Uhm. I wanted to e-mail Dr. Paley, tell him that I was doing well. He treated me like a son; I saw in him a father. He wanted me to stick through the Akkadian, but I had other plans post-September 11th. He knew that I needed the discipline, but I would in time, gain that on my own. He would always look at my papers bemusedly, I was a born interpreter, and he was a master scientist. We exchanged gifts, I suppose, I don't know what I could give a man of his renown, but he kept me around for whatever reason, giving me opportunities that he denied others.
I wish I had an opportunity to tell him how I unleashed his tricks of rhetoric on unsuspecting humanities professors, and that I indeed had lived up to the gifts that I had been given. It's a shame that I left him without knowing these things. He would have proud of me. And I was proud to have invested with his time. I offer his family my condolences, his wife and brothers. He shared his culture and his knowledge with a student who was convinced that the X-Files was a literal truth, and understood, I think that we are all groping at shadows in a vast sea of confusion. We come to these arenas with the baggage of a lifetime, and end up trying to unscript our deficiencies with the desire to be renowned.
I consider him a guru, and I believe that his time was not wasted on me, that I indeed shared what I know about Akkadian and Hebrew, and I have applied what I learned there to the theory that I have developed.
I wish his family the best, and assume that he will be transmigrated into a good life, without too many stains on his soul. He was a good man. Goodbye, Sam.
Your faithful student,
Dave
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