The Prof, The Holy Ghost & St. John The Baptist
Saturday, April 26, 2014
I remember going with Rosemary to the bookstore downtown to purchase the complicated book. On my first day I had huge butterflies in my stomach. In 1973 I was 31 but I did not look a day older than 24. My students, about 40 of them were all sort of long-in-the-tooth Americans who taught in American universities. My Uruguayan co-instructor was pleasant. I am sure she knew of my troubles.
For the length of the course, 6 weeks, I
was always one or two chapters ahead of my students. Every night I told
Rosemary I was going to snooze. She would run my bath get me into it and then
would demand I teach her the next day’s class. She would not allow me to go to
sleep.
I would arrive early to the university and
I drank gallons of chamomile tea for my nerves. I had the runs and lost weight.
But on that last day I was approached by my students who told me that they really
admired my teaching skills and that they had learned lots.
There is no Holy Spirit or a kindly Jesuit
in these parts and I feel that there is lots of information in my head on
things photographic that will die with me when I die. In jest I tell my
Rosemary to throw in all my cameras into the open pit that will be by grave so
that I can be well accompanied into oblivion.
But more seriously last night I read to
Rosemary this quote from the Open Book section of this Sunday’s NY Times Book
Review:
‘My father was a very disciplined and
punctual man; it was a prerequisite for his creativity….No matter what time you
get out of bed, go for a walk and then work, he’d say, because the demons hate
it when you get out of bed, demons hate fresh air.’
The novelist Linn Ullmann in an interview
with Vogue, discussing the influence of her father, the filmmaker Ingmar
Bergman.
I put the paper down and immediately had a
thought, “Rosemary if you ever look for my portraits of Liv Ullmann when I am
dead you will not find them filed under U. She wrote that marvelous
autobiography, Changing so I have her under a separate section on authors and
yes in the Us.”
That led me to think I should put down on
paper all my passwords for the blog, facebook, Twitter and how to access the
folks that host and manage my blog/web page. They can pull the plug any instant
if the credit card expiry date does its thing and expires! They have done this
a couple of times and anybody who thinks that one’s presence on the net is
permanent has lots to learn.
The role of the Baptist as explained in the
New Testament was to “prepare the way for the Lord.” It behooves me to make the
transition of my possible widow as flawless as that of St. John’s for the Lord.
