bussing it

who's willing to share future dreams in this field? the system - the institutional role of the writer - is tied up in publishing, and in teaching. so the professor on one hand, the writer on book tour on the other. neither one of these seem foregrounded in a community of desire (kinship?) where the writer actually chooses who s/he lives among. they can be, but they are pretty lonely, alienated models themselves - and these are for the writers who "make it". we go where the jobs are. some writers have the good sense to choose to enter into only such a professional situation where they feel comfortable/challenged, and hence can brew up (or walk into) a certain degree of intimacy among peers. others go where the opportunity or $ is, and its hard to argue with that given the alternative. but it makes for an awful lot of loners out there, lonely folk who know most others through professional, not intimate, relationships. and i would count the two years at naropa as negating that distinction between professional and intimate community - Naropa seems one out, where this fundamental division (or alienation) of work and life is not accepted. and even there the staff was rife with politics and tension, not sure how the intimacy (kinship) of going back 20-40 years helped or hindered this.

does that make any sense? here in SF we have a fragile but existent community of writers - several overlapping, largely independant ones really, and i am on the edge of one of those, with my amigos. perhaps i am crazy, but this community - and the internet helps, but i would never desire it to be the main/only tool - provides a bed or ground for my work, my writing, however tenuous (largely due to my (and others) holding back from this community). provides a social context.

that seems important. the way a conversation takes an inherently and consistently different direction than a monologue.

i brought all this up because - it is a dream of mine to have a semester length program (in either fall or spring or summer- maybe one in a diff. season each year) for college students aboard a bus - a travelling community of scholars and artists and students.

it would be for credit, associated with some school, both for admin support, credit, and possible practical assitance... maybe it could exist without this. but it should be for credit, so the students can use it to graduate. it would CERTAINLY be educational.

in my head of heads i always imagined there would be an ecologist, a historian, a poet, a phototgrapher, a mechanic, a cook, etc. could easily be a native american scholar, a critical theorist, a novelist, etc., the idea being a travelling caravan, moving across a specific and varied terrain (say the American SW, the Great Plains, the Pacific States, Mexico), w/ pre-arranged and of course spontaneous stops (buses do break down), w/ a slew of classes offfered on site, on site studies, a study of place in one sense.

a friend of mine took such a class in ecology at Geoge Washington in the 90s. they hiked and bused across the SW studying the land. My sense is that it would be four classes, and that it would be multi-disciplinary - ideally aimed though at writing, at writing this experience, these meetings.

its so hopelessly idealistic its delicious. i always have imagined doing this with friends. a community making venture. i value others often out of this radical sense of being alone. my body feels foreign today, mind too. i have the bends - 30 feet tall and billowing oddly in the wind. almost transparent, birds and heating ducts pass through me. what substance does my jelly hold?

seems another trap. lets rent buses, hjack some kids, make it happen. before gas prices render this an impossibility, oh, perhaps it already is.

(but just imagine getting PAID for this!) i would love to hear some of your writerly/teacherly/publisherly dreams. or your thoughts on mine.