post-modern sacrament

"In the morning I walked to the bank. I went to the automatic teller machine to check my balance. I inserted my card, entered my secret code, tapped out my request. The figure on the screen roughly corresponded to my independent estimate, feebly arrived at after long searches through documents, tormented arithmetic. Waves of relief and gratitude flowed over me. The system had blessed my life. I felt its support and approval. the system hardware, the mainframe sittiing in a locked room in some distant city. What a pleasing interaction. I sensed that something of deep personal value, but not money, not that at all, had been authenticated and confirmed. A deranged person was escorted from the bank by two armed guards. The system was invisible, which made it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with. But we were in accord, at least for now. The networks, the circuits, the streams, the harmonies."

-Don DeLillo, White Noise

grading

Today I read the best student paper on the Odyssey I've ever read in ten years of teaching the poem. The best thing: it's a student who took my Written Communication course and who continues to show improvement as a writer. Persistence and practice pays off.