fare thee well

evans has retired, and the two rj teachers rustled all of us up yesterday to get him a farewell dinner. this was supposed to have been a surprise, and would have been had jianyi not blurted in the middle of rashidah's hari raya party. anyway, that attempt at sabotage was ruined, and we were all at the restaurant rather nicely on time, except for yen who had to attend her grandmother's birthday party.

a couple of minutes before evans arrived, i was asking cp if it wouldn't be a bit nerve-wracking for him, what with not having seen most of us for so many years and not even remembering who we are. as it turns out, i don't think i had any recollection of what our old dynamic was when i was his student. cp constantly tells me about how much we mythologize him, and after last night i guess i have to agree. not that he's just another teacher - he always was larger than that, and that i remember - but neither is he the gentle porcupine of sardonicism that i've replaced him with over the years as the real memories faded.

there was lots of sake and good food (thanks su-lin, i've now fallen madly in love with bacon-wrapped enoki mushrooms), and conversations about rj 2005 that were a lot more interesting to listen to than usual. then there was repairing to a bar down the road for more sake and edamame and more talk of medea and larkin and the crying of lot 49 and british thespians and ecclesiastes and students protesting about being made to do dickens (never in our day!) and where all of us are, and where we are going.

so thanks to you and you for cobbling the outing together, and may-the-wind-be-at-your-back to the one who's headed back to suffolk. not all is vanity, no matter what the bible says.