Great piece. I think the opening paragraph defined, to me, what it was to leave home for the first time, travel 3000 miles, and go to school in a place that was nothing like your home. The sense of being reborn, and youthfully feeling alien and exotic to people who were as unfamiliar with you as you were with them.
Howard_T: What a terrific comment. Funny, pop culture likes to pidgeonhole engineering types as soul-free, analytical Gradgrinds, but the engineers I know always talk about experiences like yours--the moment when rigorous preparation yields excellence--with great passion. Moreover, your notion of being at once owned and sustained by a passion marks your son as fortunate in his father. For my part, the joy Price finds in mastery--both his own and others'--reminds me of the first stanza of Hopkins's "The Windhover": The Windhover To Christ our Lord I CAUGHT this morning morning's minion, king- dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird,the achieve of; the mastery of the thing! Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! No wonder of it: sher pld makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion. Gerard Manly Hopkins
KONG RAN MY DEALERSHIP GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Disclaimer: may not actually be GMH, but that's what you get for putting As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame stuck in my head.
I certainly would never have expected a poem in this thread, but thanks for reminding me of one of my favorite poems.
Uncle Toby, you have created a monster. I thought our occasional stumbling attempts at haiku were bad, but now yerfatma has led us into the dangerous depths of Francis Heaney. I'm afraid my weekend will be spent at the link reading the parodies. Seriously, Unc, thanks for the Hopkins. I was not familiar with it, and now I'm going to have to find more.
I always thought of GMH as the WASP Yeats. Where Yeats lusted after Maude Gonne, Hopkins pined for Jesus.
