Last night I remembered my dismay when I began graduate school in social psychology at Emory University. It was the basic theory class that disillusioned me about my chosen field of work. I remember picturing an orange. In sociology we tore it apart, analyzed it - and never once tasted its sweet juicy flavor. We never once smelled its tangy scent. The work I wanted to be sweet and juicy was shown to be flavorless and dry.
There were other things wrong that first year. I was smacked by the culture shock of moving from Chicago to Atlanta. I found southern courtesy making a kind of false shell around each person, so that I never knew where I stood. And Atlanta was then, in 1969, a contrast in black and white. I was used to the greater diversity of Chicago's neighborhoods: black, yes, but also integrated Hyde Park, plus neighborhoods of Greeks, Irish, Italians, Germans, Poles, Chinese, and more. It was like moving from color film to black and white, to come to Atlanta.
And in the sociology department at Emory, the faculty polarized into two groups. They fought bitterly for control of the department. We students felt like pieces of meat being torn apart by our professors.
I had a headache that whole year, until I got the letter telling me I'd been awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship. This was a portable fellowship, so it enabled me to switch to Georgia State University.
There I tried hard to bring the passion and juice and flavor back to my study. My own focus became metaphor - working from Eugene Gendlin's Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, and Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry. I studied Whitehead's process philosophy, thanks to my partner's earlier teachings.
Had I been more perceptive, I might have changed fields of study instead of schools. I never became the research scientist I'd intended to become. Had I gone to art school instead of studying social psychology, I'd not have fit in there either. Only recently have I come to admit that I'll never be a real artist in the sense of caring passionately about the field of art. I don't care about advancing the field of art.
Just as I wanted to work in social psychology in order to make the world better for people, now I want to work in art not for the sake of art, but to make certain energies of wild nature available to people - perhaps even to speak for wild nature. I want the work to enable people to come more alive.
I seem unable to give full allegiance to a field for its own sake. I know the work demands and deserves that allegiance, but I can't or won't give it. My allegiance is to the sacred fire that burns in all.
As the potter Rick Berman once told me, "No time is ever wasted." I use all my past studies in my life and work. Now, though - I taste the orange. At least now my work is sensual - the feel of hammer in hand, of soft unryu paper in my fingers, the flow of paint from my brush. Now I contemplate the orange as its full self.
9:05:36 AM 
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