Week I: TOUCH

Albert Pinkham Ryder

The word: TOUCH

Hi everyone--good first class. Nudge drawing discussion. Good group. I have numbers down to 10--should work. We'll see about Room 101, 6pm sharp next Tuesday, bring a small candle. (Someone bring matches too) Discuss alternatives following, if need be.

Also--I want you to know that I don't see 280 as therapy--or at least I wouldn't use that word. Rather, when the emphasis is on work--beautiful work, made with the hands, with feeling--that takes us to the place we need to be. It's my reason for doing the course (and, I'd hope, for everything else I do). It's ALL creative--art, music, poems, life...

That's our goal...

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Here's Theodor Roethke: 

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke, “The Waking” from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Copyright 1953 by Theodore Roethke. Reprinted with the permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.


Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (Doubleday, 1961)