Vocations and Avocations
Issue #22 - Welcome or Welcome Back
Hello (Again) and Housekeeping
Most of you were here for Season One of In Solitude, For Company and have some idea of what to expect. I’ve migrated to Substack, which shouldn’t affect you at all except that the email will look a little nicer.
If you’re one of the few new subscribers, you might be wondering how you got on this list. Well, you bought a book of mine called Ulysses Arrives in Amarillo. If at this point you’d like to unsubscribe because you signed up for a book, not an email, then I understand. Also, as I’ve mentioned to some other new subscribers, you really don’t need another damned email. There is not enough time. Feel free to unsubscribe.
Second, I will continue to write, and I’d like to have you reading.
To paraphrase Auden—
Among the leaves the small birds sing; The coyote’s yip commands awaking: In solitude, for company.
Writing is an act of solitude, but with company in mind. Communication of any form is a miracle. The mere fact that a thought that exists as nothing, as an electrical charge in one brain, finding form in squiggled dots and lines in pixel or ink, then sparking an electrical charge in another person’s brain and then somehow being held and sustained between the two people is nothing short of miraculous. But both brains, two people willing to engage are required to communicate, to heed the yip and singing.
Some Personal News
Last year, after teaching high school for ten years, I changed careers. Switching careers at forty is a strange business. Everyone I know recognizes me as a teacher. To ten years’ worth of students I am Mr. Wieck.
There’s an easy format for telling people why you’re leaving a career. Mostly people assume that you were unhappy doing what you were doing; or the specific place or the colleagues were insufferable. But none of that fits my situation. I enjoyed teaching which is a constant set of new challenges, from class-to-class, let alone day-to-day. I enjoyed my subject. I have an abiding love for literature and language. I enjoyed my colleagues and my administrators trusted me to be a professional. But life is not only a job, and on an economic level, jobs are interchangeable. You work to earn a living. Some jobs have remunerations that are beyond money, but banks and grocers don’t accept those as payment. But that’s probably not the whole story either.
Anyway, in August 2021, I began the new job which required a thousand hours of apprenticeship. The same week, I matriculated (how many times in your life can you use that word?) into a Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. Immediately, I knew that those two simultaneous endeavors ruined my ability to keep up with these electronic periodicals, hence: the hiatus.
What to Expect in Season Two
Short (~2000 words) reviews, appreciations, sketches, and essays no more than twice per month, but more likely once per month. Here’s the docket for the next few months.
Andre Dubus’ “A Father’s Story” is one of the most moving stories I’ve ever read. Look it up soon. We’re going to read it together.
My friend Ryan Culwell is a friend of mine and a songwriter. I don’t like writing about my friends because any attempt flattens them into a train of thought that works in paragraphs. But Ryan writes and performs great albums, so I’ll write about them.
An essay about Osage Orange trees and my friend the artist-farmer Jack Baumgartner. Again friends are impossible to write about, but I can write about trees.
A weird imaginary dialogue between real people in Amarillo about public art. I’ll probably get sued for this one.
A letter to my cousins still farming in Umbarger.
Some of My Publications
Thanks to the following periodicals and presses for publishing these pieces this last month.
Belle Point Press for anthologizing my short story “Plaster Madonna”
Ekstasis Magazine for publishing my tandem sonnets “My Wife Doesn’t Like These Sonnets”
Fare Forward for awarding my poem “Avocation” 2nd Place in the Fare Forward Poetry Competition. It will be published at the end of September.
Now that I’ve kept house, I’ll get back to the essays and stories and poems.