First workshop with Alice

I just finished teaching my Thursday class-- today we went over Eudora Welty's "June Recital," quite a behemoth to put on the shoulders of freshmen, even students as bright as the ones here. I'm really enjoying this challenge, and I'm optimistic that I may finally be finding a life's calling here. Then again, I feel pulled in so many different directions-- writing, the environmental community, the Deaf community, teaching. If I can find a way to ultimately integrate all of these things in my life (with love, a garden, and a nice little eco-friendly house), I will be a very happy man.

Tuesday afternoon we had our first workshop with Alice McDermott. She could blend in anywhere in America-- a middle-aged woman, perhaps suburban, someone you'd say hi to in the supermarket. She has a very down-to-earth quality, and a way of really grounding the workshop discussion. My first impression is that she's a great teacher and she really understands the essentials of writing.

Our workshops are pretty straightforward-- we begin the class with a discussion of the weekly story in The New Yorker (everyone, especially Alice, thought this week's story sucked). Then we move on to discussing the stories to be workshopped for the week. That's something I won't go into detail about, since this is our personal work here. Once again I found myself incredibly impressed by the way Alice hones the conversation and gets to the essence of the story. Will I have this kind of internal framework in thirty years? I hope so. It's amazing how much I've already grown my first month in Baltimore, in terms of the way I look at writing and reading. It's as if somebody opened my eyes and revealed the inner workings of the machine, something which I've always known intuitively how to run but not necessarily to fix and repair.

This is what really hit home about Alice, though. Later that evening, my roommate Danny and I were discussing the workshop and Danny asked if I'd read Alice's review. I didn't know what he was talking about. He told me there was a review of Alice's latest book in The New Yorker, and that it put her work in glowing terms. What are the chances that the first New Yorker we'd read for class would also contain a review of her book? And yet it didn't come up in the workshop. She didn't mention it. I can't pinpoint exactly what quality that is, but it just gives me tremendous respect for her.

Next week I'll be turning in my first story, and the week after that I'll be workshopped in class. That's something I'm really looking forward to, though I'm having a difficult time deciding what piece to put up. I'm very mindful that I want to make a good first impression-- not so much with the quality of my writing but with the kind of writer I am. Much of my work so far focuses three themes-- being Deaf, the environment, and traveling. Which side do I want to show first? Who am I really, and what stories do I have to give forth to the world that might actually have some value and benefit to readers?

On Teaching: The Last Post for the Day

This is my fourth post today. I've done my best to sum up a transitional time that has been both amazing and difficult. This wouldn't be complete, though, without at least a brief mention of my first week of teaching. My class meets on Thursdays and Fridays from 9 am until 10:15. There are, for the time being, 16 students in my class, though that number is fluctuating as kids add and drop. I thought I would have a difficulty with names but I knew them all by name by the end of the first day.

The students here are phenomenal-- intelligent and earnest. My first week of teaching was wonderful. I felt very comfortable being up there, and I felt very comfortable telling them who I am. I have a speaker phone and laptop. Ostensibly, a captioner types what the students say and it comes up on my laptop, but so far it's not working. Instead, I have a circular discussion and I roam around the class during discussion. I haven't had any problems with lip-reading so far, even with the international students.

I'm amazed at how natural everything feels. I'm not afraid to make a fool out of myself. I feel a certain wonderful authority as I roam about asking my questions about Seamus Heaney and Eudora Welty. I love analyzing the reading and drawing answers out of the students. So far, I'm amazed at how much the students are participating. This was my big initial fear, but I think I'm asking the right questions and being engaging.

Don't get me wrong, I have a lot to learn. I have a lot of reading yet to do. For example, we'll be going over scansion in the fourth or fifth week of class, and I don't even really know what that is. I'm comfortable in the realm of fiction, but I have a long way to go with poetry. The amount of work and preparation necessary for each class is absolutely mind-boggling.

From the Outer to the Inner Ear

Something unfortunate happened to me last week, though I've always been one to look at the silver lining in the clouds. On Sunday, after working out at the gym, I noticed a decline in my hearing over the next several days, accompanied with imbalance and ringing in my ears. It turned my view from the outer world to the inner, as I once again find myself grappling with my Deafness.

I was having a conversation with a few of the poets at a bar last week and one of them said I had this mysterious quality. The other said, I don't know about that, I think Franz is really open. I appreciated the observation from the first poet, and the compliment from the second. I think they are both true, and they both stem from being Deaf.

I'm certainly not a mysterious person by nature, but the nature of deafness and the inner ear, as well as the experiences and psychology that come with it, are mysteries that hearing people don't understand. I live in a bustling vibrant city on the edge of a great desert. I need only to look out a window when people are talking around me to see the desolation and the isolation that come with my condition.

I live in this vibrant city because deafness propels me to go outside of my comfort zone again and again. Because I do not want to be an abnormal person, I strive to be an exceptional person. Because I do not want to be downtrodden, I try to climb higher and further than others. I don't look at it as competition so much as compensation.

This hearing loss, whether permanent or temporary, is a strong wake-up call. I need to get back in touch with the Deaf community and focus on sign language. I've returned to writing a novel about the Deaf in Portland. And I am preparing for what may well be inevitable, a cochlear implant.

It may be overly dramatic, but I've always feared becoming a machine in this way. On the outside, a cochlear implant isn't much more noticeable than a hearing aid. A sound processor and microphone send signals to a dime sized internal processor placed just inside the ear. This internal processor is connected with several millimeter-thick wires inserted directly into the cochlea, which send sound signals directly to the brain.

I've been told since I was eight years old that I would hear better with an implant. In the twenty years since, my hearing has deteriorated more and the technology for the implant has improved dramatically. With an implant, I would hear much better than I've ever heard in my life.

So what stops me? (Well, the $50,000 price tag for one, but insurance should cover that.) What stops me is some deeper spiritual core that doesn't want to turn away from who I am, a Deaf man. I don't want my senses overrun with technology and computers. I don't want to be dependent on the subsidiary of a huge corporation. Ask many Deaf or otherwise disabled people what they would like and it's quite possible we'd all be in agreement. We simply want to be normal, endowed with the five senses that most have at birth. How nice it would be to have that breeziness that comes with the senses and the body's health being in intimate concord, a body so in tune that it forgets its limitations and mortality.

I already have a machine that helps me hear. I already have metal in my ear, a tiny wire that holds my eardrum in place, and which has done its job since I was eight years old. Most importantly, I have realized that finding my true potential lies in both an inner and outer world. I will always have that inner world, but to really share my abilities with the world at large, I will always be dependent on the wonders of modern technology.

My Community

I've met so many people here these past three weeks. I already have a solid, exciting community. The writers here are an amazing group. Last Thursday, we were out until 3 am at Spirits Tavern in Fells Point, one of Baltimore's most historic and beautiful areas. Friday I went out to dinner with my new roommate Danny. Saturday I went to the farmer's market and then to lunch in Hampden with a few of the poets. Sunday we had a movie night. Monday there was an out of town Labor Day party near Monkton. We were out in a wooded area, and there were horses and two goats named Isaac on the property.
During my three day teaching orientation last week, I was amazed at how intelligent and unique all of my classmates are. As the head of the department said, we won't all make it, but some of us will, and this is a community we are forming for life. We have New Yorkers, southerners and midwesterners in abundance, a wide variety of minds and ideas even if they are mostly (and unfortunately) manifested in the bodies and experiences of white men. We would all like more racial and gender diversity, but then, this is such a smart and qualified group we can't really complain.

I've also had the chance to meet a lot of other people here, including B-morers and John Waters' type characters. I've met my neighbors, including an older woman who told me about the history of Hampden. I love being in a neighborhood with lots of elderly. I've finally realized what an ageist city that Portland is, much as I love it.

I've made friends through Red Emma's Coffeeshop, including an environmental activist. Her name, ironically enough, is Kate, and she's the first friend I made in Baltimore. A few weeks ago we went out for a hike at Gunpowder Falls State Park, which is absolutely gorgeous, and will become even more so with the fall colors. I'm realizing that B-more has its fair share of hipsters, creators, and the up and coming, but what has really grown on me is its unpretentious side. I have never been in a city with so many people who were so welcoming to strangers. Most people here who have had experiences with Portland found it to be a very unfriendly, clique-ish town. You can't imagine my surprise when I heard that! But then, compared to B-more, where the neighbors stop by and introduce themselves, and I can talk with people of all different backgrounds and races, yes, Portland is pretty exclusive and more than a little sullen, especially in winter.

I do really miss Portland, though! I'm back at work on a novel that takes place in Portland, down to the bridges, the streets, even the houses. Portland will always have a special place in my heart, and it may still be my home again some day.

At Home in B-More

I've been in Baltimore almost three weeks now. I'm really growing to like the city, even to love it in some ways. For example, my neighborhood, Hampden. I've moved into a 2 bedroom rowhome with one of my fiction classmates. My neighbors range from Hopkins students to elderly to young hipsters. It's a neighborhood in the process of gentrification and change, but it's at an exciting phase right now, when it still has diversity instead of hipster homogeneity.
We live in a 1920's brick row home with hardwood floors. The walls of the long living room are painted red. The walls of my bedroom are painted yellow and purple. I can climb through the window and out onto an upper porch looking over the alley. The sun sets over the backs of the rowhomes, I see into little yards where neighbors are conversing, a hound is braying, and potted plants are in the full tangle of summer.
We also have the funkiest, most unique bathroom in Baltimore. The walls are painted green, the clawfoot tub has golden stars on it with a night background, and there's a skylight with gold cloth hanging from it.

I'm a ten-minute walk from the classroom where I teach, and also a ten-minute walk from The Avenue. This is B-more's answer to Portland's funky streets. I imagine it is like Hawthorne Street must have been in the 90's, with old, unique standbys such as the Bagdad Theater, a few boutiques moving in, but also still spiced with all the old school charms of a neighborhood. This is what Hampden's Avenue is like, and there are some great spots, such as Golden West and Holy Frijoles, both hipster diners.

Hopkins: the campus is beautiful, not quite Ivy but pretty close. My favorite spot there for the first few weeks was a wooded area near the gym with sculptures of different animals-- an owl, a squirrel, a bear with cubs. Here I tended to the emotional wounds of lost love and leaving the wild spaces of the northwest behind. I read my Eudora Welty and jotted notes down for short stories.

Our writing seminars classes are held just beneath the belltower in Gilman Hall, the central building of the Hopkins quad and the Homewood Campus. There are 12 foot tall windows and we are truly in the ivory tower here.

On the other side of campus is Charles Village, where I stayed my first two weeks in Baltimore. It's where a lot of the Hopkins students live, and just a few blocks over is a year-round farmer's market, where I went last week.

I've also had the chance to get out of town a few times-- a visit to the Appalachian Trail at Harper's Ferry, as well as several visits to beautiful state parks and wooded areas about 20 minutes outside of Baltimore. Maryland's very beautiful, and I love all the old historic buildings here.