Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Mentors

Rick Bass decides to visit writers who mentored him when he was in the process of learning how to be a writer. These are not merely social visits. He  honors each person with a home cooked meal— actually a feast. And he takes a young writer with him— someone he mentors.

All these meals, their preparations , and the visits become a book — The Traveling  Feast— On the Road and at the Table With My Heroes. Not all his heroes were open to the invitation. Mary Oliver said she needed to conserve her strength.

I Imagine locating and traveling to see and prepare a meal for those people in my life who acted as mentors. My culinary skills lack sophistication and tend to fall into the creation of simple meals requiring few utensils, pots, and time. 

Who would I visit? There was Nancy who lived in the Lewis Morris building and was an up and coming dyke. This was a time when the police made round ups of women dressed in masculine looking clothes. The law stated that you had to wear three pieces of female clothing. Nancy was my age and didn’t care that she wore jeans and boy’ s shirts. I think she lost that battle with our local elementary school— but changed as soon as she arrived home. 

Then I’d visit the woman who lived in a one room apartment and would ask us to go to the store and buy her Campbell soup. She talked to herself and told us to be wary of shadows. She knew all about pigeons and kept a coop on the building roof. The pigeons listened and understood. 

There was the teacher at a retreat who said what you strive for is the emotional truth of a piece of writing. Without that emotional truth, she said, you only have words.

It’s an intriguing exercise. 




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