For some reason, I've had a poignant memory sticking with me the past few days. I was driving home from work last week and saw a hitchhiker on the side of the road. It jump-started something in my brain... that poem! I read it years ago. It was about a hitchhiker wearing yellow. I remember the moment I came to the end of that simple little half-page piece of writing, and how struck I was by the quality of it. It stirred something in me, bringing me out of myself and into the page, and obviously was impressive enough to keep me intrigued even 6 years later.
That poem was in a book, which was in a pile of books, which was surrounded by many more piles of books, all of which sat in the musty shadows of my ninth grade English teacher's classroom closet.
I had a study hall with that particular teacher a couple times a week. It was in the mornings, I remember, and I never had any homework to do during it. When I wasn't passing notes with classmates or drawing stupid stuff on the whiteboard, I distinctly remember getting up out of my seat and nonchalantly walking into that closet in the back of the classroom. I don't think I ever asked... just sort of got up and went in there to chill.
My teacher didn't seem to ever care. In fact, there were a few times he didn't even notice I had gone in, and would come back to get something and jump a little at the sight of me. "Oh! Sarah Kane, that's a good book, have you read this one yet?" He might have nudged a nearby novel with his foot on his way back out to the classroom, or pulled a book off a shelf and dropped it in my lap.
There was a little window in that closet, and it overlooked the street in front of school. I do remember a few sunny days, where warm light peeked into that closet over the edge of the windowsill, but more often I remember dreary fall and winter days when the school year started to drag on. I remember seeing the leaves come down off the giant tree hanging over the road, wet and brown and clinging to cars. And watching raindrops weeping down the dirty glass. Sometimes I sat in there to sleep (no point in lying, I totally did that) and sometimes to cry, but mostly to read.
That poem about the hitchhiker was in a distinct yellow book, with blue font. I want to say it was called "Writing To Be Read" and was published sometime in the 1970s, but for the LIFE of me I can't find it on the internet ANYWHERE with those details alone. There were certain sagely wisdoms in those educational chapters that truly reformed my attempts at non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. This was long before my days of AP English classes and college composition courses, but there were seeds of knowledge and skill planted during the hours spent flipping through those pages that I owe just as much to.
That beloved teacher has since passed away, and it's a regret of mine that I never had the chance to ask him for the details of that book so I can purchase it myself. Maybe one day I'll find it, with enough determination and pursuit. I would like to hold it in my hands and feel the same sense of quiet and calm I felt when I would sit criss-cross in that dimly lit closet, filling my chapel skirt with the worn spine and spread covers of books and journals, thinking all I was doing was waiting for the bell to ring. It was more than waiting. It was organic, precious time spent lost in peace and literature, and I miss that musty little closet, a dim haven in the middle of a loud, bullet point life.
No comments:
Post a Comment