Lesson 1, with lemons

 I don’t think about schools I should have attended or degrees I should have earned. I do think about teachers I should have had.

Kenneth Lash, who wrote an essay on Borges I admire, might have been one of those teachers.

He taught at several schools. At the University of Northern Iowa, he headed the art department and later the humanities program. Introductory students didn’t take a course in “art appreciation.” Instead, the course was “learning how to see.”

At the first class, Lash gave each student a lemon with instructions to get to know it well.

At the next class, the lemons went into a pile, and students were asked to retrieve theirs.

Many of the notes in this online collection are about observation — noticing things. I always think of Guy Davenport’s essay about hunting for arrowheads, a story about how he learned to notice things and how, later, he realized that many people go through life without noticing much at all.

That lesson, learned with arrowheads or with lemons, changes everything. 

Years ago, I went walking through the woods with a group. So many things were happening in that ecosystem that I didn’t understand, I was shaken when the walk ended. My spirit had been moved, as my grandmother would say. When we got out of the forest, one of the fellows it was a shame we hadn’t seen anything interesting. He said he hoped we’d have better luck next time.

• Sources: The story about Lash’s lesson with lemons is in the University of Northern Iowa’s obituary:

https://scua.library.uni.edu/university-archives/biographies/kenneth-lash

His essay “Borges and I” was the topic of yesterday’s note.

Guy Davenport’s essay “Finding” has been mentioned several times in these notes, including “Davenport’s search for arrowheads” on March 15, 2022. It’s in The Geography of the Imagination; San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981.