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MAR
I
ST C
O
LLEGE
P
ough
k
eepsie
,
Ne
w
York
Sp
ri
ng
1
965





We, the editors, sincerely hope that the poems, essays, short
stories, and articles of other assorted genres presented in the Spring
issue of The Mosaic will satisfy a wide spectrum of student interest.
It is hoped, furthermore, that the satisfaction or emotion
experienced
in
response to the writing contained herein, or the reader's relation-
ship to one of the writers, will stimulate more individual involvement
in the task, joy, and creative fulfillment that is literary art. The size,
number, and quality of the future Marist literary magazine will be
directly proportionate to the interest., intellectual activity, and literary
contributions of Marist students.
Editor:
Assistant
Editors:
Faculty
Advisor:
Brien 0' Callaghan, fms
Edward Martin, fms
William Townsend
Peter Maronge
Dennis Goonan
David Gentry, fms
George
J.
Sommer, Ph.D.






CONTENTS
It's Almost All Right
Standard
IBM Epic of Adulthood
Atheism
in our time
Childhood Poems
Justice
and
the Jews
Homecoming
Colored
Existence
Pleasure
Woodstock-October 24, 1964
A
Requiem
The Storm
The Visitor
The
Game
Evening
Cadence
Art and
the
Artist
The
War
is
End
Few are
th
e
Ones
L
em
ming
Almost Every
Time
A
Contemporary
Trialogue
The
Purchase
Th
e
Grecian
Urn
Revisited
The
Whole
is Greater Than It's Parts
Man
in the Twentieth Century
The White House
Lif
e:
A
Purpose
Thomas R. Troland
4
Thomas R. Troland
4
Jerome R. Worell, fms
5
Michael Goldrick, fms
6
Brien 0' Callaghan, fms
8
Dennis Goonan
9
Peter Maronge
12
Vincent Fiorillo
13
Peter Maronge
14
Jerome R. Worell, fms
14
Joseph Towers
15
Joseph Towers
16
Eugene Curtis
16
Bill Townsend
17
John Gonya, fms
19
Dick Carn
20
Dick Carn
21
John W. Hart, fms
22
Dick Carn
24
Brien 0
1
Callaghan, fms
24
Dick Carn
28
John T. Sullivan, fms
29
Dennis DaRos, fms
30
William Doherty, fms
31
Joseph Towers
34
Dick Carn
35











It's Almost All Right
Thomas R. Troland
By bitter, fearful compassion
Is one way of doing unto others,
In near hope that maybe, in the same fashion,
Indifferent favor might strike back.
It's almost all right, this wonderful world,
•
If
each is loneliness bothered, not feeling and not seeing,
In his individual way. No matter, that porous joy
Is purchased for the pittance of real non-being.
Diligently not seeing any, we, the l's go blind.
Each man is an iceland; an orange is an orange is a-rind.
Standard IBM Epic of Adulthood
Thomas R. Troland
ZZ Clear the register
and
add 17155'~
ZZ 1 Store 1 7155 in counting register A
ZZ2 Clear the register and
add
1
ZZ3 Store the contents of the register in counting register B
Al
life comes on like
a
program at the stroke of 6:45
A2
the coming from bed is hard, waking is not
easy
A3
warm water and shaving suds bring
eyelids apart
A4 coffee and toast and the satisfaction of a single cigarette
A5
the newspaper, time for
the
headlin
e
s before the
carpool comes
A
6
8:
4 7 is time
enough
to punch the time-clock
A
7 the assembly lines bring
screws
that need tightening
AB
the hamburger and paper cup of Cok
e
vanish
from hand to mouth
A9
more screws for
a weary
forearm
B
1 4:
5 3
the clock takes another handout
B2 through half-open
eyes
is the trip home
B 3
roast chicken will hold the stomach until morning
B4
the
western
is hardly noticeable to the nodding head
B
5
pillow, blanket, wife with back turned
ZZ4 Add 1 to the contents of the register
ZZ5
Store
the
contents of
th
e
regist
e
r in
counting
register B
ZZ 6
Compare the contents of counting register
A
with that of
B
ZZ7
If
register
A
is greater than register B, return to
Al
B
6
th
e
sudden pang of the realization of
emptiness
is all
too late as the breath of life
grows
slowly faint
ZZ8 End of program
o:,By
way of explanation, the number 17155 signifies
the
approximate
number of days from
a
man's twenty-
fourth year until his
seventy-first.
4








Atheism in our time
Jerome R. wo
·
rell, fms
We would do well today if we were to objectively examine the postu-
lates of abstract religion, the most creative as well as, perhaps, the
most intellectually credible of contemporary credos. The close-mind-
edness
and cynicism by which we characterize them lies only on the sur-
face.
Indeed, for many years they have been the theme of derisive
sermons
and platitude-filled pamphlets whose number is legion. They
have
been calumniated in the "religious" press and on the Sunday radio;
their arguments have been prejudicially scored by the simple and un-
questioning; their conclusions have been waved
aside
and poo-pooed by
the
gullible and credulous alike. They have, therefore, been abandoned,
without redress, to the exacting justice of a merciless God. Their
affirmation
of a humanistic faith, their scientific method, their other-
wise
disturbing intelligence, their repeated claim to a more rewarding
moral
responsibility and emotionally satisfying cosmic relationship, and
their
detestation
for anthropomorphic deities, have been, indeed, fair
game for
the conventional
and
traditionally minded scoffers.
Those who roused people to questioning, who directed their measures
through
long series of eventful years, who formed, out of finely selected
students, the finest
apostles
that this age has ever known, who have re-
fined both Church, believer and agnostic, who, in the short interval
since the
"Evolutionary
Apostasy", have made the title "atheist" in-
tellectually respected
even
by philosophers, were no vulgar sceptics.
Most of
the stereotypes, the tagged absurdities, are worn like mere ex-
ternal badges, like friars' dresses, by the less stable members of their
corps.
We regret that the latter are not more silent. We regret that the
superficial
members of that body, to whose courage and criticism man-
kind
owes
an inestimable debt for creative thinking and
a
now critically re-
evaluated religion,
do not maintain the same elegant silence and conver-
sational
lucidity which their more militant brothers hold.
The true atheists are men whose minds derive a peculiar character
from
daily contemplation of the universe. Their open minds are not con
-
tent to remain with the ark of Church dogmas, nor do they keep the
windows
shut, lest a dove return with an unexplained limb. Science has
made
it possible for them to periodically disembark on Mount Ararat and
build
new
altars
to the divine spirit, altars never conceived of at Jerusa-
lem or Mount Gerizim. They are not content with an unthinkingly
acknowledged
over-ruling Being. The fact that a believer is happier than
a
sceptic is no more to the point than that a drunkard is happier than a
sober man. To them the happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous
think; it is
a
whore who seeks to prostitute itself in the first green
pastures of magic that it finds; like the gullible Eve it seeks solace and
pleasure in the unproven and ambiguous.
It
is in reaction to this, and out
of an overwhelming
awe
for both the mind and man that the atheist
jealously
guards
the purity of his faith, lest it should, at any time, light on
5







some unworthy object. They therefore reject with ascetical detachment
the ceremonious homage which other sects substitute for the pure worship
of the mind. Bread and wine, candles and tabernacles, and incense smoke
blind the believer's eyes with splendor and cause him to cry that the world
is darkened. It is a religion of antiseptic mental tidin
e
ss, disturbing can-
dor and consummate self-reliance.
Such, we believe, is the character of the contemporary Atheist
.
We
perceive the precariousness of his position. We dislike his embarrassing
inquisitiveness. We acknowledge the validity of his criticisms. We agree
that the quality of his teaching is often injured by the passivity of our
mortal reach, and we know that, in sp~te of his hatred for doctrinism, he
too often falls into that worst of vices, that he too has his "Needle's eye",
and his "Thomas Aquinas." Yet when all circumstances are taken into
consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, creative,
and distinguished body.
Childhood Poems
Michael Goldrick, fms
When I was a boy
I saw in the mouth of another boy,
A hedge leaf
.
So I went and got me a hedge leaf.
And put
it
in my mouth.
,
Then I asked me: "What am I doing that for?"
And I spit out the hedge leaf onto the floor.
I hate hedge leav
e
s now.
Som
e
day I'll go b
a
ck to the oc
e
an
And sit down in a hand mad
e c
hair of sand again.
A
s I used to sit
\\
'
h
e
n I was a boy of less than t
e
n.
I w
e
nt back alon
e
years later, I remember,
\\"h
e
n boyhood was almost gon
e
from m
e
.
It
was one of th
e
few things I still enjoyed
From my boyhood.
Still lat
e
r I r
e
turned after a long day of work in the Grand Union.
To dri
v
e my little Renault to the sea.
Pass
e
d the parallels of cars returning home.
_
.\
bout fiv
e
o'clock in the afternoon.
6





I felt a little selfish for not taking someone
with
me
But it was good to be alone for a while
To rest on the vacant beach
In the chair of sand.
What power to sit facing the winds of the sea
And what skill to light a Newport despite it all.
How fresh the salt air.
How great the waves sound and shake the ground and
Flush away to almost nothing at all.
Soaring gulls pinned to the sky, motionless for long seconds.
They caw and cry and raise their noble heads to the winds of the sea ....
Then drop of their own accord----
Only to make designs on the smoothe sand with their toes.
Some day I'll go back to the ocean, as I say
And sit myself down in just such wise
As I did when a boy,
In a hand made sand chair.
When I was a boy
I went over a friend's
And caught him talking to a flower
Out in the back yard.
I laughed at him and called him crazy
I told the whole gang, and they too laughed at him.
I lied and made them all laugh and lie.
And never did I speak up the truth.
That boy never had any friends, before or after.
And one day I went home and cried ....
You see, I too spoke to flowers when I was a boy.
I want to go back to the days in my boyhood
Of hiding 'neath the dining room table.
Snuggled in next to a hard and protective wooden leg.
To watch the movement of legs through the screen of lace
Which was my protection and disguise. ·
I want to go back to the days of my childishness
Just to see how silly.
7










Justice and the
Je
ws
Brien 0' Callaghan, fms
The Jews
have been criticized,
lampooned, and coruscated for every
historical,
economic
.
and
political anomaly since the
dawn
of the Chris-
tian Era. Thei
r
claim
to historical remembrance lies in their perse-
vering obstina
cy
in
the
role of cultural scapegoat. Nations and institu-
tions have
been willing to
accept the talents of the Jews, but have been
even more anxiou
s to
project
onto this "infamous" group the blame for
failure.
The J
e
w
s'
invaluable
work of scholarship in the Moslem
Caliphates, their
irreplaceable
economic role in the rise of the late
Medieval guilds
and commerce,
their
contributions
to progress in the
science
and
ar
ts,
recalled
by mere mention of the names, Spinoza,
Beerbohm,
Einstein,
and Buber, all these are spuriously regarded in
the emotion-laden
search
for alien causal influence for cultural malaise.
Nazism
cannot
be
cited
as an isolated nationalistic phenomenon, only
casually connected with
extermination of the Jews. Nineteen centuries
of
Christian Anti-Semitism, or
at least un-Semitism, no matter how
euphemistically dismissed,
must
be considered in the analysis of the
German
mentality.
Catholic Anti-Semitism, prominent in the Writings
of
St.
John Chrysostom, significantly remembered as the "Golden-'
Mouthed,"
and of St.
Bernard, was founded upon the conception of tlie
Jews as
the
deicide race. In his ignorance and religious enthusiasm,
Medieval man clearly saw his duty. Who had scourged his Savior?
Was it not the Jews? Who had rejected Love Incarnate? Was it not the
Jews? Who had ignominiously and unremorsefully murdered the Light
of the Wofld? The Jews had done all this, and had invoked the wrath of
God upon themselves and upon their children.
Historically inaccurate, but psychologically guiltless, the Medieval
man perpetrated the first of many Anno Domini atrocities upon the
Jewish race, crimes which served to highlight what history is only now
beginning to recognize: their redeeming qualities of religious dedica-
tion, long-suffering, and indefatigable industry.
In the Middle Ages, the Jewish people could be socially ostracized.
In the pluralistic societies of
today, race and religion are decreasingly
important factors in social evaluation.
In the Middle Ages, the Jews
could be indicted by superstitious rationalizers. Today, scientific
accuracy, critical
perceptiveness, and world-witness effectively pre-
clude this possibility. In Medieval times, and even in the "enlightened"
days of the twentieth
century,
Jews could be buried alive because "free"
countri
e
s refused to upset their immigration balance. But, today, an
ecumenical
spirit
encourages
the meeting of parched and alienated lips.
In
e
arlier times, finally, Jews lived in the diaspora, and they exercised
.
no united front. Today, they are a nation, an enthusiastic, industrious,
united people who have fought for what they have and who have repeatedly
looked to the world conscience for political and human recognition.
8






They worked quietly and were not heard. The lived defensively and
were persecuted. Now, they have asserted and announced what to the
world what was always theirs by right, ~nd it seems, with Martin Luther
and Martin Luther King, they "will be heard. "
Homecoming
Dennis Goonan
The night was rushing by with frightening haste. The train was a
carefully and completely separated world, sealed off from all that was
outside.
It
was virtually an island- an island of reality in a world of
dream. The great, hulking engine coursed over the rails, boring a
hole in the dark. It moved as if of its own volition, so massive and yet
so silent and graceful.
It
was beyond mere human control. Who knew
where it came from, or, when it had completed its run where
it
was go-
ing?
The engine was far forward, it could only be heard, but never seen.
Allen Johnson sat in a swaying coach, listening to the sound of the click-
ing rails, a sleepy vibration, as regular as the passage of time. The
car was darkened and only a few passengers occupied it. They were
traveling together, men set apart from all humanity to ride this particu-
lar train, and this car, at this particular time, but they neither knew
each other nor cared to- this the workings of a strange fate. Johnson
felt old, old and very tired. The tiredness of too many years in pur-
suit of something, he thought ironically as he lit a cigarette. The tiny
flame flashed in the darkness. I'm going home he thought with a strange
mixture of content and an unsettling uncertainty. Home. A tiny circle
of darkness was illuminated as he drew on the cigarette. He savored
the word, Home. Not a place, rather a memory, the good things remem-
bered, the bad things sanctified by time and experience. The seat
creaked a bit as he relaxed. He unbuttoned his heavy coat slowly and
with great effort. Tired, he thought, so tired. When one pursued the
horizon all one's life and never thought and never had time to think, all
was well. But what happened when one caught the horizon? What hap-
·
pened when- one looked off of the brink? What happened when one ran
out of dreams and all that was left was a vague dissatisfaction which
kept getting vaguer and yet more complete, more dissatisfying?
He glanced thoughtfully at his reflection in the glass. If the car were
lit it would be defined with clarity, there would be color, proportion, re-
ality. But this image was painted in moonlight. It was cold, and far
away. It was a ghost, an outline, a study in semi-darkness. The fore-
head was a featureless plain, the eyes dark· pools held apart by a sharply
defined nose. The mouth was a thin, hard line and the chin receded into
an undefined region. Beyond the ghost the night was flashing past in
rhythm with the clicking rails.
9







He had dozed off, he thought, wrapped in a gossamer veil of sleep.
-
Through the mist he grasped for an idea, where was he? He pondered
the question with the thoughtful detachment of a sleeper. Suddenly he
was vaulted into wakefulness as the cigarette burned his fingers. He
dropped it, muttering angrily. For an instant he was filled with the un-
known which had just seized him unaware. He sat tensely for a second.
The car was dark and empty, the few heads bobbed in sleeping agree-
ment with the swaying train. He was angry, but there was no one and
nothing to be angry with.
What happens when all the drams are gone? What happens when
one confronts oneself.in all honesty simply because honesty is a lack
of pretension? I'm tired, he thought, tired and in need of rest. To
have the best of everything, of literally everything, to desire nothing
more, and yet to desire everything. To cry becaus
e
there are no more
worlds to conquer, and yet nothing has been conquered. Stop it, he
thought, it's nonsense and contradiction.
,
His sister
.
would be at the station. His smiling, happy sister, she
would be glad to see him. As always, she would insist that he take
them home. Though he hated to drive that ancient car of hers, he
knew he would give in and that she would smile knowingly at his inept
handling of the machine. She was a little older than he was, and he
could remember how one day so many years before he had sat on the
porch with feigned disinterest as she took the car out alone for the
first time. He smiled as he thought how he had wished that she would
have an ~ccident- just punishment for being o
_
lder and more knowing.
The train moved on through the night, galloping over the rails with
frightening haste.
It
was going som
e
where, surely, and for some rea-
son, of necessity. But the clicking rails and the rumbling motor gave
no clu
e
of where and why.
Far off, Johnson saw a clust
e
r of lights. They clung to the horizon,
hiding from th
e
night. So clear, so precis
e
ly defin
e
d, and yet so very
far
a
way, b
e
yond the seal
e
d world of the train, beyond me
a
surement,
beyond the tangible, th
e
real. They looked like living things, but so re-
mot
e
~ and y
e
t, there are people there, h
e
thought, people I can never
know and never s
e
e, people with liv
e
s and loves and hat
e
s and dreams,
and th
e
r
e
th
e
y ar
e
, and I'll nev
e
r know them. The lights were there
and tJ;i
e
n the train passed behind a hiU and they disappeared.
It
was as
if,
sudd
e
nly aware of their own unrealness they could not go on living.
H
e
watched wondering and then fell asleep.
When he awoke it was almost dawn. With the stubborness of
som
e
thing faced with extinction, the darkness slowly gave way to the
light, but it was only by comparing the eastern and western horizons
that any illumination could be detected. He felt lethargic, and this con-
fus
e
d him. H
e
was coming home, he was
c
oming back, who cared now
a
bout th
e
horizons, h
e
was coming back home and all would be well.
10








Mother would be up
early and breakfast
would be ready when he got
in. He could s
m
ell
the coffee and
he
ar
his brother's dog barking at the
approach of
a stranger. His
sister would
be up early too; and they
would
have his
old
room ready for
him, and
probably his friends would
stop
by
later in
the
afternoon.
As
the sun climbed tentatively over the
horizon, he checked his watch. Ned will probably be opening the gas
station
about
now
and
my sister
will
probably
be
the first customer. He
could
picture his sister- she would of
course
be older now- and the car-
if,
after
all, they still had the
old one,
and Ned, and he could hear the
sound
of
the engine and the smell
of
oil and gas about the old station.
He
was going
home, who cared
about
what had happened? Who cared
if he
were
rich and tired and old, so very old?
The train came around the hill and he saw the old station, a single
building;
outside there
was a
milk truck and he
could
see the clerk
from
the
Post
Office waiting
for
the mail. The building was green, and
he recalled it had been
a
peeling, filthy brown when he had left. He
wondered where
his sister was:
probably
talking with Ned, or simply
e
x
ercising a woman's
prerogative
to be
late.
He
sat very
still as the train
began
to slow. The brakeman came
through
calling
the station, but he
sat very still,
watching, waiting.
Something within
him struggled to the surface, What
are
you waiting
for,
come on,
come
on,
he
cried- but
did not
move.
Steam
billowed
from
the
waiting
train
as
it sat in the station, idling,
quiet but
not silent, patient as steel and as anxious
as
a machine. Out-
side the wind
blew in
a
sudden
gust,
dust rolled like
a
wave through the
air, and
he
could
see the
big
windows
of
the station
vibrate.
He stood
up
and
took
his
bag, then stood silent and tense. The train was wait-
ing.
The
clerk took his mail and Johnson
caught
a bit of
conversation.
The milk
truck stood idling and inside
the
office someone was working at
a desk. Waiting.
All was in neutral
gear,
waiting, idling. With a
blast of cold
air
and
a metallic thud the car door opened and closed. The
conductor
said something, but Johnson did not hear
him,
and he still
stood silently as the conductor moved down the
aisle
to the next car. The
platform was
empty,
waiting. The wind was blowing cold and bitter
from down the track, then a cloud of steam billowed past the window.
Waiting,
all waiting.
With a mechanical motion, Johnson swung his bag up onto the rack
and sat down. He would go on, on to the city. The train started to pull
away,
gathering
momentum, it was moving rapidly now. In an instant
the station disappeared from sight as the trai,n moved off toward the ho-
rizon.
11





Colored Existence
Peter Maronge
Blue black; the room is in still motion,
Shells Move, stiff loose beneath
The starred dome of circular blue
And a screaming silence pervades.
Blue black, the shell faces pass,
Beer Sucklings, staggering balanced along
The painted tunnel of brown yellow
Toward the
elixir,
fountain of wood.
Grey blue, the cloud remains above,
Wispy Stirrings,
laughing pathos,
The
exo-skeletons
line up
along
The shelf of the seething tunnel.
Grey blue, the
faces
of the shells,
Tears
Smile,
pass in review of
The shelf people delayed on
Their journey for life love.
Blue
white,
the round cloth sits,
Bleached Stain
e
d, shells
nervous relaxed
Observe the
wolves
in the
arena
Beneath
the
starry
blue dome.
12




Pleasure
Blue white, the lights darken the room,
Yeah, Yeah, moving figures jump
From the floor and never return
To the earth that is, was, and will be Theirs:
Sitting on a bar stool-
Speaking with a friend,
While watching a young cool
Speaking with a chick:
Trying to make amends.
Although this man sought pleasure,
As I could tell by sight,
I thought, "He thinks she's a treasure
And he'll get what he wants tonight."
Out they strolled to his car-
"Stupid fool," I said.
Looking round at this lousy bar-
Thinking that I should havE stayed in bed.
This was just another incident
Oh, how my soul it tore
Seeing a young man so bent-
Facing reality no more.
I knew the symptoms well,
For once the world was gay
But life is a deep hell-
In which pleasure put reality off at bay.
Vincent Fiorillo
13





Woodstock-October 24, 1964
Peter Maronge
A Requiem
Antiphon:
Versicle:
Response:
Dancing, whispering, laughing, the cold
Water ran by and cleansed the night.
It ricocheted from the rocks that confined it,
And raced unending beneath the col
d
, dead bridge.
Circle white, hidden, shrouded the moon
Warmed the stream and rocks with light.
Trying hard to deface beauty, the cars raced
Past, but succeeded nought in their violation.
Still clothed in loveliness, the night mother
Wrapped her shawl about us and we were warmed.
Jerome Worell, fms
Lukewarm fir
e
and irrelevant ashes
Spewing soot and grime into dull, empt
y
faces
Children, hands outstretched, with window wide and
vacant eyes.
Holes for hearts and minds
Waiting for any garden
e
r to fill them.
Spiders for br
e
ad we give them and rocks for meat,
Hollow wounding phrases and laughs punctuat
e
d with Hell,
Hylomorphic and Hypostasis.
Oh
The traitorous band who hav
e
confined th
e
Son of Man
and shackled him within a garbage strewn alley of
legalism.
Sun and light r
e
duced to ray and shadow,
A desecration worse than the sin of the Romans when they
used the temple as a fruit cellar
!
To load Love and His message with the insignificant prattle
of legislature,
A parliment of birds who hear but themselves and their
own hollow echos,








Don't they remember "God is love" said the Lover
and Love knows no bounds
?
Black
Their minds are full now,
communion
The company can now rest from their task.
Conceived in Hell the black lamb has gone forth
to preach his message;
he has reaped the harvest intended for the Other
and which He wanted so badly.
Celebration:
Antiphon:
Ite
The Storm
Hell has carried the day
it has taught men that thought, like ashes
can•t fill bowls and stomachs and hearts.
It has filled them with itself
Lukewarm fir,
,
and irrelevant ashes
Spewing soot and grime .
One day still empty faces might again raisetheir eyes to us.
There must be a gardener in that day,
To fill all the holes.
There must be a Raboni, a "Good Master",
To fill all the holes
Big~ black
it
approached,
Wrecking as it came.
Evil, elegant, and stately,
Twisting and turning,
Striking fear in every heart,
Bent on destruction.
Now it is upon us,
We cease to exist!
It
is over, its havoc spent.
We breathe agair:
.
In
a better world.
The Storm is spent,
We have weathered it.
Joseph Towers
15









The Visitor
The Game
The light of life is to man to be experienced
Only in the sharing with his fellow.
To know is indeed to discuss, and this,
Above all else
.
requires another.
The greatest of men, be it Plato,
Aristotle, Sophocles, or another,
Could not this greatness have achieved
Had it not been for the Visitor.
In silence and in darkness of the,
Will this visitor approach,
And to his fellow will he give the gift
Of
Enlightenment.
Yet enlightenment is futile,
If
it
falls not upon the fields
Of minds willing to receive it.
JQ.Seph Towers
Eugene Curtis
It was
a
hot, muggy night in mid-July. A middle-aged, rather
heavy-set
gentleman
fumbled
with
the cigar in his mouth
while
he shifted
his
eyes
nervously from his cards to the
other
men and back to the cards.
It
was his move. He had been losing heavily all night, but now, he
thought, he might be due for a
change
of luck. Reaching down slowly, he
pulled
a
handkerchief from his pocket
and
mopped his sweating face, still
undecided
as
to
what
his next move
would
be.
It
was
another
night
of
poker with the boys.
Every
week since he got
the job
at
the office he had dragged himself from house to house "mixing
with
the boys." There were none less than forty
years old
but they were,
nonetheless,
''the
boys." He was told that it was the only way to
get
ahead.
''You gotta get in there and be one of 'em, Charlie. That's the
only way
you'll ever
get anywhere.
"
How many times had his brother-in-
law
given him
this
advice?
What
would
his wi:fe say
if
he didn't make an
effort
to
get
ahead? But these nights were costing him too much. This
would be the last time, he told himself
again.
The cloud
of
smoke hung motionless like
a
fog about his face, burn-
in[{
his
,·yes
and adding
to his irritation. The others
stared at
him
int,·ntly, trying to
anticipate
his move. He took the chewed cigar stub
from
IH.:t\1
,·en
his te
e
th
and
removed his aJready loos
e
ned necktie from










the collar of his wet and wrinkl
e
d shirt. Now he could think. "C' mon,
Charlie, we don't have all night," on
e
of them said. With that Charlie
squirmed in his s
e
at and ran his stubby fingers through his few remain-
ing hairs and rais
e
d the glass to his lips for another drink.
Sitting there in his wet, wrinkled shirt, cards in one hand, drink in
the other, and a cloud of smoke over his head, he seemed the perfect
image of what it takes to get ahead. Or so he thought. He was being one
of the boys, doing what they did. Of course, at two
0
1
clock in the morn-
ing he would much rather be home sleeping, but
if
this is what it takes to
get ahead, then this is how it must be. Besides, his brother-in-law has
been with the company a long time and knows all the "rules of the game,"
as he would say.
If
it
weren't for his bad h
e
art he'd be right there with
Charlie, drinking and smoking and losing his sleep, not to mention his
money. Funny how the card g
a.'
mes always fell on pay day
.
H
e
had d
e
lay
e
d long enough. Taking a deep breath, and fixing a
look
o
f grim resolution on his face, h
e
spread his cards on the table as
his
eye
s look
e
d nervously at on
e
man
a
nd then another. He came close
to winning this hand, but he didn't quit
e
make it.
"
I'v
e
had enough,
b
oys
,
"
he said
,
as if his l
·
,ss
o
f mon
e
y and sleep meant nothing to
him.
With th
at
th
e
oth
e
rs decic
'
.=
d to break it up and go home. Charli
e
pulled
his j
a
cket back over his shoulders, stuffed his tie into his pock
e
t, said
hi
s goo
d-b
y
e
s
, and aim
e
d hims
e
lf toward the door
.
Before he got into
hi
s car
he stopp
e
d and look
e
d
a
round. There were no lights lit in the
h
o
us
es
, no cars on the street, no p
e
ople walking around. What was h
e
doin
g
u
p a
t this hour
?
He got into his car
a
nd headed for home to catch
a
f
ew
hours sle
e
p befor
e
the race would b
e
gin again.
Eve
ning Cadence
Bill Townsend
L
e
mon-yellow form pierces orange topped flora -
Greeny sw
e
etness of creme de menthe
Coating the warm air.
She dances h
e
r last quadrille along the hill
And laughs like a clown
In his first act:
The while, amidst the sweetness, sits one
Mystified - gazing at her frolics ·-
Encased in a lemon yellowness.
Then, she sinks into the gret:n sawdust hills.
I
17








Soon, a stark blue light rains its sullied ray upon three
Who clutch guitars that compete in discordant notes
That roll a deafening beat into the smoky room.
Groovy bumping.
Square tables bear stiffly reclining forms - loosely
Stretched next to the wall - a black-painted wall:
Under a draped ceiling of black-blue, tables stand.
Splashy releasing.
Slacks clinging to her flashing legs, tightly
She skipped upon the heavily knicked floor boards
As her brown hair flings about her tan cream face.
Smoky dusting.
Her partner faces the blue-'-black wall, while burned dungarees
Become spotted with sweaty drippings -shoes dusty-
As his shirt spills soaking from the strain.
Sweaty burning.
Among
modern dutch
oval
lamps that shed
a
feeble light
About
the
wall and
blue
checkered
table-top:
while
Amidst
the straining images flit the notes.
Lightly
deadening.
Most enjoy
twisting to
the sounds
of
the
instruments
·
That
strike
inside the room
and
st
ee
ly ring
Like a
breathless
cold
breez
e
through a
tense tree.
Calmly shivering.
A blue
-
grey
ring, mix
e
d
with orange
pe
e
ls
for a
tangy
yellow
Rushing, trembling
sound;
r
e
leasing, clashing
In
a crash of blue
notes.
Silently whirling.
Then,
into
the sky,
a
swollen
blue.
Standing
in
the water, the muddy bottom pasting our
feet to the sea
floor
that
slid
away
lik
e
greasy
jello at
eac
h
step
-
Round-
edged stones spot
th
e
shore
in black polka-dots
resting upon
th
e
carpet of
dull brown sand
that stretches
into th
e
wrinkled water
-
\\
,.
surre
nd
ered
to the playful wrinkles
th
at
ti
ck
lingly
tou
c
h
at
our
ank
les.
II
Ill
18










Her foot breaks the surface, gently flicks the water's top;
then, drops silently into the cool, ankle-high,
caressing wetness -
A
stare appears upon her face: darkly swelling,
as
if
she were deciding to part her lips in a
light smile -
We let. ourselves sink, eyes melting in short, bursting
glances.
A
sea-green tickled our toes: she peered into the water,
the salty water, wrinkling toward the shore,
smiling -
Her beams try flicking the blue swell into the water,
and a thousand fireflies seem to tarry here
as the day breaks.
Art and the
Artist
John Gonya, fms
We
would
speak of the artist who
in
any age is a mystery to his con-
t
e
mporaries, a stumbling block to many
and
a sheer enigma to most.
The charges of fraud, of pseudo-intellectualism, of hyper-subjectivity are
familiar
to the public which is subjected to a variety of art critiques. But
we who
recognize the falaciousness of such a superficial judgment choose to
probe
deeper into the underlying motivation and passion of the aesthetic ex-
perience.
If,
as the poet assures us,
all
the world is a stage, then this stage is
indeed the raw material which the
artist
seeks to translate into a personal
idiom, to transform physical realities, to transcend the phenomenal world;
w
ith
which
he hopes to communicate to the public, with which he hopes to
relate
himself to reality. Like all the professions art has its Blifils, its
J
udas
',
and
its
Byrons, and
none
are
so aware of these pretenders as those
who are
involved in the genuine and sincere pursuit of pure aesthetics. The
controversy
between
art
and its multiple varieties of counterfeit has r.aged
throughout the centuries, in the areas of literature, of music, and of the
visual
arts.
Since
the time the first man drew
a
four legged animal on a cave
in
Gaul and
observed the qualities of movement which resulted from a few
well
drawn lines set down with harmonious proportion and rhythmic variations,
rnan has
sought
to capture human
experience
on canvas; and it has made
little difference
if
this canvas has been of stone, of wood, of metal, or of
19










the more conventional media. What matters is not the-
.
means which man
lakes, not the colors which he uses; not the subject matter which he em-
ploys, but the growth which accompanies the creative experience.
In
the
wealth of the world's literature we recognize a development from pure
imitative writing, once Homer has been acknowledged, to a literature
which is as imitative, and yet as creative,
as a
Finnegan's Wake or a
Ulysses.
Art is the physical statement
which
.
through
arrangement
of space and
form creates a response in the viewer, compelling him to accept or re-
ject in accord with his own feelings for the beautiful. Contemporary
artists have differed in their approaches to
creativity.
Juan Gris, with
his theory of synthetic cubism, creates a
geometric
form which before
his eyes evolves into an object of sense
experience;
Pablo Picasso be-
gins with the statement of an
everyday
experience, then allows his imagi-
native
genius
the liberty of distorting, simplifying, and magnifying this
object until it becomes a universal statement
of
human
experience.
The
most difficult approach for
appreciation
by the uninitiated is the
approach
of abstractionism. The
abstractionist's
statement of
aesthetic experience
challenges
the
viewer
to see his
environment
with
freshness.
It
challenges
human nature's fear of the unknown, its tendency
to absolutize,
its sense
of
security,
and
its hatred of
change:
making the
viewer repel this
art
form which lays
aside
the familiar trappings
of
the phenomenal world to
concentrate
on its underlying forms
and relationships.
One who looks
at
the sky
and
se
e
s only blueness, one
who
looks at a
tree and
s
ee
s only a tree, one
who
looks
at
a shadow, but does not see
its source nor its n
e
w life
environment, all these
will be unreceptive to
the balance of space and form seen through
color which
l
eads
to a re-
statement of
everyday experience
.
Such a
person forgets that the basic
components
of human
experience
and
creative
experience remain unchanged;
newness is the result of the re-arrangement of these basic forms. Man
has
th
e
power to
create
his own universe,
and
the artist accepts this challenge
by
abstracting
these geom
e
tric and polyglot forms from the world of
physical reality.
This is what
we
believe to be the basis for the
aesthetic experience
,
and
so, while
we
are not ready to deny the presence of men of guile in the
v
isual
arts,
we
are
not prepared to
generalize
this group to include all
present day
proponents
of
artistic expression.
The
\rar
is End
The war is
e
nd, and all rejoice; Thank God-Thank
God
The war is
end, and
all rejoice; Thank God-Thank God
The dead ar
e
d
e
ad,
and
they bring them home,
They \\·on
.
the war
and
are brought home,
Dick Carn
20






Rejoice, Rejoice-the war is end
My son! They brought him home, again.
They laid him down, his eyes were shut; Dear God-Dear God
They laid him down, his eyes were shut; Dear God-Dear God
His eyes were shut and his face was cut,
He felt so cold in that dark hut,
Rejoice, Rejoice-the war is end
My son! They brought him home, again.
Get off that bed of straw my son; Please God-Please God
Get off that bed of straw my son; Please God-Please God
Get off that bed of straw my son,
And walk and walk 'till all is done,
•Till day is night and day again,
And then, and theq, and then ...
Rejoice, Rejoice-the war is end.
The war is end, and all rejoice.
Rejoice my son, for you have won,
And now, and now to rest,
0Y
son.
Rejoice, the war is end.
Few are the Ones
Dick Carn
Time is the test that tests the best,
That tears them hand and foot
Yea, few are the ones that keep their hold
Few are the ones that are so bold
Few are the ones, few are the ones.
The Test is one to find an end
The answers to the questions many
To where, to how, to why
Few are
.
the ones who care to know
Few are the ones who
·
do.
Few are the ones who care to live
Few are the ones who die
Few are the ones who save their souls·
Few are the ones who try.
The rewards are great
The takers, few.
21










Lemming
John W. Hart, fms
Lemming looked out from his house.
Late autumn was on the mountainside, and trees were in their senes-
cence state, half of their leaves gone and the other half struggling to
maintain their grip on life while ostentatiously displaying a variety of
hues. The sky overhead, n;ow populated by migrating groups of clouds,
now seeming to seek twinship with the sparkling blue waters below, was
the dwelling of a beaming, yet seemingly cold sun. Trees rocked to and
fro in an autumnal wind, stretching toward the sky but remaining rooted
in the earth for continued life. Their foundation, though dotted with small
rodent holes, still supported them.
The vista registered vaguely in Lemming's brain. Mechanically he
completed his morning repast, somewhat wearily bid his family the
usual goodbye, and went forth to work ---
via
the same route
and
man-
ner', jostling the same people whom he still recognized not, aware of
them only as vague faces and forms and colors competing with him for
the right of way.
Work went as usual. Only during his customary break did Lemming
sense anything out of the ordinary. There was something in the
air,
something he
couldn't
quite grasp, a vague feeling of
anticipation.
He
looked at his companions,
and
they too seemed to notice
it.
Some
of
them were nervously shifting from foot to foot,
while
others, almost
eagerly it seemed, were
absorbed
in the sensation of
excitement
that
was building up.
After the
break the work was continued, but
a
little differently, perme-
ated now with that note of
anticipation,
and somewhat more hastily done.
By mealtime a definite urge
caused all
the workers to
walk
quickly to a
central
point of the town. Once there, they noticed that there
was
a general
confused
rushing about. Men,
women,
a
·
nd children darted here
and
there,
uncertain
and excited without
knowing
why.
Then there
was a
sudden mass
movement toward the south. Lemming found himself surrounded by and
pushed forward
with
the rest, till he too
was
running, merely to stay afoot.
A
d
•
istant uneasiness struggled to reach
consciousness
in his
brain,
but
was
roughly
smothered
to oblivion by the overwhelming
emotions of excite-
ment and
of eagerness
to see what was happening and to be
a
part of it.
The
crowd
was outside of town now, trampling underfoot the bright,
varicolored
leaves. Lemming jumped to a boulder to se
e
where
or what
or
why. Ove-rhead in the woods there
were
few leaves left hanging, since a
violent
wind from
above,
.
coupled
with that caused by the rushing citizenry
below, had swept the majority of natur
e
's
ornaments
from their hold on
her
tr
ees
.
22





Some of Lemming's friends, co'"workers and relatives called to him
to jump down fast and join the crowd in its rapid journey. Lemming hesi.;.
tated --- he didn't know why --- but was suddenly brushed from his
station by a group that was trying to find a yet faster route and, climbing
over his rock, had carried him below again with them.
Lemming was in the crowd once more. But now he experienced a
definite feeling of terror at being forced to be thus carried along with the
others. Awareness of darkness caused him to look upward: there were
large clouds in a grey sky, and, surprisingly, it was already late after-
noon.
Suddenly a scream came from the right - a man, somewhat unable
to maintain the frenzied pace, had fallen and been trampled underfoot by
the crowd. Within seconds the succession of feet had caused him to· cease
to be. Lemming felt a chill creep up his spine.
Without warning the forest disappeared. Only scattered trees of
varied sizes populated the open field, and even some of these, those with
weak foundations, were uprooted and thrown aside or else trampled by the
mob.
Then Lemming perceived the destination of the running herd: about a
hundred yards ahead, overlooking the sea, the mountainside terminated
abruptly in a precipice of several hundred feet. Over this cliff plunged
the frenzied, almost unknowing crowd.
The excitement and hysteria were contagious. Lemming felt him-
s
e
lf drawn almost irresistibly toward the cliff edge. Then a spark of
int
e
lligence and of will flashed thrrough his brain. He struggled against
th
e
flow of people, but unavailingly. Suddenly he saw another rock a-
head of him and with a mighty effort reached and climbed it.
He watched, first with a sensation of horror, and then of numbness,
th
e
scene below. The whole maddened populace, it seemed, were racing
over the precipice to the waiting waters below. Phalanx after phalanx
came throughout the afternoon, marked by the sun's passage through the
western sky. Lemming saw friends and acquaintances, some of whom he
had thought too sane, too balanced to be caught up in this hysteria, leap
over the cliff with the rest of the group. Gradually the majority had
passed, and only a few stragglers remained. It seemed like the whole
World was rushing over.
Lemming looked about him. How greatly the morning scene had
changed! Fewer trees, with little or nothing left of their fall array,
dotted the landscape. He saw that the sky was almost completely cov-
ered with clouds, and felt a chilling wind blowing and whispering.
He
looked long at the cliff as the last straggler plunged over. He looked at
the sun, among the clouds and almost gone over the far mountains.
23







And so gazing, he uneasily trembled on the rock, as
'
darkness slowly
fell over the earth.
'
Almost Every Time
Dick Carn
Every single time he did it. At first he did it just for a joke, so
people would laugh at him, think him funny. But then he got so that even
when people weren't around he'd do
it
just the same. He didn't think
about it anymore, even though he still smiled when he did it.
It wasn't a very hard thing to do, but it just stood out when he did it.
He'd just step up onto the bench when he came to it, and step off it when
he reached the end. Nobody ever sat on the bench; it was half broken
and very dirty, so it didn't really matter. He was friendly with every-
body around there, always had a pleasant word for anybody he saw, the
kind of guy you talk to because he's always willing to listen. He was
liked, and accepted.
They came one day, with their green uniforms and their sledge ham-
mers. They took the bench apart, and loaded it on the back of one of
their trucks with some old fence and a couple of dented garbage cans. It
didn't s\:irve any purpose, so they took
it
away.
We miss him now, sinc
e
he stopped coming around. There just isn't
anybody to talk to anymor
e
.
A
Contemporary Trialogu
e
Brien O'Callaghan, fms
Clokus:
M
e
dical school, and for the first tim
e
in my entire school ex-
perience, I feel teachers care about m
e
: not becaus
e
I reflect
their success or failure or because l'llhav
e
to tak
e
the Re-
gents, but 'caus
e
I'm me. They seem to be only r
e
luctantly
fulfooling a job. A corpus, a body, of knowledge, a corpse of
knowledge, casketted in p
e
dagogical emptyisms, is handed
over, like a diploma, to those who promise to extend the fiction
into the next gen
e
ration, to Abraham and his sons forever.
The
student is a pot
e
ntial monolith, a propaganda agent, another
e
vidence that a particular dogmatism still meets the needs of
the
mod
e
rn world.






Skinkly:
Clokus:
Blokus:
Skinkly:
Blokus:
Skinkly:
Blokus:
Skinkly:
Blokus:
S
kinkly:
Blokus:
Sk
inkly:
Blokus:
S
kinkly:
Education: to be led out - led out to pasture to feed forever-
more on the cactus of verbalisms.
One man's ideas. Everyone else an adversary of one shade
or another. Philosophy and Theology class - a Chemistry
pre-lab in which you label all the bottles with a name and
an error. But, if you only use one element, no matter how
good, you don't get a reaction. There are no experiements
in button-down land.
He was a great systematizer, you'll have to admit. He
summarized the main currents of thought up to his time.
he saw reason and faith as two approaches to God, and he
tried to show how both blended and reinforced one another.
Grace and nature: grace builds on nature.
Grace is the second story, and the Christian is a second-
story man.
No, grace and nature are not two separate things.
Then they are one thing.
No, they can't be one thing, 'cause then they wouldn't be
called two things.
Like the earth must be flat because otherwise we'd fall off?
Anyway, what's in the basement? Sub-nature? We've been
admonished to avoid building on sand. Nothing like a strong
foundation. So, now we have a psychoanalytic trinity - grace,
nature, and sub-nature - like super-ego, ego, and id.
The issue is quite baffling, as you can see.
Yes, but perf
e
ctly reasonable, like the existence of God.
Faith
,
seeking understanding, is the way Anselm put it.
Like Adam ate a cherry
,
and George Washington chopped
down an apple tree.
Each age, and each indi victual, has to interpret anew, in
symbol and myth, what it recognizes as the basic realities
of life. Transcendence can only be approximated. But con-
temporary man cannot see his own philosophical ship ex-
cept against the horizon of his history of ideas: his cultural
heritage.
I haven't noticed Philosophy
&
Sons, Inc. on the Stock Ex-
change lately, but I'm sure that
it
pays rather low divi-
dends.
25







.
Clokus:
Blokus:
Skinkly:
Ciokus:
Skinkly:
Clokus:
Blokus:
Skinkly:
Clokus:
Skinkly:
Blokus:
Skinkly:
"
Unfortunately, conviction and conscience, like faith, don't
have much market value, .and the Christian, despite his pro-
fessed "otherness," must compete and cheat in the same
marketplace. "Dollar Diplomacy" we have; "Dollar Dedica-
tion" is from hunger.
And yet, there must be something
beyond.
Otherwise, life
becomes an
amusement
park, its main attraction and sym-
bolic image the merry-go-round.
Man
is given, gratis, like
grace, a collection
of
tickets at puberty's door to merriment.
He squanders them confidently in anticipation of his Father's
promise to re-welcome his prodigal son. But, as he sits at
his
Father's
table, he feels
an emptiness
that not
even
the
fatted calf will be able to fill.
I'm devoting my life to knowledge, to drinking life to the
lees . . .
You mean drinking the lees.
My subject matter has
a gender, and
I'm
pretty
well
versed
already.
I've spent two years
in
Ecuador,
and
the people are well-
versed there, too. Their curriculum is
a
little
more
pedes-
trian than
yours: Poverty
101, Intermediate Ignorance, and
Advanced
Despair. They don't have the leisure
you
have to
cultivate such rich soil.
Biological progress has been recently described
as
"ineluc-
table." This judgment is hard to believe. Half our time is
spent making plans
and
the other half wondering what it would
have been like had we
executed
them.
We ought to
execute
the planners instead. We
could
call it
the
"bourgeois
bounce" or the "purge of the petty."
What would be our criterion of
criminality?
Indifference?
Equivocation?
Irresponsibility? Hypocrisy? These
are
steps up
to
promotion rather than down to discouragement.
I should have been more sensible.
We move against the stream of isomorphic
equations
of new
and dangerous, traditional and correct, slow and secure. But
Christ said that he had
come
that we might have life, not
safety. Civil Rights is
as good
an
example
as
any
. . .
I
suppose Negroes are
motivationally ready for
emancipation?
26







Blokus:
Clokus:
Blokus:
Skinkly:
Clokus:
Skinkly:
Clokus:
Lincoln thought they were 100 years ago. We celebrate the
an-niversary of his dead body, not of his living spirit and
enduring attitudes. We move among each other spectrally,
an assorted box of candied opinions, prejudices, and "isms,"
ideas without convictions, knowing everything, yet knowing
nothing - a part of all that we have met, yet never having
really met anything, except through the newspaper or TV,
neither of which bleed, or scream, or invite response.
·
We
watch life; we don't live it. We lived it once - when our
fathers didn't come back from Europe. But our parents
made sure that we got everything that they didn't. They
didn't suspect that in giving us everything they didn't have,
they might prevent us from getting what they did have. To-
day, our fathers do return - from VietNam - in caskets.
You can see it all each night on Hinkley-Bungly. It's a
serial, like Flash Gordon or Don Winslow of the Coast
Guard.
We're contestants on the $64,000 Question. We advance,
hesitantly, by prestige plateaus, each of which entitles
us to a certain income and feeling of adequacy. We can
stop at any time, or risk total failure and go ahead.
Everything man does is a test; he's got a contestant com -
plex. Life is a most dangerous game, and the stakes are
psychic equilibrium.
What' re you going to do? We' re a scientific age, and our
people are computer conscious. The success of marriages
used to be based on human adaptability and love. But love
is not efficient and entails far too many responsibilities.
So, we reduce the divorce rate by IBM marriages. We are
interviewed to determine our basic personality traits and
are provided with an electronically accurate mate . . .
Who will respond to us just like any other good machine.
We might as well try IBM confessions. I mean, those lines
are awfully long. Suppose one of us makes lists of the sins
of all the others (without looking, of course) and sends them
in, PREPAID, to the priest. He could stamp them "approved"
and ship them back, C.
0. D., with a little desideratum for
each of us - like Christmas presents.
The Church rides in the stagecoach of human progr;ess and in-
genuity, drawn, it knows not where, by horses run
wild. He
is just beginning to get back up in· the driver's seat.
·
. . . and miles to go before I sleep .
Sounds familiar.
27







Skinkly:
Clokus:
Blokus:
Blokus:
Cinderella on her big night. She ate an apple at 12
0
1
clock
and was forever doomed to pumpkinhood, that is, until Prince
Farming rose, like the vegetation god, from the dead and re-
deemed her from her primal blunder.
Where's my magic wand?
There is no magic wand. Wands are relics of authoritarian
fairy-land. When you use machines all day, you begin to
see keyboard on your children's faces. You press the right
buttons, and you eliminate the obstacles to efficiency. You
teach the young to push buttons, as you have done, to be con-
ventional, and you discourage ingenuity. How does a ma-
chine account for the spiritual, dynamic factor ?
Given a set of arithmetic variables, the machine proffers
an answer to the problem. But a young man is not an arith-
metic problem, and the key to his life is not on the key rack
or in the old pidgeon holes, nor on Bazooka bubble-gum wrap-
pers. It's easier to look to the pidgeon holes, but as the
young passively accept their standardized meal ticket to de-
cision and the future, they invite intellectual malnutrition.
We put them on tracks laid down by the past, and there are no
sidetracks to the future.
It's easier to say what's been said to us, to use the magic
wand, to press buttons, to live in button-down land, advan-
cing by plateaus to pumpkinhood. But why duplicate gener-
ations? Old tracks deteriorate
·
or lead to ghost towns. New
destinations must be found for travel, goals not approach-
able by the old line. We can't reach Europe by Pony Express,
nor Maturity, and all points North, by carrier-pidgeon-hole.
We travel by conscience, without sandals or tunics, and all
God's chillun got shoes.
The Purchase
Dick Carn
He walked down the street and felt little. He had his hands in his
pockets and he watched the ground in front of him a-s he walked along. He
wasn't
e
ven sure of where he was. It was late, but he had no place to go,
so
it
didn't matter what he did or where he was .
.
He was just there. He
was just a stroller.
But then the seller came. From where? He didn't know-an alleyway
perhaps, or nowhere; but he did come. He made an offer, odd and strange,
and the stroller laughed. "Buy the street, sir? It's yours for ten, and I
can giv
e
it to you." His dress was dirty, his face common, but his eyes
28












sparkled; and the
stroller
noticed not his
appearance, but only his eyes.
The stroller was amused; he smiled. He prodded
the seller, "Buy it;
but
why? What
does it have to
offer?"
·
"Nothing
sir," said
the seller,
"but all
the
laughs
and smiles, all
the hopes
and
joys of all those who
walk upon
it.
They'll be yours; -and
I
can
give them
to you-for ten dollars."
The stroller's
eyes faded, and
he
gave
up the
eyes
of the seller to
think.
A minute passed.
He
smiled then.
"Give it
to me," he said,
"I
want
it."
"But
first
the ten," retorted the
seller, his eyes now
brighter
than
ever.
The
money was
paid
and
they started to separate.
"But
where's my
bill of sale, the
deed;
how do
I
know
I
own
it,
"
yelled
the
stroller.
The seller wa13 angry,
or
annoyed
maybe, but then he
said,
"Start
here friend, on the line
that
runs down
the
middle
of your
street,
and
walk
down it to
th
e
end;
and look
at
every window pane and
flowerpot,
and
reach out
and grab the
buildings
on both
sides of the
street
and pull them
i
n
on you
'till th
ey
almost topple,
and then, then
you'll
know this is
your
stree
t. That's
how
you'll know you
own
it."
The
stroller
did this
all-a
nd
the
seller
disappeared.
He doesn't stroll
very
f
ar
now, not more than a
block
or
two from
that street. He li
v
es there
now,
and
he's content.
You see, he owns
that street.
The
Grecian
Urn Revisited
I came upon a Grecian Urn
Which once of beauty spoke,
Whose 'attic shape' and fii;rures bold
Preserved in stone man's love.
John T. Sullivan, fms
Once it had 'teased us out of thought,'
Given us inspiration for
Feelings we could not spout forth
In hollow words
and
blundering phrase.
Its sculptor had given to that
Marble mass a silent
voice--
An ageless voice, to speak to aging man
New words.
Then why does it speak no more,
No longer draw forth from
The heart of man
Those hopes which
c,
.
ce it did?
29










The Grecian Urn lies shattered,
In myriad pieces strewn,
By man
Whose path it blocked.
The Whole is Greater than It's Parts
Dennis DaRos, fms
Perhaps my little expose will or will not gain your approval. Per-
haps what I will say will seem to you a very trite experience. Perhaps
it is only the relation of an emotion that has stirred me - but to you will
be uninteresting and boring. But I will relate it anyway, for it has giv-
en me an insight into man, something which I do not consider trite at
all.
Today I looked into a man.
A man who laughed
and
cried, a man who shouted, a man who
whispered. Perhaps an intelligent man, a man who talked, and a man
who kept silent. Perhaps he was a man who loved many people, or
made others happy, he was a man, maybe, who hated, a man who
wanted to hurt others. Perhaps he was a man who
felt
sorrow or even
a man ~ho was always happy.
Maybe he was
a
man who wanted to be free from prejudice, a man
who fought for freedom, a man who didn't want anyone telling his
children
to wait. Maybe he was a man who believed in
the
rights he
felt were his due, even though others denied them.
He may have been a small old man,
a
twinkle always in his eye. A
man of great responsibility, of tremendous insight. He may have been
a
man who wrote for the world that there might someday be "Peace on
Ea~th."
He might have been a
young,
vibrant man,
a courageous
self-dedi-
cated man, on fir
e
with life, a leader. He might have been a man who
offered this solution to other men: "Ask not what. .. for you, but what
you can
do
.•.. "
Then he could have been a funny man, one who made others laugh,
a
kind of burden - lightener in the flesh. He could have been a man
whose
clean
and brisk humor evoked light heartedness from those he
pass
.
ed by.
Possibly h
e
was
a
strong bd
emotional
person,
emotional
I say
yd
le\·cl,
out
of control
at times but mostly in
control
of many situa -
:rn








tions.
A
person very strong,
v
ery compassionate, and very generous.
Why not an e
x
t
raordinarily intellectually gifted man, sent into the
field to disprove the threats that beseiged his beliefs?
A
man whose ba-
sic commitment would not allow him to proclaim the truth of which he
was convinced.
A
man buried in a foreign land - not even the correct
name on his tombstone.
Yes, I looked inside a man today. I saw the parts that compose him.
His heart, his brain. But when I think of what kind of man he was, he
might have been, or could have been . . . then I know there i
.
s more to a
man than skin, and bone, and muscle, and blood, - there is more than
that which I can lay upon a table and touch with my hand or cut with my
knife.
There is something in man - call it what you will - but it is there in
me, in you, in him - there is something - that makes man a whole that
is greater than his parts.
Man in the Twentieth Century
William Doherty, fms
The U.S. has always been a nation of movers. This country was
built, and is still being built, by self-reliant, brave people who have
been willing to cut themselves off from the old country to move out in
search of a better life in a new, unknown land. The original nucleus,
the Thirteen Colonies, came into being because pioneers from Europe
moved to the New World in the hope of fr1ding here something that the
old country had not or could not give thi .n. Compared to our fore-
fathers, we in the sixties are a nation of movers on a vastly larger scale.
What has happened to man as we moved from the relatively uncomplex
agrarian economy to a highly complex industrial economy?
The great shift in industry and population that took place in the 18th
century was due to the introduction of coal as the source of mechanical
power, to the us
.
e of the steam engine, and to new methods of smelting
and working iron. Out of this complex a new civilization developed.
This industrial civilization created new concepts of the nature of man and
society which although gradual, ultimately led to an ideology totally dif-
ferent from that which had prevailed during earlier periods. Elton Mayo
in his, The Social Problem of an Industrial Civilization, states that "there
is an unrealized difference between two principles of social organization-
the one, that of an established soci
0
ty; the other, that of an adaptive so-
ciety." The agrarian period in Ar:.erica was marked by a society of small
towns and villages, its religion all prevading and the center of the social
as well as the religious life of the community. Brown in his, The Social
31









Psychology of Industry, states that "large cities replaced small
villages
and towns; the unskilled the skilled craftsman; the large factory the small
home industry; unrestricted competition replaced cooperation, and an indi-
vidual
I
s position in society became dependent upon his own unaided efforts
in the struggle for status. "
The farmer of fifty or a hundred
years
ago was a much more self-
sufficient individual than even the farmer of today.
The farmer generally
grew enough to eat, and his success was measured solely by a good crop.
His need to keep up with the Jones' was non-existent because the nearest
Jones' may have been a mile or two away. The child, in the
agrarian
set-
up, takes on a different meaning; he is looked upon as an
economic
asset
and hot as a distraction or something extraneous and foreign to the im-
portant business of the father getting ahead. In this type of set up self-
sufficiency and a lack of dependence upon others is a key factor in the
development of the individual. Ausubel in his, Ego Development and the
Personality Disorders, states that "by governing the availability of the
experience required for personality development, socio-economic condi-
, tions are able to determine the rate of adolescent ego development and the
eventual attainment of adult personality status." For the farmer, life was
relatively uncomplex - live a good life and work hard. Hard work was the
key to success to the farmer. Th
e
farmer was in rapport with his environ-
ment; the changing seasons, "mother" earth, and the eternal
going
on from
birth to death; he was attached to
the
earth.
Now let us turn our attention to modern man. What is the basic char-
acteristic of modern man? Turner spoke of man in terms of his "frontier"
thesis:
·
the nation of the one more mountain to conquer in the vast wilder-
ness of
America.
Many men took Horace Greeley's advice to
"Go
West
young man,
"
but countless more
"migrated"
to Long Island in the 1950's
.
The Am
e
rican dream of the "one more mountain" or the notion of "any
man can be president, " and the "land of Opportunity," may or may not be
valid but I believe that Potter's theory of abundance is a more inclusive
and encompassing notion than Turner's frontier thesis. But with this no-
tion many problems must be met
and
overcome which were not
even
thought of in the "good old days.
11
.n the 20th century, how do w
e
measure the successful man? This is
a great problem in America today because of the diversity of pursuits in-
herent in a complex society and because there is no accepted hierarchy of
social
values.
With th
e
increasing lack of emotional involvement in most
work, there leaves only one least common denominator: the dollar. In
Gorer' s, The
American
People,
A
Study in
National
Character, he states
that ''dollars can be
considered
an adult equivalent of the marks and grades
which signify the school child's relative position in regard to his fellows.
,\n adult's income shows his rating in relation to his fellows, and a rela-
tively good income is
as
much a matter of legitimate pride and boasting as
g
dting
all A's
in
all
the subjects
on
one's report
card.
It
is an outward
and visible sign that one has striven successfully." But with this lack of
emotion
a
l involvement in work there
evolves
a certain alienation from the
32







work and from one's fellow man.
William H. Whyte, Jr
.
, in his, The Organization Man, argues along
the lines of the fierce aggressiveness characterized by the people of the
frontier. Many, according to Whyte, desires to be the controller of his
own destiny and not lose this control to the group or the organization.
But argues Whyte, "he must not only accept control; he must accept it
as if he liked it. He must smile when he is transferred to a place or a
job that isn't the job or the place he happens to want. He must appear
to enjoy listening sympathetically to points of view not his own. He must
be less goal-centered, more employee-centered. It is not enough that he
work hard; he must be a damn good fellow to boot." There is, to use a
wellworn cliche, a dichotomy between the appearance, which to Whyte is
all important, and the internalization of this value which generally does
not take place.
·
Even "Big Daddy" Johnson is getting into the act with his State of the
Union Message wherein he points up that "we begin a new quest for union.
We seek the unity of man with the world he has built - with the knowledge
that can save or destroy him- with the wealth and machines which can en-
rich or menace his spirit. "
"We seek to establish a harmony between man and society which will
allow each of us to enlarge the meaning of his life and all of us to elevate
the quality of his civilization."
"But the unity we seek cannot realize its full promise in isolation.
For today the state of the Union depends, in large measure, upon the
state of the world. "
As is evident, cultural factors produce or alleviate anxiety in many
different ways. In our society a man's worth is measured by the price
he can fetch in the market place; maxim
·
m value is placed upon the
goals of social prestige and hierarchical status; adolescents are drawn
into a mad competitive race for status; and since the possibility of many
individuals acquiring such status is limited, it is obvious that anxiety will
b
e
widespread
.
The average adolescent must put up with a long period
of status-deprivation. The theory that success is the inevitable reward
for conscientious work, self-denial, and superior ability bogs down as
adolescents begin to see rewards monopolized by those whose sole claim-
to-fame is family wealth, inheritance, connections or a highly developed
capacity for double-dealing. A classic comment on our culture was that
uttered by Bobby Baker when he expounded his philosophy of "you get
along if you go along. ''
In
our society, how do we measure stress, tension and Anxiety? Dr.
Gordon, in his, The Split-Level Trap, points up the notion, through his
rather questionable statistics, tha
.in
Bergen County, the "mover" com-
munity, there is a higher incidence rate of psychosomatic illness than in
Cattaraugus County, the "good old days" community. He argues further
33










that "the inference is plain, something .is troubling the people in Bergin-
something whose effects are not nearly so intense or so widespread in
rural Cattaraugus. "
Once we admit of a more dynamic community we must admit of more
stress. Man is less sure of himself because the "old familiar ways" do
not hold up against the less personal, less familiar society in which we
live. In the Crisis of Faith, Babin points to the problem of anxiety
among adolescents. He argues that "one thing is certain: the opening up
of so many vistas, with the doubts and questionings that come in the wake,
tears this
generation
from the lukewarmness of readymade solutions.
In
entering
upon
a
new stage of maturation, mankind is forced to
a
choice
that is more lucid
and
courageous, --unless, indeed, men harden them-
selves in
a
cowardly refusal to face reality."
The problem today is admittedly:
we are
the Anxious Age and
Ameri-
ca is
a
Nation
of
Tranquilizers.
But,
what are we to do about it?
Adap-
tation is the key word to the successful living
of
one's life in the
20th
century,
but does this imply
we must
prostitute our ideals in order to
adapt?
I don't think
so.
The problem today is compounded because we
are
not only horizontal movers but
also
vertical movers
as
well. We
are
P
y
ramid
Builders
or Status
Seekers.
This range in
society
leads
to problems of transitional
anxiety
in which the new role is not clearly
d
e
fin
ed
. It is
my opinion
that
as
man becomes more
and more accustomed
to
his new
role
in the
adaptive
society, t
e
nsions will b
e
alleviated, and
we
will
enj
o
y
the relatively
less
stressful
society
that our forefathers en-
jo
ye
d.
T
e
ilhard de Chardin, in The Divine Milieu, puts the
emphasis
on
man
a
nd
his
hope in man wh
en
he
states
"Jerusal
em
, lift up
your
head.
Look
at
the
immense crowds
of those who
build and those who seek.
All
over the world,
men
are
toiling- - in laboratories, in
studios,
in deserts,
in
factories,
in th
e
vast
social
crucible. The
ferment that is taking place
by their
instrumentalit
y
in
art and science and
thought is happening for
your sake.
Open, then,
your
arms
and
your heart, like Christ
your
Lord,
a
nd
\1·elcome
th
e
waters,
the flood
and the
sap
of
humanity.
Accept
it,
thic;
sap-
for,
without
its b
ap
tism,
you
will wither, without desire, like
a .m1·er out of water; and tend
it, since,
without your sun,
it
will
dis-
perse itself wildly in
sterile shoots."
It stands,
statdy yet
humble,
Set aside
from a11 othc>rs
by
its nature.
1
-
:xagg(•rat('d it1 rwithc>r siz
e
nor shape.
Y
t·t
;.i
S_\'
mbol
to
all mankind.
Joseph Towers
:14





Life: A Purpose
Peaceful, serene, yet
still bustling,
A place where children come and go,
In their ignorant bliss n~ver realizing
That they are dependent upon it.
A House, a mere structure,
Built by mere human hands.
Dependent upon its occupants
For its very survival.
It
can tell us nothing,
For it is incapable of speech,
Nevertheless it communicates
By virtue of its existence.
An ordinary house?
No, a Home!
Dick Carn
Theologians tell us persistently that the true goals of this life are
not mundane; they argue that wisdom and knowledge are the only
commodities worth striving for. They state that a man is only truly
happy or content when he has come to a realization of what he is and
why he is here. They are certain that the "why's" are more important
than the "how's." A quotation from Koestler is referred to: "Woe to
the fool and the esthetic who ask only ho'v and not why. " All worldly
things should be put aside until the ans, :!r to the "why" is found.
I have put aside the worldly things, for the present moment at
least. I have stopped and stood, waiting for the first step to be shown
to me, waiting for the sign to pass; but the only thing that does pass
is time. Time, the element without which I could look no farther; and
it is this time that I lose. So vital is time. I can't afford to waste much
more. I don't know how much time I have. But I do know that I must
use it. Most of this time is wasted on the things of this world, things
I know don't matter; yet these things tie me down and tire me so that I
can't look. I must move then, to nowhere perhaps, because nowhere is
where I might find it. You see, it might be nowhere, or it might be
that it is now here. This I must find out; this. I have decided, and I
hope to look.
So I move on; but where do I g. from here? I don't know. I don't
know.
I don't even really care. But the road pulls me to it. I remem-
ber Spanish, some at least.
It
all comes out to be one idiom: ponerse
35





en camino (to hit the road). The road, yes, the road! The road holds
something; I pray to God it does. Funny I should have written that;
God, I mean. That's one of the things I hope to find on the road, or at
the other end, maybe. I don't think that there's one particular road
for me. I hope not; I might choose the wrong one. I hope that the
answer lies just on the road, and by trying to find it, I will
.
The
Christian lord has said, "Ask and you shall be told
;
knock and it
shall be opened." I hope what he says is true.
I imagine it's a well-traveled road
;
I wonder, however, if it's a
well-marked road? What lies ahead of me I can't even guess at
;
I
can only desire it. Maybe I'll find it, maybe.
I've written this; and now I notice that time has passed. And it's
time that is so precious. I can't buy it;
it
can't be given to me. I'll
end this in a while, because I have to go, but I'll end it with I imagine
what you would call a prayer.
And then I'll go.
3
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