School of Life

The bureau chief audited history and French classes at San Francisco State from 2006 to 2011 and may audit some more in the future. In addition to appreciating just how good the professors were, I was amazed at the energy, beauty and optimism of the students, my own college days being long in the past. I came across a quote from Paul Fussell, in his book "Doing Battle", that sums up what I felt.

". . . the sentimentalist indulged the melancholy thought that when deserted by students, classrooms are dead in a way no other public spaces are. What ecstasies and shames have been experienced in these neutral rooms, with their characterless fixed-arm chairs, blackboards, and teachers' desks. What intellectual beauty has had its moments there in the midst of such depressing plainness and utility. . . College students are so fresh, so noisy and so beautiful that their absence from empty classrooms is unignorably melodramatic and touching. They and their charming loquacity pass, but the room is silent, and it remains, in its permanence and anonymity making the ironic comment:'You young people grow old; your hopes and certainties alike will fade away; your vigor and beauty will vanish;  you will be replaced by others like you, equally self-certain and self-concerned.' "

I could have named this post mortality or the human condition but that seemed too uninviting.

Doggerel for the old dogs

Wanting to be a better chef du bureau, I attempted to audit a Creative Writing course at San Francisco State. The instructor agreed to let me audit but it was later kiboshed at the department level. I understood. Paying students were desperate to keep their full time status in the face of so many courses being eliminated because of huge state budget cuts. Why should a state with the 10th biggest economy on the planet and a population of 37 million people bother to educate its next generation?

Anyway, the assignment from the one class I attended was to write a manifesto. This is it.

ANTI-MANIFESTO

Manifestos are for the young, the firebrands, the visionaries, the mad artists and the drunken poets.

Baudelaire wrote, “Stay drunk! On wine, poetry or virtue, as you please!”

But I saw the best minds of my generation tear gassed while tripping on acid, going to jail, enduring broken hearts in cold climates, forced to get jobs.

I saw them marrying, buying houses, sending their kids to college, worrying about their health plans and those goddam Republicans.

I saw them realizing that the older you get, the more dead people you know.

I saw you, Allen Ginsberg, in 1969, dressed like a sadhu, playing a harmonium and chanting Blake off key.

25 years on I saw you again, wearing a nice sportcoat, surrounded by acolytes, walking through the food court of a shopping mall in San Francisco. A few years later you were dead.

The manifestos of the older set tend to lack élan vital.

“I have had my fun if I never get well no more.”

After a certain age, manifestos are replaced by memories:

“These foolish things remind me of you.”

And elegies:

“Earth, receive an honored guest: William Yeats is laid to rest.”

Better those than admonitions and sage advice, because no one listens to that shit.

Maybe there can be mini-manifestos: “I shall not wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled”; “I will dare to eat a peach!”

No. Too much like cocktail wieners, lacking the flavor of the full sized sausage.

Wait! It’s almost lunchtime.