Followers

27 April 2006

Mystery Text. Who Wrote the following?

There has been something in the Vancouver papers about a cougar - she thinks it was on this coast - mauling a child.
Who would want to live where you have to share every part of outdoor space with hostile and marauding animals?

Kallipareos. Of the lovely cheeks. Now she has it. The Homeric word is sparkling on her book. And beyond that she is suddenly aware of all her Greek vocabulary, of everything which seems to have been in a closet for nearly six months now. Because she was not teaching Greek, she put it away.
That is what happens. You put it away for a while, and now and again you look in the closet for something else and you remember, and you think, soon. Then it becomes something that is just there, in the closet, and other things get crowded in front of it and on top of it and finally you don’t think about it at all.

The thing that was your bright treasure. You don’t think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember.

That is what happens.

And even if it’s not put away, even if you make your living from it, every day?

Juliet thinks of the older teachers at the school, how little most of them care for whatever it is that they teach. Take Juanita, who chose Spanish because it goes with her Christian name (She is Irish) and who wants to speak it well, to use it in her travels. You cannot say that Spanish is her treasure.

Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang on to it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you.

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