John Haag

To Professor Haag: my dearest, most incredible teacher, poet and mentor. Though I knew you only for a short time, the childlike wonder you imprinted on my soul was permanent. Rest in peace.

I fondly remember him reading "Slippery Jack" with "the thing in the clock" at The Jawbone in the late 1960's. Were these ever published? I never took a class from him, but he was one of my favorite teachers. He will be missed.

John once told me 40 years ago that Atlantis didn't sink, she just slipped her mooring and sneaked away when no one was watching. In essence, John has escaped his cocoon of mortal flesh, spread his wings and floated after her directed by that compass in his hands. Thank you for the guidance, I now know the way. There will be wine and cookies waiting for you. We have all been so lucky to have known John in this life.

John loosed his metaphor "the grunion of the mind," in my fertile beach during the high tide of my youth in the early '60s. He was THE one, of my many teachers, who insinuated the value, love and sheer glee of learning into my then profoundly resistant and empty head. Perhaps it was that tell-tale impish glint in his eyes, the knowing witty cackle, that lubricated his
students' acceptance of the grimmer challenges/self-responsibilities that lay ahead of us in the life experience. In those...