September 2023 - Workshop Shit!

AFTER APPLE-PICKING

By Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still,

And there's a barrel that I didn't fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

I got from looking through a pane of glass

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

And held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.

But I was well

Upon my way to sleep before it fell,

And I could tell

What form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,

Stem end and blossom end,

And every fleck of russet showing clear.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

The rumbling sound

Of load on load of apples coming in.

For I have had too much

Of apple-picking: I am overtired

Of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all

That struck the earth,

No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

Went surely to the cider-apple heap

As of no worth.

One can see what will trouble

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.

Were he not gone,

The woodchuck could say whether it's like his

Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

Or just some human sleep.

NOCICEPTION: The Ability to Perceive Pain

1. Make a list of experiences where you have felt pain. It can be physical pain, emotional pain, existential pain, etc. You define your own pain. Write this is in list form, without a lot of background or detail. You should have between five and ten different, distinct experiences of pain.

2. Choose one of these experiences to focus on.

3. Without writing, let your mind go to the moment when this pain had lessened to the point where you could return to normal functioning, where you could let go of the pain or put the pain aside. Still without writing, take time to re-experience that moment, including what you saw, heard, felt, and thought.

4. Write about the experience. Now it’s OK to go back to the original experience of pain and remember whatever you can about it, but also take yourself to that point where you got past the pain -- even if only temporarily – and explore the experience of releasing or letting go of the pain. What made the pain strong enough for you to remember it, and what made it possible for you to set the pain aside, to whatever extent you have (it’s OK to discover that you have not).

5. If time allows, go back to step two and choose another painful experience to work with.

6. If you are happy with your response, and feel like you might want to share it, feel free to post it in the comments section below.

Douglas’ Response:

The Pain of the City Revealed

It was never a matter of being afraid, here on the streets of the city. I was not worried about my

safety or my wallet or my companions. Even the rushing yellow cabs, the delivery guys on their

electric bicycles, the crowds of young men, hungry and eager for the edge of danger… None of

that scared me. I knew I was not wealthy enough or fat enough or timid enough to deserve any

voracious attention.

What used to bother me was the relentless flood of the city, the way so many expensive suits

rushed by me, so many imperturbable stiff figures on motorized scooters weaving through the

crowd, so many grandmothers weighed down by their overcoats and packages, so many

policemen, bored and wary, so many young, clever tongues ready to size up another mark, so

many unresponsive faces waiting to sell chewing gum or cocaine, so many unique lives,

inimitable wishes, one-of-a-kind histories, so many incarnate souls like bees circling around each

other in a dance that no one could sufficiently choreograph moving toward a revelation none of

them could imagine or articulate. It seemed that I was the only one with the power to escape.

So I would weep: uncontrolled tears that I tried to hide from all these thousands of people that

were rushing by me without weeping – obviously not overwhelmed, not even concerned by the

great wash of wishes and wonderment that each of them individually and all of them collectively

accepted as normal, as an average day in the city.

When did I learn to do the same? When did I learn to accept the dirty wrinkles on that deeply

sun-bronzed face asleep on his cardboard bed on the sidewalk in the middle of the day? When

did I learn to look past a hundred pairs of eyes in thirty seconds, letting them all flow up the

stairs out of the subway without reaching out to touch a single one? When did I learn to not even

see the wizened fingers reaching up plaintively for the handout that was never coming?

Now I know how to stand firm in my own isolation, to breathe in and blow out, remembering the

unassailable uniqueness of me, and see all the faces of the streets, all the dirty t-shirts and wild

fashionable costumes, all the little dogs prancing on their leashes, all the hungry teenagers

stuffing sausages or selfies in their faces, all the momentary solutions to a lifetime of problems

balanced for a moment like a kid on a skateboard, moving clearly in the only possible direction

because what else can you do with an impossible contradiction?

Now I see the city in all of its skyscraper glory drowning in its own cynical laughter the

objections of my naïve grief, and I turn away, counting myself lucky to be unable to stay for

long.

Andrew’s Response:

So tear that photo up … those smiles lie.

It doesn’t capture headaches, heartbreak, loss.

It doesn’t show the vomit, sweat, the sky

Turned floor … upended worlds and troubled toss.

But it will mean the things it doesn’t show:

You’ll see them, looking at those eyes each day,

Remembering, and never letting go …

So tear it up, and toss the shreds away.

Your past is pieces anyway, and scattered

In frantic memory. That future’s fake.

The never-realized dreams have never mattered

Since then, but new ones might. Let old mistakes

Be effigies, and burned like plagues away …

And tear them up, and toss the shreds away.