I absolutely adore my epistemology professor, the Horse. The Horse is perhaps the handsomest man I have seen so far here in the Hoosier State (and he is from Montreal) and he is simply hilarious - he never seems to be listening to a word anyone says, but just sort of rolls his head around and pulls on his lower lip and gazes into nowhere when spoken to. The Horse almost never finishes a sentence, which makes it very hard to take notes in his class.
Today I was in the lounge drinking a cup of tea and the Horse came in. "I'm worried that you'll peak too soon," he said, apropos of nothing, in his delightful rumbling, scratchy, nasal voice. "I mean, you'll peak really early and then ... and we want you to kind of -" he made a gradual swooping motion with his hand - "what's that you're drinking? Is that tea? Well, that's okay then. I was ... I was being facetious ... I guess you can't tell, okay, see you later." Then he trotted off.
Today in class he was talking about Descartes' requirement that we must rule out the possibility that we're dreaming before we can truly say we know things about the world around us. He said, "Of course in everyday life we're perfectly justified in saying that we know where the nearest hospital is, or who we are, or where you can get a flatbread with what R.J. Apple referred to as 'the Beluga of bacon' ... 'the Beluga of bacon,'" he repeated, almost dreamily. "It's this bacon called 'nueske's' and you can get it at a place called 'Trulli's' which is on ... is it 10th and 3rd? No - it's - it's 10th and the overpass - Trulli's - " and he wrote "Trulli's" and "nueske's" on the board. "Or you can get it at a place called the Butcher's Block. It is the caviar of bacons.
"Once," he went on, "we were in Memphis - I think it was Memphis - walking down the street and we were suddenly - beguiled by this smell of bacon and it drew us in to this little hole in the wall where we had this bacon, and you can actually get it here in Bloomington. Where was I?"
"You were talking about the Cartesian requirement," I prompted him. And he was off again, galloping away in another direction.
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7 comments:
Get me that bacon.
That was not LCA, that was me. ANd I want that bacon.
Maybe for Christmas. I was going to make you a fruitcake, but if I can figure out a way to transport it I will see if I can bring you some.
There was some mighty fine looking bacon at the Union Square green market but 90 degrees and no way to transport it, plus the idea of a parade of dogs following us around Manhattan, into Brooklyn and back to Buffalo made us decline. Further research is clearly needed.
Thank goodness you weren't drinking coffee.
I think the Horse sounds like a professor from Hogwarts.
in my case, bacon really would be a digression.
Bacon, shmacon. Is this the sort of person you are thinking of becoming when you finish all this and become a professor yourself?
Here I am, all worried and anxious that you may be all worried and anxious about your chosen field and all your OTHER relatives only care about that bacon!
What's to become of us???
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