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When we were first trying to christen Buzzsaw, we toyed with a lot of names. One of the many suggestions was "Harvard." We were told it was classy and highbrow. We said it was dumb. Well, Daniel Springer is a student at Harvard and he's written about it here. His piece just goes to show that things aren't always what they seem. Loss By Daniel Springer I go to visit my mother at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Often she comes to see me because she doesn't get quite the exercise that she thinks that she ought to get, and Harvard opens its fields and pools to her. We are allowed to sit and have tea in the faculty club. Then we can put the bill on her doctor's identification card and leave. Harvard owns her hospital like it owns the fields and pools and the faculty clubs and Harvard is open to her needs. Now I go to her, and laugh with her in the hospital and the surgeons break bones and cut skin and let blood flow from black arms strapped to a table. I go to Annenberg. I eat a chicken's leg, in spicy sauce. I bring it to my mouth, slide lips to my gums, hold the skin between my yellow teeth and pull my head away. Again, again, I pull brown underflesh from the bone and peel it to the joint, where it sticks, then pops delightfully into my mouth. I used to have a brown vest that fastens in the front with round leather brown buttons. I also used to have two bow-ties, which I kept in my closet. I brought them to school with a third bow-tie, each of which belonged to my grandfather while he was alive. I used to wear them with a cashmere shirt that I used to have. I can't tell you, though, when exactly I wore them last, or where, or what might have happened to them after I took them off. I know what the shirt felt like on my arms, and I know that the cloth along the middle of the bow-ties was frayed and worn. I also remember that the top button fell off of the vest. I remember that it rolled around inside my desk for months and would have been sewed back on one day. As far as my sadness goes, it does hurt to loose something that you love, a simple garment or length of fabric, though it may be. At the same time, if one were to tell me that as I look back on each thing that I have lost, I'll soon learn (and learn for good) that these things shouldn't matter as much to me as they did before I lost them, then she and I would agree. Meanwhile, it does hurt to loose something, anything at all. My old brown shoe, my french knife, my wool mittens; each of these things kept me company for some time. They filled a certain part of me that I grew around; now that they are gone, my body aches there and there and there, but all of these same aches fade away while the sun is up and I have the work of the day. These faded shadows go to my dresser, to my closet, to my crushed laundry, and consort with old friends; these garments I then throw over my head down around bare shoulders so the sadness enlaces me and then slides again off to lie once more as a spirit among living things. And the sadness washes me down and does not seize me as I walk away. It sends me off with no moist sentiment but only THIS white film of rememberances, crusty and crisp on my skin like the dry kiss of my mother's winter lips and each crust of bread that my Pop lifted from the toaster with sandal-wood tongs. They are the memories of a life that takes its leave in small pieces, day by day, in car trips through the Delaware countryside back to my parents' new home; and year by year, as my grandparents leave the old houses to strange young couples. One day, when my brothers and I are old enough, perhaps there will be trips through the streets of a Massachusetts suburb, and our parents' grandchildren will stare out through car windows at the sidewalks that felt the pressure of my feet many years ago. When I was in seventh grade, our school was here, and I used to walk every afternoon this way home, and I only walked home because I had a crush on this girl in my grade. She lived down there, and every day she'd leave me here and then I'd walk begin walking faster then, so I could get home quicker. And here's where I was almost run over when I was younger, and here is where my best friend's younger brother was, right here. He was fourteen. Here is where you walk to get to the graveyard, and down that street is where my best friend in fifth grade lived. And then my sons will understand only as much as I ever did of my parents, and I as much of them as they of me. Then I, my sons and I, will drive home with their mother silently, sad to leave but happy that we were allowed that brief change in our lives' flow. It will have been good to have seen my parents. Later, when we have return to my new home, where dinner is set up on the table, we will brawl. I will yell and they will yell louder and we will be outraged. This will continue for quite some time. They will wonder about me and what might have made me so afraid of their lives. They will think, 'if he cares so fucking much, then he will let me live my life. It's my life! Why doesn't he let me live it?,' and I will say, 'what he is doing, it is what I did. Like I did, he will soon lose interest and find himself trapped by his own mistakes, or worse.' This will continue for quite some time. I used to wonder why my parents care about me as they do, with pressure and pushing and contradiction. But now, as I taste the film of sadness on my lips, and a friend keeps me company while I write, I can see. I can see. One day, they forgot to hold on to their lives with both hands. By the time they turned around again, pieces of thoughts that once swelled up in their chest like a happy red balloon now lay in wrinkled scraps floating down the river. So, they went back to their own parents, and became new friends with them; they reread all of their old favorite books and betrayed most of them. Now they could only look back longingly at the glittering pieces of what they once shaped with their bare hands, sunny morning days and green grass. They didn't go to Harvard, but they might as well have. It is perhaps the finest and easiest place in the world to lose something. Not just clothing do I lose among the brick buildings and the grass in the great hurry to gorge myself with all of Harvard's knowledge; slowly, each time I turn my back, pieces of my old life in tow break away and turn and twist in eddy pools behind me. So there they are, if I ever need to look at them, back there among my cashmere shirt and my old brown shoe. And for any that's left, I feed most of it into the void that all of these other students are to me. Walking around this zoo of strange and wonderful animals, all I know about each of them is that he is hungry. So, I give them all that I can, which are tired old thoughts and emotions that I have no use for here. Some day, I will need to hold these thoughts and emotions in my hand and feel them once again. They will be gone, and I will be left dry and uncomprehending. My mother once told me how she lost a doll once, in the highway, when she dropped it out of the window of her parents' car. She played with it too close to the edge and her father would not return. I think that there is nothing more crucial to this life than the love that a long life teaches those of open mind and heart. I hope that others have their wits about them, and lose nothing more personal than an old brown shoe. Around the office, we call Daniel Springer "Mr. Harvard." |
