My last Japanese Art class was on Thursday, and I turned in my last paper on Friday. Tonight, I have one final class, Reading Poetry. I took this class because I don’t know much about poetry and thought I should. I’m still not sure I know much about poetry, but maybe a little more. My intention is to read, and understand, Walt Whitman. I’m not there yet.

Auditing a class puts you in a kind of limbo. Some professors encourage you to fully participate, others can tell you to do nothing at all, or there is a middle ground. The poetry prof encouraged me to participate in class, but not to write papers. This was fine with me; the papers were a lot of work. I did not participate very much in class. I just felt the other students needed all the opportunities they could get and I shouldn’t take it away from them. This class was filled with relatively young kids, at most early twenties. The Japanese Art class was a special seminar with both graduate and undergrads, several Japanese and people who had lived in Japan. I think this is what made it such a great class.

Back to poetry: tonight we are each supposed to read a poem of our own choosing, and I am also expected to read. I was actually going to skip the class; I’m not sure I want to listen to everyone read; but after being asked to participate, I will do it. I have chosen a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, A Sunset of the City. It is a poem for an old woman. I want the children in my class to hear it, whether they understand or not. The poem expresses more sadness than I feel. Perhaps Brooks wrote it when she was older than I am, or wrote it for someone who was older.

Brooks was poet laureate of Illinois, getting the position after the death of Carl Sandberg, and I remember reading about her often when I lived in Chicago. This is the first time I have really looked at her poetry.

I am writing another paper for Japanese Art. This is a big one. It would be worth a lot of points if I was taking the class for credit. I tell myself I am learning more by writing all these papers. But I also agonize over them. This professor has made me feel so much a part of the class I feel like I have to do the work and do a good job. At some point I suppose I’ll find something more engrossing than going to school. Then I’ll be able to let it go. For now, it’s a good thing.

I’m writing about the "way of tea," chanoyu. As with most things Japanese, it’s very complicated. We are supposed to write about building a teahouse and then giving a tea. I’m still stuck on building the teahouse. Back to work.

I turned in my third paper today. It was easier to write; the reading was more straightforward so I didn’t have to do so much work avoidance. This one was really about revising Japanese art history. I know there have been many revisions and reevaluations in western art history, usually because one influential critic writes something everyone else is unwilling to challenge. I recently read a book about Eakins that charged his personal reputation and the interpretation of his art was all based on one monograph published in the 1930s that was so influential it paralyzed any further thinking about him. The Japanese art history revision was more complex, based on a number of important exhibitions in Japan and here in the US. Western artists from Whistler and the Impressionists until today have been influenced by Japanese art. It is equally interesting to learn how the Japanese art world has been influenced by western exhibitions and, most important, western art collectors.

I begin with Chinese Art on Thursday. Then an interlude on Fiction Writing and finally, my favorite, Japanese Art. I’m really very interested in the Chinese art, but I wish the instructor was a little more focused. She talked about the first Chinese emperor’s terra cotta army at Xian. I’ve been there. It’s a fascinating place. In between fiction writing and Japanese art I went to the library and found a book about the soldiers so I could fill in information the instructor did not have time to give us. The best part about these classes is that they raise questions I never thought to ask, or never fully formulated. When I saw those soldiers I knew they had been created by some kind of a manufacturing process, but I never thought it through. The instructor raised the questions and never quite answered them. But now I know.

Some day I’d like to go back to China. I was there for only 2 weeks. I’m sure I could spend 2 years and never see or understand it all.

I worked on that second paper until this afternoon when I had to go to class. I had a terrible time with it. Each time I had some idea of what to write I looked at the reading again and decided my thought was not quite right. The paper has strict guidelines. It’s supposed to be a critical abstract of the assigned reading. I am at a disadvantage because I have very little knowledge of Japanese history. I thought about not turning in anything. I had written one long paragraph (out of the required three) and I was very dissatisfied. So, putting my cursor in at the top of the page (thank goodness for computers), I wrote: "I can’t write this paper." I then proceeded to detail my problem. I finished the paragraph, decided the original could stand with it, added a sentence at the end and I turned it in. In our subsequent class discussion I realized that I hadn’t been far from the truth: the reading was disjointed and awkwardly translated.

We got the assignment for our major class paper today. I had intended to ignore this one. I thought it would be more work than I wanted to do. But the assignment is charming and I think it will really be fun. I’ll have more to say about it as I start to work.

and I should be writing the second paper for my Japanese Art class. This week we are looking at the tea ceremony as an art form, and it’s relationship to the politics of the 17th Century. I am still having trouble with the Japanese names and concepts. And I probably should have taken a class in Japanese history before I took this one. If I could only remember all of the Japanese words, it would be much easier.

The tea ceremony promoted a culture that was highly problematic for the ruling elite, as evidenced by the enforced suicide, in 1591, of one of the great tea masters. The tea ceremony emerged from a movement called gekokujo, those below overthrow those above. Obviously suppression of culture has gone on for a long time and under many different forms of government.

I always thought the best thing I did was go to school. So I’m back in school again. The University of Pittsburgh has a program for seniors, which offers classes geared strictly to seniors and also the opportunity to audit undergraduate classes. I signed up to audit 2 classes: Japanese Art in the Edo Period and Reading Poetry. I also signed up for 3 of the senior classes. My 2 audit classes have begun meeting; the others don’t start until next month. I really enjoy the Japanese Art class. We are looking at art from both Kyoto and Edo. I am familiar with a lot of this, but the class is giving me a much broader appreciation. I tend to look at the composition, color, technique and emotion evoked by each piece without thinking about the purpose, the artist’s intent, and the broader context in which the piece was created.

The class began with the history of the political and governmental occurrences in the sixteenth century, the beginning of the Edo period, a time when the power of the emperor, who remained in Kyoto, was eclipsed by the power of the Shogunate, which ruled from Edo. We are looking at several different art forms with the idea that they came out of these political events.

When I came out of the class it was starting to get dark. This is a picture of the Cathedral of Learning, the biggest building on the Pitt campus.