Still around. Dasein. Ich bin da.
Taught my last class today. And what? These students are such nice people. But am I saying goodbye to it? I think I have to. The moment it’s over it seems to have been fine, I can’t remember what I was bitching about all spring; but clearly it was a weight at the time, and would be a weight again.
Anyway the books don’t go anywhere. I shared the leftovers of my final-class evaluation pastries with the crowd in the department lounge, and was introduced to another Melville war poem, “The Apparition,” one more reminder that there’s no end to Melville for considering:
Convulsions came; and, where the field
Long slept in pastoral green,
A goblin-mountain was upheaved
(Sure the scared sense was all deceived),
Marl-glen and slag-ravine.
The unreserve of Ill was there,
The clinkers in her last retreat;
But, ere the eye could take it in,
Or mind could comprehension win,
It sunk!—and at our feet.
So, then, Solidity’s a crust—
The core of fire below;
All may go well for many a year,
But who can think without a fear
Of horrors that happen so?
