Welcome to class An Essay by Bill Tozier vaguery.com I differ from almost all your previous instructors in three ways: First, I acknowledge that this is true, whereas they have for the most part lied to you (and themselves) and declared you competent, even though they’ve had to re-train you from scratch in every damned class. Second, unlike them I intend to do something about it. And, third, in order to do something about it, I will let you—no, make you—cheat. teaching
Five barns worth burning I walked around with a map, penciling in X’s wherever there was a barn or shed. For the next three days, I covered four kilometers in all four directions. Living toward the outskirts of town, there are still a good many farmers in the vicinity. So it came to a considerable number of barns—sixteen altogether. I carefully checked the condition of each of these, and from the sixteen I eliminated all those where there were houses in the immediate proximity or greenhouses alongside. I also eliminated those in which there were farm implements or chemicals or signs that they were still in active use. I didn’t imagine he’d want to burn tools or fertilizer. That left five barns. Five barns worth burning. Haruki Murakami, Barn Burning barnsworthburning.net i