Welcome back Mr. Writer: characters are all around you!

I have recently taken back to writing and I thought that blogging might help me keep the mind going in that direction. This return comes after nearly an 8 year dry spell. I was able to figure out the last time that I wrote anything non-academic related because I found a disk full of past writings. The last thing I composed was a poem for a good friend of mine, Charlie Issacs. The piece I wrote was a poem that was read for his retirement party. At the time he was terminal with pancreatic cancer. Here is the piece that I wrote:

When One Sees a Tree

When one sees a tree

it is easy to forget

the seed that it came from

and the seeds that it has spread.

The former can be found if one

looks within the heart of the tree.

But for all the seeds that the tree planted,

one is left to only guess.

From that one tree,

many a life may grow:

each reflecting the tree that gave it life.

Some may even become trees of great stature

to spread more seeds of their own.

10-18-2003

 He passed away April of the following year. A colleague of mine remarked after Charlie’s memorial service that the last two years of his life I likely spent the most time with him of anyone else at that time.Charlie and I worked five days a week together in the math lab.

I consider Charlie one of the first educators that truly treated me as a peer. I learned a great deal working with him. I rarely heard him say an unkind word of anyone. I think the harshest thing that I recall him saying when he otherwise would have grounds to say more was, “I don’t care too much for that person.” His attitude to life, and his manner toward others is still an inspiration to me in the work that I do at the college.

I should take this time to mention what I do. I work for a local community college as a math instructional specialist. Sounds like a fancy title doesn’t it? What does that mean I do? Well, there is the official job description that says I provide workshops, tutor students, keep records, other job duties as needed. Don’t you just love those open ended descriptions that translate to: "whatever the heck needs to be done." Practically speaking there is a great deal more that happens in my job. This position gives me an opportunity to work with a lot of different people and get to know a lot about how they think, speak-what makes them tick in general.

So, that means I should have plenty of material for studying people as I write. What a rich ground of personalities, situations, and mannerisms to draw from and experiment. Of course, I do have to be mindful of confidentiality in my job, so names are changed to protect the innocent (or guilty). Now that the cat is out of the bag, I wonder how many will start to look for a hint of characters around them in my writing.