Write What You Know

“Well I know one thing-- .”
“Oh? And what is that?”
“Ahem. Well, I know that—I know—know-- .”
“What? Say it!”
“Uh—I forgot.”

How's Your Portfolio?

The few,
The proud,
The ma-rich!

Doy

We are here. Here we are. No we’re not.
Don’t say doy. Say anything, but don’t say doy. Doy is the one word you are not to say.
Don’t say doy under any circumstances. It is forbidden to say doy.
Now it’s going. It takes a moment to get going, but now it’s going. No it’s not.
And don’t say doy.

Men Are Strange

“Do you believe what my Ralph asked for for Christmas? Sunglasses!”
“Men are strange.”
“You’re telling me. Like I’m going to get him sunglasses.”
“Men are truly strange.”
“Well Ralphie boy is. I mean, could he ask for tools or electronics like any normal guy? No. Not even something for that Camero of his. I tell you, Velma, if you ask me, he’s got the hots for someone at the plant.”
“Some men are strange.”
“You said it. I mean, why else would he want new sunglasses?”
“I don’t know. Some guys are so strange sometimes.”
“Well that’s it. I’m sure of it. After thirty-four years, little Ralphie has got the hots for some little floozy down at the plant, and he thinks if he puts on a new pair of shades it will hide his big fat gut and his bald head.”
“He’s not so fat.”
“No? Well, you don’t buy his clothes. And that’s another thing. He keeps trying to get into his old size 36 pants. He’ll never get that flab into a 36 again.”
“He’s not so bald either. I’ve seen balder. Besides, some women like bald guys.”
“You think so?”
“Honey, I know so. But like you say, men are strange.”

Vamp Till Ready

Not too shabby,
Kinda crabby,
Keep them coming,
Keep them humming.
Will I get there,
Or get nowhere?
I don’t know yet,
I can’t tell yet.

Where’s the party, Artie?
You going to the big dance tonight?
Oh no, Sheil. I’m just staying home and listening to Judy Garland records.
Well, you’ll be sorry then.
Whence and whither?
Thither! Thither! Thither, of course!
Any fool knows that.

White, red, blue and green
Makes you look so clean.
Black, brown, gray and purple
Makes you look so je ne sais quoi.
Whether you agree or not,
It’s a grave matter, quite grave.

Onward, brave men, into the jaws of Destiny!
Fear not for your selves, think of your loved ones.
Little Willy, Tad, and sweet Marie, huddled ‘gainst the impending story,
Defenseless against the Mongol hoards.
But ye, ye men,
Ye Men of Bargle, ye have it in ye
To win the day and save them all from certain horror.

So on, on I say!
Onward into the breach
And the devil plague him in your eyes ye espy.
And cleft him twain, thrain, and again.
Cleft him from s’noggin to s‘toe. Stop nought till s’bell s’run and s’eye’s alight!
A’blinkin and winkin till Thursday.

Black Rock

I once visited a beautiful wooded lake in western Connecticut, near Watertown, a few miles north of Waterbury on Highway 8. Black Rock State Park, it’s called, where my family camped while apartment hunting for me in July, 1986. I had just arrived to take my new job as Director of the Arts and Humanities Division at Mattatuck Community College. We were pulling our foldout camper, and I drove my Toyota, crammed with whatever belongings I could bring. I would be living in Connecticut on my own until my family could move up from Florida the following year. We knew it would be tough, but that was the plan. There was little choice since I had lost my job. My former college closed that spring. I would have to go, as a bachelor, wherever I could find another job in my field, and the Mattatuck job is the one that came through. I had been offered it only two days before.
We camped at a private campground acorss the road from the state park, and immediately went over to explore its beautiful lakes and rolling woods. Barb said she’d like to return in the autumn; the leaves would be spectacular. And I actually did return, alone unfortunately, to take pictures when the blaze of Autumn in New England began that October. It was evry bit as beautiful as she had imagined.
That scene, that place, became for me an icon, an idyll of New Endland life, from that moment. To think, to dream, to be suffused by the transcendent beauty of that scene, has returned to my mind so many times in the quarter-century since. Barbara mused that she would like to live there, and that became my dream as well…to get out of Florida and move to a New England wood—maybe not that particular one, being illegal in a state park to homestead, but another woods with similar beauty.
I actually found a couple of potential properties for us during the following months, and tried to buy them. My personal mission, apart from doing my duties at Mattatuck, was to be the “pathfinder” for our family, first on the scene and scouting for a future home for us. Barbara had to mind the Florida home and manage the children while she taught her final year needed to vest herself in Florida’s teacher retirement plan.
Every Sunday I scoured the realty ads and went out to neighboring villages and towns with ads in hand to check out properties. As I said, I found a couple of great places: one, a farmette of several acres in Woodbory, with rolling fields, a chicken coop and feather plucker, and picturesque stone walls bording the property, had wonderful trees and picturesque structures and vistas. I tried to buy it, and my offer was accepted. The house needed work, but the property itself was worth the price. I took many photos and flew home to try to get the financing. But in the end I couldn’t swing it. I couldn’t sell my Florida home quickly enough or find affordable loans. I had to withdraw my offer.
Later I found a nice cape cod on a lake, and its back yard abutted the Mattatuck State Forest. We would be assured natural beauty and unlimited woods forever. Again I tried to make an offer, but it was sold that very day for full asking price. Priperties in that area had risen in price 35% in one year, and sales in that part of the state were in a land rush as industry moved quickly in. Houses listed in the morning were sold that same day, sometimes before listing, even. I was crushed that I never got to move to my prized New England dream house, that year or since.
But in retrospect, perhaps it is good that I never got to move there. Later that year it became obvious to me that I couldn’t get along with my dean and my future would be too stressful at Mattatuck. After February I informed them I wouldn’t be returning that fall, and I moved back to Florida after commencement. Right career, wrong job, definitely wrong boss. In the following year I taught courses part-time for Indian River Community College and a branch campus in Stuart. I realized again how much I loved to teach. I had missed that at Mattatuck. By December I was looking again for another fulltime teaching job,
But administrative jobs were easier to find, and paid more, and I had experience.
I dound a division chairmanship plus faculty status as a full professor (almost tenure) at the College of Boca Raton in South Florida. We moved to nearby Delray Beach in July of 1989. Barb got a teaching position at Deerfield Park Elementary School, Deerfield Beach, that fall, and we settled into South Florida for several years. We bought our Coral Springs house the following March and have lived in it for fifteen years as we raised our sons in good schools and neighborhoods. They all attended Florida universities and later settled in Florida themselves. We seem likely to spend the rest of our lives in this state.
But the image of Black Rock State Park’s mystique has never left me. It still occupies my dream as the idyll of a New England life, with such rich history and such a vibrant intellectual tradition, storybook towns and village greens, rolling woods and picturesque lakes, autumn leaves and Christmas charm of a Norman Rockwell painting. It was always my goal to teach at a liberal arts college in New England. But over the next quarter-century I completed my academic career in South Florida instead. Sometimes one takes what opportunities seem at hand rather than forcing choices, and the opportunities I had seemed to be in South Florida for my family and me. I’ll probably never know how things might have been, had we moved to Connecticut. Maybe we would have been better off, maybe not.
Sometimes we drive down though Vermont and New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut on our way home from Eastern swings on our summer trips. And as I pass by my former college site and realize it’s now no longer operating, I think of how I would probably been forced to relocate to another town anyway, after a couple of years, had I remained. Waterbury was also scorned by a magazine for a couple of years as the worst place in all America to live. But I still miss it. I still think of it as my “spiritual home,” my “New England experience.”
However, I’ll probably never live in New England again. I doubt that I would want to now. Once Barbara retires in another five or ten years, we will probably move to central or northern Florida, not to New England. That would be too far from our grandchildren and sons. And there won’t be the same reasons to go, since I’m done with fulltime academic work. It was a dream. It is a dream. And it will always be a dream.

Rush Hour

Most of the time,
Or so it seems,
The cars never end.
It is as if someone called a convention and no one can find the hall.
They come in bunches as I wait,
If I’m lucky. Bunches suggest there will be a break.
And I can whiz into the morass, join the insanity, and fire up my fight or flight response
With the other adults-turned-animals.
They call it “rush hour,”
Which is optimistic, in my view;As it seems to be growing longer day by day, lenghthening through the morning till ten or eleven, beginning again shortly after two or two-thirty by early quitters anxious to get a jump on the crush, and growing every year,
And seems near blending seamlessly into the homebound late afternoon traffic,
And even continues into the evening. Six, seven,
Then, just when there’s some hope rising,
That all the workers have found their way home,
The partygoers and diners hit the streets and highways, and extend the rush hour into the wee hours of the morning.
Rush hour is usually “over” about two a.am.
When the drunks swerve home…those who try,
Stupidly,
Sometimes without incident and not obviously D.U.I.,
Other times commisserating with a power pole or tree or worse, eacher,
Or another car,
Or a pedestrian.
Lord help the late churchgoers
Still beaming with a benedictory blessing…the sermon went too long,
The altar call cannot be rushed.
The Spirit cannot be interrupted in the pentacostal fervoer for some mere human invention called time—
One o’the clock, two o’the clock—
Lord help them! Blessed as they are, backing in heavenly grace,
They will need all that grace, and skill, attention, stamina, intelligence, wariness, and plain luck and lightning reflexes to muster up and survive the roads this night, to make it home without getting hit by a drunk going the wrong way on I-95.
At 2 a.m.
Or even going the right way. All the angels in heaven and on earth can’t keep those drunks off the expressways, it seems.
Finally, however, in the silent night the streets are quiet at last.
Lit by amber halogen lights like angels’ candles they seem
For just a few minutes.

Then rush hour starts again, too soon—
Five or si in the morning reminds us why they have twelve lanes
As the streets fill again
Before daylight.
:Gentlemen, start your engines!”
the inner voice sounds through the coffee and cobwebs
into the mobile wombs we pop and unpop at or parking spaces—
it seems unendlingly.

But it is not completely unending.
Rush hour actually does pause, or seems to diminish o an almost safe level
At the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Once each week it happens:
On Sunday morning one can still drive in mid-morning to get a newpaper
An pretend he lives in a small town,
Not in the middle of an expressway.
(Of course, if everyone decided to do that….)


I cringed all the time my youngs sons rode their ikes to school,
Praying they would make it without getting hit.
Scott actually did get hit, once,
Riding his bike home from Publix
Where he bagged groceries.
At the ripe old age of fourteen.
But it was his fault;
He didn’t stay at the curb till he had the walk sing
But instead darted to the center island, then tried to bolt onthrough as the light changed.
The driver of the car that hit him couldn’t see him riding past the van beside him and knocked him down,
Knocked him off the bike, stopped, got out to check him—
We think he stopped not from conscience but because a patrol car was right across the intersection and saw it, most likely.
Otherwise that driver, true to the unwritten but universally followed S. Florida NASCAR rules everyone seems honorary members of, would have perobably continued on his merry way
And let Scott be run over by the next guy
And possibly killed
By a hit and run driver.
It happens more han a hundred times a year in Dade and Broward counies alone.
The lawyers here are amoral sharks and everyone knows it.
No one wants to be involved. The courts will crucify them.
The lawyers will ruin them,
And the state will revoke their driving priveleges,
And no one can get anywhere in stretched-out, horizontally-built South Florida without wheels.
If you stop, and admit you made a mistake,
Suddenly your money is gone, your job is gone, your life is gone and everything you held dear,
If you stop, knowing you were probably unobserved,
Rather than speeding away and trying to forget the whole thing.
It must have been a dog, or a raccoon that came up from an adjacent canal, that thump…that thump…
No way it could have been a child.
No way at all.
He who thumps and drives away
Lives to drive another day.

Scott got a $50 fine for crossing the street illegally.
I paid a $300 ambulance call and hospital checkup.
The overzealous paramedics immediately immobilized him to a board,
Taped his head and chest down over his forehead like a pharoah
And trotted their mummy off to the emergency room.
Someone called us at home at some point in this process
And we had no say in the matter:
“Your son Scott has had an accident at the corner of Royal Palm and Soral Springs Drive…I was there before the call ended, almost, barly breathing, my chest heaving…
My son Scott, lying flat on the ground on the corner sidewalk…My God, what a sickening moment!
But he looked up at me with his bright green eyes.
The paras had screwed up and left his mouth, eyes, and nostrils untaped. He could breathe.
And he could talk.
“Hi Dad.”
“Scott, my God! Wat happened? Are you allright? Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Oh thank God!”
“Except I jammed my thumb when the guy hit my bike.”
He wiggled his right thumb. He jammed it when the bike went over.
Scott was treated and released.

Mark, four years Scott’s younger, wove in and out of traffic on Sample Road for ten years going to and from three schools on his bike in rush hour.
He never had an accident.
But he sure picked up a lot of thorns, nails, and flat tires
That seemed to occur to him only the next morning at seven-twenty
When he would be late at seven-thiry if I didn’t drive him to school immediately
With his flat tire fixed or not. If not, I’d need to also pick him up at 3:00 when school let out.
Other emergencies forced my diving into the crush of rush hour traffic to rescue my sons from the many showers and lightning storms that came out of nowhere in South Florida day and night without warning.

But we survived.
Yes, we survived rush our in the Megalopolis.
And continue to survive going on fifteen years.
Our sons are grown and gone—
Except when Mark comes home from Florida State for breaks
And his friends begin their phonathons and dropins and comeonovers
And the evening’s entertainments call him to establishments throughout the area as far south as Miami and the Keys
And as far north as West Palm and Stuart
And I worry a father’s worry till the cars come home
And the garage door motor begins its low drone
At two or three a.m.
And everyone in the Kauffman clan is safe for a few more hours,
Alive, with their limbs and organs intact,
Safe from rush hour for another day.
I thank God for his grace and protection of my family
From South Florida crazy drivers and their rush hours.
Oh Henry, Henry, Henry Ford,
You had no idea what you started.
But I don’t blame you.
I blame Sam Levitt, who started the first suburb in the ‘forties on Long Island after the war—and Herbert Hoover, who promised us two cars in every garage and the chicken in every pot.
The little picket fence,
The little house in the burbs we could all escape to at the end of our workday in the city…

But who could know we couldn’t build enough roads to escape each other?
And ho foresaw that every business and human enterprise in the land would insist on beginning work hours at the same time?
Every day!
And that all schools would start at the same time.
And all churches and clubs.
And throwing every registered and unregistered vehicle, motorized and unmotorized, onto the streets and avenues, alleys and expressways of our fair cities
Like ants responding to an invasion,
Cramming into our cars,
Careening through our inadequate concrete chutes and gungles like blundering bloodcells in veins, banging around, trying to get on and off the right ramps, dodging each other like soldiers in trenches dodging bullets.
The other cars fly by, some actually at the speed limit,
Creating stationary targets for the others to ram
As they make up their own rules of the road as they go.
And praying all the while that our vehicles hold together with spit and pluck long enough to get us where we’re going,
Witout asphyxiating us,
Without crushing us,
Without killing us,
Without smearing us all over the windshield or the road,
Without drowning us in one of our ubiquitous canals that gulp down whole cars upon entry!
Without incinerating us in faulty wiring fires that explode in flumes of black smoke from our engines sometimes without warning
And give no time or space to pull over, stop, leap away, or try to salvage what we can before the whole car goes up in flames
As happened to Mark’s Toyota on the turnpike:
Singed his tires to the road it did, melted his dash and blackened the whole interior.
All I could do was sign it over to the road vultures who towed it to the impound at the service area, for charges
Without spearing us through our windshields and pinning us to our seats with road debris
Kicked into the air by the dump trucks ahead of us or hurled from an overpass by an unidentified delinquent for kicks,
And get us home,
At a reasonable hour,
In a reasonable condition of health and mind,
For supper with our family,
In time for the blessing,
Day
After day
After blessed day,
Year
After year
After blessed year;
Until someday,
If we survive,
IF WE SURVIVE
IT ALL,
In one piece,
We can escape the madness,
And retire (to South Florida? To North Floria? To Georgia? To Tennessee? My God, where can we retire to where the carnage promises to be any less?)
And our rush ours will end.

Surely somewhere there’s a better world.
And a better way of moving in society to fill our daily needs.
But where?
And do we have to all die to get there?
And if there were, and people learned of it, wouldn’t we all just go there and create the same tangled mess?
I’m distrustful of those magazine articles that rate “the best places to go on vacation,”
Or “the best places to live”
Or “the best places to retire.”
I figure if they publish them, people will go there en masse and the information will soon be obsolete.
Maybe rush hour is just a paradigm for the way we are
And if we didn’t have it,
We’d invent some other, equally obnoxious way to keep our numbers in check;
Maybe we need our misery we go so out of our way to create
In order to justify our continued existence.
When we pull into our own drive or garage,
When we enter our own domeciles,
It is as if we are saying, “Look at me! I survived another game of it!”
Give the man a T-shirt.

The Colonel

In the dark, unfamiliar room I sat with some trepidation at a small desk. I missed my journal. There was only a computer before me. I fingered he keyboard tentatively.
A door suddenly opened. A colonel strode in--mustached, monocled, helmeted, festooned with decorations, and bearing a short riding crop like Patton. I smiled. A condescending sneer formed with a tilt of his mustache as he sized me up.
“Well now,” he began, “you’ve decided you wish to be a writer, eh?”
“Yes, s-sir.”
“Splendid! Honest, humble—progress begins with humility. It so happens you are not alone in your desire, my good man, not alone. Legions end up here for training. Get soft in the belly they do, self-absorbed, that’s what does it—ego, like yours!” He suddenly whacked his riding whip across my desktop. It came from nowhere. I jumped.
“I’ve read your so-called journal,” he scoffed. “Rubbish! All of it!”
“Well, I--.”
“Rubbish, I say!” For an old guy he was very quick; again he whacked the desk, this time so fast it just missed my knuckles before I jerked them away.
“Hey, watch it!” I complained.
“Here’s the thing to do the proper job,” he continued, seemingly oblivious to his near-mutilation of my fingers as he strummed his mustache. He touched the computer keyboard with reverence. Then his expression darkened as he leaned his near my own, and he stared a hole through me like Blackstone. I drew back, but there was no escape.
“Now you’re going to become a writer, boy!” he sneered slowly. And you’re going to do it right now!” (Crack!) “Now type!” (Crack, Crack!))
“Uh, uh—what? What should I say--?”
“Anything, dammit! Anything at all! Now type, you rascal! You novice! You coward! You know-nothing! Type, or I’ll rap your knuckles good!” (Whack whack!) “Type! Type! Type! (Smack, crack, whack, punctuating each word with his whip.)
I reached to the keys, pulled back, reached again, trembling. My fingers fussed and fidgeted and fumbled over the circular depressions, and without realizing what I was doing, I skittered off the following:
“qikd thoiyhaf slu,.k—“
“Good, good, keep on, keep going—“ the colonel urged, warming to the clicking keys like listening to a flowing symphony. I continued rapping, clicking, trying to quiet the whip… “In the dark, unfamiliar room….”
“Ah, excellent! Most excellent!” he exalted. “Keep it going.” I realized my only protection from the crop was the ceaseless click of the keys. To stop, even for a moment, was to risk amputation. “I sat with some fear—“no, I corrected, backspacing, “trepidation—“
“No!” he roared. “Never correct in the heat of fiction, Never! Nevernevernever!” I winced but kept typing as the colonel jumped and stomped his black boots loudly as in a childish tantrum. He fumed. He ranted. He pounded his fists on the desktop in a rage of frustration. Then suddenly the colonel calmed.
“Just type, just type the words like you play a piano,” he smiled--a tolerant, fatherly, patient smile. “My dear man, don’t you understand?” he implored sweetly, “you’re creating something. It is unique. If you revise, if you second-guess yourself, you’ll destroy its spontaneous beauty. Never look back when you’re creating something.”
I glanced up, surprised. “How on earth did you know that I play the piano?”
He totally ignored my question. “Type like you play,” he gestured simply, as if it were the most natural, easiest thing in the world. I couldn't help wishing the computer keyboard were a piano keyboard instead because it was true, I had no trouble making music, ever. I sighed.
“Don’t stop, “ he warned, “Keep the fingers moving… he suddenly darkened anew, tapping the crop near my hands menacingly. “Tut-tut-tut….”
I quickly resumed typing: “…at a small desk….” “That’s right, that’s better…keep the fingers moving, that’s the song of it..” He might have been cooing a lullaby.
“But what will I say?” I implored.
“Doesn’t matter one whit!” He suddenly barked as the smile vanished. “What you say isn’t important. But you must keep the fingers moving. As long as you type, you make words, and the words make images in the mind, don’t you see? The words themselves make images in the mind.”
“But where does the inspiration come from?”
“From the mind.” He fired back without a thought, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“When does it happen?”
“When the mind makes the images. And the mind make the images all the time so long as you keep the damned fingers moving!” Crack! The crop missed my fingers by inches. I typed again.
“Yes, keep the fingers moving. That’s the key, that’s the keyboard, that’s the real secret of writing. One can’t make music without playing; one can’t write without writing. Epictitus said it best: “If you would be a writer, write.” That’s all there is to it. Keep the fingers moving on the word processor, and you will make writings, the journal be damned!”
“A door suddenly opened, then a colonel came in,” I typed.
He peered down, adjusting his monocle. “Ah, right. Haha, good, good. Yes, by Jove, and have some fun while you’re at it, fellow. Dash it all, enjoy the task. Writing should be a pleasure, like pretending, when you were a child.”
I paused to consider this.
“Ah-ah—tut tut tut…” the whip’s tip flickered. “You’re trying to think about it. Bad business, that! Thinking is fine for many things, but it’s deadly when you’re trying to write fiction. Much better to let the fingers just type. Don’t even look at the screen. Just play the keys like your piano…a song, a lovely, sweet song—“
The colonel, despite his bulk, began to sway his arms and pirouette about in circles.
“Get the rhythm going—la, la—let yourself feel the waves flow through you, as when you play a favorite waltz—“
“Excuse me, sir, what is my favorite piece here?”
He stopped instantly, his back hunched up. I realized I’d called back Mr. Hyde.
“Now I suppose that depends on which mood you’re in, doesn’t it, sonny,: Mr. Hyde wagged his head, refusing to rise to the bait.
“Well, yes, I suppose so.”
“To be sure. And so it should be. Your feelings will quicken with the words and moving of the fingers. You will sense the rhythms easily enough.”
Satisfied his point was well received, the colonel moved to the desk and sidled near. “And as in music,” he nearly whispered now,” it doesn’t mean you should never stop. Sometimes silence, a rest, is the most eloquent moment of the song, the silence between tones filled by the mind’s activity, which continues despite the silence, and dreams, and reflects, and anticipates…”
“So too with words. You don’t have to continue them endlessly, pecking along without thought and without pause, but pause here and there. Return the carriage here and there. Let your rhythms of creativity take you to the cadence of the idea.”
I suspected he might actually have something.
“Then when you’ve arrived at the idea’s denouement, hit the period. It’s a good, solid feeling, like a nail’s being well-hammered in. If you think you haven’t said something clearly or completely, hit the semicolon; it’s a good way to restate or elaborate. Or hit the comma, for a breath, or the dash—I love the dash—for a digression—whew!” the colonel dabbed perspiration from his brow.
“You know, I think you have something here,” I admitted. “Let’s see--“ I scanned my manuscript, intending to continue.
“No, no, my good man,” laughed the colonel. We’re all finished here. Next!”
With one firm Crack on my desktop, my work suddenly vanished! I heard a door open behind me. My lesson was over, I realized. I rose to leave.
“Oh, and one small word of advice,” he called to me. “Even though there is little restriction on content today, you really should try--well, never mind.”
“What?” I shouted.
“Nothing, nothing…” With a click of his heels the colonel saluted the newcomer, who had taken my seat at the computer.
“I just don’t know why they sent me here,” the student said. “I’m already a writer. I even keep a journal.”
“Do you now?” purred the colonel with a Cheshire grin, tapping his crop lightly in his palm. I grinned as I left.

The Uppermost Level

This is a multi-level writing. It may appear to be only a uniform level writing, but it is not. It is a multi-level writing.

The writing itself, identified by its words and accompanying punctuation, exists at several levels.

The levels are determined by their paragraph order, or vertical position on the page. For example, there is the paragraph level above this level, which is referred to as the uppermost level.

Under that level is this paragraph level, called the second-from-uppermost level.
And this level is the third-from-uppermost level, and so forth. With a bit of practice, most readers will be able to identify the correct level.

There is one rather frequent problem in identifying the levels: in a longer work of numerous levels, it may become awkward to precisely name, say, material at the forty-second-from-uppermost level. This is especially inconvenient when the item level at issue is actually closer to the bottom, lowermost level than it is to the top, uppermost level.

For example, in a fifty-seven level work, the forty-second-from-uppermost level might be more gracefully expressed as the fifteenth-from-lowermost level, with equal accuracy. The advantage to be gained from such interpolation is obvious in discussions. When one expresses a comment regarding words or accompanying punctuation as, for instance,

“Nice color imagery there in the sixth-from-uppermost, don’t you agree?” rather than “Nice color imagery there in the twenty-first-from-lowermost, don’t you agree?” the gain in grace speaks for itself.

Of course, if the paragraph level at issue is exactly centered, that is, equally subordinate to the uppermost and superior to the lowermost levels, the proper designation for all but the most exact, formal usage is simply “center.” Thus, in the example above (“Nice color imagery there in the sixth-from-uppermost. . . .”), had the material at issue appeared in a twelve-level work, one might simply have said instead, “Nice color imagery there in center, don’t you agree?.” Despite its economy, with perfect correctness and ease.

Now, regarding the horizontal designation of particular words and their accompanying punctuations on the line itself, as opposed to the multi-level vertical designations of paragraphs, the matter becomes much more complex. Since margins and point size, font style and modifications (italics, bolding, shading and so forth) of the symbols create many hundreds of variables which mitigate against precise expressions of position on the line, it is desirable to greatly simplify the designation in discussions of a word or other symbol as being “leftmost”, “second-from-leftmost,” “center” or “fourth-from rightmost,” and so forth. Although this taxonomy is less precise than vertical identifications, it may benefit from a greater facility. As with all learned conventions, practice should enable mastery in a short time.

And finally, In the matter of whether, in expressing position of words and their accompanying punctuation marks, their vertical or their horizontal position should be first expressed, it is more proper and customary in current practice to express the vertical as the first identifier, followed by a comma, then by the horizontal designator. This convention is not strictly necessary since the identifiers themselves infer either a vertical or a horizontal axis, admittedly.. One may locate “center, next-to-uppermost” just as precisely as “next-to-uppermost, center.” However, the vast majority of current usage of “vertical, horizontal” probably makes it the more expected, therefore the more easily and quickly recognized location to the mind.

Phyllis

When Phyllis parted the gauzy curtains covering the front window and raised the yellowed pull blind, she couldn’t see through the panes for the frost. Quickly she rubbed circles on the glaze with arthritic fists and cleared a small clean spot, to which she pressed her eye and peered out intently. Not many cars passed by even on a clear day, but the constant snow since last afternoon had discouraged any traffic. Even the snowplow hadn’t yet reached her road.
But Phyllis was sure the postman would try the route. He had never failed before, no matter the elements. And this morning he had to come. He would come. She needed for him to come. He was coming now. These were Phyllis’ thoughts which repeated through her anxious mind like a chant as she scanned the lifeless fields Miracles did happen. They happened when they really needed to happen, as now.
For a long while she watched, and whenever the small clear spot frosted over, she rubbed it clear again. Though it was nearly ten the the morning, it was as dark as late afternoon.
Still she watched. Then it seemed something changed. Some glow in the east reflected dimly, pulsing from snow to sky, sky to snow. She was sure it was the mail truck, the lights of her lifeline. A plow would have shone more steadily, but the little postal jeep always lurched and started in the rutted, stony road, casting its lights about.
Yes, the jeep was coming. She was sure of it. She had to hurry.
Phyllis donned her worn heavy woolen coat and threw her big yellow knit scarf over her head, tossing it over her neck and shoulders as she forced open the front door. She plucked the letter from her purse and held it tightly as she picked her way across the slick stoop. Her gloves should have been in her coat pocket, but she couldn’t locate them. No matter, she thought dismissively. And she hadn’t taken precious moments to put on boots over her thin white socks, either.. All she had for protection were the cotton socks and her black everyday shoes, and the stoop ice was slick. Why hadn’t she salted it?
“Don’t fall, oh God, don’t fall now!” she muttered. But she could not afford to move with caution. Too much was at stake. Twice she started to slip on the icy steps and lurched to the side and her arms flew out suddenly, but somehow she managed to keep herself aright. She reached the ground beyond the steps and plunged stubbornly into deep drifts, marching across the front lane as fast as she could force her aged legs to move. Within moments her bare legs felt like ice, but she ignored them.
To the east the low glow of yellow headlights pierced the blue-gray, swirling snowfall, and soon the postman’s jeep rolled down the drifting road with a throaty purr toward her lane.
“I knew it!” Phyllis exulted. I knew it was him.”
She waved frantically as the postman reached her box, cracked open the door and inserted some mail, then quickly slammed the door shut and prepared to leave. Phyllis’s exultation suddenly turned to panic.
“No, please! Wait!” she cried to no avail against the elements, still too far away to attract attention.
The engine began to accelerate. The jeep’s wheels spun for a moment, then caught hold and began to move the cube-like vehicle forward.
“No!” Phyllis screamed. “You must wait!”
The jeep had gone perhaps ten feet when it suddenly jerked to a stop, its brakes lighting brightly. Then it began to back up. Its small horn honked an acknowledgement of the awkward figure in the snow in an agreement to wait.
Phyllis’ heart leaped with new hope, and she struggled with young wind to close the remaining distance. Gulping the frigid air in great gasps, her lungs ached. Though she had journeyed only thirty or forty yards, her feet were wet and freezing. Phyllis gave them no thought at all. The letter would be mailed.
As Phyllis reached the lane’s end, the squarish door again cracked open.
“Thanks so much for waiting.,” she gasped, extending the letter urgently, “It’s very important to me..”
“No problem, ma’am,” the carrier smiled. “I’ll see this goes out by noon. But you watch your step getting back, though.” The door thudded shut. The little engine pressed on once more, spinning the snow tires into new channels against the trackless expanse. The road lay somewhere beneath. Occasional mailboxes poked just above the drifts, along with occasional telephone poles and fenceposts, to indicate where the lanes peeled off to other distant homesteads on the lonely stretch.
Phyllis squinted against the stinging wind and watched the jeep’s big round taillights fade into the swirling sheets like frightened eyes, as if she were willing the missive on its way by sheer desperate force, urging its struggle through the mounting drifts which rose to the west. Despite the biting wind that stung at her with tiny, sharp needles, she dared not turn around till she could no longer hear the motor’s soft shuffing over the horizon.
When at last she was certain no sound save the whining wind reached her ears, she steadied herself against the mailbox, turned, and tried to follow her former tracks in the deep blanket back toward the house., freezing and exhausted but relieved.
“Thank you, God,” she prayed. “Oh, thank you.”

The Grass Is Green Today

The grass is green today,
But I have seen it greener..
The grass was yellow last fall drought,
But I have seen it orange and sunset red, streaked with lengthening shadows.
The grass was black on moonless night,
But I have seen it blue by pale moonlight.
The grass was gay and white with Christmas frost,
But I have seen it gray and bleak in winters lost.
The grass is green today,
But I have seen it greener.

Something

A tensing,
A tensing pierces the fog of faces,
Then a pain, growing, trembling—
A shudder,
Then an easing
A backing off—
A respite.
The pain is gone,
The tension is gone,
But now there is—

Nothing.

No breath,
No heartbeat.
The eyes are open, yet
There is nothing,
A sweet stillness, but—

Nothing.

Featureless faces move in fog
Discs with handles appear
Somewhere starts a low buzzing tone, whining, rising—
Explodes!
Heaving, pounding paroxysms wrack muscles, tear tendons, break joints, but
A beep,
A feeble, faint beep, then--

Nothing.

More discs, cables, hands—Wham!
Shudders, shocks, pulsing light red violet blue green white yellow, then—
From the pale yellow fog featured faces form—beep, beep--
Beeps grow louder, steadier—there are eyes, voices, but—
The pain returns,
The tension returns,
The trembling muscles scream, but

Something.