I was already at the bottom of the page, but I squeezed in the words right before I fell asleep.
RAYMOND Friedell had come out to UH from Oxford University, and he knew Latin and Greek and Sanskrit, and God knows what else, and he spoke in this forbidding English accent, cool as cucumber sandwiches, even there in Honolulu, even wearing polyester aloha shirts. Everybody said that in the past decade he had gone to seed somewhat, his hair having thinned, as had the rest of him from his dissipations, which were many. He had a certain fondness for his pipe and his bowl, if you know what I mean. So Friedell had this sallow complexion and straw-blond hair and slightly watery eyes, and this thin frame, and always gave the same course, “Themes of World Religions,” which he packed with intimidating material and this unbelievable reading list with all these books he’d got down so well he could rattle them off in his sleep—and a lot of times did. He stalked up and down the stage like he was kicking a can in the ruins of his classical education. The rest of the time he hung in this deep, dank basement office, which was his lair. But by far the spookiest thing about Friedell was every single year at the end of the term, he’d give all his students terrible grades. Out of one hundred students he would give at most one to two A’s. And he could get away with it, because he had these huge captive enrollments. Because his course was required—not just for religion, but for philosophy and history too. All the religion majors called him the Minotaur, because when he lectured it was like he was half man and half bull, and every fall he took a new classload of students to slaughter.
There must have been a hundred students in the class, and it was held in the art auditorium, which was designed for slide lectures, dark and deep. Friedell liked it that way. He was one of those professors like a jazz musician—bright rooms hurt his eyes. The floor raked up sharply, like a miniature theater, and he spoke down in the pit of the room and strode his little stage, although, as he’d warned that very first day, he did not impersonate anybody but himself, but spoke in his own tinder-dry English accent. It was as if he saw his role as making religion as inaccessible and obscure as possible; it was as if he were the last guardian of the relics of antiquity before we students got our slimy little hands on them and started watering them down!
The reading was so heavy that by the second week I was behind. It happened insidiously, like everything else in that class. I was just lagging a couple of chapters in the Confucius reader. Then I fell one section back in the Koran. But I made a mistake, which was instead of just moving on to the reading for the next lecture and staying current, I kept working on the stuff I was supposed to have read already. The result was the class was moving ahead, while I was stuck farther and farther back. I stayed up late and I got up early. And I read on the bus on the way to work, and during my breaks at Shirokiya. I carried my books with me all the time. I felt like I was doing everything right, but all of a sudden the midterm came up—and it was the next day. I flailed and I moaned and I waved my hands, and I tried to do a month’s reading the night before. But it was all to no avail.
The morning of the test I was sitting there in the auditorium, staring three essay questions in the face.
Compare and contrast the Confucian ideal of filial piety with that of the fifth commandment.
How did Mohammad attempt to synthesize the best of Judaism and Christianity? Why?
Explain Augustine’s conception of illumination of the mind.
Holy cow! I wasn’t even up to Augustine yet. I must have stared at that third question for five minutes, just in total panic. I looked around the room and everyone else was writing away, hunched over those desks that swing up out of the arms of classroom chairs. Everyone was sitting there, one seat apart, the whole class evenly spaced, and Friedell was up front proctoring with his teaching assistants. My heart raced. My palms were sweating. I said to myself, Sharon, hold on. I said, focus your mind. Draw upon your inner knowledge. I started writing.
Confucius was similar because he got the concept of honoring your father and mother. Yet Confucius was different because he planned his society more in a building block formation rather than an authoritative legalistic do this or else kind of idea. Indeed Confucius was less hung up on authority than Moses and more into cooperation at all levels. Confucius had down the Eastern ideals of harmony and circularity, while Moses, being a founder of western civilization was more linear, and being, basically, a patriarch, more patriarchal, to the point where he tended most of the time to communicate by fiats or decrees rather than more open ended suggestions.
Mohammed had an idea that you could value other people’s points of view by actually taking their ideas and using them in your own, and people like Jesus and Moses were not necessarily at odds with each other but onto some of the same important truths. Like when you boil it all down Judaism and Christianity could be summed up by the Golden Rule which is do unto others as you would have others do unto you, and just because people are different doesn’t mean they’re wrong. So he put that into the Koran and also wrote his own mythology of creation, etc.
So I felt like I was at least saying something for those questions. But when I got to the last one, I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t read anything by Augustine. The Confessions, the De Doctrina—I was too far behind. And I felt like there was this hollow pit in my stomach. I felt like, Oh my gosh, am I going to get a zero? I was just frozen. Because I was not one of those people who could make up answers out of thin air. I looked at the words of that question, and I looked and looked, like they were tea leaves, or like they were tarot cards, or even the palms of someone’s hands. The only thing was I didn’t have the powers to uncover an answer.
There were only five minutes left to go, and Friedell and the teaching assistants were fanning up the aisles to pounce on all us students and collect our papers without giving us even one second of leeway.
“Just three minutes,” Friedell announced over his microphone.
My pen started moving. I started scribbling as fast as I could:
Illumination of the mind is when you have basically an aha moment and your mind is flooded with the light of understanding. Augustine had these very frequently being not only a great religious thinker but also a Saint. Illumination
Those proctors snatched my blue book out of my hands. They told me to put my pen down. Down. They made me feel like a criminal, or, actually, like someone in a penitentiary, with the big oculus on me. Friedell’s teaching assistant actually pulled my blue book out from under my pen. It was like I was in some labor camp trying to scribble out my last words, and the guards snatched away my scrap of paper.
When that exam was over I wanted to go home and crawl into my bed and sleep. But I had to go straight to Ala Moana Center. At Shirokiya I had about one minute to dump my bag in my employee locker and put on my smiling customer-service face. You know how it is in retail. The show must go on. Yet I knew I hadn’t done well. Not well at all.
The next week Friedell announced that all the midterms were graded. They were in a box outside his office door and we could pick them up at our leisure. But I, of course, had to go right from class to work. Also I dreaded picking up my test. It was Friday morning by the time I went down to Friedell’s office to collect it.
I crept down the stairs of Webster Hall, my hands clammy on the bare metal railings. At the bottom of the stairs I crept past this boxy silver water fountain, and then I went back and leaned over to take a drink, but it was one of those water fountains that only trickles, so I just got a lick of water on my tongue. I crept past the vending machines, one for candy bars, and one for coffee, where you were supposed to hold your cup under the spout and specify dark or light. And then at the end of the hall I saw a battered old cardboard box that looked thoroughly abused and kicked around. And I saw Friedell’s door, and it was open, and his light was on. I sidled over and looked into the box. There were just a few blue books left, maybe ten wilted ones at the bottom. And there was mine lying there. And right on the cover under
my name was my score in red ink. Do you know what I got out of seventy-five possible points? I got a twelve. There it was, scrawled right by my name, like that was what kind of person I was. Twelve points.
And, I mean, what was that? A twelve! Did they give me credit for anything on that test? I opened up the blue book, and there it was: 5/25 for question one, 5/25 for question two, 2/25 for question three. My eyes were smarting. That whole dank basement hallway swam with tears. I just knelt down by that cardboard box like it was the gravestone of my academic future. “Why?” I started snuffling, “Why?”
“Yes?” the voice floated out from the open office door.
I froze.
“Come in,” Friedell said, and his accent was so English it was like he was inviting me in for tea.
And that was it. That nonchalance, that breezier-than-thou. That was when I lost it. In one burst of indignation I marched into the office, and I slapped my blue book down atop the desk, and I said, “Did you grade this?”
“How do you do?” he said. “You must be one of my students.”
“I’m Sharon.” I said.
“Sharon. Won’t you sit down?” And he drew up a chair for me right next to his desk.
And warily I sat down, and my bare knees, since I was wearing shorts, brushed Friedell’s cool steel desk. And I said, “I want to know who graded my midterm.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Did you?”
“Let me see.” He picked up my blue book from his desk, and he opened it up and he looked inside. He read my work, and he kept a perfect poker face the whole time, except at the end he began to smile. But he stopped himself. He put down my exam. He said, “Well.”
“Did you grade that?”
“No.”
“Professor Friedell—” I couldn’t get the words out. He swiveled on his swivel chair, reached behind him, and produced a tissue box.
I took some. I wiped my face. “Professor Friedell, I can’t believe this is happening to me. I mean, I have a 4.0 average.”
That really made him sit up and take notice. That really got his attention. He leaned forward. “Really!”
“But I feel like in your course, at least at this point, I’m failing! It’s not like I’m not working. It’s not like I’m afraid of work. But you assign so much reading, I can’t keep up. I feel like I can’t read fast enough—I mean, I am not a speed reader. I mean, education is not a race, right? It’s about delving deeper, not faster. And I can’t delve at all at this pace we’re going. I am a person who needs to focus on just a few things.”
“There were only three questions on the test,” Friedell pointed out. “Perhaps you might have focused your energies more on each one.”
“Professor, you don’t even know how hard it was for me to force myself just to write what I did. I was practically having panic attacks! Which made me get writer’s block.” I blew my nose. “I can’t keep up because I’m thinking so much. I can’t read so fast, because actually, I’m trying to learn this material to practice it in my life, because I want to grow as a spirit. And you know what? I’m looking at these great thinkers and trying to figure out which path is the right one. I mean, right for me. It’s like I’m weighing their ideas in my mind—not just reading them superficially.”
And I took my Augustine out of my backpack, the Confessions and De Doctrina, and I opened the books, and showed Friedell how by now I’d highlighted just about every word on every page. The pages were all bright psychedelic yellow, and the margins were all covered with my notes and questions and exclamation points.
Friedell said, “Oh, I see. Yes. I’m surprised you didn’t have more to say about Augustine on the exam.”
“Oh, I did have more to say. I did. I had too much to say!” Which admittedly was a slight exaggeration, since at the point when I took the test I hadn’t read any of this stuff.
“Well,” Friedell said, not unkindly, “perhaps you can take on Augustine for your research project.” And he handed back my blue book to me, and he stood up. “May I walk you out? I’m afraid I’ve got to run to lunch.”
I stood up. “Please—”
“What is it?”
“This test doesn’t show what I can really do.”
“I’m relieved to hear that,” Friedell said.
• • •
ALL weekend I sulked over that conversation with Friedell. I sat by the pools and fountains at Ala Moana Shopping Center. Just slumped on the concrete benches and felt so sad. Hour after hour I watched the carp that lived there. Beautiful koi from Japan. They were white and orange. They were golden. Their eyes were bulgy on the sides of their heads, like blueberries. They looked so fat and happy as they swam in their shallow pools, their whiskers nosing a few pennies on the bottom.
They seemed a little bit dumb. Yet you had to give them this: They sowed not, neither did they spin. They were making the most of their God-given abilities; they were living their lives. Twelve points on a test would never faze them. Nothing did. They didn’t rail or curse their fate, being mall fish.
Sharon, Sharon, I thought to myself, where is your detachment? How is it you’re already after one semester caught up in this whole academic evaluation scam? That’s not what education is all about. You know that. Do you need approbation from a guy like Raymond Friedell? No! You’re learning for yourself. Just forget about Friedell already. Cut out the middleman.
I was not giving up on seeking knowledge. I was not going to let some prof stand in my way. Monday morning I strode into class with my notebook, and it was like I was coming back to the scenes of my nightmares, wide awake, in the middle of the day. I looked around, and I thought, Sharon, please. Is this what you were so intimidated by? The art auditorium, with indoor-outdoor carpet on the floor? Is this what you considered a temple of the gods of learning?
Friedell stood before us. He looked us over, and he started talking. He started walking and talking on the little stage down on the auditorium floor. And he said, “Some of you have been a little bit concerned about your performance on the midterm. And well you should be.”
Despite my newfound freedom from caring about superficial things like Friedell’s course and his opinions, I squirmed when he said that. I couldn’t help it.
He went on, “Some of you have been feeling rather put upon, I gather, by the volume of reading in this course.”
There were more than one hundred students in the class, but all of a sudden I felt like everyone was looking at me. I told myself, Sharon, remember the koi. Remember the koi. Do you think those carp could care less what this land mammal is carrying on about?
Friedell was saying, “Perhaps those of you with concerns would do well to remember that the drop date for the class is approaching. In the meantime before we move on I would like to touch briefly today on some misconceptions about Augustine.”
Loosen your attachments, I thought. Let go of your anger toward this man. Let go of your resentment. He is neither an obstacle to you, nor a guide. He is nothing. He is neutral. He is …
“Augustine did not start out a saint, as some of you seem to believe. He was not even a Christian when he began his journey as a young man. It was much, much later in his life that he had what one of you so fittingly described as his aha moment leading …”
Aha moment! That was my essay Friedell was quoting up there. That was my exam he was exploiting in his lecture! There he was, plagiarizing my work, while at the same time flunking me for it! My eyes went wide. I clutched my notebook to my chest. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe what was going on in this class! All my calm went by the wayside. All those good thoughts the day before with the fish. Out the window. It’s just that I was not a very calm person! It’s just that he was getting off on my failed efforts. Appropriating them. Mocking them for his own personal entertainment! He was raping me in front of a hundred people.
“Augustine was a theologian,” Friedell said, “He was a bishop. He was a writer. He was many many things.
Augustine—”
“Fuck Augustine!” I screamed out into that dark theater of the lecture hall. I sprang up from my chair. I pushed past all the other students in my row. I was running up the aisle toward the red EXIT sign. The door slammed shut behind me.
14
Pilgrim
Prof. Friedell,
This is to apologize if I offended you in class—though I realize you probably forgot the whole thing by now. I was the one who said Fuck Augustine. It wasn’t having anything against him—not at all. It was you lifting passages from my essay on him. And right after I came to see you and appealed to you on the harshness of the grading. It seemed like you were just using the occasion of my test to be making fun, which I realize now is probably one of your pedagogical tools. Nevertheless people’s feelings are on the line there in your class, whether you realize it or not, and people’s sparks of creativity, which you can either fan constructively or snuff out with irony and intimidation. Is that the way to go? Because actually teaching could be about tenderness and training up the little vines of people’s imaginations onto strings, like they are bean plants, and then they would bear fruit, or rather, legumes. Teaching could be about inclusion, where you just let everybody come to the well and drink at their own levels, rather than about grading and public humiliation, where you hold up someone’s exam for ridicule. That’s all I was trying to say. Learning isn’t really how many pages you can choke down. Learning isn’t cramming Augustine down one’s throat.