T.S. Eliot's Legacy

My first class on Fridays is Modern English Literature with Dr. Marren. It's a regualar classroom, with a chalkboard and a lectern and perhaps thirty desks. On the first day of classes, Dr. Marren asked us to move our desks out of the traditional box pattern we were in, and into a circle, so that each one of us would have to stare awkwardly at another random and unfamiliar student. When we first did this, there were so many bodies that chairs had to be brought in from another classroom.

The problem with this system is that we have to move the chairs from the original set up to a circle everyday. This is not difficult; the difficult part is spending the next hour counting the number of unmoved desks, and realizing that today, fifteen fellow students skipped class.

It has to be disheartening for Dr. Marren, to have a visual confirmation of how many students don't want to spend their time with her. I imagine every time she looks up to see our neatly arranged faces all she can see are the ghosts sitting in the unmoved desks in the middle of the circle, like children who are forced to sit in the muck pot after being caught during Duck-Duck-Goose. I may not pay attention - I use Modern British Literature to transcribe previous nights' dreams into a notebook and to brainstorm titles to short stories I've outlined - but at least I come to class.

I cannot blame those who skip. Let's all be honest together - T.S. Eliot makes no sense. What I think happened is this: Eliot gathered his extensive library of original language classics and put all those millions of pages into an commercial grade blender, and then arranged individual scrap sentences like magnetic letters on a refrigerator. Then everyone clapped for him.

I will say that Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a must have for every collection. I'm just waiting for one of my fraternity brothers to get sick, so I can read him Gus: the Theatre Cat, and he can tell me I make him uncomfortable. But its a good poem, so I think he'd appreciate it either way.

Quick story: during my first year to work at camp, on a day off, I suggested to some other counselors that we all see the musical Cats, based off of T.S. Eliot's poetry, which was passing through the Walton Arts Center that weekend. They all laughed and told me I was funny. I laughed with them. Later that night I went to see Cats alone and told no one. Except you.