February 12, 2008

It’s already hours into the morning, and I have done almost nothing but the little chores necessary to start a day like today–dealing with the cats, readying correspondence to be mailed, clearing and answering e-mail. It’s no way to live. We all say that, and keep on living just the same.

Load-in at the Arts Center last night. I admire the patience of people like Ben and Mike C, crawling under platforms and drilling patiently away when I would long since have burst into tears of frustration. Maturity is the process by which we learn what we should not be doing. The Arts Center has been hugely generous. I am stunned by generosity aimed at me–though, perhaps, that’s the proper reaction.

Three big lecture classes in a day are too much. One is dazed, though not totally in a bad way–dazed sometimes by the beauty and acuity of student response, which requires more time than you have to sort, to fully understand, to prepare some manner of reaction. Brian is smitten by Shelley, and stops me on the quad to ask why he shouldn’t leave school right now to take in as much beauty, as much awful loveliness, as he possibly can. I make the lame–if true–observation that much beauty lies behind the walls of the library, and there’s no reason not to start there. But Shelley’s whirlwinds and earthquake daemons are still thundering in his ears, and nothing can outshout them. We talk of the infinite storm of beauty, and I myself am so moved that I can hardly speak.

Last night we talked of Donne, and a boy with tears in his eyes says he’s an atheist, but because of Donne he wants to love God so much–if only he could be convinced there was one. There is matter for a story– the lover seeking a lover whom he cannot believe exists.

I fight too hard for things that matter too little. I can release a bolt of heavenly fire in a classroom at will, and I almost never mention it.