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 123 Afterword W hen I was a college student, I had the good fortune to be taught by a teacher, Perry Miller, who kept insisting that we in the classroom “venture forth—out of these fancy dorms and libraries,” he put it; and then a memorable pause: “into the worldwherepeoplelearnfromoneanother,courtesyofserendipity.”How perplexed we listeners became in response to that remark! Why such a departure, when this was the very place where we were supposed to be doing a considerable amount of learning from others, known as first-rate teachers? Next, the words spoken, a hand picked up chalk and our eyes were summoned to a written gesture, our ears given a break: the word “serendipity” was there for us to witness, ponder. I can still recall the first sound I heard, after the stillness of a bunch of us dominated the room: “a college board word,” said my sitting neighbor, his face’s evident savvy no match for the scorn his whisper managed to convey—and a second later, this cynical follow-up: “You get into this place if you can throw words like that at others.” Silence on my part and on the part of my neighbor, and college friend—and on with the lecture. But after we had left that lecture hall, the word “serendipity” kept asserting itself in my mind—I didn’t really 124  knowwhatitmeant;so,backinmydormroomIturnedtothedictionary, got my answer. Weeks later, during a so-called tutorial I was lucky to take with Professor Miller, the word “serendipity” returned for my ears’ attention: “We can learn a lot through what might be called the ‘grace of serendipity.’” Silence, as I wondered at the threesome just tossed my way. Then an observant teacher’s apology, amplification: “Sorry to toss that comment your way. I was just trying to break myself out of all the expected ways of thinking a classroom can push on us, and say through the use of a word that we can learn a hell of a lot in this life every day, outside classrooms and libraries, by letting our everyday life be our teacher: the serendipitous is luck, good or bad, coming our way, and that luck can teach us a lot, if we’rereadytosay‘yes,sureenough,what’shappenedcanbeabigteaching, learning moment in my life.’” More words, as a teacher spotted a student’s evident perplexity. Then came interpretative help—the essence of which I finally could comprehend, and to this day and time find important to keep in mind: lots of learning can come our way, suddenly, unexpectedly, surprisingly,accidentally—andyetsoonenoughbecomeanimportantpart of our personal lives, affecting how and what we think, believe, and say. AsIlookbackattheessaysthisbookprovides,Ikeepreturningtothat time with a college teacher, because his comment on life’s flow, including its serendipitous moments, helped me understand much of what I was so constantly regarding, trying to say, affirming, figuring out, explaining to myself and others—what still figures in me, his one-time student, then his student, still, who wrote essays in response to what befell a life’s moments , its way. Again and again, in these essays, I remark upon incidents, encounters, impasses, and resolutions thereof—a wayfarer, as are we all, trying to get through time, events, and responsively wondering about  125 them, their meaning to him, or with respect to life’s overall significance. In a sense, then, these are essays that tell of a person’s journey through time, space, and place (now straightforward, now aimless, sometimes even perplexing). Once the poet and physician Dr. William Carlos Williams became, for a moment, a briefly forceful teacher of mine: “When we write a personal essay,” he remarked in his usual insistent way, “we’re often writing so that we can figure out what matters, and why, what happened, and why, or what to do—and so with written words, we’re sharing our experiences, our great hopes, our disappointments, our ups and downs: all of that, our mind’s effort to share what we went through with others, and maybe, in so doing, join our self, the scribbler, to others, the fellow travelers who accompanyusaswetrytofigureoutwhathappenedandwhy.”Withthose words of a great teacher I was so lucky to know came an explanation, in a sense, of my life, its work done in so many places; and with those words I can conclude my latter-day remarks about long-ago written words, and bid a big thank-you to this book’s kind and thoughtful editor, and to...

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