Page 11 - Vol V. #8

moved for my first real job. My salary made me feel so flush that on Valentine’s Day I sent bou- quets to her and my mother. My mother loved the surprise, but the florist phoned me troubled, as my aunt refused to open her door. The more the delivery boy pleaded, the more certain she felt his words were a criminal’s ruse to enter her apart- ment. The florist reported her saying, “No one’s sending me any flowers.”
reading applications for admission. “My first question when reviewing candidates,” he said, “is whether they will kill somebody.”
I sent them again, this time for her funeral, when they could not be refused.
Brain-damaged Brian Denner was never a figure of fun in our neighborhood of unusually cruel children. He sat in a rusty chair on his stoop, rubbing the bridge of his long nose. We always waved and he sometimes waved back. We tried to engage him in conversation, but his words were confused. When he returned from family vaca- tions and we asked how it went, he always an- swered, “Same but different.” He said this about holidays, birthdays, and weddings. As a child, I found it paradoxical. As an adult, perfect sense.
During his quest for spiritual enlightenment, my friend apprenticed himself to a roshi, a Zen Bud-
“Everything must be learned, from
reading to dying.”
Our Lady’s is a nice place except for the very in- firm. I’m sure it is hard for Aunt Grace to see her- self living among people so disabled. A nurse said they are referred to as the Os and the Qs depend- ing on how their mouths look and the position of their tongues.
The poet, a professor at a university, was read- ing applications to the MFA Program in poetry. “My first question when reviewing candidates,” he said, “is whether they will kill themselves.”
dhist master, who could hardly speak English. For lunch, he offered my friend a “penis butter and jelly sandwich,” and apologized for meeting him early one morning still wearing his “vaginas.”
Everything is the same and everything is different.
My father had no friends. He said, “As long as I have a buck in my pocket, I don’t need a friend.”
The English Department bulletin board is known as the Wall of Fame. It contains poems, articles and stories published by faculty members. If your name doesn’t appear, you seem lazy and unproductive. After a long dry spell, Mary Yindell tacked up a story about herself from the local paper. It reported that she was “fortunate to have just learned the secret to removing Christmas tree sap from animal fur when her cat, Jonathan Livingston Seagull got his head stuck to his chest at 2:30 in the morning.” The photo shows Mary holding the cat by the neck and applying Skippy peanut butter with a stick.
If you have a brother and he loves cheese, that’s physics. If you have a brother and therefore he loves cheese, that’s metaphysics. If you don’t have a brother and he loves cheese, that’s pataphysics.
My aunt asked what I liked about kindergarten. I said nap time because that’s when we lie on our mat and look up girls’ dresses. My aunt said that if I did that, God would blow a piece of dust into my eye.
Our well-loved and distinguished colleague re- tired after fifty years of teaching Victorian Lit- erature. A slight and gentle soul, always in a blue suit and solid tie, he had become almost deaf and2
Fifty years later, fifty years of that same activity in different contexts and afflicted with corneal erosion, I’m sure He did.
The surgeon, a professor at a medical school, was
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