Farewell to This Class

At the end of every semester comes a time for saying goodbyes. I always find this bittersweet in classes that I have enjoyed....to say goodbye not only to the class and the material, but to the person that I am now. We will never have these moments again.....we will have them unending. As of now, I am not registered for any Sexson classes next semester, a fact that leaves me uncertain and uneasy. I have made a point of attending his classes for the last year and a half of my academic career. How will we go on without the shaman, the enchanter, the maker of Kool-Aid? Today in class I found my answer.

It was us all along. The magic, the meaning, it was us.

At the end of the day, at the end of the story, our tempest, the magician removes all his powers to reveal this simple truth.....to reveal the illusion, the mystery and the magic. Dr. Sexson told us of this experience when he related the story of the woman on the plane. "I only meant to please you". I feel as if Dr. Sexson has been preparing us throughout the semester for the loss of this art, for the time when we would inevitably go on and become our own enchanters, magicians, and artists.

I want to say thank you to Dr. Sexson for making me excited about university classes after a first year of ultimate disillusionment and wanderings. I took an AP English class my last year in high school, and it wasn't until I found Dr. Sexson's classes that I felt that excitement to attend, that passion to analyze and dig deeper that I had experienced before. I have found this on my own, by my own means always, but finding it in a class has been somewhat more difficult. Thank you, Dr. Sexson, for that.

As always, I want to thank my fellow students for nothing more than being in this class. We always come together as a community (cult members....) even with the divisions of lowbrow and highbrow coming to the foreground. We were new and we were ancients. I love hearing Dr. Sexson mention one of those literary inside jokes from another class and hearing the kids who were there laugh out loud. =) I hope any students who were new to this class get to experience that in further Sexson classes. I've learned from you guys and laughed and even read of tragedies, all with you. I hope in all earnest that if we happen not to meet in classes again but fortuitously run into each other on the street that you will drop a line from Nabokov or the Four Quartets, or even Finnegans Wake *shudder* =) and we'll laugh at the connection. We really are highbrows now, aren't we? =)

Of all the courses I have taken from Dr. Sexson, this has not been my favorite. I do not mean to say this with any disrespect to the class or the materials. Beckett, for one, gripped me. Eliot was another. And I will say that this class was so multidimensional (thank you Rio) and full of great blogs and lectures, the whole nine yards. However, I can't shake Nabokov at all. I don't think I want to. I think I am very much still enchanted with that semester and those works, too in love to have room for more......(should I prescribe myself some kenosis here??).

As the semester draws to a close and I slowly and agonizingly cross essays and drawings and critiques off my list, I can't help feeling that I haven't had the time. I never have the time, as subjective as time may be. At times I feel tossed into a tempest, swirling and struggling to stay upright in the storm, loving every minute of it yet fighting to the last. (for something? against something?) Both. I want the time to really think about all of this. I want the time to have revelations and to struggle and to dig myself into the work and let it consume me for a while. I want the time to breathe a bit, the time to finish (or even start) all the works that are in my mind. I want the time to find out what I want to say in art. I want the time to write real thoughts, without the need for rush and time constraints. I want the busy and the calm. I want a paradox.

This is all becoming very stream-of-consciousness. Perhaps it's time to sum it up. Simply put, I'm just....happy to have experienced all this with you all and with the works and with our leader. If this is a cult, we are members for life.

"Oh, you took his class too, didn't you?"

Farewell and I'll see you around, undoubtedly. =)