A cool summer gives way to a heat wave as we slide towards fall. The year starts in earnest for me tomorrow. The energy of students noisily calling to each other, carting in books, sorting through back packs. And so we all slide into the work of learning. Beowulf and Grendel wait to unpack their world views, Chaucer his cheekiness, Shakespeare his ambitious monster Macbeth. I float through these last grading-free days in a dream of reflections. Thinking about knowledge and learning and how it happens and where it all goes.
Light bounces off a stream. Bubbles on water. Verdant green shimmering, waiting to slip into autumnal tones. Cicada percussion rises and falls. Somehow, the peak of summer at the beginning of September–the effusiveness of insect and foliage–always sounds a rueful undertone, its very fulgence whispering of its doomed denouement.
