I figured out what I want to memorize

Today in class, I opened up Essential Shakespeare to page 131 and, for whatever reason, the passage there struck me. It's at the bottom of the page. Maybe because we were talking in class about death and that passage has to do with death, but it connected with me. I kept stealing glances back at the passage as class went on. I read it to myself as I walked back to my truck, and then read it aloud when I got inside my vehicle. (Though, perhaps Dr. Sexson would have preferred I read it aloud as I walked through campus, as to "freak people out"!)

I sense a theme already in the class of people being struck by things they find accidentally. Some one opens 'Essential Shakespeare' to a page and finds a connection between that particular passage and what is being discussed in class. Another opens to a different page and finds words for something that had been troubling them. Perhaps it isn't so accidental. Perhaps if we keep our minds open to these sorts of chances, they are more likely to happen.

Or maybe we're all just really smart people. Either one works.

At any rate, I like this passage because it refers to death, which has come up a lot in the course already. Death is nothingness, yet it is what there is to talk about. So much history centers around the dead and most of what we do in life is to help us be remembered after we're dead. So, why not talk about it as King Richard II does?

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,

Who knows why we are struck by the passages that we are. Why some words seem to resonate within our souls, why some sayings connect with us so powerfully. Maybe by studying this passage more, I'll figure something out. Until then, this is what I want to memorize. 

Alan