4:32 a.m.

Can't sleep.
No sight of Tom Selleck.
Rory talked a lot about his time studying at Marquette University last semester and his girlfriend, Katie, in group therapy today. She is going to come up and visit him during spring break and even his eyes creased while he smiled talking about it. How did I know she wasn't coming ?
It made me think, though.
One of my favorite classes in undergrad was with Dr. Greer. It was a Shakespeare course but that wasn't why I liked it.
Dr. Greer was very unorthodox. He never told you what anything meant. To the point that he'd drive you crazy. No structure. No reassurance. No syllabus and no validation that your 85% average was tipping upward because you'd have to have a grade posted to know that.

But, he made you hungry. Hungry and desperate to understand what was going on. Why did Macbeth lose his shit? Why is Cassio so dauntlessly baiting his own demise? Why is everyone with a uterus a sacrificial lamb or a manipulative shrew? Why did they hate each other? Why did they love each other? Succumb to vice or feign virtue? And when they all soiled themselves in regret ...it was oddly satisfying.

He'd walk around watching us talk. We'd attempt confidently, balking often and then relied on our most pedantic group member to face any cross-examination.

Then, he'd ask you another question in response to your exasperation. It started to piss some people off. They started bull-shitting his assignments. Skipping his classes. They stopped clamoring.

They were idiots.
He was always listening to us.

Our final assignment was a 5-minute recitation of twelve lines from any play we had read that semester. I got to witness a few. He had them stand up on the fold out table at the front of the room.

There was a sign: Buckled knees are not advised.

He had every single one of them go back up and recite it again-even Stan and Hanna who were damn near close to bewitching. Even I thought It was excessive. But, they spit it out differently each time. Carefully. Trembling. Dryly. With passion. With at least 4 weeks of practice bleeding through . Calmly. Stoically. Arrogantly. Absently. With reckless gesticulation.

I wonder what he heard in each of us. Was it a better mask or did it make it easier to see what lives underneath those words...now ours.

I didn't get to recite my selection because I was in the hospital. I came back to school two weeks after finals and sat in his class room ready to finally take my exam. A proxy was present instead of Dr. Greer but I was somewhat relieved. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say to people anyway.

"Hey! I slammed the shower door so hard on my left hand that it broke ground for a new life line."
Then, I'd hold up my palm, probably.
"Also, I'm not okay and I feel really awkward right now."

I watched the proxy wipe down the white board. I was twenty minutes into my exam and had barely answered the first essay question.

Watching her work methodically I remembered the first thing Dr. Greer ever wrote on that board.

People write because they have one thing they really want to say and that can illuminate all the rest.

The can part he said was usually where people stopped. He told us there are people with beautiful and heinous ideas floating out there but they're never going to write it.

I wrote down one thing that day.

I was released from the hospital two weeks before graduation. I took my finals that following week then ...Bertha Mason was out of her dorm by Friday.

Before I left I slipped a manila envelope in his mailbox. It contained a pin of a blue swooping swallow I'd found at The Field Museum. He'd told me once that his writing often inspired bird cameos. I hoped that he knew what it meant.
On graduation day I saw him in line as the faculty processed down the center aisle with it pinned to his robe.
He did.

I started writing a few days after all of my graduation sheet cake had been consumed . I really thought I was going to finish it at the time.