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After having made a big deal in the presence of various students about how important it is for faculty to show up at December commencement to honor the kids and parents -- we have paid our money; where's our ritual? -- I will not be at December commencement today.

Yesterday I tweaked my back, though perhaps wrenched it would be better or taunted it and made it cry ... any verbal embroidery to capture the fact that pain has locked its teeth down low and to the left like a pit bull.

Pat and I biked like champions yesterday morning, but that didn't do it, I'm sure. I'm thinking it was when I rolled around on the floor in various contortions trying to screw the mail slot back into the wall, from when I had removed it to repair the flap. And then last night we visited The Andersons and watched the movie Monterey Pop on their Andorra-sized TV with its new surround-sound component.

I've done this before. I find myself in a cramped and uncomfortable seat, and rather than saying so for fear of appearing self-important and not able to take "six of the best" with a stiff upper lip when it comes to the musical chairs of a social situation, there I sit somewhat confined, misaligned and out of whack.

So last night in bed I could not find that sweet spot, usually in fetal position, when sharp pain becomes dull ache. I got out of bed and alternated hot pack and ice cubes until the discomfort was manageable and slept a little.

But no matter how lovely a church St. Ignatius is, every day is a bad chair day when you're seated on the speakers platform in seeming astonishment at exhortations you've heard quite a few times before, starting at your own grade school graduation.

And now I hear some ice cubes calling my name.

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Having Plenty to Say Doesn't Mean You Say It

Cover of Lady's Not for Burning

I have posted -- really posted -- very little lately. It has been a difficult semester in many ways, and talking about it publicly wouldn't help. Oh my no.

Is anonymous blogging cowardly? Maybe. But certainly therapeutic.

In happier news, tonight we have the annual dinner for Media Studies seniors at the Villa Romana in San Francisco. That's where we had it last year, and I thought it a big success. I don't think students want their senior years to dribble away in a series of fragmented moments. This will be a pause, a signpost. Friends will be embraced. Faculty will be honored.

The last week of my own senior year of college went by well enough without such a moment, I recall. From one point of view, that last week was one big moment, a great holding of breath. E. and I had been secretly married for six months, and if that fact had emerged, even at the last minute, I would have been tossed out of school, and my lovely fellowship at Duke lost as well.

You may say: secretly married? Expelled??!! There you have Whooping Jesus Bible College in a nutshell, and why my memories are less than fond.

I'd already been expelled once my senior year, for having a roommate whose oil lamp set the room on fire. Not ciggies. Certainly not the dopeawanna, of which I knew nothing. It was just an oil lamp that turned over on his desk when we were out of the room.

What I remember -- my signpost -- from those final days is the night before graduation. (E. was driving in from Detroit the next day; we would announce our marriage to our parents in the parking lot outside the gym immediately after I had my degree in hand.)

Carl Haaland suggested we drive down to Ball State in Muncie to see a student production of Christopher Fry's "The Lady's Not for Burning."

In his car. In that vintage Volvo. I considered him quite the sophisticate.

I remember the play and then the drive back through the dark Indiana countryside afterwards, remember it so clearly. Carl and I talked about the future, and its uncertainty, but also how it was going to be okay, Vietnam or not. (As it turned out, Carl went. I didn't.)

I thought about telling him E. and I were secretly married, but ... no. No point showing off, and he was a pretty religious fellow, Volve or not, maybe more than he let on. Still, this conversation, this good fellowship, has to mean something, I thought, because this is a moment meant to mean.

But it didn't. Fifteen years later, after I had got the rest of my degrees, lost a job, moved around, come here to work for the San Francisco Chronicle, I got a note from Carl. He and his family were going to be driving through, from Arizona on the way to Oregon, and he wanted to stop by.

I wrote back saying he was so very welcome. As long as he didn't talk about Jesus. Because I didn't talk about Jesus anymore. And I never heard from him again.