Phew. Nothing like a rousing game of hide-the-bone with old Bash to get the blood pumping.

Back from class, and wowee, confident me came out to play. I love it when that happens. There's never any telling who'll show up when I walk in the classroom--fearful, craven, hates people looking at me me or extraverted, joking, knows her shit me. There is nothing, not one thing, I can do to make it one or the other. So. For a first day of class, that went probably as good as I could possibly hope. Right.

But on the way home I remembered something I wanted to write here days and days ago. Something pretty horrible. My very first good English teacher, Mr. French, recently killed himself. Every time I write or teach, well...not every time, but often, I feel the ghosts of all those great English teachers I've had at my back. And he was the first one. The first really smart, really thinking, really in love with literature teacher I had. He was bored to tears teaching high school but he was too lazy, or something, to do anything else. I remember on the first day of class he called me out, right on the spot, the exact place I so assiduously avoided all my days in high school and he said, Molu, you have a philosopher's soul and a poet's pen. He said that right in front of everybody. I was mortified and thrilled and from that day forward he had my undying loyalty. A lot of nasty rumours went around campus about Mr. French and pretty girl students and, frankly, I've no idea if any or all of those rumours were true. I know he got fired a few years ago as a result. But toward me, he was quite chivalrous and polite. He was serious and he gave me books to read and he gave incredible advice about people and about writing (he told me this hilarious story about eavesdropping on his downstairs neighbors during a horendous fight and then he said, that's what you have to do, Molu). I adored him. Even after he refused to write me a recommendation for college because I dropped out. I still adored him.

Dan had him for a teacher a few years later and did not like him at all. My dad was in a local production of Hamlet with him a few years after that and he took great pleasure in mocking Mr. French's oddities. Of which there were quite a few, I'm sure. But it just makes me so sad. He was weird and probably creepy but part of the reason I write today was because he once told me I was good for nothing else.

Only Dylan Thomas will do:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.