The Saker and the Cunning Fennec Fox

28 September 2013

2230 hrs

        Well, Dear and Patient Reader...  I have the next installment of the Saker and The Cunning Fennec Fox ready to post, and I look forward to hearing more of your comments.  You all have very interesting things to say, and I apologize for not posting those up as well.  I am working on a truncated timetable, as I am preparing for school to begin on Monday, and I just don't have the hours in the day to get it all done. But I appreciate your words, kind or not, and the insight you give so freely.

        Speaking of your being neglected, either real or imagined, I am afraid that the postings may become fewer and farther between, as I believe 14 credit hours at the University will keep me pretty fucking busy.  I predict a 60 hour study week, and that's because I cannot STAND Mathematics.  And I have a Math class every term for the rest of my degree program.   I am almost ready to vomit as I type this. Icky sticky...

        So Patient Reader, without further adieu, I now turn you over to the Saker and Her Fox...

        Kristen is a teacher, a wife, a mother.   She was an English Major in college and has a Master's Degree in Education.   She is a writer, and a good one, as you can imagine.

        A friend of mine, Ryan*, worked with her, and once a month there was an office/classroom Trivial Pursuit game, students and tutors and teacher all participating in this wonderful event.   TP is the greatest game ever invented, just like Jeopardy! Is the greatest show on TV.

      You wouldn't know it to look at this blog, but I am a writer, too.  I took over Ryan's job because he was moving out of town and resigned his position.  I was still between careers and a tutorial position now needed filling.  So I applied for, and filled, it.

        Kristen used a clever metaphor in a lecture she gave the class one day.  It's not important what it was, this metaphor, but what I took away from it, and then what I brought back.  I approached her the next day and handed her a thin sheaf of paper, just a few pages, with a title page on top.

 

        -Ooh, a story! She said -I love stories...

        It was nothing really, my thoughts on her lecture from the day before.  Certainly nothing autobiographical... those were to come later.  Like the Heidi story found earlier in this blog o' mine.  Yeah, she knows that one and the story of Rhonda* and a whole lot more stories of my life. Stories I will share with you over time, Patient Reader...

        At first she was the Constant Grammarian.   She hated my repeated use of commas and semi-colons.  She never complained about ellipses... or italics, though, and this made writing for her a bit easier for me.  Yes, I was writing for her.  I was telling her about myself, who I was, who I was becoming, the taming of my animus and the calming of my soul...  the awakening of my long dead heart...  I chose stories specific to the revealing of my heart, because I wanted her to be the first woman to ever see me.  I was not even in love with her yet, but I knew for certain that a friendship, a real one was blooming.

       Soon, her pencilings became more opinionated, with less editing stets.  One time she had written something in pencil and then erased it, writing over that once again.

        That wasn't working for me.  What was it that she said (wrote) to me, and then, having changed her mind, obliterated?  What had she written down from her heart without filtering, edited with her brain, and then thought better of it and erased with her hand?  She was censoring herself, and I do not abide censorship.   Not even a little bit.

       
      -This really aggravates me... Telling her as I pointed out such a spot on some random story I had gotten back

     
      -This... do you know what this is?  Her beautiful brow furrowed just a titch. She knew what she had given me yet she knew not what I had received.

       -It's a palimpsest, I said... Thousands, jesus, countless ancient manuscripts have been lost, destroyed by stupidity and wars and carelessness, or transformed into palimpsesti.  Aristotle writing a third book of comedy, then saying ach, and erasing it to overwrite it with a shopping list for the agora.  Please don't do that to this running record of us...  er, of our...  scholarly correspondence...

        Jesus, had I shown my hand?  She explained it away easily enough; that she redacts herself because that is who she is, how she carefully presents herself to the world, taking caution and thoughtfulness into consideration before wrapping up the project at hand and handing it over.

       A perfectly gift-wrapped box, I thought to myself, with a square, level, and plumb enigma inside of it.  

       She seemed hurt by my observation, at least a little bit, and I can sort of see that.  She was doing something here, sharing herself in her own way, and here I was (in her mind) not appreciating it at all, or too little, at least.  Yet the words and feelings she shared with me was delightful, and I felt a peace and contentment I hadn't felt in a long while, even as my heart pounded thunder behind its cage.

        So we came to a compromise:   I would expect less if she would erase less, a little bit from both sides, anyway, from each of us...

        She was becoming introspective with her comments, pretty much musings by then, and I ate up every word.  I did not realize it at that moment, but learning about her was learning my own heart.  I memorized her life because something deep inside me in someplace dead and forgotten, she was an inextricable part of my life as well.  Our lives were merging, and I interpreted this as pain.

        Soon her comments covered whole pages at a time, and I added blank sheets of paper to my stories, hoping that she would fill up every square inch with Kristen.  I was never disappointed.

       -Where is Mr. So and So- she asked me one day while taking roll, and I told her I saw him in the computer room.        

       She was already up and about, circulating among the students quietly so as not to disturb them as they studied. This is how she did her roll call.

        She immediately went to the doorway of the computer room, paused as she looked in, and marked him off on her attendance sheet.  She turned about and was met with my gaze, a touch of (mirth?) bemusement about my expression.  She smiled until my expression changed.   It became serious.   Not frightening, just sober, and she thought, I believe, she felt...  that I was about to say something I meaningful. I did not disappoint, I think.

        -Ms. Beautiful Saker*, said I, -I will never lie to you...

        -Mr. Cunning Fennec Fox*, said she, -neither will I ever lie to you...

        Now, I believe she said her own version back to me for a few reasons:  I think she was surprised at the frankness of my statement.  Whether or not men had said that to her in the past aside, she knew in her heart that I was serious, and that I would never break that promise to her.  That was probably a little frightening, too.   Knee-jerk, her immediate response in kind.

        I think also that she was being polite.  How do you shoehorn such a personal exclamation into a quiet classroom conversation, especially when one of you is taking roll?   It was just a good, and the right, thing to say.   A good way to acknowledge my statement, along with its veracity, and then press right on.

        I also feel that she said it aloud because that was what she truly believed.   She really thought that the person she was striving to be would never lie to her employee, some kind, yet not-too-significant co-worker that happened to be sharing the same corner of the world with her.  I was not special to her.   Not yet, anyway.   So she wanted to be telling the truth with this promise, and saying it out loud simply willed it into existence.

        Oh, and before you ask, only one of us kept the promise. Whom, Patient Reader, do you think that person was?

… to be continued...

* names have been changed to protect the guilty