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YOU ARE INVITED
I have to compliment you,after all you ignored mefor four years in high school,condemned me to the outcasts,the geeks, the losers, the barelytolerated and then only whenthe Headmaster was watching. I didn’t go to your parties,no one without an invitationever dared, was left to theclubs no one wanted to join,but I have to say I…
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IN MOURNING
I will soon enough bein mourning for literatureand philosophy for the momentis approaching when theywill be lost, or I supposesimply subsumed, swallowedup in a cloud appearingmomentarily then gone. The day is rapidly approachingand if you doubt itfor even a moment, goto your local library, ifit has not closed, and notethe diminishing numberof books, replacedby computers,…
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THE GRADUATE
You really ought to pauseand wonder just how differentthe world might be todayif in that crucial momentthings had gone ina wholly different direction. A single moment canset the course for allof the moments that follow,a definite future pluckedfrom an infinite arrayof possibilities. I mean, of course,that moment whenMr. McGuire, in the guiseof Walter Brooke turnsto…
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SORRY, CAN’T HEAR YOU
What I despise most about purchasing large dollar items is the factthat salesmen know onlyhow to speak in superlatives, orcaught short,comparatives. If it isn’t the bestthey will explainwhy it is, or at least betterthan anything I have now,although they haveno idea what I have. So I pretend to be deaf, and hope that theydo not know ASL,or the will seea miracle happenas…
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HOME?
The news, online and on paper,is replete with storiesabout adult children movingback in with their parents,whether because of the pandemic,or other circumstances, alwaysexpecting they willhave a room at the ready. Perhaps it is why wechose to have no spare rooms,sort of a preemptive strikeagainst an ill-conceived return. But as my cohort ages,I wonder if all…
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AFGHAN, ANYONE
Symbols have deep meaningeven to those so blind theycannot see them, and our politicshave become wholly retail. Any good retailer will tell youthat $19.95 is significantlyless than $20.00, a nickelthat swallows the dollars. So we got out, and nineteenyears and 354 daysis considerably shorterthan twenty years we are told, but everything blew up around us,but…
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INSTRUCTIONS TO MY ENGLISH LIT CLASS
First, read the syllabusand buy the books we will read.Note that I have carefully selectedworks for which there are no Cliff Notesor their equivalent, so if you werecounting on that consider yourself screwed. When you write an essay, do not ever,let me emphasize EVER, begin by sayingin my opinion, for if I wantedan opinion on…
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JUSTICE
The Rabbi always said thatthe highest form of justicewould be to teach a man to fish,rather than to donate fish to him. The Rabbi in question is nowlong dead, and in so many placesteaching a man to fish will onlyenable him to poison his family. We have laid waste to ouir worldassuming someone will clean…
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THE BARD OF BROOKLYN?
If he were to appear here suddenlyI suspect Shakespeare wouldbe running a small theater groupin Brooklyn catering to an audiencedrawn mostly from the LGBTQcommunity, alternating productionsof gays and lesbians with Transand gender fluid having free choiceto reflect their true selves and notin the roles genetics cast them. If you asked him why, he’d saythat it…
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WAITING IMPATIENTLY
Waiting rooms are usually somber.That is true of most hospitalsand every mortuary. It isn’t like we needto be prepared for whatmight happen next. In the hospital the surgeon,at the direction of lawyers,has given us the worst case. In the mortuary we are certainthe departed was no saintso resurrection is out of the picture. I’m not…
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an old writer and his words 