January 28: Rosebud Afternoon

It's been a long Monday.  I'm just about ready to head off to class to teach.  We're finishing up City Lights with Charlie Chaplin, and then we will dip into Citizen Kane at the end of class.  I can hardly wait to be done with this day.

I have to say that is has been a Rosebud kind of afternoon.  In Kane, "Rosebud" is the MacGuffin, the mysterious last words of Charles Foster Kane that drive the entire film.  Of course, at the end of the movie, Rosebud is identified as Kane's childhood sled, but it really means much more than that.  It represents a simpler time in his life, a time of childhood and innocence, a time when the most important things in his world were throwing snowballs.

I kind of feel that Rosebud longing right now.  On a day-to-day basis, my schedule is a little exhausting, with work and teaching and all.  I'd love to have the kind of day I used to have as a grad student.  My Rosebud would be the office I had in the basement of the university library.  I had a beanbag chair and scented candles.  A mountain of returnable cans in the corner.  And friends.  Tons of friends who just hung around, shooting the crap, trading stories, studying Chaucer or Dante, and eating cheap food.  I didn't have another job.  I was a student and a teacher.  It was one of the best times of my life.

Say it with Saint Marty:  "Rosebud."

Where's my sled?