when it's good, don't say it's good — secrets of msr —

I do an awful lot of complaining, I admit, about student papers, grammar, exams, apathy, critical thinking skills, motivation, writing, attention span, due diligence, and well, writing. And that's a lot of complaining. So. I think it only fair that when it's good, I say it's good.

Tonight, it was good.

Tonight it was transcendent. I'm not even sure they know how good it was. It was that good.

Tonight we had our last regularly scheduled class meeting of MSR (Magic, Science and Religion) and we used it for the oral portion of the class's final exam. This portion of the exam is voluntary. It can either be done written or oral. All but two students stayed for the oral group exam. It's a big risk: they have to trust each other. I only grade this thing collectively. They have to help each other — not compete with each other. It makes them very very very nervous. One grade for all of them. Rise or fall with the collective.

They don't know I give bravery points. They don't know that the collectivity always outperforms individual work on these exams. It's downright un-American how well collective oral exams work.

Tonight, it was not just that they hit (with help from each other) key or nuanced points — it's that they began opening doors. One right after another.

They opened the Michael Murphy door, and found Castaneda and Fritz Perls waiting.

They opened the PARDES door, and found the Tetragrammaton and Orisha waiting — and even Thomas Kuhn.

And they kept going!

They were seeing the connections. No class had ever opened so many doors in one night before. Or come even close.

They saw Cavafy's poem Ithaka had the structure of PARDES, which is hard enough to get to. Which means, essentially, that they could see how it built from the concrete to the sublime in the same four stages. And the doors still kept opening. By the end of the night, they were almost in freefall. At one point, to be sure, the rush of ideas and emotions that swirled throughout that crowded classroom was downright entheogenic.

Relevant tales emerged, of relatives now departed. Tears. And not just in the telling. It wasn't just collective doors that were opening. Some folks had private doors they needed to encounter. They needed to walk on through.

And so, for the first time, because they stood right on the threshold, I told them MSR secrets.

I told them what you can really do with all those theoretical constructs. What you can do with all the unfamiliar models I'd made them learn.

Something very very special.

You can try them on, and you can live them. And when you do that — models come to life.

I've written examples of that here, in fact. You can be Chango or Oya and live that way. You can be El or Ba'al, alchemical fire or air. Anat, or the Shekhinah. You can embody them, and then look at the world through eyes. You can see what they see.

And everything changes.

So. Most folks study for their exams. They memorize as best they can, and spit it all out on their exams. Very boring. I know, because I'm the one who has to read all that stuff. But this way is different. They can try on the models and watch what happens. And something always happens.

They can be. And the world shifts entirely.

So. This is me — happy. But only for a fleeting moment. We all know how dangerous too much happiness can be. It trips us up if ever we acknowledge it. We pay for boasting of our pleasure — for falling in love, good fortune, or beauty. It's all too threatening, I guess, to those who say they know us. It's a whole lot safer complaining grumpily. People love you when they see you suffer. Happiness just brings on their envy.

So.

I had a really shitty night in MSR tonight.

Let me tell you about it...

a perfect day at the office

No, the title is not the usual snarky sarcasm.

He walked into the office with these things under his arm. They were fairly transparent, blobby things — one short and bulbous, one tall and amorphous. He set them down on my desk very very carefully so that they each balanced on an impossible edge at an impossible angle. And then he sat down across from me and took off his backpack.

"I need your help," he said.

I looked at him. Looked at the fragile amorphous blob, the tall one.

"Asimov," I said.

"Asimov, great!" he said.

"Not his robot stuff. Not Foundation. This one's called The Gods Themselves. Not what he's known for.

He didn't know it.

"Here's what I'm after," he said. "I've got a show coming up, and I want these to be animate."

"Asimov," I repeated. "The beings he created look exactly like that. Only there are three of them, not two. Three genders, and they fit together ..."

"Yes, they're supposed to be able to merge..."

"Asimov called it 'melding' ... it's how they reproduce."

At some point he mentioned something about when he used to play wind instruments.

"Alchemical air," I said, mostly to myself.

"What?"

"Alchemical air. You blow glass, instruments, alchemical air. Oh. And earth: Your garden..." because I know what a horticulturalist he is.

He wrote that down in his notebook: Alchemical air.

"And fire..." I realized, thinking of the great heat entailed in his metier. "So that leaves...."

"Water," he said. "I'm very aware of how hydrated I have to be to do what I do..."

"Balance," I said.

"Balance," he said.

I looked at his pieces again, and laughed. Suddenly I saw them with these tiny plastic humans 1950s style set at the feet of these transparent obelisky things. It changed everything. The pieces became enormous. Like they were supposed to be enormous. Like they were supposed to be at least eight feet tall or something. I told him my vision.

"I've been struggling with scale," he said. "And that's it, that's what they need so that you can see the relative scale. At least until I find a way to make them large..."

There was more, much more. But that's the essence of it. I have no idea what he came into the office for. Why he was asking me for assistance since I know nothing about his art, his show, or him. No idea how I could help him.

He wanted his pieces to be animate. There was no way I could help. They already were.

peter pan and the indian

It's probably the nature of Peter Pan to be an asshole who thinks he's a hero — the excuse being that he's so thoroughly adorable, how could anyone fail to appreciate his preciousness, or not fall for the twinkle in his eye? It is (unfortunately) undeniable that he is also pretty good at what he does.

I happen to know Peter...

At the time, Peter was playing shaman. As you know, he flies around a lot, and so he had taken bits and pieces of the rituals, practices, music and songs of indigenous folk around the world, and put them all together into a powerful experience he could give others. He lit his feathered pipe. He warbled. He drummed. He was a digiridude, and a good one too. In the dark, and with your eyes closed, he could make you feel the forest. The dangerous four-leggeds brushed past you. The birds whisked past your head. you could smell the humidity, feel the leaves and feathers close in on you. Pretty neat, huh? He could turn a classroom into a full-blown vision quest in very little time. Sprinkle a little fairy dust and fly the whole lot of you off to Never-Never Land. Very effective. What matter that Peter was not a real Indian?

Until one night there was an Indian in the circle. He stood up tall, shaking with rage and said only, "I can't be here!" as he stormed out.

And Peter stopped. The spell was broken. Peter then gave a lecture on how he was given the pipe, given the digiridu, given the songs, the drums. That he was a Sun-Dancer. That he was allowed to do all this. He had permission. But the spell was broken. And everyone went home more than a bit down from the experience. All I could think of, was I wanted the Indian to come back again so we could talk it out.

And the next week he returned. And I turned to him, and this is what he said:

"That boy was singing my song."

And he told the story of the song, and how it is used in the Sun-Dance, and what a Sun-Dance really is, and what the song was for. For three hours. And as he spoke, he poured out the lore and practice of his people, and it became clear that singing that song in a university classroom was wrong, as was the display of his pipe.

And then he turned to me and said, "You wanted that to happen, didn't you?"

"Yes," I whispered. "If it was there, I wanted it to happen." And this revelation took me by surprise. Somehow, I knew exactly what he meant. And he understood me as well.

He had taken off the previous week and headed up to his People, up to his Land and his own Shaman (who, he explained, stayed on the Land, and didn't run off to play pretend in university classrooms. This was serious business.

Peter Pan flew off to Europe to play digiridude-shaman over there, build sweat lodges, give workshops, make some bucks, see the sights.

When he got back I got a call. He had been evicted. Lost his job. Car was wrecked.

"Did he do that?" he wanted to know.

So I emailed the Indian and asked. And this is what he wrote:

"I believe in IT. If you do wrong, IT'll get you." I gave Peter the message. He didn't like it.

I mean, in shamanism shouldn't you take these things as a sign? Cease and desist? But no, this was Peter. And Peter never takes no for an answer.

Maybe a year later, emails from the Indian. A picnic? A waterfall? We started hiking together. He poured out his lore at me.

"I'm the enemy, aren't I? Evil anthropologist! Stop telling me your tales! Watch me," I protested, "I'm not gonna write any of this down!"

"That's why I can tell you," he said. "Because you know who you are. Because you have your own People, Land, Identity — and you won't go out trying to steal mine."

His shaman had told him that the Peter Incident meant that he was supposed to give the talks. That he was gonna have to learn how to tell the tale himself. Properly. He wasn't thrilled. He became a spokesman. An advocate. An Elder.

More waterfalls...

Another call from Peter. This time his wife had been killed in an accident. (Yes, Peter had had a wife!)

More hikes...

I never saw Peter again. He's still out there doing what he did. Maybe he saw the suffering as what he has to endure to achieve authenticity, I don't know. Maybe he still blames the Indian for his terrible misfortune. But he still flies, he still crows... Nothing stops him. And I keep thinking, how strange that just maybe Peter changed the Indian. Peter. The hero? I asked my friend, the Voudou Priestess. She said, "Hell no!" He's just a fraud.

The Indian began to speak. Publicly. He's still pissed about it, to tell the truth.

And I still keep my silence about Indians. Their tales are just not my tales to tell. But I do like the waterfalls.

eating treif

When I was little I used to sleep with two other little girls down the block. In those days, they were called 'colored' and we were called 'jew' — small 'j', said with attitude. It was an adjective. But it was also a verb. Their names were J and J and they were twins, a year older than I. J and I would play under the covers. J, her twin would cry.

One day, J and J came home from Sunday School with the bad news.

"We're going to hell!" she cried. Sister J cried too.

I felt really bad for them. They were going to hell? I mean, I knew that I wasn't. So. Something we were doing was bad for them, but I hadn't a clue exactly what. I think right there I became a little anthropologist, wanting to figure it out.

J went and washed her mouth out with soap — providing herself with her mother's usual punishment. When dad was around, it was the strap — but he was a cook in the Navy, and was close to never home.

The whole world of moral imperatives became something exciting and fun, and worth exploring. I mean, what did it feel like to get your mouth washed out with soap? (The strap sounded interesting too, come to think of it). It all sounded so exotic and quaint.

Their whole house smelled intoxicating, especially weekend mornings. Mrs J made it clear to me that what was sizzling in her skillet was not for me, and eventually I got the idea that she thought that if I ate it, that I'd go to hell too.

I knew that wasn't true.

One morning, J (my J, not crying J) brought me a gift under the covers. One piece of stolen perfectly crisp bacon, right out of the frying pan. The taste was, well, exotic, intoxicating, and downright ineffable (was this my first mystical experience? The salt and fat combo so irresistible to humans?).

And then there was a scream from the kitchen. Of course Mrs J would have counted out the pieces and discovered that one was missing. She hollered at J (my J, it could only have been my J), and then (what a thrill!) she hollered at me.

"Go wash that mouth out with soap!" she commanded, fearing for my soul. I jumped up and complied instantly. What a let down. Boring. And I didn't feel any different. This just reinforced that all these rules, punishments, and eternal hellfire stuff was theirs and not mine.

Fall Semester is coming up, and it looks like the enrollment in my Jewish Mysticism class just isn't going to make it — and the first thing I thought of was this tale of J and J, and the delights of eating treif.

Why?

Don't get me wrong; I love this class. I'll miss teaching it this semester. But still, it brought up the treif story first. Most of all, it seems, I'm gonna miss the treif. After all, I can study Jewish Mysticism on my own, right? You might also say that I could really eat treif at any time I want, too, but it just wouldn't taste the same, would it?

Here's what I discovered. Every time I teach a class on Jewish something or other, I seem to eat a meal that includes treif before the class begins. I've apparently been doing this for, well, decades. At first I thought it was funny, a coincidence, or a just plain balancing things out (like making my kids study Arabic if they want to study Hebrew). But now, I'm not so sure.

Cause when I think of treif, I remember J. And when I remember J, I remember her terror at the possibility of going to hell. I remember great irresistible salty smells, broken 'rules' and the letdown of a mouth full of soap bubbles (maybe I hadn't done it right), and then well, I get stuck.

Pork and parsha? Forbidden fruits, so to speak... I mean, what's the connection?

My default for the moment is still the 'balancing things out' explanation, until someone can come up with something more satisfying. That the treif somehow reaffirms my identity as an anthropologist and not, say, as a theologian (god forbid!), not a practitioner, but a rational, analytical being.

Bottom line: for Fall Semester, it looks like no Jewish Mysticism (at the university, anyway) and (an equal sorrow) it looks like ... no treif.

the experiment

Summer session's winding down. I'm going blind reading the term papers. My eyes just can't sit there for hours at a time any more. But these papers are different.

I offered the class the opportunity to try an experiment, for those who were willing. Do their research paper the old fashioned way: Use the library, bookstores, whatever — but print media only. Journal articles made out of real paper. And read them. All the way through. A few took up the challenge. Cheerfully, I might add. It is summer, after all. Oh. And I offered them an extra 10 points, no matter what the result.

The curious thing is how few were willing to try it. I think even for ten extra points it just wasn't worth their effort or time to set foot in the library. Besides, access to the catalog, is, after all online. And you can access it from home. We made an exception in this regard. It's gotten to the point where it's not possible, even in the library, to not go online. And that transition, I think, happened years ago, when I wasn't paying attention.

Here are some of the student observations:

— Relying on the library was very time consuming and stressful.

— It was difficult to pinpoint the specific details without having to read word for word.

— On the internet I can just use key words and obtain instant information.

— I spent several hours skimming through the many works.

But here's the thing. The experiment was clearly flawed. In reading the papers, it still sounded like a lot of the 'information' was download. Only, instead of now quoting sources, the sources were left out entirely. Introductions had 'information' wreaking of Wikipedia notations, platitudes, and biographical backgrounds that journal articles and even introductions to monographs just don't include.

Oops, how could I have forgotten? A similar experiment in another class rewarded me with the following:

— Is it okay if we use comic books and graphic novels?

— I don't really read. It's not required for my major.

— I just open the book and grab a quote and stick it in somewhere, cause they always want quotes.

— This is a joke, right?

One of my own preferred ecstatic states is sitting on the floor of the Bancroft Library stacks — discovering things I hadn't dreamed of looking for. Or finding journals I'd searched three continents for. And there they were at my fingertips. The Revue Africaine, from 1832 – 1943, right there at the Bancroft, when I'd searched Paris, Aix-en-Provence (known for its fantastic archives), and the libraries in Rabat. Those old journals, gone, all gone! And how did I find them? They were on the shelf below the shelf I was looking for. Right here at home, I quite literally stumbled onto treasures.

I mean, what could be better than stumbling on treasure?

Key words?

Sure, I'll give them their extra 10 points anyway. And I learned from the experience. (Again) I realize now that it's really too late to try to turn back the clock this way. A majority of students see 'research' as the accumulation of 'information' (relevant or not), and the analytical component is (for the most part) reduced to just that accumulation of info-statements (relevant or not).

But there are some, some who are somewhat (maybe) like me, who were not only willing to try, but who took real pleasure in it. And whose writing blossomed (god, I really just used that word!) with complexity, such that there are no one-liners to quote — only flowing prose, filled with both analysis and self-discovery. I mean, how cool is that?

No more experiments, however. Surely, I've had enough? I think I've learned my lesson. At least until the next time I forget that I've already lost this battle — at least a couple times already. Maybe more.

But wait, wait — I just read another one. From another experiment that I've been trying over the last year or so.

Work together (what a concept). But write the paper as a conversation about the material, working out the analysis together, bringing each perspective to the conversation. And well, this one really worked. It's not an "I'll write this section, and you write that section" — but a let's-think-together. Out loud. And oh, this one was a delight, just a delight to read.

It was on Dawkins, of course. No platitudes. Some attitude. And getting the biology right.

See me flap my wings and soar...
Oh, and my eyes don't feel so bad anymore.

rumi and the bell-shaped curve

Summer Session. Magic, Science and Religion. Possibly the very last Summer MSR that I ever get to teach. And so, I've really wanted it to be sparkling. Thoughtful. Deep. Fun. Engaging. Paradigm-shifting, if I can manage it. For them. And for me as well. But I always want this. Generally speaking, students signed up for Winter or Summer Session are highly motivated, albeit in a bit of a rush to 'finish' as fast as they can. Frequently, they're taking their very last class before graduating, and I want to send them off with something pretty special. If I can.

And as with all semesters or intersessions, I think we're on track for exactly that experience ... until I start grading the papers. In this case, the first Midterm of the session. And then all my optimism, desires for a joy-filled, meaningful send-off, and just plain exuberance in teaching this extraordinary material ... just plain falls apart.

Last night I read the following sentence in a short essay, that bore not the slightest resemblance to the topic at hand:

"It's always been taught to me 'it's not what you know, it's who' and I thoroughly believe that."

What a slap in the face at content. At the whole concept of a thoughtful–deep–fun–engaging–paradigm-shifting course. At what I've always thought of as performing cartwheels of the mind. It's a course that can change lives, and that does, if given even half a chance. A course that I'm only beginning to understand after all these years, is really at heart an attempt to understand trauma and suffering, and the lengths people can and do go to alleviate that suffering. Desperate acts, irrational but powerful—when rationality fails. I love this course! It encompasses the depth and breadth of the human capacity to try (something/anything!) in the face of the unfathomable.

And then, that one little sentence tells me that none of it matters.

Which maybe explains why there are more and more failing papers. Or barely passing students. Who, in their own words, "just wanna get outta here." Graduate. Without critical thinking skills. Analytical skills. Without having read the important thinkers (from Ibn Khaldun to Thomas Kuhn). Without spelling and without grammar. Without, dare I say it, a real education. And as if there's something spectacular waiting out there for them without these skills.

"I just need the piece of paper."

I've heard that more than once. More than a dozen times or more. I can turn as many remarkable cartwheels of the mind, but many in those classroom seats just want the grade that'll get them outta there.

I had a colleague once who referred to these students as 'the taxpayers.' That they were the ones who simply helped foot the bill for the few who really were engaged, who were excited by the learning. Whose eyes sparkled with delight and discovery. I used to argue with him.

"I aim," I said, "at the yawners." I figure if I can get them engaged, I can reach anybody. His response: Don't bother. But I do bother, and I am bothered, and the bother never goes away. I want everybody, not just the delighted and delightful few.

So, here's the weird thing. Over the many years that I torture myself over bad writing or the lack of analytical skills, every once in a while I examine the grades and discover that they work out to a fairly normal bell-shaped curve. All by themselves. And I find it shocking. The curve is not constructed to distribute the grades. The bell-shaped curve is simply there. Have I merely imagined that the writing has gotten worse over the years? Have I become more lenient in that hideous task called 'grading'?

The A's make me happy. Thrilled! But why are there so few of them?

Who made that curve? Is it a force of nature? Is it a distribution of innate intelligence? Is it one of Durkheim's 'social facts'?

And I wonder (and this really bothers me) why they can't all be A's? Is there some law of nature that says everyone cannot excel? I find the bell-shaped curve somehow insulting. Like if I'm really doing my job right, everyone in that classroom should be excited, engaged, and jazzed by the material (whatever class it happens to be). If I'm excited about the material, why aren't they?

The psychoanalyst Owen Renick used to say that teaching is a seduction. A seduction of the material, I'm sure he meant—not of the person. The teaching isn't about us at all, as far as I'm concerned. When I'm teaching, I feel like I disappear, and the only thing that's left is this remarkable material. Why bother otherwise? I think Rumi would say the same, although he would claim that what remains is God, not 'remarkable material' (but what's the difference)?

The pessimist in me is deeply offended that not everyone in the room is an A student. It just doesn't make sense to me! Why wouldn't every single person strive to achieve at the highest level? Strive for that Rumi-experience in the classroom? If we're not aiming for the extraordinary, why bother?

The mystical experience I await is the annihilation of the bell-shaped curve. Where every person in that classroom is on the same page, breathless and in awe of the thinkers and thinking produced over the millennia, of the beauty of nature and ideas about nature, of the remarkable diversity of understandings—including right there in the classroom.

We have the best job on the planet that we get to engage in the enterprise of the mind. And then the university ruins it by asking us to grade it...

teaching bunnies to fly

I had this student once — I wonder how many tales start that way — and it was a very long time ago. When I was obsessed with being a boxer. Yah. I wanted to box. And nobody would teach me. And I wanted it bad. Just to see what it felt like, to hit and be hit (in some kind of controlled environment). Once. Just once. Let me say right at the outset, that I lost interest in even the idea of boxing pretty quickly after the bunnies...

I was teaching this class at the time called Cultures and Conflict, or maybe it was Cultures in Conflict, I don't really remember anymore. And discovered one afternoon in class that I was a fraud. With a show of hands, every person in the room had had a fight, at least one, physical fight in his or her life — except me. And three quarters had guns, even the nun in the front row. And I was teaching this class?

What I knew was theory. Theories of conflict. I don't actually do conflict itself all that well. Better, I always say, just to run. Just keep running. Passport in hand. After all, we've been doing it for centuries. Millennia, really. It's worked out moderately well, hasn't it?

But this time, I wanted to learn how to fight.

So. At the end of the semester, this student, he told me he wanted to give me a graduation present. That's what he called it. It was, after all, his graduation, and he thought it would be fun. He came up to the City and decided to teach me to fight. Not boxing. Martial arts. My student became my teacher. But that's not what this tale is really about — it's just how it started.

Eventually, he invited us down to his ranch. Me and my kids. He taught my kids to ride the horses his family bred. What I remember most about the ranch were the guns everywhere, leaning against things. Stuck in mattresses, just in case. I watched my kids reach out; little private school urban Jewish children, reaching out ... He offered to teach them to shoot. He was a born teacher.

Mostly though, my kids were drawn to the bunnies. And the bunnies won out over the guns. And at some point, I overheard him telling my kids that his mom taught bunnies to fly.

Driving back, my kids were all about flying bunnies, and they didn't let the subject drop until I promised to find out more. After all, if his mom could teach bunnies to fly, so could theirs. I was a teacher, right?

The life of bunnies, like that of all living things, is a precarious thing. Or maybe, the life of bunnies is more precarious than many of the other creatures who live on the ranch. They require protection. And his family was pretty good at it. Pens and fences and shotguns to keep the bunnies safe (and sure, everything else safe as well). But fine. Safe bunnies. Got it.

But when one died of its own accord, his mom would take it from the pen, holding it up by the feet, climb up to the top of the ridge the ranch stood on, and fling the bunny way out into the wilderness below. And they flew, they really flew. And the coyotes were grateful. His mom, he said, was an expert at teaching bunnies to fly.

And I realize now, although it didn't occur to me then, that boxing or no boxing, martial arts or no martial arts, fieldwork or no fieldwork — and no matter how much my kids might want me to teach them — there was one thing that I would never ever be able to teach, and that was ... teaching bunnies to fly.

hybrid bean entities

My favorite disabling phrase from a student paper, was and always will remain: "hybrid bean entities." It was this phrase that taught me how to deal with the incomprehensible. Though clearly, what I learned at the time has long ago worn off.

I was stuck for hours — like a robot with the power unit shut off — pen in hand, leaning over the paper unable to move, the phrase stunned me so. I tried to picture them, those little bean entities. Hybrids, no less. But they eluded me. Still, I could feel them; they were fully and wholly alive. And sentient. They were thoroughly enjoying their impact. Laughing at me. At my paralysis. I was at an Anthropology of Consciousness conference at the time, being stupid enough to bring papers to grade to the conference, when I read that phrase. I walked into the room next door where all my friends were altering their collective consciousness (while I sat in my room reading student papers) — and I did the only thing I could think of: I handed them the phrase: "Hybrid bean entities" I announced, and started to walk out.

It was one of my most memorable grading moments. Everybody froze, their eyes on me with the same stunned expression on their faces (altered states of collective consciousness is an SAC specialty). The result, though I couldn't have predicted it, was in retrospect, obvious. Or perhaps inevitable. That phrase disabled me the whole rest of the conference. I locked my door (so the little entities couldn't escape), and was forced to join the party.

Maybe that lesson is worth retrieving.

The class was Religion and Anthropology. The assignment was to take one of the concepts we had just covered in class and apply it to something from the student's own life. Turned out, this was what she knew. She worked in a hybrid bean factory. I don't remember anything else from that class. My memory was completely wiped clean. Except for the little bean entities who took up permanent residence in my neural pathways.

when in doubt — run

I've actually finally gotten fed up with the whole 'grades' thing — which has made me realize that it's probably time to quit. Which has made me realize that when I think such things, I act on them. I don't quit — I run. Fast.

I always knew that it would come to this. That one day I'd read a paper or a phrase or just a misspelled word and it would push me over the edge. It happened this past Winter Session in my Magic, Science and Religion intersession class: a whole semester's worth of the weird stuff crammed into 10 or 11 days. Designed for sensory overload, that's for sure. I don't remember what the line was. Should have written it down. But I do remember the overall subject:

Joseph Campbell.

And the thing is that Joseph Campbell actually does have something worth saying, reading, thinking about — but nobody seems to get that far. Reading Campbell takes patience. It's not just about about heroes and follow-your-bliss. But that's all I ever seemed to get.

Here was the problem: There were not one, not two, but three bloody papers on Joseph Campbell in the stack. And two of them were back to back. And I burned out just like that.

And it was time to quit.

That last sentence, whatever it was, paralyzed me, blinded me — it was that powerful — and I couldn't grade another single paper. It's happened before. Then I read the offensive line to someone else, and they become paralyzed by it, and I'm temporarily cured and can get on with it.

But here's the thing. The very next semester I got hit with something worse. And this time I copied it down. So here's the sentence. From my Middle East class. And this part is true:

"Throughout the history the evil and good has been a religion or its minorities at a time"

You're welcome to translate it for me.