I took the exit off the parkway to avoid the traffic,
quickly discovering everybody else had the same idea.
Closed streets, dead ends, the mass of cars seeking to
escape the gridlock by just keeping moving.
A turn here, a turn there and I found myself at a park had
not thought about or visited in years.
The last time was long ago, a memorial service where the ashes
were scattered to the air and water.
I parked the car, followed the trail along the rocks, the
gazebo on the cliff overlooking the water.
Consciously I had not thought about her since that day, but unconsciously
she was the one who gave me a map of an inner architecture.
One that I would now call magic, but for many years after I
had no name for it.
She was my first magic teacher.
My parents and academic advisors had no idea what to do with
me in school as my grades and studies were all over the place. Some subjects
were solid A, while others a passing C, there was no pattern so the system and
my parents gave up on me.
Certainly part of it was I preferred reading my science
fiction books, but it was *how* I learned versus how the material was
presented. I had to unlock myself, some years later after graduation, and to late
after all my formal education that I learn by immersion and by doing.
Not memorization or tests.
I don’t know how I wound up in the classes I did, but the
first class with her was mythology in the Western world. For that academic year
we studied the Gods, explored the tragedies, and immersed ourselves in the
myths.
She instructed through action, assigning various Gods any
Heroes to play in class as we read and acted out the stories.
Mythology by Edith Hamilton became the map.
For forty five minutes each day between the pages of that
book and the classroom something else was brought to life, a something of
possibility that she made possible.
Thank you.