Acclimation

I am getting used to walking around campus in the hot sun, even with a pack of books on my back! I did not think this was possible. Once more I had to drag around my big fat French/English dictionary so I could spend five hours between classes finishing my homework. No problem at all.

This week has been a breeze, even though it has so far been hotter than last week. I haven't used the shuttle bus from the parking lot to campus, even though it's free and easy. I don't even want to. I'd rather walk. I still walk from shade spot to shade spot, but heck, I'm at least as smart as a cow. I am even going up and down stairs with ease, shunning elevators. (I make an exception for the late-afternoon French class on the third floor. By then I'm ready to give in a little.)

Now this stairs thing is a biggie. Two years ago I had to not only hold on to the handrail but actually pull myself a bit with my arms. Up until this week, I was still using the handrail, but without the arm assist. My leg muscles are stronger, but I still needed the rail for balance. This week I'm going right up (or down) the center of the stairs. What this means is that I've found the little muscles I needed to use to keep my balance and keep my knees in line. Hallelujah! I am born again!

The courses are feeding me. Every lecture in molecular genetics gives me several "wow" moments. I leave the class smiling. Even in the undergraduate (300-level) evolution course, I am learning new things about modern phylogenetic analysis this week. I'm finally taking notes.

The surprising and gratifying thing is that the poetry class is more exciting than anything else. It is totally new to me. Even though I wrote a bunch of poems thirty years ago, I had no idea what a poem is meant to do or how to make it do that. I just wrote off the top of my head and then worked at it until it felt right. When I read them now, I see good stuff in them but glaring deficiencies as well. I have to turn in an original (new) poem Sunday evening, and I am thinking about it as I walk around campus or sit at an outdoor table enjoying the shade. It has to start by using a male or female character and the character's location.

And here's another twist: French composition is intersecting with the poetry workshop. To improve our short compositions, we are asked to find more interesting verbs and adjectives, to include color and movement in our descriptions, to notice poetic things like rhythm and alliteration, and to use metaphors. The landscape I described in my first French paragraph will be the location for my poem, and the woman looking at it has already cropped up in French class. Our third revision has to introduce a character, which I created yesterday afternoon.

I gave a little oral report based on part of an essay by Ezra Pound in poetry class, and I got so excited I was bouncing in my chair and turning red. That was fun. I ended up bringing in scientific method and Chinese ideograms, and asking the instructor if Pound would approve of our using only free verse in class instead of learning all the forms and seeing if our poems would bull their way out of symmetry and into vers libre. 

The introduction in the poetry text goes on about how poetic language is a more primary, authentic original language... and now I can begin to feel that.