No matter how much we prepare for some thing I don’t think we ever truly know it until we experience it. There is intellectual knowing of preparation and then there is knowing in the body that comes with experience.
One metaphor that helped me tremendously at other times in my life is the idea of compost. Leaving academia and Iowa, throwing out all those papers, etc., wasn’t a trash truck that took it all away, or a fire turning it to smoke evaporating in the air, but rather just the beginning of the long process of decomposing. Like the orange rind and banana peel that take longer than the kale, but never as long as the egg shells, compost only happens over time, in the dark, and with proper attention. What you are going through now is necessary. You are becoming compost that will then nurture the soil you have prepared, and in which amazing new things will grow, blossom, and bear fruit. As a gardener, you know that this all happens in seasons, and takes time.
Tend to the compost (the old/ past), tend to the soil (soul), and tend to the garden design (your hopes and dreams) in equal measure.
(this last sentence is a new thought for me, and hey, it’s not bad 😉)
Lovely, mournful and yet hopeful. I think all life stages can be as difficult as you described. For me, becoming an empty-nester has left me feeling similarly to what you describe.
My favorite saying is a twist on an old chestnut: when one door closes another one opens, but it’s hell in the hallway.
Well said, Sean. The hallway is Feiler's "messy middle" (I'm a little obsessed with Feiler, if you can't tell). I'm further down the hallway, but not out of it. I do hope to have captured some of the doors that have opened at The Chronicle and on Substack -- things are looking better a year in.
Beautiful stuff. I’m feeling the echoes of that letting go/grief myself, and it’s very like having that “council of dads” listening to this piece, picturing the plant life that’s just about to pop.
Got sucked in by the Willa Cather reference when I saw this posted on FB (what a woman!) and am so glad I came by. Wonderful piece. I’m looking forward to digging into your archive, Joshua, although I think it may resonate quite a bit and hurt a little.
Welcome! Happy to share some of the paywalled content if you get stuck in the archive. Let me know: dolezaljosh@gmail.com.
Incidentally, I wrote three of my dissertation chapters on Willa Cather, and nearly all of my published scholarship features her work in some way. Her life story is just as intriguing as her oeuvre :)
Wonderful essay, Josh. You covered a lot of solid ground. You’re doing good work. Keep it up. I’m with you: I worry a lot about the next 10-15 years, what academia will look like. Will Homer, Shakespeare and Dickens etc be jettisoned simply because of their skin pigmentation? Will serious, rational, critical thinking survive? (Is it already gone?) Will classes teach facts and ideas or one-sides ideology? The librarian thing makes me sad.
Anyway. I’m glad you’re writing on Substack. We need you. Leaving academia and coming here might have been the best thing that ever happened to you.
Well, I'd say that my wedding day and the births of my three children are the best things that ever happened to me. And as much as I love Substack, it's not a substitute for the depth of purpose I felt early in my career, when teaching was going well and colleges cared more about people than about data. For several years I really did feel that I'd landed a dream job. But you're right -- the trends in academe are alarming. Most of what I read confirms that my decision to leave was the right one. And I'm glad to be in conversation with you here.
Lovely and mournful, as another commented. I was never in academia long enough to mourn its loss, and when I was there I stood much lower on the ladder than you, teaching as an adjunct or freeway flyer as we were known, trying to piece together a full-time living working part-time at several colleges. But I left for similar reasons, a disenchantment with a system that devalues those it depends upon to exist. I spent my last few years organizing a union for part-time teachers, then negotiating a contract to raise wages, pay for office hours and provide some minimal health care coverage. I stayed on one year as president of the union then happily left it in other's hands, and entered the nonprofit sector. I retired some years ago to write, and while not a gardener like you take solace in nature living on the edge of a preserve and watching the deer and wild turkeys and coyotes, and feeding feral cats. And watching the oaks bloom with the rain while others topple in the wind and lie like ancient ruins on the hillside. The practice of nonattachment is what saves me in the end from despair or anxiety as I write and send my work out on the wind, wondering where it will land and be read. So many beautiful flowers lay unseen on so many hillsides. And yet their beauty is undiminished for all that. I take comfort in that. It's the writing I love that nourishes me. I seek readers, yes. But the writing sustains me.
Thank you, Deborah. "Disenchantment with a system that devalues those it depends upon to exist" is exactly right. Perhaps you read Jenn Zuko's post a month or so ago about leaving academe after adjuncting for twenty years.
And what a lovely nature metaphor for art. Flowers blooming unseen on the hillside. You make me want to begin a new fiction project!
Ever since I've left the country, I'e found that most urban people just don't get back country neighborliness, especially New England style. I spent 10 years as a part-time farmhand to help out a neighbor. Occassionally, half a side of beef would appear on our porch in the dead of winter (-10 degrees so leaving it on the porch is reasonable). We always knew who left it, but part of the neighborliness was never telling. You didn't want to give the impression that anyone owed anything or that someone should feel obligated. Years later, they gave me $2000 to help me out, and I bought my first car.
I've been practicing that attitude ever since, and I've found that in most places ... people find it weird even then adjusted to fit the locale. Most people that you're going to ask for pay, or that they owe you, no matter what you say. They don't get it that it's about community.
I was speaking with a neighbor about this recently. He grew up in Indiana and taught for many years in Illinois before retiring here. We're both advocating for some collective action against the invasive plants in our wooded commons, but we're both relative newcomers, and the issue has been unaddressed essentially since the land was developed. A small team of 8-10 people could do a real number on autumn olive and honeysuckle, especially in two-hour shifts here and there over a year or two. But we're not a tight-knit neighborhood. Most people move here for the quiet and to be left alone. It's a foreign dynamic to me and to my neighbor with Midwest roots. But we'll keep chipping away -- it's nice to have each other.
Ah. When I was talking about "country," I was referring o the edge of the wilderness in Maine. The climate and the poverty is so harsh that it drives community. I've always been curious what it looks like in other regions.
A number of the people we interacted with moved out there after the horrors of war, as a number were WWII and Vietnam vets, etc. Or just wanted to be away. Communes and back to the landers were common.
At my house now, we have a communal back garden for three houses. Despite my "meh" attitude about prairie, I do have a prairie garden in back. My experience of Iowa is of sitting on the sharp divide of "you're not from here!" to "we don't care you're not from here!".
I used to have long chats with another neighbor at an earlier house. He was a Bosnian immigrant, and we used to chat on our front lawns about how in that neighborhood everyone avoided talking to or acknowledging each other. As we both had European sensibilities on the subject (mine tempered with rural Maine), we found that very, very odd. He'd pedal his bike about town, I would babywear for hour-long strolls or just be in the garden. No interaction.
My proudest moment last year was finoshing a three year campaign against my old girlfriend's trumpet vines. It is worth the effort. And of course it becomes almost easy when multi people are joining the hours.
Thanks. I was worried about you thinking you needed to fix academe. I hear the owl call my name, now that is a true statement. The book buying public are really remiss in not seeking sortof- stories about survivorship. After all that is the ship we want whatever the pay scale. Now lookyou are doing it all right. We donot listen to Wendell Berry because of his ancestors. We listen because folks like you 25 miles from the town are earning your keep. Everybody wants to be on solid ground, thankyou for the heads up about socializing with neighbors. Give us a long form essay in a year that does not sound like Thom Wolfe slumming, but i think it is what people describe as slumming, the suburbs in 1905 were houses attached to small gardens also known as the slums. You have an audience at all stages of growth. A downtown building near me has a stack of 5 bags of potting soil just sitting on their parking lot. At 5 pm i am stealingone. We try to keep going.
No matter how much we prepare for some thing I don’t think we ever truly know it until we experience it. There is intellectual knowing of preparation and then there is knowing in the body that comes with experience.
One metaphor that helped me tremendously at other times in my life is the idea of compost. Leaving academia and Iowa, throwing out all those papers, etc., wasn’t a trash truck that took it all away, or a fire turning it to smoke evaporating in the air, but rather just the beginning of the long process of decomposing. Like the orange rind and banana peel that take longer than the kale, but never as long as the egg shells, compost only happens over time, in the dark, and with proper attention. What you are going through now is necessary. You are becoming compost that will then nurture the soil you have prepared, and in which amazing new things will grow, blossom, and bear fruit. As a gardener, you know that this all happens in seasons, and takes time.
Tend to the compost (the old/ past), tend to the soil (soul), and tend to the garden design (your hopes and dreams) in equal measure.
(this last sentence is a new thought for me, and hey, it’s not bad 😉)
A perfect metaphor. I ought to have mentioned Whitman's "This Compost," which ought to be a favorite of all gardeners!
It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal,
annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts
such leavings from them at last.
https://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1867/poems/142
Lovely, mournful and yet hopeful. I think all life stages can be as difficult as you described. For me, becoming an empty-nester has left me feeling similarly to what you describe.
My favorite saying is a twist on an old chestnut: when one door closes another one opens, but it’s hell in the hallway.
My you find your way out of the hallway soon.
Well said, Sean. The hallway is Feiler's "messy middle" (I'm a little obsessed with Feiler, if you can't tell). I'm further down the hallway, but not out of it. I do hope to have captured some of the doors that have opened at The Chronicle and on Substack -- things are looking better a year in.
Beautiful stuff. I’m feeling the echoes of that letting go/grief myself, and it’s very like having that “council of dads” listening to this piece, picturing the plant life that’s just about to pop.
Thank you, Jenn. I'm grateful for your solidarity, and it makes me happy to feel that you have also found a shore here.
Likewise, and back at ya. :)
Got sucked in by the Willa Cather reference when I saw this posted on FB (what a woman!) and am so glad I came by. Wonderful piece. I’m looking forward to digging into your archive, Joshua, although I think it may resonate quite a bit and hurt a little.
Welcome! Happy to share some of the paywalled content if you get stuck in the archive. Let me know: dolezaljosh@gmail.com.
Incidentally, I wrote three of my dissertation chapters on Willa Cather, and nearly all of my published scholarship features her work in some way. Her life story is just as intriguing as her oeuvre :)
Wonderful essay, Josh. You covered a lot of solid ground. You’re doing good work. Keep it up. I’m with you: I worry a lot about the next 10-15 years, what academia will look like. Will Homer, Shakespeare and Dickens etc be jettisoned simply because of their skin pigmentation? Will serious, rational, critical thinking survive? (Is it already gone?) Will classes teach facts and ideas or one-sides ideology? The librarian thing makes me sad.
Anyway. I’m glad you’re writing on Substack. We need you. Leaving academia and coming here might have been the best thing that ever happened to you.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Well, I'd say that my wedding day and the births of my three children are the best things that ever happened to me. And as much as I love Substack, it's not a substitute for the depth of purpose I felt early in my career, when teaching was going well and colleges cared more about people than about data. For several years I really did feel that I'd landed a dream job. But you're right -- the trends in academe are alarming. Most of what I read confirms that my decision to leave was the right one. And I'm glad to be in conversation with you here.
Lovely and mournful, as another commented. I was never in academia long enough to mourn its loss, and when I was there I stood much lower on the ladder than you, teaching as an adjunct or freeway flyer as we were known, trying to piece together a full-time living working part-time at several colleges. But I left for similar reasons, a disenchantment with a system that devalues those it depends upon to exist. I spent my last few years organizing a union for part-time teachers, then negotiating a contract to raise wages, pay for office hours and provide some minimal health care coverage. I stayed on one year as president of the union then happily left it in other's hands, and entered the nonprofit sector. I retired some years ago to write, and while not a gardener like you take solace in nature living on the edge of a preserve and watching the deer and wild turkeys and coyotes, and feeding feral cats. And watching the oaks bloom with the rain while others topple in the wind and lie like ancient ruins on the hillside. The practice of nonattachment is what saves me in the end from despair or anxiety as I write and send my work out on the wind, wondering where it will land and be read. So many beautiful flowers lay unseen on so many hillsides. And yet their beauty is undiminished for all that. I take comfort in that. It's the writing I love that nourishes me. I seek readers, yes. But the writing sustains me.
Thank you, Deborah. "Disenchantment with a system that devalues those it depends upon to exist" is exactly right. Perhaps you read Jenn Zuko's post a month or so ago about leaving academe after adjuncting for twenty years.
And what a lovely nature metaphor for art. Flowers blooming unseen on the hillside. You make me want to begin a new fiction project!
Ever since I've left the country, I'e found that most urban people just don't get back country neighborliness, especially New England style. I spent 10 years as a part-time farmhand to help out a neighbor. Occassionally, half a side of beef would appear on our porch in the dead of winter (-10 degrees so leaving it on the porch is reasonable). We always knew who left it, but part of the neighborliness was never telling. You didn't want to give the impression that anyone owed anything or that someone should feel obligated. Years later, they gave me $2000 to help me out, and I bought my first car.
I've been practicing that attitude ever since, and I've found that in most places ... people find it weird even then adjusted to fit the locale. Most people that you're going to ask for pay, or that they owe you, no matter what you say. They don't get it that it's about community.
I was speaking with a neighbor about this recently. He grew up in Indiana and taught for many years in Illinois before retiring here. We're both advocating for some collective action against the invasive plants in our wooded commons, but we're both relative newcomers, and the issue has been unaddressed essentially since the land was developed. A small team of 8-10 people could do a real number on autumn olive and honeysuckle, especially in two-hour shifts here and there over a year or two. But we're not a tight-knit neighborhood. Most people move here for the quiet and to be left alone. It's a foreign dynamic to me and to my neighbor with Midwest roots. But we'll keep chipping away -- it's nice to have each other.
Ah. When I was talking about "country," I was referring o the edge of the wilderness in Maine. The climate and the poverty is so harsh that it drives community. I've always been curious what it looks like in other regions.
A number of the people we interacted with moved out there after the horrors of war, as a number were WWII and Vietnam vets, etc. Or just wanted to be away. Communes and back to the landers were common.
At my house now, we have a communal back garden for three houses. Despite my "meh" attitude about prairie, I do have a prairie garden in back. My experience of Iowa is of sitting on the sharp divide of "you're not from here!" to "we don't care you're not from here!".
I used to have long chats with another neighbor at an earlier house. He was a Bosnian immigrant, and we used to chat on our front lawns about how in that neighborhood everyone avoided talking to or acknowledging each other. As we both had European sensibilities on the subject (mine tempered with rural Maine), we found that very, very odd. He'd pedal his bike about town, I would babywear for hour-long strolls or just be in the garden. No interaction.
My proudest moment last year was finoshing a three year campaign against my old girlfriend's trumpet vines. It is worth the effort. And of course it becomes almost easy when multi people are joining the hours.
I'm here for ya, man.
I appreciate it, and -- as they say in Uruguay -- igualmente. Somehow the English equivalents don't convey quite the same meaning.
And I am also coming from a military background. We either stand together as brothers ... or we die. In our case, a spiritual death.
Thanks. I was worried about you thinking you needed to fix academe. I hear the owl call my name, now that is a true statement. The book buying public are really remiss in not seeking sortof- stories about survivorship. After all that is the ship we want whatever the pay scale. Now lookyou are doing it all right. We donot listen to Wendell Berry because of his ancestors. We listen because folks like you 25 miles from the town are earning your keep. Everybody wants to be on solid ground, thankyou for the heads up about socializing with neighbors. Give us a long form essay in a year that does not sound like Thom Wolfe slumming, but i think it is what people describe as slumming, the suburbs in 1905 were houses attached to small gardens also known as the slums. You have an audience at all stages of growth. A downtown building near me has a stack of 5 bags of potting soil just sitting on their parking lot. At 5 pm i am stealingone. We try to keep going.