“To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.”
― Rachel Carson
Today I learned of the untimely loss of a valuable, irreplaceable friend and mentor—the first creative writing teacher who ever told me I could do this thing, that I could brave this strange world of art and creativity despite the odds. He was the kind of teacher who makes you feel as if you’re the most important student he’s ever had, pushing you to new levels and challenging your conception of narrative and self. It is strange at moments like these to look out at a beautiful world and sense a loss, to see that life and the universe just keep on going while one spirit among us is gone. Or maybe that’s not it at all. Maybe the narrative point, as this amazing Teacher-Spirit would likely teach it, is the beautiful disjointedness of life and death, of continuation, endings, and the messy joyous disastrousness of how we make sense of everything in between.
Cold Mountain Collective 