The Physicist's Tale

"The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne." --- Chaucer

"I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly." --- William Stafford

Back at good old Willamette U., during my first year after transferring there, I had the pleasure of taking a couple classes in the English department from a chap named Kim Stafford.

"First he wrought, and afterwards he taught"

A specialist in Medieval Literature, he was the son of William Stafford, the one-time poet laureate of Oregon, the so-called Robert Frost of the Northwest. By the time I met Kim, he himself was also a published short story writer and poet.

He wasn't a full-time faculty member, but had been hired for the year as a visiting professor to teach one course each semester while commuting down from his home in Portland.

The first course I took from him, in the fall semester of 1985, was a once-a-week seminar on Chaucer. Each Wednesday evening we gathered around a big long table in Eaton Hall to read and discuss The Canterbury Tales.

Kim's style was casual yet rich in substance---highly Chaucerian. That's how he wanted us to be exposed to this classic work, in the spirit in which it was written. During the semester we felt like we were on a journey together, working through the list of pilgrims: the Knight, the Reeve, the Wife of Bath, the Clerk, the Nun's Priest, etc.

He also taught us the basics of Middle English pronunciation, and we took turns in class reading Chaucer aloud as if it were the 1390s: "Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth, inspired hath in every holt and heeth"

We learned how the Medieval mind savored illuminated manuscripts as the preferred method of literary expression---the ornate multimedia intermixing of text with rich illustration.

Kim was one of those guys from the 1960's generation that possessed a Bohemian earthiness that seemed to be in touch with both the earth and the stars at the same time. He was rigorous in academic demeanor but driven to express his own life experiences in the vernacular spirit of the common man.

Like his father, he came from that Northwest tradition of the democratic bard, in the same line as, say, Woody Guthrie, who came to the Northwest to furnish it with hymns to its industry, or his fellow UofO alum Ken Kesey, whose magnus opus was about loggers on the south Oregon coast, or the cowboy poets of Nevada, to whom he made his own pilgrimages to listen to their latter-day horseback-composed tales.

He treated his students with respect as if we were possible budding writers. He listened to our work with the ear of someone genuinely interested in what he was hearing.

I liked his Chaucer course so much that in the spring semester it was an easy decision to sign up for his creative writing workshop, which met in the same Wednesday night weekly gathering format (with many of the same students). We brought in our prospective storytelling efforts and, like Chaucer's pilgrims, shared what we'd written out loud. We critiqued each other, to be sure, but in a convivial way that seemed to elevate everyone at the same time.

Kim also gave us practical pointers from his own experience---how to pick the best venue for your work, how to write query letters, and how to show off your inevitable collection of rejection letters.

Back then I had the idea that my talent lay in being a novelist. Ironically one of the reasons I had taken my first physics class at Willamette had been because I was planning on writing a novel that included a character who was a physicist, and I wanted to learn some physics to make it more real.

But even though I didn't become a professional novelist, some of the advice he had given us stayed with me, resonating with me through the other forms of expression I chose to pursue.

For example, one evening after our writing class, the two of us walked over to Brice's, a coffee shop that used to be across from campus.  He bought us both pieces of cake. They were four bucks each. I told him I'd pay him back. He waved it off. "I deal in a cash only basis," he said. In the years that followed, I've used that line while sitting on the other side of the table.

In regard to creativity, he advised us to "follow the rabbits that cross one's path." He said another writer had told him that, and it had served him well. Obviously I've remember it over the last 27 years, which is how long it's been since I've seen him.

The advice about following rabbits reminds me of something that happened to me last week here in the Portland area.

Ten days ago, after my night at the Motel 6 in Clackamas, and needing to find a coffee shop where I could work for the day, I headed for a nearby Starbucks I had found using their web site. I couldn't find the one I set out for, so I tried for a different one in the nearby town of Milwaukie.

After failing to find that one as well, and missing a crucial turn that would have made it difficult to turn around and look for it again, I said screw it and took the Sellwood Bridge over the river, following it upstream towards Lake Oswego. I knew there was a Starbucks there on State Street, just south of downtown.

I didn't mind making a trek back to Lake O to work for the day, since it's a classy place and I enjoy hanging out there, as I've mentioned.

As I pulled into the parking lot of the Starbucks, I thought, in my cosmic whimsical way, "I wonder what I'll find here today, that I wouldn't have found at the other places I tried to find. What will make me say I'm so glad I came to this place?"

The question was answered after a couple hours, when after having plowed through some of the day's work, I went up to the counter to order a lunch sandwich (Starbucks gets their money out of me, to be sure). While I waited for my sandwich to heat up in the oven, I sauntered over to the bulletin board by the front door. A crowded quilt of fliers and announcements were posted overlapping each other. I rarely look at the bulletin board in Starbucks. But on that day I was restless and didn't feel like sitting down again right away.

While I waited there, my eyes landed on a small glossy cardboard poster, right at eye level. It was an advertisement for a place called Fishtrap, a writer's retreat to be held the following week, July 8 through July 14.

I was intrigued. While we were on the coast, Red had mentioned the Qi Gong retreat she had attended there. The idea of going to some kind of retreat appealed to me, just for the heck of it.

Even if I'd long abandoned my original idea of being a novelist, I'd found ways to enjoy writing as a hobby---the blog you are reading now, for example, as well as some other projects I've been working on in my spare time.

After my sandwich was ready, I went back to my seat and pulled up the Fishtrap web site. The site had much of the same information as the flier but went into more detail. It was the twenty-fifth year of their summer program.

Attending the week-long program was out of the question because of my day job (working for a large publishing company, ironically). But it turns out one could sign up for a shorter program, held during the last three days during the weekend.

The cost seemed reasonable as well. The only catch was the location---hundreds of miles away from Portland in the northeast corner of Oregon, in the Blue Mountains near the town of Enterprise.

"Why couldn't it be on the coast?" I lamented. I didn't like the idea of driving out so far, especially to that part of the state. I love eastern Oregon, to be sure, but I'd just come from that general direction, via Spokane, and felt like staying near the ocean for a while.

The more I thought about, however, the more it seemed like going was the thing to do. But I still wasn't convinced yet. Then I perused the list of workshop sessions and saw a familiar name in one of them, the name of my old creative writing professor at Willamette. He was to lead a Friday afternoon discussion on digital story telling. That's what Chaucer would have done, I thought.

I wasn't surprised at all to see his name on the list of participants. He makes a career of doing this kind of thing. But it's fair to say that if I hadn't meandered into that Starbucks in Lake Oswego that day, I might never have learned about Fishtrap, at least not in time to attend part of it.

It turns out Kim's office at the college where he is currently a professor, is about a mile from that particular Starbucks. Quite possibly it was he himself who posted the flyer that caught my eye in the coffee shop.

I suppose I'll ask him when I see him.