Upon Attending a Senior OralMonday Afternoon

Sometime Monday . . . Things get hazy and sometimes I'm not even sure when I tied my shoestrings last . . . especially on those days when depression sets in and I see my mind floating around my head in black and white and red sworls and swills and I behold rainbows and trees and unfinished business and yessir yessir three bags full . . .

I turned around and asked him if he liked those poems or not. And he said something about not really knowing about that sort of thing and if he had a chance to think about it for about 150 years, he might make sort of a liking for them or maybe he wouldn't and well what good was there in actually liking or not liking a piece when all that counted was the piece when people just need to sit down and be open minded about all that stuff.

He said, "Well I don't want to dislike anything too much. I . . . well I think you want to sit down with a poem and let it happen to you and you want to be open and just let it clothe itself around your brain and smother you dead if it wants to and if you don't really like it, well that's your problem, isn't it? You probably need to give it more time. Let it rest. Peel it off your head and put it aside till you're good and ready to see into its incredible soul."

I said, "Do you like oatmeal?--I mean nice cold, stiff oatmeal with a few raisins sprinkled on top served with Half and Half?" And he said, "You gotta give it a chance to tell you something that you might not learn if you say right off the bat, well that's bad and I don't want to eat it. Who knows anyway? And why do I have a right to criticize before I can actually see that oatmeal mold before my very eyes and turn brown and hairy and disintegrate into a pool of black fuzz? . . ."

I have this recurring vision that I'm going out to meet some sort of ten o'clock literature class and hark! I open the door and I've got a whole classroom of one-hundred pound white marshmallows oozing from chair to chair and one of these marshmallows stands up near the front of the room-- I'm not exactly sure how--and raises his arm (I'm not even sure right now if marshmallows have arms, but I can see the loose powdered sugar dusting off his arm onto the carpet . . .) and somehow, on some kind of downbeat from this standing marshmallow--with or without arms--the whole class recites from memory Wordsworth's "Daffodils."

And just as their hearts lift up with pleasure and they dance with all those stupid flowers, I stand up and say something like, "wow wasn't that nice!" (I don't know why I would say that. But it comes out so easily . . . ) And I say, "Wow! wasn't that nice!" And I say, "Hey, didn't you like that incredible imagery of those Daffodils--as they toss their heads to and fro in sprightly dance! and those sparkling waves of glee! And the sight of Gawd that flashes in the Poet's inward eye!" And in unison, they say, "Poet's inward eye!" And I say, "Do you think those daffodils were stupid?" And they say, "And do you think those daffodils were stupid?" And I say, "Peas porridge hot!" And they say, "Peas porridge hot!"

And I say, "Allliobbchuckeelento!" And they say, "How do you spell that?"

I am in a long, dark tunnel and it's Monday night and I'm supposed to be in this senior's orals. And there is some kind of water splashing over the tops of my Adidas and cobwebs--miles and miles of cobwebs in my face. But I'm down here looking for this graduating senior who has just run out the door and fallen through the grate on the corner of Stanton and Isaacs. "You don't," I'm saying, "You don't need to have an opinion! I didn't . . . I didn't mean to ask you why you liked 'Frost at Midnight'"!

And deep down in the pitch blackness, I hear some soft moaning and I say, "Come on out! You're getting your hair wet!"

And a small voice says far away, "No one said I had to know why I liked it or not . . . I didn't even know I had to feel one way or another about anything. And I don't want to know. I want to learn. Isn't that what it's all about? I want to separate my mind from my feelings."

And I say, "Come on out! I promise I'll only ask easy questions about philosophy and art and thoughts about lofty inner eyes and the exact meaning of fluttering strangers." And the still small voice says, "Promise?" And I say "Allliobbchuckeelento!" And the voice says, "Allliobbchuckeelento!"

My heart . . . My heart is leaping up and I am beholding a crowd of spring Allliobbchuckeelento. They are swaying in the wind and talking about the effect of Freud and Jung on the early Shelley. And I want to worry that I'm liking that stuff too much, too-- but I'm paralyzed in my leaping heart and I'm smiling and drool is dribbling down my chin and I'm saying to myself, "My heart . . . my heart is leaping up . . . my heart is leaping up and I am beholding rainbows in the sky and most of them aren't going on to graduate school anyway and they'll all get good jobs and five years from now, they'll all come back for their first five-year reunion as members of the Alumni House and they'll look back fondly on their experience here where they could postpone critical judgment and wander lonely as Swiss cheese through obviously great literature and set aside their judgments to remain open-minded like large open cans of Oberto olives and . . . and I too in my paralysis can postpone my critical judgments if they can, can't I?

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