If you catch me after I've gotten off the phone with my grandparents, you might realize that I'm not from around here. Maybe that's why I dance in the subway while the rest of the metro-boulot-dodo world can't even muster the energy to roll their eyes; even if I'm not from here, I'm elated to know that I've come home. One wall in my room is the color of an eggplant, another an equally solid blue; they're to complement a painting by a girl with devil-horns for eyebrows. I have a weakness for them you know, pretty girls, that is; and particularly for making them dinner in my too-narrow kitchen. I compensate for my shyness with a practiced gregariousness; the truly kind forgive the act while enjoying the antics.
While one of my titles may be 'professor,' at heart I am a teacher; a distinction with which some may quibble but which is - to me - imperative. Having been systematically processed by that spark-snuffing degree-factory otherwise known as the English Department of the University of California, Berkeley, my dream has become to remind students of why they fell in love with literature in the first place.
"'The path is the Stone. The point of departure is the Stone. If these words are unclear to you, you have not yet begun to understand. Every step you take is the goal you seek.'"
-- Jorge Luis Borges, The Rose of Paracelsus
"...he did not think his work burdensome, because he was doing it for a dying man and hoped someone would do the same for him when his time came."
--Leo Tostoy, the Death of Ivan Ilych
"One and the same person must not have too many sides to his nature, because that makes us unsure, and those we are unsure of we don't like. We hate the person who apparently comprises everything, because it is agains the rules of the game to comprise everything. The really popular people are the uniform ones who are always themselves, that is, as the rest of us consider them to be."
--Stig Dagerman, A Burnt Child
