instead of the front page, she glided
her attention over to the daily Horoscopes and read Pisces: Work needs to be
coordinated more carefully. You will meet someone rare this day .
“I meet someone rare every day. Pick another.”
She read Aries: Be on our toes, don't forget the details .
“Think I'll take that one.”
Thinking details, she said, “Something football-ish to impress Carl.”
She flipped directly to the Sports Section and read the headline: DETROIT LOSES
BIG TIME.
“Uh oh.” She scanned to the left and read:
Sport's Talk by Bud West
GET THE HOOK
Last night's so called football game was a laugher. The Lions couldn't
beat Madison High. But worse yet was the Lions' new color commentator, Carl
Bostich. At one point in his career he might have been a big star at throwing
the pig skin, but last night he didn't know a cheerleader from a tight-end or
the umpire from the referee. Maybe the Lions could find him a job as equipment
manager. Better yet, Gatoraid Boy. Get a job!
“Uh, oh, Mr. Eliot.”
T.S. looked at her stoically.
“Don't look at me like that.”
He went back to his Fancy Feast and Rachelle began mind-crafting a response
to the Bud West article for Carl. Then she thought, Maybe it would be better
to just not have seen the article. I think yes, good idea, what article? Is it
a lie to tell a florist her ugly floral arrangements are beautiful? I think
not.
She finished the paper, stashed cup, saucer and utensils in the
dishwasher and, T.S. in front of her, ascended the spiral stairs to the bedroom
loft. She showered, dressed in her running gear—white shorts, white Adidas
shoes, etc., for she planned, after paperwork at her campus office, to take a
long heart pumping jog along the Red Cedar.
Her pony tail secured by a thick rubber band, looking more like a
teenager than a professor, she skipped down the spiral staircase.
In the kitchen, poised like he had ancient Egyptian relative, T.S.,
knowing the routine, looked up at her and yawned. She said, “You be good and
stay out of Carl's shoes.”
He yawned again.
In the garage, she pressed the garage door opener and, as the door clattered
upward, morning sun gleamed off the polished silver of Carl's BMW. She had
dropped him off at the Lansing airport Saturday morning for his flight to San
Francisco. He had grumbled about small commuter planes, short flight to
Detroit, connecting flights, the Lansing boon-dock airport and stubbornly refused
to park his BMW in the uncovered Lansing airport lot.
Coaxing her Saab to life, Rachelle backed out of the garage, pressed
the remote, the door closed and she headed, fifteen minutes away, to Michigan
State University.
Flowing with the traffic, her thoughts scattering, she focused on Com. 501.
She remembered the singular item that had triggered her interest in the
subject: a reading of William Faulkner's 1949 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Parts of it were part of her:
...this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work—a life's work
in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for
profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which
did not exist before … the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the
problems of the human heart in conflict, with itself which alone can make good
writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat
… the basest of all things is to be afraid … forget it forever, leave no room
for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal
truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honor and pity
and pride and compassion and sacrifice … the poet's, the writer's, duty is to
write about these things.
Thus, the kernel of an idea born, the course would, through written
communication, investigate (because, she reasoned, science, by its very nature,
must ignore these immeasurable subjects) abstract
her attention over to the daily Horoscopes and read Pisces: Work needs to be
coordinated more carefully. You will meet someone rare this day .
“I meet someone rare every day. Pick another.”
She read Aries: Be on our toes, don't forget the details .
“Think I'll take that one.”
Thinking details, she said, “Something football-ish to impress Carl.”
She flipped directly to the Sports Section and read the headline: DETROIT LOSES
BIG TIME.
“Uh oh.” She scanned to the left and read:
Sport's Talk by Bud West
GET THE HOOK
Last night's so called football game was a laugher. The Lions couldn't
beat Madison High. But worse yet was the Lions' new color commentator, Carl
Bostich. At one point in his career he might have been a big star at throwing
the pig skin, but last night he didn't know a cheerleader from a tight-end or
the umpire from the referee. Maybe the Lions could find him a job as equipment
manager. Better yet, Gatoraid Boy. Get a job!
“Uh, oh, Mr. Eliot.”
T.S. looked at her stoically.
“Don't look at me like that.”
He went back to his Fancy Feast and Rachelle began mind-crafting a response
to the Bud West article for Carl. Then she thought, Maybe it would be better
to just not have seen the article. I think yes, good idea, what article? Is it
a lie to tell a florist her ugly floral arrangements are beautiful? I think
not.
She finished the paper, stashed cup, saucer and utensils in the
dishwasher and, T.S. in front of her, ascended the spiral stairs to the bedroom
loft. She showered, dressed in her running gear—white shorts, white Adidas
shoes, etc., for she planned, after paperwork at her campus office, to take a
long heart pumping jog along the Red Cedar.
Her pony tail secured by a thick rubber band, looking more like a
teenager than a professor, she skipped down the spiral staircase.
In the kitchen, poised like he had ancient Egyptian relative, T.S.,
knowing the routine, looked up at her and yawned. She said, “You be good and
stay out of Carl's shoes.”
He yawned again.
In the garage, she pressed the garage door opener and, as the door clattered
upward, morning sun gleamed off the polished silver of Carl's BMW. She had
dropped him off at the Lansing airport Saturday morning for his flight to San
Francisco. He had grumbled about small commuter planes, short flight to
Detroit, connecting flights, the Lansing boon-dock airport and stubbornly refused
to park his BMW in the uncovered Lansing airport lot.
Coaxing her Saab to life, Rachelle backed out of the garage, pressed
the remote, the door closed and she headed, fifteen minutes away, to Michigan
State University.
Flowing with the traffic, her thoughts scattering, she focused on Com. 501.
She remembered the singular item that had triggered her interest in the
subject: a reading of William Faulkner's 1949 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Parts of it were part of her:
...this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work—a life's work
in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for
profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which
did not exist before … the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the
problems of the human heart in conflict, with itself which alone can make good
writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat
… the basest of all things is to be afraid … forget it forever, leave no room
for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal
truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honor and pity
and pride and compassion and sacrifice … the poet's, the writer's, duty is to
write about these things.
Thus, the kernel of an idea born, the course would, through written
communication, investigate (because, she reasoned, science, by its very nature,
must ignore these immeasurable subjects) abstract
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