I remember being afraid as I sat in the big classroom. I had two young kids at home, I didn’t have a job, and I had traveled halfway across the country because I had decided I was going to be a writer. As everyone around me talked about all the great literature they had read—or written and published—I quailed. I had a monster case of imposter syndrome.
What was I thinking starting a Master of Fine Arts program in writing? I’d penned a few poems. Big deal. I wasn’t ready for this. I needed to drop out now, save my money and my pride, and scuttle back home to Minnesota.
And then a big bear of a man strode in and wrote a single word on the blackboard. In my memory, he underlined it twice before sitting down on the desk in the front of the room.
The word he had written was rapport, and his warm and fiery eyes flashed as he convinced us that was what we should be looking for in life, people with whom we could have this deep sense of connection. Because we were going to need it. In our writing life. In life.
Because life goes sideways, and we need to find the people who will be there for us when that happens. People who allow us to feel supported, safe. People who allow us to name our vulnerabilities and our fears, our mistakes and our regrets.
I took this man at his word, and I set out to find my people. Thank God I did. One that I met in my writing program has been my emotional sherpa for over two decades now, and I don’t know if I could have survived everything that happened to me without his ferocious support and wisdom.
Another has guided my poetry writing life as much, if not more, than anyone else in the world.
And I count myself incredibly lucky to have so many others who are there for me, holding me and nudging me toward my strangest, truest sense.
Ever since I got back from Japan, I’ve been thinking about that man and his idea of rapport. We warn our students about how hard it can be to describe what happened to them while studying abroad, and I can testify—it’s true for a director as well.
Because, you see, that trip changed me.
I now believe. I absolutely, completely believe. In what? That’s harder to say. Magic? Yes. The Greater Than? Yes.
But that and so much more.
I now know there is a Goodness, a Power, a Faultless Monster (a phrase I came across in the Oxford English Dictionary) who lives in and through and with everything and everyone.
I add this last one, because just this past weekend, I was talking about my trip with someone who said we often domesticate the divine. We turn the holy into a well-behaved dog, ready to come when we call, ready to beg—how may I please thee?
Whatever it is that I experienced again and again in Japan refuses to be small. Contained. Controlled. And while we are not meant to meet it in shame no matter what so many religious voices cry, we are invited to meet it as we would a wild and sudden beast.
Be still.
Curious.
Meet what is with bright eyes, and pay your respects—with a bow or a hand to your heart.
Then go softly along your way, and find others who want to talk to you about things like this. Or whatever it is you need to talk about to be your fullest, richest, most magical self.
The man who strode into that classroom so long ago and told me to look for rapport? His name was Liam Rector. A brilliant poet. A fierce man. His suicide years later stunned, devastated us.
But a person can know these things and can still find it all too much.
I have a picture in my new office at work. I found it as I was moving offices this summer, and I put it on a shelf that is right behind my heart when I sit in my office chair. In the picture, I am in the foreground, smiling. I have just received my diploma for my MFA from Liam. He stands behind me—out of focus, but he’s there. Undeniably there.
beautiful story and wisdom. thank you for sharing your inner life with us.