Sherman Chaddlesone Arts and Letters Lecture Series University of Central Oklahoma Pegasus Theater A Reading and Book Signing with Award-Winning Poet Joy Harjo – Co-Sponsored by UCO’s Passport to Native America.

-Indigenous Poet & Memoirist

-PEN USA Literary Award for Nonfiction

-Wallace Stevens Award for Poetry

-NAMMY-winning Musician

Great door prizes!

Reception to follow!

FREE and open to the public!

Campus Address: 100 North University Drive, Edmond, OK 73034

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/104068293283203/

Map: pdf

Illinois Blues

Made it to Urbana, Illinois to begin my eight weeks courses. I notice that storms always take the same route when they leave Tulsa. They travel up I-44 to St. Louis, then by the time they get here to Urbana/Champaign, they're colder, punchier. It's definitely colder. I froze all day

I'll be here for a week to get things going, then return for two more meetings. For the most part the courses will be online, which I'm finding takes more work in the set up. There will be more heavy one-on-one engagement with the students. Next year, it's back to in-residence.

It's harder and harder to leave home. Tonight I'm in my hotel room, finishing up a syllabus. I rewrite them the same way I rewrite my poems, stories, scripts, or songs. Often it's the end of a semester when they're fine tuned. But that's the way I am. I start earlier and earlier on them but it's a process. I wish I could just pull out a syllabus and re-use it, but I'm not that kind of teacher. I always have to start all over, and that makes it more work intensive. Like my successive projects: books of poetry, CD's of music...I never do the same thing twice. Sometimes I'd rather not be that way. I can't even write the same letter twice successively when I write cursive.

I am not used to this cold. The morning starts out in the 40's and didn't appear to warm up much over 60. I caught a chill. Walked a mile back to the hotel, stopped and got a warm scarf, then some soup. Tonight when I reached for my bag with my money, credit cards, and IDs, it was gone. The scarf store is closed. And the Japanese soup place didn't have it. I used cash in my pocket there. It was either stolen in the restaurant, or is in the first store.

Still have two hours to work, then need to be up and out early to get to be ready. And wondering how I'll get by without cash or cards or ID's. I've called the banks...we'll see.

It's one of those days---

Tomorrow will brighten with students.

Signing out--

Reach

Good morning from a hot, late Tulsa morning. I miss blogging. I can get on here immediately and write. The WordPress system demands over ten steps, including finding a photograph for every blog, so I have not been blogging except on Facebook. I want to see how many people get this one if I send it out. Please send back a note if you do. Let me know. I want to start again here.

Guns, Winds, and Breath

Last night practiced targets in the garage with a BB gun pistol. The practice reminded me of focus and intent. This morning up at 6:30AM. Went to hardware store for building supplies for a patio build out. Had to load in heavy north winds. They too are focused with intent to get where they are going south of here. I cannot fight them or will be tangled.

...a spiritual teacher told a close friend that she would be doing what she’s supposed to be doing in life if she just took breath and went with the story of her life. blame others. If we do just breathe, write, drum, blow horn…love…it will keep moving, and the gifts can emerge easier than when there is resistance.

Don't forget to check out Joy Harjo's new blog

Don't forget to check out Joy Harjo's new blog http://www.joyharjo.com/category/blog.
This blog will no longer be used.

Recent Blog Post: http://joyharjo.com/from-my-hotel-room-listened-to-an-alto-sax-player-at-dusk/
*You can subscribe to the new blog there.

Moving Blog to www.joyharjo.com

This will be my last post here. Please join me at my Wordpress blog at www.joyharjo.com. I believe you can subscribe there too. Let me know if you have any difficulties. Joy

Witness

Tonight ran by the post office to pick up my mail, an ordinary task in an ordinary world. Polar temperatures have returned; it will be even colder tomorrow. I open a card-sized envelope from my friend Sandra. We have known each other since graduate school at Iowa: we helped each other find a place in what was essentially a far distant country of the mind. We continue to stay in touch, through relationships, moves, new projects, deaths of our parents, and the twists and turns of politics of career and country. In the envelope was a card with a bright blue and red eagle design, and simple but profound words of thanks and encouragement for the New Year. She enclosed a card with what she knows is one of my favorite images, the only art my mother’s mother ever had on her wall in the one and two room houses she and my grandfather lived in: the angel protecting two children walking across a broken bridge. I appreciate my friend Sandra’s witness of my life. We do that for each other.
We all witness for each other on this Earth. It is a profound act. Sandra’s note reminded me how profound. In these last months I have lost many people with whom I have traveled in this world. One was like a mother, another a fierce teacher, and two like brothers. I almost lost one of my closest friends to cancer, a cousin is fighting the fight of his life, and another friend was up late last night writing her will and to think of her passing was almost too much to bear. All of it can feel too much to carry in the dark, and then someone reaches out with words, a song, a simple image or gesture that says I am watching. I am here walking alongside you until we make it to the other side. It matters.
Write, call and encourage.
It matters.

Charlie

The last thing Charlie Hill said to me was that he was going to have breakfast with his buddy Floyd Westerman. He'd missed him all the years it had been since Floyd passed over. What helps the grief of losing a best friend, a wise (ass) philosopher, gatherer of stories, a healer, is knowing that he will be there, with Floyd catching up. He'll get some rest, and will be there when the rest of us who love him, follow. Prayers here for you Charlie, and for your family, and all those whose hearts you have opened with laughter, with love.

Fire

We are each planted with a spark of light.

Each life is like a fire.

We must take care of that light.

Feed it.

Do not let passions for anything we find delight in

Rage and consume us

In any small or large manner

Or we will dim the fire.

It is made of the love of our parents

And ancestors.

It is lit by the Divine within everyone.

We must take care of it.

We each carry light into the world,

Every small and large being.

We share the light with every

Small and large act of compassion.

Laughter and joy make it dance

Beyond time.

What will we leave the day as a gift

Of remembrance and thankfulness?

c Joy Harjo November 6, 2013 Grand Rapids, MI dark and rainy

Wrestling

These last few days I have wrestled with difficult parts of my psyche.

It came to me that some of them aren't mine.

The ones in particular I wrestled with were my mother's.

I have to clean them out for myself, and for the generations that follow.

This is quite a profound teaching.