November 19, 2007

Met my former student Jacob R in the YMCA parking lot. He was looking smooth and bright and happy, with his baby in the car seat. Every time you ask Jacob how he is, he says “Great, I’m great,” and, as is not always the case, one believes him. When he was my advisee there was a professor who irritated him, but other than that he seemed to go from strength to strength, trying new classes, learning new skills, riding his bike to a sort of local cycling fame that few of his academic peers knew about. In Poetry Performance he was the class favorite; he was fearless and hardworking and, though not at the outset particularly good, he was never embarrassing, because he was never embarrassed. All of this instills an awkwardness in casual contact such as today’s, for he seems conscious of his good fortune, and realizes there’s not much to talk about on the superficial level once you’ve said, “Great, everything’s great.” One strategy is to assume he’s covering up, that he’s keeping the darkness in him secret, though that is the prejudice of our dark hearts, presuming that there is no one on the earth truly happy with his lot.