JOHN KEATS AND THE UNLIMITED TIME EXAM
I'm sure that the university authorities who dreamed up the
concept of the unlimited time exam, had good intentions. But it was just an
experiment, and it never got repeated. They probably thought that it would
accommodate those poor hacks who are really doing their best and just write and
write and write and basically just dump out everything in their barren skulls
in the hope that something in there will ring a bell for the examiner and drag
them over the threshold between a pass and a fail. I know, because I've been
there. I'm not that fucking smart that I can afford to sit back and laugh at
anyone. They probably thought, what the hell, what can it hurt, some poor
dumbass planned his time wrong or got into a tailspin when his pen ran out of
ink, so give him another 15 minutes -no, what the hell, let's give him 30 – no,
wait, let’s just give him as long as he likes, he’ll run out of steam soon
enough! Let's not show prejudice against stupidity!
So they did this experiment and they called it “The Unlimited
Time Exam”. After all, what kind of an asshole is going to sit in a cold,
drafty exam hall for endless hours after all the really promising students have
buggered off down to the pub if he really doesn’t have to do that and actually
has something to say?
But they obviously never thought about the stoned ones. Unlike
drunks, who will at least be struck by the realisation that they have lost an
hour here or there, stoners have no idea - nor do they care.
I will never forget that exam. It is as clear as a 17th
Century stained glass window - which is appropriate in my case because it was
an English poetry exam and you could either answer a whole bunch of shitty
little questions or you could do one big critical analysis of John Keats’ poem “The
Eve of St Agnes”. I had never read the poem in my life but Keats was a personal
friend of mine and I distinctly remembered him talking about it one day on
Signal Hill while we were sharing a joint and he was planning the thing, so
when I cast my eye on it, it all came back to me in a flash. It was love at
first sight, and I just knew that that poem was mine.
We had spent the morning smoking it up in the maid's quarters
of my friend’s house in Camps Bay. Then I had to go to a dentist appointment at
12 so I had taken my Honda from Camps Bay to the city centre just before 12 but
somewhere along Hof Street as I was passing through an arch created by
beautiful old Oak trees, a squirrel, which was obviously planning to swing from
one tree to the other, lost its grip, fell into the road right in front of my
bike, and became road kill. I was so strung out one way or another by the time
I got to old Doc Navias, my dad’s dentist, that his nurse checked me out with a
beady eye and refused to let me in. Thank Gd the dagga cookies must have kicked
in right about then because otherwise I would probably never have made the
drive through to university.
The old paranoia which had just about settled by the time I
got to the exam room, started up all over again when I realised that I couldn't
hold my pen. It took about twenty minutes to figure out how to do that, and
then I got started on this critical analysis of “The Eve of St Agnes”.
Oh, how I wrote. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. After about three
hours, my classmates started closing their answer books and one by one they
left the exam hall, but I wrote on. Eventually I was the only candidate left in
the hall. The sun moved from azimuth to horizon, and I wrote. It grew dark
outside, and I wrote. The stars came out, and I wrote. The exam invigilators
coughed and shuffled, and I wrote. Eventually out of the corner of my eye I
could see them conferring. One of them came over. “Look” he said, “you don't
need all of us to be here, I suppose it'll be OK if we go and one invigilator
stays?” I shrugged. They could all go, for all I cared. I was writing, damn it.
Writing!!!
I forgot about the whole thing but then one day just before
the exam results came out a little note appeared on the notice-board board in
the Dept of English: “Will Harry Friedland please make an appointment to see
Prof. Gillham as soon as possible”. I didn't see that because I didn't
know that there was a notice board, or
where it was, but someone told me about it (someone always does, don't you
know).
Prof. Gillham was a dry old Englishman who probably didn't
like Jews very much, I'd never spoken to him in my life, but he did his best to
be nice. I was uncomfortable as hell in his office. He wore those funny little
half-spectacles - reading glasses - and he peered at me over the top as if I
was a laboratory specimen, or a pygmy, or something.
“You wrote a most remarkable essay, Mr Friedland” - he said it
as if it was a question. Clearly, he expected an answer. Or an explanation
perhaps. I was feeling my lack of culture and breeding acutely. I wasn't about
to tell him how that essay really got written, but clearly, from what he could
see on the other side of his desk, some sort of explanation might help. I don't
remember what I told him.
I got the class prize. It covered all my varsity fees for the
following year, and my textbooks, and a really cool trench coat and a pair of
binoculars which I have to this day.
I never saw John Keats again, and I never did read his poem.
But I think about him every time I sit on my porch and use those binoculars to
watch the Southern Right whales and the dolphins cavort out beyond the surf in
Table Bay. Good old John!
_______________________________________________________
(c) Harry Friedland 22 Jun 2020
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