The Jekyll/Hyde syndrome.

The farewell party didn't feel like farewell at all. Actually it was quite joyous (even to a dyed-in-the-wool withdrawing person like me). She was there, too. I was explaining something to A at the moment she crossed the threshold and stepped into the room, but the second I acknowledged Her presence I completely lost the thread of my thought.

It was pretty interesting, though, to notice that I *can* be social if I just want to and the circumstances are right. I chatted with A in the beginning and continued with K, when she arrived, even though I didn't even know her. By the time most people had left, and only me, K, VS, and Wanderer were left, we arranged the room back as it is in its usual function as the staff coffee room. VS mentioned her plans for the evening; Wanderer suggested that K and I should go to a nearby bar to have a drink and continue talking. I may be misinterpreting, but to me the look she gave me as she said it... well, I'm prone to think of it as a somewhat transparent attempt to push me closer to K. Or then I'm imagining things. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Anyway, we departed after we got outside the university building; she had a party to attend to. I continued my journey with VS. She said W considers her as a sort of a daughter; I felt very envious, to tell you the truth. It also appears that the teacher G is actually even weirder than I've noticed him to be. Some of the comments were slightly inappropriate, but I suppose an Oxford graduate can behave in a little odd way; after all, there's a very fine line between insanity and genius. Speaking of Oxford graduates, I got my term paper back from my other Oxford inmate teacher. He happened to return to his office as I was going through the papers to find mine. I got a four (which slightly annoyed me), but it was soon replaced by pride. He assumed I was a first-year student but after I corrected him (that I'm actually a third-year student and only minoring in English), he told me my English is "excellent". Someone who has studied at Oxford told me I have excellent English! YEEHA!

Another, not-so-excellent grade was also a four; it seems to me that there has been some kind of a confusion in communication, in one way or another. She has, I assume, mistaken LaVey’s "The Satanic Bible" as the alleged sixth and seventh books of Moses, also known as "The Black Bible", which are obviously two completely different things. I don’t know what "The Black Bible" is like and I don’t even care because that is *not* the theoretical foundation of my essay! Although clearing this confusion will not increase my grade, I’ll clear it out anyway.

Now, I may be the first to use LaVeyn Satanism as the basis of an essay, but something tells me I won’t be the last. So, to clear out the path for them (and maybe a little bit motivated by the possibility of Her close, albeit temporary, proximity). But anyway, even though my grade remains the same, I’ll feel better knowing that I have settled the score of my essay when it’s been graded based on the correct source material. She was very obviously grading it from the point of view of a Christian, and more importantly from the assumption that *I* had intended to present the Stranger from the Christian point of view (which I, in my opinion, very clearly was not!). I base this astute assessment of mine on the comment "but of course Satan and his principles are much older than Anton LaVey’s interpretation of them". Could you possibly enlighten the ignorant and tell me what exactly are Satan’s principles? And the comment "to return to the origin of 'evil'"… at no point did I state that the Stranger was evil. The mere idea is quite ridiculous; I rarely use words like "evil", "normal" or "unnatural" without thinking it through three times and consciously deciding that really is the word I want to use. And finally, if I were to "look for -- authoritative sources on Satan" "The Satanic Bible" would still be on my list. The trick is that I wasn’t trying to find an authoritative source on Satan but on LaVeyn Satanism, and TSB is *the* most authoritative book there is!

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The Meme of the Day:
How much do *you* know about Satanism?
(http://www.funtrivia.com/trivia-quiz/Religion/The-Satanic-Bible-and-the-Birth-of-Modern-Satanism-194718.html)

Yours truly screwed up one question out of ten. Ah well. I, by the way, absorb a nickname for the teacher who uses that phrase frequently ("Ah, well"): Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. One guy said at the farewell party the teacher seems to suffer from the syndrome named after Stevenson's characters. I cannot disagree; to me he has always been nice and patient and is in a habit to talk with me whenever I happen to be at the Spot, but I was present at the lecture where he replied with a very angry answer to a perfectly reasonable question. The one to ask the question said she felt a little frightened of him then; I think the whole class was more or less looking out for an explosion from him. I know I did, because for a while he sounded like my father. Hence, Jekyll/Hyde; at one moment a well-behaving yet oddish professor, the next moment causing waves of fear sweep over the class room. I like the Stevenson short stories, though, so in a twisted way this is actually a compliment.