Busca

... Blending into the Background Doreen Roberts a runner up in the QEP Essay Contest The aroma of burning Tupperware was our first clue that something was amiss. Last Christmas as my sisters and I crowded into Moms kitchen for the holidays, bearing covered dishes and platters full of festive food, Mom warned us that the stovetop no longer worked. Within the hour, we discovered that it did indeed work and that she had turned it on with plastic laying on it. Up to that point, we had noticed little signs here and there but at that moment, the pit in my stomach deepened. I knew we were dealing with the first stages of Alzheimers. I have lived enough decades of life to realize that life is often inequitable. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the caregiver gets cancer, the poorest country gets the earthquake, the soldier loses a limb, the newborn is diagnosed with AIDS. I have come to almost expect unfairness. Dementia, however, seems the unfairest of them all. Robbing the victim of their very personality, it leaves the rest of us dealing with a mere shadow. Mom was never a shadow, never a blender, never a wallflower! The creative juices were always flowing to help her five active daughters with everything from 4-H projects to Halloween costumes to graduation speeches. None of us could beat her in multi-tasking! She could get five kids on the school bus, buzz around the yard mowing, throw in seven loads of laundry, clean my aging grandparents house, and get beef, mashed potatoes, peas, and homemade rolls on the table by 4:30 p.m. when Dad came home from the chemical plant. She was the type that could be ever so sober about a topic like God, but then get into a pee-your-pants-giggling fit with me in church. Mom had respect for doctors and teachers and those that were doing something for the greater good, yet realized that her role as a mother was equally weighty. She didnt base her actions on what everyone else thought was important. A persons parents make an indelible mark on their offspring, and unfortunately for many, its not a positive thing. I feel blessed to have a mother that inspired me to always be thoughtful and put others first, not to muzzle creativity, and to do the right thing in life. I perceived through her character that motherhood is an aspiration to greatness, too. I was instilled to never be indifferent or uncaring or unsympathetic. Im not sure how a woman gives birth to five daughters, then deals with 35 Blending into the Background | Doreen Roberts stair-stepping toddlers, followed by a period of five teenagers, five weddings, and then be a mother-in-law to five new men, followed by being a grandma to ten grandchildren. It wears me out just thinking about it. But she handled it with aplomb and was greatly loved. What tears my heart out is that she should be able to enjoy the fruits of all her labor. Instead, the dementia has clawed at her brain. When I call her and she can no longer remember my name, I have to remind her, Im the third one. You know ... Doreen? Observing a person muddle through a debilitating disease can also have an immense impact. I cannot express how many times I count my blessings that I have all my faculties for the time being. What a reminder for all of us to latch onto the people in our lives that have a positive impact on us and to appreciate and love them. We simply cannot allow those people to blend into the background until its too late to tell them how important they were in our foreground. How many times did I take my mom for granted over the years? How many times could I have used loving words instead of whiney ones? How many times could I have lightened her load instead of giving her more baggage? How many times could I have just laughed something off instead of being so serious? As I read over what Ive penned, I came to the realization that I have written in the past tense. Its as if she is already gone ... as if she has already blended into my past... 36  ...

... Before You Were Young Ezra J. Miller It seems like a thousand autumns have gone since that autumn. Your hair was black then. The autumn before, your hair was the color of Pinot Noir. The autumn before, you were young, vivid, a Renoir painting of freshly flowered maturity. You laughed at everything, at things that werent funny. You told me once you laughed as a way to cope when you didnt know what else to do. But this autumn your hair was black, and brilliantly so. You smothered your delicate baby blue eyes so that they matched. You wore jeans that didnt quite fit, and I strongly suspect you excused yourself from your first block to cry in the bathroom when Jack Evans told you so. That was the last day you rode the bus. After that, you became a specter in the front seat of my car. You didnt like my friends, and they in turn did not understand why you always got shotgun. You didnt like my music either. You used to like my music. You used to sing along to Sting in your stunning little soprano. If you love someone, set them free. You quit the school choir that fall as well. It was stupid. Stupid. I chided you on the limited vocabulary, and you rolled your eyes and told me I was stupid. That was when you were kind. When you were kind, you told me you were just experimenting, trying out new things, new forms, new ways of expressing who you were, as if you knew. You tried out new boys as well, boys with names like Sky or Vid, who played bass guitar in shitty metal core bands that soon dominated your walls with their visages. You smoked cigarettes with them, Marlboro Reds, and I told you I was proud of you. You smoked weed with them, and I told you I didnt care even though I did. When you were kind, youd tell me about them in great detail, elaborating at length about why each one was different from the last, how each one was special, not just another boy who wore the same tiny jeans, t shirts, and high heeled boots you did. Another boy who didnt care about you. When you were unkind, you didnt tell me anything. We went days without speaking, and in the winter, I swear the coldness made the frosted windshield twice as hard to clear. In the autumn before, you had called me crazy, stupid, your dumbass big brother. This autumn you didnt call me anything. You just didnt look at me in public, as if you were ashamed of me, and I never felt smaller or more pathetic. 34  ...

... Better Left Unsaid Hillary Fox I went out into the night expecting nothing spectacular to come my way. It was an ordinary gathering of friends which had been the routine in the past several months. It had taken on a sameness that I appreciated but became monotonous after a while. I did not expect the evening to hold any surprises for me, but that was about to change. I pulled up to my usual parking spot, around the block from the yellow house, and right away I gazed upon the massive puke green Plymouth Satellite. My heart swelled. Moffitt was here. Instantly I was nervous and frantically examined my face in the car mirror. Hoping to see a new one in the old ones place, and disappointed with the lack of change, I pulled it together and exited the car. I couldnt wait to see him. It had been months. He had taken a semester off from college and moved from Winchester to Manassas to work. I had been lost without him around. He was one of my closest friends, and I was madly in love with him. It was a strange predicament, but we worked around that fact. I entered the house and prayed that my face was not the same shade of red as the hydrant out front. Brian was the first one I saw, and he greeted me warmly. He asked if I needed a beer. I took one out of obligation and started to scan the room for Moffitt. At 66 with long, dark curly hair, and a deep hearty laugh, he was never hard to find. Hill! I heard it and my heart sped up. I turned too earnestly towards the sound, but then he walked up to me and embraced me tightly. It was just the fix I needed after those months apart. We made small inquires about each others summer activities and then he asked if I wanted to join him on the porch for a cigarette. Two hours passed as we spoke to each other effortlessly. Our long talks were what really made me fall in love with him. We had so much in common, and our humor was wicked. I could never get enough. Then he admitted to me privately that he was under the influence of some mushrooms. He wanted to go for a walk just to clear his head and wanted me to keep him company. Would I go? Of course I would. I would have followed him anywhere. It turned out to be the best stroll Ive ever taken. We chose to ignore the sidewalks and take full advantage of the empty city streets. No cars passed us, and it truly felt like we were the last two people on Earth. There was a delight in taking up that much 32 Better Left Unsaid | Hillary Fox space. Our conversation flowed, and his intoxication didnt seem to dampen any of his musings. There was a strong summer wind blowing through the tops of the trees, and I will always remember that rustling noise. We walked every street we could in downtown Winchester. Eventually he asked if we could make our way to the potential house he was going to rent for his return to college in the fall. He began to point out the elements he enjoyed, but I couldnt even concentrate on what he was saying because I was so elated. He was coming back. Maybe not back to me, but he was going to be near me and that was enough. Soon, I realized it was incredibly late, and to my dismay, I needed to head back to my car. I had to work in the morning, and I was scared of oversleeping. He escorted me back to my vehicle and then we continued to talk. At first, we stood, but then he hopped upon the trunk of my car and beckoned me to do the same. We lay back against the cool glass and gazed up at the night sky. I cannot remember what we discussed, but I can see him clearly. He was wearing a dark blue rugby shirt which was unlike anything else hed worn before. I made sure to compliment him because he looked very handsome, and I hoped he would wear it again. He was into flannel and t-shirts adorned with the school plays hed crewed before, so it was a pleasant change. He smelled delicious to me as well. It was a combination of Old Spice and Tide, even though he had been incessantly smoking and walking all night. I still catch that smell sometimes when I least expect it. Unfortunately, I am responsible, and I broke the spell. I stood up to leave, and he followed suit. We looked at each other, and then he embraced me. It was the longest, tightest hug Ive ever experienced from another human being. Then I pulled away. I was feeling awkward. But then he looked into my eyes, and I knew he wanted to kiss me! So, naturally I turned away and bolted for the car door. I often wonder how badly I wounded him that night. My blatant rejection of his quiet advances upsets me still. As I drove home that evening, I cursed myself for being so cowardly. How could I have been so stupid? The next morning at work, I recounted the evening for my friend, and as soon as I finished, Moffitt stepped through the door. The timing was eerie, and in accordance with the night before. He had come to tell me about how he had gone to see the house, and he was going to take it. I was excited for him, but deep down I knew I had been on his mind as much as he had been on mine. It was a simple conversation taking the place of what really should have been said. But for us things were better left unsaid. The truth was too much to bear. 33  ...

... Something You Miss Kyla Crowley my heart hangs defeated on my bones tomorrow sets me down on a plane bound for home ill speak now of things i never told you the big, long thoughts i left alone i will miss you more than any person should i will wonder if my sex was really any good i hope i was beautiful on the outside, for once i hope that my insides werent crazy, too much i want to see you again someday i want to mean something to you more than just a big mouth i dont know what to make of anything youve said or done though i analyze it every hour on the hour i wanted more than we had or could possibly devour i wanted to be seen as someone other than i am who do i tell when all my dreams come true? 30 Something You Miss | Kyla Crowley when these bright and shiny new ones were laid in front of me by you? im only twentysomething, oh what did you expect -ive never had a lover i didnt have to regret ive never had a secret that was able to stay ive never had a desire and then walked away ive never had a word i thought before i spoke ive never been someone thats easy to love they always drop their hands, when push comes to shove ive never had a hurt quite like this i dont know how to be something you miss 31  ...

... H. I. M Victoria Proffitt I wonder, sometimes, if the moment we met he felt it too. That tinge of seeing something we ought not to have seen. It was the middle of a dry summer and my patience for men and love was running thin as ever. I was rapidly becoming enveloped in the idea of being asexual and isolated. I was standing outside the door of my friends apartment when he came around the corner and my life changed instantly. I was a depressant liberal who raged for pro-choice and liked to chain smoke while chatting about North Korea. He was the boy who was too worried with his future. He was the boy with a head on his shoulders, but a heart hidden under sheets and sheets of chemistry work. He would never see the way I watched him, the way his every movement contradicted my attention from one minute to the next. I salivated on every word he said, and I was the rebel he tamed most severely and unknowingly. If I had known from the first cigarette that he would consume me so, I would have given up smoking years ago. But from one end comes forth another. And at the end of that cigarette, I smashed the butt of it against the concrete, feeling more apart than I had in a while. How unfair it was the way his eyes cradled my heart from the first blink. How grotesque his smile left me, when I realized my cheeks flared red every time I saw his mouth move upward in that most familiar movement. It happened so fast that my mind had to sprint to keep up with my mouth when recalling those first few moments I met him. I never dreamed I would know his name or plans for the future, never knew he would engulf me with his rhetoric. I never thought he would know my name, but he proved me wrong, became a fixture of my life, like a lamp next to the bed or a coffee table. Most convenient, but nondescript as they come. I cant say I love him, but I wish I could. I could love him so much more than I could ever love myself. He makes me feel alive. The way he stands next to me, Im surprised he cant feel it too. The way my chest feels like it might explode from the electricity of our near touches. The way I wish I could touch his skin, and feel the creases of his inner hand. How all of this makes me feel even lonelier, writing it out for the world to take in and turn it into savage lust and obsession. Its so much more than that. I could leave him, forget his name and the way he smells, but it would do me no good. I could remember to forget him in conscious thought, but my dreams would be limitless. He would be the celebrity behind my eyelids almost immediately. The way he 28 H. I. M. | Victoria Proffitt makes my tongue twist and tie to try to put him to paper makes me feel for him even more. I want to have our mouths inches apart, but never kiss. Maybe then, he would understand how his very presence affects me. I build my world around him now. Please dont crucify me. I only ever wanted to be honest with him and my heart at the same time. He consumed me so effortlessly. I use to be the girl who walked around whole, believing I was complete within myself. He changed that, most dramatically. Now I walk around feeling slightly departed and a tad dingy. I walk around feeling ragged and smeared. I use to be better put together, but I suppose I fell in love, and nobody has come to fix the pieces his rejection left me in. I know it is said that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but I believe that is utter rubbish. If I had never loved him, he would not still linger in every song on the radio and collect dust on the pages of notes I meant to send him but never did. I feel like I lost a piece of me that I never really owned to begin with. If this is love, I never want to be burdened with it again. That might sound childish, but I never wanted to grow up anyways. We never dated. We never kissed. He slid through my grasp like dust in the rays of the evening sun and departed to bigger and better things. I became his friend, nothing more. That was the first time in my life I had experienced something so painful I pleaded with death to bargain with me, to surrender myself over, to end the torment. You may know him as a man, a student, a blurred detail, but to me, he is the reason I pop my little Zoloft every day. He was the first thing to break me and now I walk around uncertain from one thing to the next. 29  ...

... The Toothpaste Incident Deborah Poulin winner of the QEP Essay Contest On a nondescript autumn morning in my sixteenth year of life, I licked the soft pad of my thumb and through a haze of lingering sleepiness, reached up to the mouth of the new boy in drama class and wiped free toothpaste remnants that without his knowledge clung to the hinge of his smile. To this day, I cant muster any reasonable explanation for what caused me to commit this random act of intrusiveness. I do remember however, precisely how we drew apart from each other wearing identical expressions of alarm. The simultaneous startle wasnt because of the spit I smeared across his unexpecting mouth; instead it was the lightning bolt of familiarity we shared. I was destined to bathe his mouth in my saliva; we had been anticipating each others arrival our whole lives. When I close my eyes and succeed in quieting my interjecting mind, that blank canvas of a memory is sought out and I reconfigure him; paint him again, every finite detail of the seconds immediately following the toothpaste incident. If told I could retain only one memory of him for all of eternity, it would be just that one. The expression he wore, the light in his eyes, that split second of purity, the one right before we fell in love and replaced our youthful innocence with experience. In our time, we frequented Harvard Square, together chatting up every invisible homeless person who littered the pristine streets of Cambridge. To him, these forgotten anonymous werent eyesores, but rather grand story tellers eager to share their epic tales. As I witnessed this mere boy encompass the gravity of love with his enraptured attention to these folks, I learned the life lesson ultimately responsible for my carefully constructed conduct as a human being. He taught me that everyone deserves to feel like someone. The unfathomable warmth that emanated from him was palpable; he literally glowed with genuineness from his insides out, bathing everyone in his beautiful radiance. Until him and since him, I have never seen a light quite so luminous. He was my first for everything; my first true best friend, first love, first lover, and with the end of his life, my first experience with death. As a grown woman, I now understand his pervasive impact on me to be like a stone skipped hard into a quiet still pond. He landed heavy in my heart creating enough of a splash to ripple endlessly, sustaining me through the span of a lifetime. The love that we shared twenty-four years ago is a blink of an eye when put in 26 The Toothpaste Incident | Deborah Poulin context to the years following. I have grown from girl to woman, a lost woman to one found. I have married and given birth to four children, and yet, that brief love affair has had a lasting impact on me far surpassing the other relationships Ive had, even those of colossal caliber. In the dusk of a beautiful May evening of my eighteenth spring, he was killed in a car accident, drowned by the waters of our beloved Charles River. The shock reverberated with hollowness leaving a life of substance to feel a then forever foreign concept. It took me a long time to see kindness in any form in a world lacking his presence, especially my own. Thankfully, the auto pilot gear I was stuck in finally shifted to neutrality; with a deep breath I paced myself through stages of grief. I wrote unrelentingly in journals numbers enough to fill the shelves of a library. Occasionally, when a butterfly would tease me with a flirtatious game of hide and seek, I imagined it was him, and laughed freely, hoping the breeze would carry my love for him wherever it was he flew away to. I lived linked to him this way for years. Then, one day while brushing my teeth, I stopped; mouth full of minty foam; overcome with his disapproval of my anguished spirit. In my ears his voice, everyone deserves to feel like someone including you my love, so get to work. Every day since, while inspecting the corners of my mouth for lingering Aquafresh, I see his face that very first morning, morphed with my own present reflection, we are smiling reciprocally. In the glass, in our smiles, I discover he not only he lives on in every kind act I commit, but that we are eternally bonded by our mutual appreciation he passed no mirrors himself that day. 27  ...

... Missing Rain Aerial Perkins-Goode he called me puddles when it rained on days where the sun decides to play hide and seek with the clouds when raindrops fall I would think about how fragile each single drops was dwindling from what seems to be an endless abyss why do you jump in the puddles he asked me with a slight grin because they want me to free them from their structure with the soles of my willingness and rain boots doesnt exist to me water stained pants legs remind me of my childhood the good times where doubts fly like the breathing wind I remember him saying well just roll your pants legs up before you jump advice well taken 25  ...

... He Sat With His Thoughts In His Hands Ashlie Vandebrooke Get deep into your thoughts and walk around; Get out and find a way to feel the ground. Its a funny human trick we try to play. We get tangled in the words we do not say. 23  ...

... Une Eternit Alexander Urp At last, after many a decade of long and painful work, the hour of elation had arrived. His novel was very nearly complete. Five hundred pages lay before him, each page composed of paragraphs, each paragraph of sentences, each sentence of words, each word of thoughts, and each thought of infinite contemplations. In terms of space and time as society knew them, it had taken Duchamp twenty-five years to reach this point. Twenty-five years of explaining that his plot was difficult to pin down in one sentence. Twenty-five years of enduring the stinging insinuations that there was no book, that he had simply fabricated tales of writing such a book. Twenty-five years of being told by professors that his aims were the fancy of an overeager student, and then, when he himself joined their ranks, of being told by his peers that he was not talented enough to write what they termed a good book. Twenty-five years! Perhaps to them it had been only twenty-five years; to Duchamp it had been an eternity. Every waking momentand some sleepingof every day he had spent consumed in his myriad contemplations and imaginations. He could not even hope to remember the infinite glimpses and ideas that had contributed to his masterpiece. Perhaps it would not be a literary icon or the great French novel, but he had to admit that there was some greatness in it. That greatness had been written into it during that eternity spanning twenty-five yearsor perhaps it was twenty-five years spanning an eternity. Duchamp leaned forward and dipped his quill pen into the black ink of his well. He had written two words of the final line of his novel when, to his surprise, his arm stopped writing. He knew better than to continue with the task, for some part of his subconscious had urged him not to finish it. He leaned back in the plain wooden chair and searched his subconscious thoughts. He came upon it rather quickly. Fresh air. He had cooped himself up in this circular study in his cottage for far too long, had made himself a prisoner of his determination and of his thoughts. He could not finish the book before taking a breath of fresh air. There were no windows in his study, so he would have to return by the dark hallway and leave his little cottage if he were to breathe calmly and freely again. Perhaps he might even find a better way to write the final sentence, as if it mattered what he said there. He did not bring the solitary lantern with him, so he returned through his hallway 17 Une Eternit | Alexander Urp in complete darkness; he had gone to and fro in complete darkness for many years now. He did not know why. Perhaps it was because someone he met at a caf in Paris once had said that thoughts surfaced better in total darkness. He could not remember the someone at the cafhe might have been beardedbut then it hardly mattered now, now that he had finished his lifes work. Finished his lifes work. The idea was somewhat disappointing, anticlimactic. What was he to do now that he had finished? He could not write anything elsethis was the best work he had written in his lifetime, and he could not imagine surpassing it. He might go into teaching, but then, what could he possibly teach students that they could not learn simply by reading his novel? Besides, he found writing much more entertaining than teaching; oh, he had envisioned being a professor in his dayhe had spent some years trying to be onebut now that seemed a different life, one that he ought not to enter into. He was a writer now, as much a writer as Dumas or Verne, perhaps even a better one. They had written of such petty subjects as adventure and chivalry his novel, with its many themes, was much more interesting. In a way, he decided, he was even a better writer than his favorite author, Chekhov. The world would see that, soon enough, when they read his published work, the work it had taken him forever to write. He could compare himself to Chekhov, yes, for his book was quite impressive, literarily speaking. There were metaphors in it, and similes and personification and all those little gratuitous details and tendencies that made great authors great. He had told parables in the book, crafted chapters with such eloquence that he might have published them as short stories. Yet that, of course, would never do. Alone, they were short stories comparable to Chekhov; as part of his book, they were works of genius and far surpassed anything the Russian author could have imagined, let alone written down with such illustriousness as he. He opened the door of his little French cottage and stepped outside. It was a beautiful day, marvelous. He should spend the whole day outside in this bright sunlight, with this blue sky and cobblestone pavement and green grass and rainbow-colored flowers. They had said it should be windy, but it wasnt; in fact, the breeze was more than welcome. The temperature was just right, he thought. Nothing could possibly go wrong on this fine day. Indeed, nothing did go wrong. Duchamp spent the whole day walking the little streets of his tiny village, lying under trees in the park and sitting peacefully on benches. He did not return to his cottage, and in fact, the mossy walls of the abode, the 18 Une Eternit | Alexander Urp dark hallway, the circular room, his book on the desknot one of them so much as crossed his mind. Here he was, spending the whole day in blissfulblissful what? He wasnt doing anything, absolutely nothing. Perhaps he should call it nothingness. Yes, nothingness. He was spending the day in blissful nothingness, while his fellow Frenchmen waddled about their daily business like mallard ducks crossing the road down by the river. He had spent twenty-five years, an eternity, with nothing but the book on his mind, and now he found he was able to forget it completely. It was an exhilarating feeling, and that night he went to bed in his beautiful cottagehe found it beautiful nowand slept a sound and dreamless sleep. The next morning, he returned to his study, although he wasnt sure why he was doing itperhaps out of habitby passing through the dark hallway. He opened the door to the circular room, which he noticed for the first time was strangely curved, sat down at the desk, and dipped the quill pen into the black ink. Again, however, his own arm stopped him before he could finish that final line. Why should he finish it now? There was no rush, after all. Finishing the book would seem so dull, so dreary. He didnt want to be finished with it, didnt want to be done with the work of twenty-five years, an eternity. Perhaps he could wait just another day, and then finish it tomorrow. He could spend today as he had spent yesterday, lounging about in the sunshine and the breeze, lying on the soft grass instead of sitting on this hard chair. Yes, yes, he would do that. He would enjoy himself. Indeed, he did enjoy himself, not just that day but many days afterwards until he lost count. He would walk into his study every morning and decide not to finish the book that day; eventually, he stopped entering his study altogether and simply waltzed around his village. He visited the baker and chatted about how he managed to make his bread so wonderfully warm and soft on the inside, yet crispy on the outside. He talked with the gossipy old women who lived in cottages like his, on the same road, and asked them how they went about tending their gardens. He paid a visit to the church house and had lunch with the vicar because the bishop was away; they talked about God the entire afternoon, and when the vicar asked if he had finished his book, he said he was almost done with it. On the way home, he stopped and had words with some fine, respectable ladies, and they complimented the near-completion of his little book. He was not a slave to his subconscious, and over time he realized why he had taken to leaving that final line unfinished and pondering on it instead of writing it. He 19 Une Eternit | Alexander Urp simply couldnt finish the book, not now, in any case. He had spent his whole life writing it, and if he stopped now, he would experience that terrible sinking sensation that he always used to feel when he finished writing stories. No, he was much happier this way, always with the knowledge that he could finish his book at any time. In fact, he reasoned with himself, he could start to improve the book without finishing it. He began to cut his days in half, the morning spent reading over and revising his manuscript in his parlor, where there were windows, instead of in that dreary study. In the afternoon, he would enjoy himself, visiting his friends and acquaintances in the quaint little town. He even fancied that he might search for a wife, since all the gossipy old women claimed it was high time he found one. He very much enjoyed revising his unfinished book because it allowed him to feel as if he were re-writing it instead of changing something he had finished writing. Removing lines was no longer a pain for him. After all, he wasnt destroying his sentences; it was more as if he had never written them in the first place. Had the book been finished, he felt sure, it would have been much more difficult to improve. Some afternoons, he gardened and found that he enjoyed it very much. The rainbow-colored flowers responded well to his touch, and he rather fancied that he had a bit of a green thumb. He took better care of the moss and vines that curled around his stone cottage, and, before a year had passed, his garden was the envy of the town. Whenever he finished working in his garden, he felt so elated that he visited the chapel and thanked his late father profusely for his inheritance, without which he could not have enjoyed so fruitful and happy a life. His gratitude, over time, extended to the entire town, and he began to fund book clubs and social gatherings and charitable events. Through all this, he felt that his book improved exponentially. His experiences, these new feelings of gratitude and peace, had helped him elevate his novel to such heights that it now seemed to him the greatest work ever written. Certainly, Dumas and Verne, even Chekhov, no longer compared, but now he imagined that not one of the worlds greatest authors could ever surpass him. He no longer questioned whether his might be the great French novelhe knew with a kind of visionary assurance that it would be. He talked with some professors and literary critics in the town about what they believed would constitute the finest novel ever written, and their answers only proved decisively that his was that novel. His life passed in this way for five years, years that passed so quickly, years in which he truly considered himself a writer in all 20 Une Eternit | Alexander Urp connotations of the word. One fine spring day at the end of these five years, he was walking along the main street and whistling to himself. He meandered and stared up into the branches of every tree he passed, and sometimes he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk simply to take in the warm rays of the sweet, bright sun. What a change this was from that dark corridor which led to his study! The corridor. The circular room. The desk. The book. The quill pen. The black ink. He had not thought of these things in years; he had revised and re-revised his book for one-fifth the time it took him to write it, although this was not particularly egregious. Only recently had he begun to think of them again, but he had deliberately ignored those thoughts until today. There was, he knew, a reason he had thought of these things lately. The revisions were finished, and there was nothing more to be gained by waiting. His subconsciousno, his talks with the vicar had convinced him it was his soulwas now telling him to finish that book. He knew at once what the final line should be like, and then tomorrow he would ship the book off to the publisher and see what he said. Somehow, the idea of finishing the book was no longer anticlimactic, nor was it depressing. He knew, somehow, that it was time, that it had been time for a little while. He had waited too long, but now he would listen to his soul and finish the book. Then all his good friendshe did not care what the critics saidwould see how fine a writer he was. He began to skip joyfully on his way home, a home that now seemed so far away, as if it might take him an eternity to get there. Duchamps novel was published a year later and achieved great renown in France. Critics and regular folk alike agreed that a novel like it had not been seen in many years. The words were so precise as to be perfect, the tone so smooth as to be eloquent. Similes, metaphors, and other figurative language abounded so that one might have considered it poetry instead of prosesome critics called it a work of prosetry, so melodic was its rhyme and meter, all within prose form. The novel sold well into the hundreds of thousands, which in that day and age was unheard-of. It was translated from French into English, and from there it traveled to America and to all corners of the British Empire. In India, it was read in Hindi by Brahmin priests; when it reached China, it became mandatory reading for the mandarins. It appealed to all ethnicities, philosophies, and religions; everyone from the Christian to the Muslim to the Buddhist to the Confucian saw value in its fine plot and skillful composition. Around the world, 21 Une Eternit | Alexander Urp it was generally considered a fine novel. Admittedly, the myriad of themes meant that critics rarely concurred on how to interpret it. There was, however, one point on which they all agreed. The novel suffered in only one aspect, which, had it been remedied, would have elevated the masterpiece to such heights that it would indeed have been not only the great French novel, but the greatest world novel of all time. As it were, it could not compare, literarily speaking, to the work of Verne, Dumas, or, as was often cited, Chekhov. All critics expressed their wish that the author had not been hit and killed in a carriage accident before being able to complete the book, which lacked the sense of resolution that the unfinished line might have added. 22  ...

... A Stroll Along the Beach Lee Stone Sometimes it is better to leap into the sea whose steady, frigid waves a fiery passion quickly quench, then to dwell here in your tepid bath, waiting for the water to warm. 16  ...