Day #3 @WOLSyracuse. Inspired by Mapping Superpowers with @Abdaddy & James Haywood Rolling. The Result? #EveryDayIWrite

Confession: I studied with Dr. James Haywood Rolling while at Syracuse University and I really do believe it could be lethal if we spent too much time together. His genius was irreplaceable and I loved every second of his courses, especially the readings, the artistry, the creativity, the joy, the laughter, and the funk. I have folders and folders of work from his classes and, perhaps, one day, the two of us can create something spectacular together. I am a visual learner, and his influence helped me to bring forth ways to make meaning beyond text.

Today, I used his Writing Our Lives prompts: What are you superpowers? What activities do you love giving attention to? What do you work harder at? What might you contribute to the world? with Abdi Nazemian's call for mapping out ideas through word association - that is, seeing what might arrive when a word leads to a word and so forth (um, cool!). I started with birth and free associated all the way until I trapped myself by the chin: HOPE.

Here we go:

Rip was born amongst the pollywogs, but he didn't know it at the time. That song would only come when the universe taught him how to sing in frog ways during the time of Lily Pads and dragonflies, teaching and chalk...(and this was way before he was a Professor). Listen. Record. Create. That is how one finds their potential  inside. Rip was the Willy Wonka sort, nefariously testing the creatures he met with gobstoppers and fizzy-lifting drinks to see which would take the bait and which would show integrity. 

Integrity is what he was after...that, and the quest to decode morality to the very core of its chemical fiber. Were there genes for humor? For laughter? For mischief? For hate? Rip's work was (but he didn't care) the laughter of the academy and very few took him seriously. Dr. Doobie-Doo they called him behind his back. He was the Fool to everyone else's King Lear (and he learned this in London while rolling down the hills of Primrose Hill and dancing the streets of Wigmore...Picadilly circus was in his brain and Camden in his soul...there, the rebirth of sorts...birth after birth...born again and again... all on the quest to find serenity, the Siddharthean Om...despite human wars, hangnails, and despots). 

"Put a couple more fingernails into the sauce," Rip instructed his graduate student, Glamis, who maintained jars of poetry, magazine clippings, dog hair, eyeballs, and toes."

Strange hobbies Rip had, running through the veins of his girth and brain.

"Genetics. Biology. We will figure out a way to capture this human thing," Rip instructed Glamis. It was always a battle between quantifying the everything and qualifying the outliers to make every numerical finding a joke.

"Hand me some of the Sycamore leaves and one hair of Walt Whitman." Rip continued. "The last time, it was the follicle that helped us to pick Pandora's box open."

Secrets of The Great Whatever. Ways to read the word, and the world. 

Yes, Rip taught college, but he was after something bigger. The creatures he selected were strategic. It was  networking through soul-work, and most of the time they didn't even know they were part of his larger quest. Tell me your story. Share a time when...What was that like to live through.... 

In the end, it always was a quest to find hope. 

His superpower? Writing every single day.