The Beginning - Being Sixteen in 1926

This was my very last day.

They didn't know it yet, but I did.
My last day as a secondary school teacher. I knew I would walk out that door and not come back. This was a brilliant group of bicultural Anglo-French kids, and we were just getting to know each other. They had a reputation for being "troublesome", but I knew they just need the right kind of attention.

We were studying Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, a wonderful, troublesome book. And we were studying it as ex-pats in Paris. 

I knew that this was the end, my last class with them. I knew I had to use this time to tell them everything I wanted them to know, without telling them goodbye.

I don't know why I recorded it. I later asked permission to use it (you can hear their voices, more or less), and they said yes. But they remain anonymous. They no longer exist, in any case, these sixteen year olds. They have moved on, to college, or what they will.

But I invite you to listen to this rough, improvised lesson. In which I tried to tell a group of young people everything I had to say, on that day, in that time. 

I knew I would never go back. And it hurt, a lot. But the first step out that door was the first step on the road to here. And here is good. 

Join me, fly on the wall, eavesdropping from the Future, as I try to tell them all I have to say. Everything. Here. Now. Always.

THE HOLLOW PATH IS A MEETING OF MINDS AND HEARTS, TO FOSTER EXHANGES AROUND MAGIC, ART, ENCHANTMENT, CULTURE, POLITICS, AND POETICS ...
RE-ENCHANTMENT. RE-WILDING. RE-MEMBERING.
RESISTANCE.