Here it goes...A very successful writer and award-winning record producer wrote about her old college English literature professor who had a profound impact on her life, a man who made her fall in love with poetry and the written word. It was because of him that she visited Ireland and to make her first stop Yeats' house. Two decades later she met the professor again. He was in a wheel chair accompanied by an aide. She approached him and expressed to him his influence on her. He didn't respond. In her desperation, she wanted to give back so she decided to send him music she produced with famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The aide was kind enough to share his address which she found out was two blocks from her own home.
The writer was ready to take her leave but turned around and recited a verse in his ear. It was the first words from Yeats' Sailing to Byzantium she learned from her once passionate professor:
THAT is no country for old men. The youngIn one another's arms, birds in the trees-Those dying generations - at their song,The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer longWhatever is begotten, born, and dies.Caught in that sensual music all neglectMonuments of unageing intellect.
She cried hard on her way home. The music was eventually sent and she learned not too long after that he passed.
It wasn't her professor's dying that I found sad per se, but the moment when she attempted to express his passionate stamp on her life at a time when he may not have fully appreciated it. A chord within me was struck hard. And then the resonance blossomed further when she whispered back the passion she learned from him, hoping against hope that just maybe the words would reach him inside somehow. That was what made the tears fall and mingle with the spray of water during my morning shower. His passion for 19th century poetry had flowed to her and God knows to how many more impressionable minds to galvanize them to do God knows how great or small and fulfilling adventures in their lives...
My drive into work was comforted thanks to sips of my hot berry-flavored fruit tea on the way. The rest of the day was a struggle for some reason. Bridget and I rejoiced that our boss had left early today. He reminded us that he was off tomorrow, too. Really, he's been stressed and we gals need a break from him.
Still early in the evening (said AGOL the Insomniac). I think I'll read a chunk of pages from two books I am reading. Sleep tight, my lovelies. xxoo
*Oprah Magazine, October 2008: To Sir, with Love by Laraine Perri, pp:239-241.
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