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Fare Foreword
(Some thoughts on "retirement")
by Michael S. Glaser, Professor of English
In the middle of the journey of my life
I awoke, astray in a dark wood
where the true way was wholly lost
- Dante
Approaching what is for me the uncharted territory of retirement, I do not presume with Dante such a profound spiritual angst, but as I enter this next passage of my life, I do find that Dante's words resonate, encouraging me to re-examine my interior life and acknowledge the casualties. I hope to reclaim some of the treasures that became dormant because I didn't make time for them. And I plan to embrace this new feeling of both terror and wonder as I open myself to the opportunities and challenges of asking again those essential questions that, now more than ever, I hunger to explore. There is trepidation, yes, but also a fascination with the landscape ahead and its invitation to cultivate a relationship with the unknown or the barely imagined. I am ready to turn from the self I have been presenting to the world for so long that I sometimes think I became trapped in believing that what I have been doing is who I am. And I welcome the opportunity to allow my poetic imagination - not my job - determine how I will spend my time.
Teaching at St. Mary's has been a great and enriching joy for me. It has provided me a way to blend my vocation and my avocation into one almost seamless experience, and I am deeply grateful for the gift of that. As Leonardtown doctor Pat Jarboe recently stated, it is not a retirement I feel myself entering so much as a re-focusing. I hope it will be a time of an almost radical simplification, a period of what the poet David Whyte calls "investigative vulnerability" as I let go of such distracting peripherals as my great skill at multi-tasking, and a near-addiction to my "Things to Do" list. It amazes me to think about how long I have lugged those around with such a proud sense of self-necessity!
I am challenged by the opportunity to go out to the edges of my own experience, with time to explore things I have both taught and written about - but somehow never really understood that I was the one who most needed to pay attention to what I had said, what I had written.
And I look forward to having the time to live with increased attention and deliberation as I embrace the opportunity my poet-mentors have always encouraged: to make "a new raid on the inarticulate," to "sit and be still," "to dive into the wreck" to open the door, because "the truth is furiously knocking," and discover and explore those fields that are waiting to nurture my "one wild and precious life."
I leave St. Mary's with deep gratitude and affection in my heart - for the many colleagues, administrators and the wonderful support staff I have worked with over the past 38 years. I will especially miss the nearly 6,000 students I have had the joy of teaching. Their hungers and generosity have encouraged and sustained me as they have allowed me to enter their lives to share the excitement of reading and thinking and writing. They have put up with me and nurtured me, challenged and trusted me, and supported and stuck with me in ways that have shaped my professional and personal life. St. Mary's and the good people with whom I have shared this part of my journey, have given me a wonderfully supportive place to grow.
And so, with T.S. Eliot I say:
"Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers."
