Poetry, Prose and Painting

These days education seems to be all about STEM: science, technology, engineering and math. Kids tap and swipe on a variety of dancing screens, stumbling, it seems, past the world they live in and the people they live with, focused on other places and faces. Back in the day it was the “3 Rs - reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmatic.” Slates, then blackboards and ruled yellow tablets with yellow #2 pencils and pink erasers captured penmanship, vocabulary tests, multiplication tables and decimal equivalents.   

The tools designed to enable and manifest human intellect and creativity are constantly evolving. Indeed, come January, I will teach my last class at NC State. It will focus on that very notion of how - from the crude symbols scratched millennia ago at the ever more receding dawn of “humanity” to this week’s new phone, app or “smart appliance” - we strive for new ways to enhance human interaction. It is a tad ironic that the course, dealing with the nuances of human communication, will be conducted entirely online, across a variety of screens. But I digress - no surprise there. 

The point is that now, after 40 some years in the classroom - and on computer screens - I am drawn to a new model for my personal “manifestation of human intellect and creativity.” I call it The 3 Ps.” Poetry, Prose and Painting. 

We tell our children, and were no doubt told by our parents that “You can be whatever you want to be. Follow your dreams!” However, as we go through the formal education process it soon becomes clear that instead of that being an ever-broadening road exploring more and more options in existence, we are actually funneled through a series of choices that require us to focus ever more tightly on a particular area of interest, a particular vocation; on making our reputation and enhancing our income via a tightly focused specialization. In the academy that specialization spiral increasingly reflects a Pygmalion-like inclination to facilitate the hatching of a new generation of academics remarkably similar to ourselves. Oops, another digression. 

The point is that this web of specialization inclines us to trust our hobbies or avocations to provide a more Renaissance experience among the wonders that surround us. The 3 Ps reverse that track, encouraging us to shake off the rust and see, savor and create in that all encompassing “everything is possible” world that we were promised as children but that somehow slipped away. 

This inclination of the senior cohort to “re-experience life” has not gone unnoticed by the leisure industry. Cruises, lecture series, hiking vacations for the “mature set” abound, and no doubt provide excellent profits for those purveyors of silver from the silver-haired. I don’t know why I find the idea a touch creepy - but I do. Maybe I just don’t like being part of a “targeted demographic.” Instead I find myself increasingly drawn to the avocations for which I stole time while locked in the demands of the specialization spiral. Don’t get me wrong, the life of a tenured university professor is a wonderful life. I know of none other that offers more freedom to think, create, and reflect. It is sort of like being one of the Medici, but without the money or the power, and with an obligation to publish within the shifting confines of your discipline. So I see my “almost here” retirement as a liberating opportunity to truly think, reflect and create; hence the 3 Ps. 

I do, however, need to point out that the 3 Ps, are not easy task masters. Pick any of the three, and you quickly discover that each requires significant effort and long stretches - hours, not fractions thereof - of uninterrupted concentration and reflection. Finding that kind of time - even in a retired world - is incredibly difficult. That is particularly true because it often appears to others that the “3 P involved individual” is doing nothing at all, or at the least isn’t doing anything that cannot be interrupted or put off. So you can see why those AARP and Smithsonian cruises, tightly scheduled to fill the days, are the antithesis of a 3 P lifestyle: 

“Ready for the breakfast buffet? 

“No.” 

“How about a tour of the cathedral?” 

“No.” 

“Yoga?” 

“No.” 

“Lecture on the structure of black holes?” 

“No.” 

“Water aerobics?” 

“No.” 

“Antique shopping spree? 

“No." 

“Would you like me to leave?” 

“Yes.” 

“Close the door?” 

“Please.” 

So this, bit by bit, day by day, is becoming my life: the 3 Ps.  A blank screen, a clean sheet of paper, a rainbow of paints or markers, music lilting in the background magically creates a mysterious, ideally timeless, world of creative potential; words and rhymes, images and lines. Everything lies beneath my fingers, and once again, like the first day of school, anything is possible. 

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