Sunday 5/29/05
Ought 5. 40 years after high school ended. High school seems so long ago. Minneapolis and St. Paul, Hubbard County, Lindstrom, Appleton, Connersville, Crawfordsville, and Muncie. So many places, so much life frittered away. Yet I feel content. Odd, isn’t it?
I’ve spent lifetimes as a drunk, as an administrator, as a scholar and a drifter. As a lover, and a fearer, an advocate and a hermit. From this vantage point I think of two things: John Desteian’s remark that it is a tragedy I had no students, and Kate’s comment last week about myEducation of a Docent having the virtue of being “existential”, by which she meant rooted now, rather than in a future ambition. I don’t know whether to evaluate these notions as critical, pejorative or as statements of fact. Perhaps they are both.
This is my 58th Memorial Day and I feel at ease. Not because I have accomplished much, though I feel I’ve met the criteria of having won not just one but several “victories for humanity.” “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” – Horace Mann I know the end point of this Pilgrimage, though not its epilogue. Perhaps I will not be at ease tomorrow, things change, but today I am calm.
