still the family smiles
and convenes at the agreed-upon dates.
still they drink the beer, and
and sing the campfire songs.
but the eyes wander now from the fire
to the icy stars,
looking, maybe, for what happens next.
as in everything else,
nature probably had it right
with the human lifespan:
every milestone is one less reason
to keep running.
If a dog has not been properly leashed by its owner, and that dog bites a stranger, the owner is to blame. No sense in blaming the dog. Verily I say unto you, the dog is a dog.
Gets the worm. But the early worm gets the bird. It’s not about early or late. The question is, are you a bird or a worm?
When I arrived at Buffalo State College for the first time in January of 1994, I didn’t know what to expect from higher education. I pictured professors in old-fashioned suits, with matching old-fashioned bowties, speaking in English accents about the zeniths of the human intellect, ranging over the riches of antiquity, Shakespeare, and Thomas Mann in lectures that were high-minded, free-wheeling, and letter-perfect.
And somehow, that is just what I got.
Dr. George Vid Tomashevich — who exhibited all these fine and unlikely qualities — was my first college professor. He passed away this week at his home, far away from Buffalo, in California, at the age of 82. Dr. Tomashevich was a Serb, born in Yugoslavia, who acquired the Queen’s English and half a dozen other languages, graduated in Chicago among a historic class, and taught cultural anthropology at Buffalo State from 1968 until 1995.
That first semester as I scoured the course directory, the title of his class caught my eye. “ANT 382: Religion, Myth, and Magic.” Although I was an English major, I registered for the upper-level Anthropology class without hesitation. Wisdom is wisdom, I thought. And besides, college is about experimentation (I also, inexplicably, took a Dance Appreciation class that semester; I picked classes like people watch cable.)
The class lived up to its (to me) provocative title. Psychology and history, religion and science, all were equally dear and familiar to Dr. Tomashevich, and in his lectures the learned gentleman moved among the disciplines with ease, using each to deepen, not discredit, the others. In his lessons he presented a vision of a whole, unsplintered humanity. There was no feminism, no Marxism, no post-colonialism, and certainly no deconstruction. Only one gifted mind’s synthesis of every noble idea to which it had ever been drawn. He took the term “anthropology” — the study of man — literally, with no further quibbling on the matter. Dr. Tomashevich was “multidisciplinary” before it was a buzzword. In spite of this, he was tarred as “old-fashioned” by some colleagues. It is not unfair to say the criticism stuck in his craw. In the semester’s last few classes, he began to detour from his lectures to rail against those who, he claimed, were pressuring him to retire. One evening an observer sat in on the class, a plump young lady with a notepad.
On another, happier evening Dr. Tomashevich, the old Serbian gentleman, extemporaneously conjugated Hungarian verbs to amaze my Hungarian girlfriend during our coffee break, a good-natured sparkle in his eye. The following week during the same break he pulled me aside, and complimented me on the “charming young lady” I had brought to class.
I started teaching this semester at Buffalo State — a class in my “native” discipline of English. The sky is big and dark early, as it was during those first few weeks of Anthropology classes in 1994. The class I am teaching class happens to be in the same building as Dr. Tomashevich’s night class was, so tonight I clambered down the steel steps to his old room on the first floor. It’s almost 6 p.m.; the room is locked and dark. Although there is no one in the hall, the still-fragrant cardboard remains of a pizza party are piled on top of a nearby garbage can. I peer through the narrow window on the door. In the gloom, I can see the desks are new, in a new, seemingly arbitrary configuration. I remember him gingerly transplanting his yellowing transparencies on and off of the overhead projector as he patiently meted out to us the perfected fruits of a lifetime spent learning and comparing, thinking and researching. Tonight the only light in the room is from the Dell PC that sits on a cart, a confusion of cables erupting from its side, the Buffalo State logo sailing across its monitor from corner to corner.
Because these are these words exactly,
and nothing else;
Because each new word is a new flag in a new country,
that we must abandon immediately, or die;
Because my heart mingles with night airs,
and communes in silent joy with the white spray of stars;
Because the way out is truly the way in;
Because the wisdom of a trillion unrecorded lives
is awake inside me, and will speak;
Because the sky has portals enough;
Because the afterlife is loaded with darkness,
but light is only one kind of tangibility;
Because no fact nor whim nor apprehension is
without its own little life, its own holy vector;
Because the mystic accent is what is required here, and
will be required again, and will not be required;
Because songs must end, but a miracle is a timeless commodity;
Because the crows of time have grown fat on our breadcrumbs;
Because we are capable of throwing hoops around “Time” and “Nature,”
and of framing the shifting mists;
Because the workaday world melts into the long night of prayers;
Because we must push and pull at a thing
in order to discover its true shape;
Because prophecy is, happily, inevitable;
Because everything at our feet may be fashioned into a conveyance;
Because those are ropes, hanging from the stars;
Because our sorrows are as seasons in the mountains;
Because reverence is the better part of reverie;
Because my poem wanders to find its theme.
Husband and wife pushed and pulled the battered silver cart across the parking lot.
Every hill, every crack on the asphalt, seemed too much for the ancient device, as its faded bottles of cleaning solutions rattled together in protest. The cart’s saucer-wheels dug in against each new direction. The couple brayed flat-sounding instructions to each other in their language: it could not be told if the words were angry or loving or what. Maybe they were neither: just communicating the essence of what had to be done to gain the next incline, or to traverse the next precipice.
In spite of the difficulty, they dealt tenderly with the old cart, treating it like a stubborn family nag, pleading and threatening. For somewhere among the tiny soaps and toilet ribbons, the stale coffee packets and Dixie cups, dwelt the most precious thing they had.
I am just a simple man, you wouldn’t call me well-to-do
I got enough for me and mine, we can always make it through.
And no matter how hard things get I always try to…
Leave a little bit left over (over) – at the end of the month.
Maybe get a pair of sneakers, maybe have a nice lunch.
Got a keep an eye on things: keep your money in your shoe.
From Park Ave. to Washington, they all got their sights on you.
And you know they won’t be satisfied while you…
Still have a little bit left over (over) – at the end of the month.
They won’t get a wink of sleep, now, ’til your money’s all used up.
Maybe I’ll take a walk – just listen to my thoughts
They used to be my closest friends.
But there’s no way to go
Real life just moves to slow
And we already know how it’s gonna end.
The water bill is drowning me – the gas bill burned me, too.
The armies of the money-changing madmen have broke through
Might be a year before I manage to…
Have a little bit left over (over) – at the end of the month.
They won’t get a wink of sleep, now, ’til your money’s all used up.
Available on Cafepress.com!
“You are undoubtedly provided with what in your case can only be called the curse of the gab.”
Life with Jesus (the sitcom that saved the network)
Dwelling on my eventual diseases, certain of the central role of the cell phone.
It is weird that my wife was murdered behind a garage with a five iron. Especially after I had posted that piece to an online writing forum about my wife being murdered behind a garage with a five iron. Of course in the story, the garage belonged to a Mr. Fitzpatrick, while in the actual incident occurred behind the garage of a Mr. O’Malley.
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