I’m gonna level with you: if this site didn’t have a hefty Star Trek schtick, it would’ve had some other schtick. Because to my mind poetry and math/science/progress just fit together.
When writing poems, poets are always looking for the perfect word or turn of phrase to convey all the meanings in a single line. When writing proofs, scholars are always seeking to make their work elegant, a single unifying theory basically being a shared attempt to get the poem that is the universe to sit nicely on a piece of paper for anyone to read.
This kind of thinking is why I’ve circled back to the idea of teaching again and again. Whether it was Mathematics and English to middle or high school students, creative writing in a college or university setting, or planting all of the seeds in the minds of smaller children.
The reasons every time I circle back I also happen to circle right back out again are — to put it simply — centered on the issue of long-term compatibility.
I go back for the chemistry, I get back out for want of compatibility.
You know, the basic recipe for a doomed relationship.
And yet I love sharing what I have learned, am learning, and want to learn next. I loved sharing it when I used to do Morning Writings on Youtube and Twitch. I love sharing bits of it now as a guest on other people’s streams like Orville Nation and Axanar.
Teaching — when it’s a natural extension of the writing I’m already doing — is something I have no problem doing. As I write this, I’m getting my writing routine squared away after it went completely to crap for reasons I know I don’t have to explain (because your own routine has probably gone to crap of late for similar reasons).
But I am getting it back a little at a time. And once I know what it’s going to look like for sure and for certain (for the foreseeable future), I’m going to start streaming my writing and chatting again. And I’m looking forward to seeing you there soon.
And right now my priority is getting all things Penrose squared away til the end of the year. Because poetry and progress just belong together, you know? Is that something we can ship?