a primitive toy, but well-loved,just a stick, a wooden duck and rubber feet that flap.

10. Cell phone rings: “Will somebody please get that?” it always rings. It’s a common tone.

11. A low bell: it isn’t but sounds light a lighthouse bell in the far distance. fog rolls in. Night has happened.

Snow carpets,coats,covers quietly

the air is quieter, settled, movement slows and in turn is noticed with an acuity not found i tropical climes.

Each color dances backgrounded as it is with white pure as the empty void of black in true space.

Eat, pray,love a book by Elizabeth Gilbert has me tranfixed with ideas:

“In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down….

“to devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business” . 114

I am tansported several weeks backward in time to Rome. My first trip there. My meagre expectations flooded.

On a dark December morning i hiked up to the Borgese Gardens and i turn into the Villa Borgese Museum. WE had a two hour ticket purchased several days in advance as the museum was sold out. A ticket costing e 25 which roughly translates into $40. why is any museaum worht a 3 day wait and then you can only enter for 2 hours and be hustled out?

I’ll tell you why:

Apollo catching Daphne.

Bernini.

His name pops up everywhere. Upon entering the room with the pair-Daphne and Apollo-tears welled up in my eyes.

the room fell in a hush. As quiet as snow. No one could speak. The marble moves, flows, is the epitome of beauty, is the encarnation of pure art, is the climax of what mankind’s highest goals can accomplish.

Tenderness, surprise,wryness, coquettry, speed, gentleness: all are embodied and much, much more simultaneously.

Are these values? Yes.

Is Bernini a genius? More than yes. I am caught so unprepared for the depth of my own reaction that words fail. Now 5 weeks later I attempt.

What also am I attempting?

To connect with others’ thought,feelings, fears and joys relating to HOW to conect?

WHAT is importantf?

HOW do we know what we know?

HOW do we communicate what we know?

IS sharing living?

IS just experiencing internally more important?

Perhaps these are only qustion each of us can answer for themselves.

I take a break and wander out to get the mail,shffuling through a foot of white powder, brushing the puffy whiteness from the mailbox door and extracting a pile of letters,bills and a magazine Veranda…I open it to a page that says Roman Art From the Lourve coming to the US…and get excited since serendipity barges in with a bluster with such assertiveness.

Here I am pondering on Rome, on art, on values and the first page I turn to is…

Is that the way my mind functions? All minds function? We just pull and pull and tug until we see a connection?

Since all the universe is cononected is that how we do it? One tiny,miniscule bit at a time?

WILD IDEAS

TO                 INTEGRATED CONCEPTIONS

                      TO         ACTION PLANS BOTH INDIVIDUALLY AND WITH ANYONE ON THE BLOG

IDEA ONE: PUTTING TOGETHER A PURPOSE STATEMENT AND GOAL FOR NON-MOTIVATED STUDENTS

IDEA TWO: PUTTING TOGETHER A BOOK 

IDEA THREE: PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON CONTACTS WITH THE WORLD        

See each of the three in the discussion sections