Keating & Me

By Dyllan Kolinen

Author’s Note: The following essay is a piece I wrote for my Advanced Essay class during my freshman year here at Judson. This story is fiction; the Mr. Keating in this story is based on the Mr. Keating from the 1989 film “Dead Poets Society.”

The themes in this essay reflect my own struggle to balance my love for the arts, such as writing, and my career pursuits in less creative industries, like the Computer Science degree I am currently pursuing. If you haven’t seen the film and wish to do so, there are spoilers for major parts of the story, and there are character moments that are better experienced by watching the original film. With that said, grab a coffee or tea and enjoy this short story.

I was still finding my footing as a business student when I met Mr. Keating. The first goal I had when I started at that small college in Illinois was to find a local coffee shop to frequent. I settled for a small café squeezed into the corner between two old city buildings. When it was available, I would always sit at the small two-top in a windowed corner. I’d order a coffee and whatever baked good piqued my fancy that day. Most often, my fancy was drawn to the simple bagel.

Spending time at the café allowed me to escape from the rigid structure of the business-driven life I was living. Everything was cost-benefit analysis and prospective-growth estimates, and all of that was left behind in that quaint space. I was living a dual life, and, at the time, I preferred it that way.

Besides myself, there was a diverse cast of other regulars. Some of my favorites included a short, aging couple who would come for a late lunch during the week, a younger gentleman who seemed more interested in the waitresses than his food (though he never seemed to work up the nerve to say anything besides his order), and a businessman on his lunch break who could never finish a meal without taking a call on his then state-of-the-art cell phone. His voice always matched the condition of his clothes. Some days, he was calm and collected, and his attire was neatly ironed. Other days, he seemed frantic or overwhelmed, and his clothing seemed equally stressed with wrinkles and bunches.

It wasn’t until the wind started stinging my face and the leaves started dropping their green for ever-warmer tones of brown that I started paying attention to one particular man. I did not realize he was a regular since he never sat in the same spot. Eventually, as everyone became familiar, so did he, and despite his erratic seating habits, I added him to my mental tally of café cohorts. He was old, and he wore those years of experience in each crease of his pale skin. He never wore anything on his face despite a look of contentment. Looking at him, you would be led to believe that there was no place or time he would rather be in.

He was usually occupying himself with reading in some form or another. Sometimes, it was ancient-looking tomes that held collections of writings by century-old authors and poets. At other times, he read from loose-leaf papers containing unknown swaths of text, and on other days, it was a humble reprinted paperback of a cult classic. Our orders seemed similar, a baked good of some kind with a white mug next to it, except his mug always had the paper tag of a teabag hanging over the edge.

The first day I ever spoke to him was October 29th, 1998. The café was unusually empty, and he had decided to sit at my windowed corner table. As I entered, I noticed him acknowledge me and return to reading. I sat at a different table, and the waitress came to take my order. By the time she left, he had retired from his book and was gazing out the window. The solitude of the place was making my curiosity flare up like a bad allergy. I waited for my coffee to arrive and cautiously approached the corner table.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all.”

I sat across from him. After some awkward introductions and random questions, he learned that I was a student, and I learned he used to be a teacher. He asked about my experience at school and if I were enjoying my time in college. I told him I was a business major and that I was enjoying it just fine, for the time being. We talked for a few hours while we sat at that table. Something seemed to prompt him just before he left, and he asked me if I knew any Latin. I did not.

“Carpe diem,” he said, and then translated, “Seize the day; remember that.” 

He left me with that idea: don’t let a breath go wasted. Those little meetings in the small café became regular. We never formally agreed on a schedule, but we always came at the same time.

Early on, he managed to tease out of me that I was a reader: Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, among others. All prose; I hadn’t ventured into poetry beyond the occasional “inspirational” line I’d hear. I remember his being appalled by that idea.

“Poetry—poetry is an essential part of living life well, my friend,” I recall him saying. From that day on, I think he made it his personal mission to expose me to as much poetry as possible. Sometimes I didn’t even know he was quoting poetry until I read the lines later, which I originally had thought were his.

After one of our meetings, he had to hurry out of the café. In our frantic goodbyes, he forgot the book he had brought. It was a hardcover book with a tattered green cover and a gold-stamped title reading: Five Centuries of Verse. I took it with me as I left, intending to return it to him when I saw him next. Eventually, I was tempted to open it as it sat on the desk in my dorm. Inside the front cover, handwritten in blue ink, it read, “To Be Read At The Opening of D.P.S. Meetings: ‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…’”

The next time I saw him, I returned the book and asked about what I had read, “What’s D.P.S.?”

A startled look came over him as he took the book from me. He seemed conflicted, the memory clearly bittersweet. Despite himself, he began, “When I was not much younger than you, a few of my classmates and I started the Dead Poets Society.” Slowly, the tone became less jarring and more nostalgic. “We found this cave near the school where we’d meet to read poetry aloud to one another. It was a sort of magic; we experienced the lives of these men who poured their souls out in verse.”

He grew quiet suddenly and stirred his tea. Quickly, his apprehensions returned, and he scrambled helplessly to change the subject. I asked him if he was alright. He took a long time to respond, but he eventually tamed his emotions and managed a reply:

“Yes, I’m quite alright. I have just avoided thinking about that for a long time.”

I asked him why.

“I taught briefly at the school I attended when we founded the society. When I taught, I fought against the rigid curriculum they proposed and taught poetry as metaphor for life. As I believed it to be. The students found out about the society and founded their own chapter. I encouraged them to be freethinkers and to pursue their passions, but to be responsible while doing so. One of them, Neil, had an incredibly strict father who insisted that he become a doctor. Neil was a gifted actor, and he wished to pursue that. I encouraged him to speak to his father and tell him just how passionate he was. The poor kid was too timid about it and kept acting against his father’s wishes. His father was furious when he found out and was going to send him to military school, from what I hear, but…” He trailed off. I could tell he was fighting tears, but one of them was stronger than he was and managed to escape. “Neil took his own life the night after his first show. It was a good show, too.” He continued, “I don’t think Neil’s friends blamed me, but the school claimed I encouraged him to go against his father’s will and therefore, it was my fault entirely.”

I remember being in shock at what this man had just said to me. He’d already become someone I considered a mentor by then. I would often bring things I was struggling with and ask him for advice, sometimes even before asking my close friends and family. I didn’t realize that the vulnerability would end up going both ways. I told him I didn’t believe it was his fault either, and he seemed to genuinely appreciate it. 

Seeing him so emotional broke the resolve that was holding me to the path I was on in that moment. He processed life so vividly in our conversations, and I felt alive speaking to him more than I ever had crunching numbers. Slowly but surely, from that moment on, I began to prioritize my writing more, and I even started entertaining the desire to write something for myself—for my own humanity and enjoyment. By the time there was snow on the ground, I knew I wanted to change directions. I switched majors to English. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but in fairness, I didn’t know what I was going to do with business either.

“‘The powerful play must go on, and you may contribute a verse.’ I hope my verse meant something.”

He passed away the following semester, and being the only local who knew him well, I was approached to write his obituary. I knew him well; I could have picked him out of a crowd based solely on his mannerisms, but I didn’t know him. I never asked about his family or what he was doing, seemingly alone, in that college town. His obituary was my first “published” piece. I wrote about his beliefs and the joy he ran at life with, discontent to let it come to him as it may. He had mentioned at one point he’d given students an alternate name to address him by— “Oh Captain, my Captain,” from the Walt Whitman poem by the same name. If I had any choice in titling that somber piece for the local paper, I would have called it that: a man gone before his work could be complete, unappreciated in his time, but wholly necessary.

I attribute my career as a writer to him. Many others supported me as I was getting off the ground, but he started the engine. I wonder if he knew that those conversations, which convinced me to abandon business, would lead me into the lifelong passion of writing and eventually become the career I love. They don’t have much need for writers like me anymore, but I believe I contributed my verse to the history books.

I’m fast approaching the age he was then. I’ve had more spare time this year, so I’ve taken to frequenting the local coffee shop.