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December 07, 1968 - Image 4

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Michigan Daily, 1968-12-07

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

1

Good morning from a mirror's self

-- or What to do if you have two

By HOWARD KOHN
TIME WAITS, certain that I
can't clheat it, confident that I
can't stay awake all night and
still face it in the morning.
Today has been routine, fraught
with opan-ended tests and close-
minded teachers. Everyday is rou-
tine if you know the difference be-
tween morning and afternoon
classes, between adolescence and
maturity.
I haven't finished what I never
started. If I'd taken the time ear-
lier I could be spending the night
reading the surefooted remarks of

Time, puttir crowning touches
on my bachelor's degree in fore-
sight and insight.
As it is I'm stuck in the library
looking for the fractional parts of
the forces which manipulate our
unsuspecting public. If I can't find
those forces, I'll flunk the course.
(Poor public, there ought to be
a law.)
IT'S GETTING LATE. T h e
library is about to close, and the
sound of searching feet in the. re-
ference room fades away.

My mind thinks of knowing. My
convictions are free,
The darkness hides the cracks
in the sidewalk and the silent
pencils and impotent acorns lit-
tered in the lawn. '
There should be peace here. But
the shadows, smirking in their
artificiality, jump about with false
pretenses.
It would be better to be home
asleep, away from the dark hours
of the night where you might find
anything, even yourself. In the
window of a shop sits a sign in
handwritten letters, "What would
you do if you had TWO?"

Two what? Two chickens in
every teflon pot? Two answers for
every question? Two heavens for
every hell?
Two hands for every clock.
There's still time to finish what I
never started.
MY ROOM IS CLUTTERED
with its past, guarded by walls
where windows should have been
if my landlord hadn't been so
cheap. Maybe I should rearrange
the furniture, move the desk
where the bed is now. But the
creeking noise of wood against

linoleum might awake the people
downstairs.
My minds thinks of cheating.
My convictions are empty.
If I go to sleep now, I'll have
lost my chance. My room is too
much around me. I can't get out
of myself to get into what I'm do-
ing.
This is a cruel jest, fighting the
sweat and nervousness when no-
body woud care if I gave up.
But I want to stay awake now.
Not to finish what I never start-
eb but to seek what I never found.
Outside are the streets of the

public, caught fast in the saving
grace of unrepentance.
(Damn public, there ought to be
a law.)
It is late. The illusions of the
past seem to be the promises of
the future. Soon the day will re-
turn with its push-pull pomerade
which is always distracting and
which always takes so much time.
I HAVE BEEN AWAKE a long
time. I'm shaking and my eyes
stare slightly in their wideopen-
ness. It's strange because I'm not
afraid.

My mind thinks of hoping. My
convictions are sure.
At the end of town there is a
stone bridge over a silent river.
The sun is breaking across the far
bank of the river as I stand in the
middle of the bridge.
My reflection is there in the
water. Two of me? There can't
be. I cross over the bridge.
Looking back I can see my re-
flection, crying in its nothingness.
But I have crossed over and I
have what I sought. The morning
is here and we walk back togeth-
er.
Time hurries away.

I

94C Airtdiljan adgil
Seventy-eight years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan
under authority of Board in Control of Student Publications

420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich.

News Phone: 764-0552

Editorials printed in The Michigan Doily exp ress the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1968

NIGHT EDITOR: RON LANDSMAN

1

On the seventh day.,
they fribbled

--Daily-Jay Cassidy

Lest we forget
what is to come
By NEAL BRUSS Tae Kwon Do, chicks and women, Eliza-
T HAS BEEN a long exhausting year. We beth Kohn the baby,-Robert Tindall, Rev.
learned many things; we will remember Robert Morrison, Robert Williams, Robert
what was said. For sure, there was joy. the K., Robert Baines Johnson, Robert 4
wat aid sFrn sure thiwas isoy. haircuts, 3 mustaches and Robert, I am
Also, great suffering. None of this is to allergic to penicillin.
say that 1968 cannot end too soon.
The year began with Leopold Bloom. It YES I CAN surely positively emphetical-
ends with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and IV, polymorphously and perversely dig it,
Norman 0. Brown. In between, Fannon, yes love is all you need, yes in diversity
Cleaver, Mailer, Dryden, Kafka and Huiz- there is strength, and in banality, wisdom.,
inga and others. Next year, we hope, a bet- Like a paralysis, like a muscle cramp,
ter assault on Sartre's Being and Nothing- a hernia, like a rolling stone all year we
less- have, many of us, clenched teeth against
But in 1968, also, Frank H. Joyce of the pigs, all the pigs, large and small, for
People Against Racism, Eric Clapton of better or worse. An emotion.
Cream, Frithjof Bergmann of the phil- And like a deer standing in the roadway,
osophy department, John Wright of the eyes glued to the headlights coming com-
English department, Dr.. Wyatt of the ing coming in the night, coming with
psychological clinic, Lake Michigan, the bumpers and grill and horn too late, we
house on East University, the apartment have watched ourselves be crushed, clob-
on Wilmott, the Time Detroit Bureau, the bered, gassed, arrested, killed but not dis-
Third World, Descartes' Dream Problem, heartened by the evil pigs we know full
well cannot help but off us.
(The above is for the friends in The
Corrup O t- l Resistance.)
Sometimes we wonder whether it is not
unfair that politics draws on the time we
c ctt r C OG , would like to experience the 15 individu-
als each of us is/are, But still we have
By MARTIN HIRSCHMAN been somewhat political a n d 15 people
nonetheless.
GUESS I WASN'T really such a bad That is how one can be Inextinguish-
11kid before I started school. Ta shwoecnb nxigih
k eersineIthirgrde henIhad.able with the symphonist Carl Nielsen and
But ever since third grade when I hadn't do the boogie with the Canned Heat on
done any of the 54 pages of our arithmetic successive afternoons.
wdrkbook, or fourth grade when I justs
couldn't get started on the Civil War re- AND LET US not forget to welcome to
po parents had to come up to the school Ann Arbqr our brothers from Detroit, the
and the whole bit, and I remember the MC5, and John Sinclair, who, we think,
groaning pit .in my stomach and the gas was a beatnik in our late childhood.
in my bowels that I couldn't release, I Andrea says: a beatnik is a romantic
decided right then that academics must be fronting as a cynic: a hippie is a cynic
the~ ultimate corruptor. fronting as a romantic.
I didn't lie or cheat or anything like
GET IT ON. Get it on. Get it on. Get
that. It really was the flu I had, or the Geoffrey Hartman's "The Unmediated
recurring stomach ache; really that's why Vision," get the gun, get bells, get f
I couldn't do all those multiplications, Mrs. get yourself together, brother, get Brilo,
Oakason, really,geyoreftgtebohgtBil,
akason.nofabitchget a blood test, get it up down all around
Oakason. Son of a bitch. like a seesaw, says the sublime and mag-
BUT SCHOOL is a great teacher and ical lady soul Aretha Franklin, S i.s t e r
now C know one all-nighter yields one dB' 'Reeth. I am searching for my mainline/
paper and can include all the studying I cannot hit it sideways, says the Velvet
intend to do for a passing French quiz. Underground Sister Ray.
In drastic situations, I think "Maybe he ANN ARBOR - When the Michigan
won't mind if I hand the paper in a few Daily is good, it is very good. When it is
days late." Weeks later, I consider "He bad, it is somewhat boring. The staff, how-
might just give me an incomplete if I tell ever, is all right and some people have
him about the time I've spent on the written some nice magazine pieces, which
Daily. Maybe he'll even suggest an incom- Pete has locked. Howard has, with Anne's
plete if I say it right." help, edited some columns and Fred, on
Still, in the back of my mind, in my behalf of himself and the photo staff, has
stomach, in my bowels, I worry. "Suppose, told some good thing. Each week, Sunday
he doesn't take late papers or "What if he Morning reads like a prayer. Tops in in-
doesn't give incompletes." vestigative reporting, clearly the best of all
"I can tell him I did hand in that paper newspapers,
and he must have lost it." Every day one should make sure that one
The roots of my corruption have grown has a little fun. Otherwise one becomes
deep. But in academia a separate, sub- tense, anxious, unable to rest in sleep.

THE LAST CLASS is not so much dif-
ferent from the first. History s t il l
speaks its mind unintimidated by the
claque of students at its door. Literature
still suffers in silence unaffected by the
polenics of professors who think they
have unearthed its meaning.
Maybe our evaluation of the world has
changed. But it would be naive to simply
footnote our formal education. Our per-
ceptions are a function of many things,
sometimes even what is really happening.
And academia does often serve as
only a self-fulfilling fountainhead. Yet
its one redeeming virtue is that it can, in
rare instances, not take itself seriously.
In the spontaneity of class on the
grass or watching a flick for a final there
is still hope that formal education can
liberate itself. (Academic reforms may be
reassuring but they seem engineered by
the same forces which built the present
overburdening structures.)
WHAT WE CAN salvage then from the
morass of this semester, or any
semester, is the lesson of appreciating
frivolity.
From politicians to professors to edi-
tors we seem overcome by what we have
decided is our role in shaping the destiny
of man. We curse and fight and protest
and worry ourselves to the point of
frenzy.

"SUNDAY MORNING" has tried, once a
week, to shift the emphasis from the
weighty problems of an overstuffed so-
ciety to personal feelings and perspec-
tives on our lives.
There are few, if any, specific issues
which all of us should feel compelled to
consider as relevant. There are few im-
personal standards which all of us should
be force; to consider as correct.
What should rather concern us is the
immediate feelings and emotions of those
who know and love us. Only then can we
ultimately understand the dreams for a
better mankind.
To spend all of our time churning in
the incidentals of a fetish society is fool-
ish and sad. To argue about the relative
merits of sitting in the front or back of
a lecture is nonsense.
So we sincerely wish all of us a merry
vacation.
(And if this "Sunday morning" is pub-
lished on Saturday, what the hell?)
-THE EDITORIAL DIRECTORS

Proposition: Your teacher
does e at peanuts too
By FRED LaBOUR So whose fault was it, this wasted time?
I T SEEMS as though there ought to be The kids? "Lazy bums," say the teachers.
"Never want to talk in class."
something good to say about our aca-
demic progress this semester. I mean The teachers, "Can't empathize with
everybody always says it washorrible, they us,' say the kids, "They just drift along
didn't learn anything, they were bored to in their academic stupor and forget they're
death, and the University stinks. But there really one of us."
must have been something we liked. One of us. We think that makes sense.
The problem is that the teachers aren't
The readings, for example. There were human beings who just happen to be a
some good things in those readings. But little older than us. They think they're not
of course we didn't read them because we tudetan Thes think they're
were too busy. And besides, if you hate the ' students and the students think they're
class and the guy who teaches it has the not teachers so nobody makes contact.
personality of a small-mouthed bass who The students allow all kinds of stupidity
wants to read anyway. to go on in their classrooms because the
teacher is a grad student or a professor
Class discussions? Well, we never learned and he must know what is better for us
the names of anybody in the class and than we do. And the teacher looks at his
the others were all pretty stupid anyway. Ph. D. and thinks he must be different
But the three things we did say over the than the kids, sort of divinely inspired, and
three months were so incredibly, bright that he will err significantly fewer times
we could service on their wisdoms without with significantly less serious consequences
listening to anybody else. than the students.
Papers? We must have learned some-
thing from papers. Like how long we could THAT IS WRONG. He is like the stu-
stay up at night and remain coherent, and dent as the student is like him and it Is
what kind of drivel we could pass off as the job of the student to let the teacher
relevant to the course. We recall vowing know what his boundaries of power are
to start the next one early but we always going to be, how far the student will be
seemed to start three days late. pushed before he has had enough.
Exams? Hardly. Exams seemed to follow So 'in order to let the teachers know
the pattern of papers in terms of prepa- they are just like us, human and all, I pro-
ration. "You won't be able to cram for pose that during every class period of every
this one," the guy would say triumphantly. day next semester, every student physical-
"Idiot," we'd say to ourselves, "there has ly touch his professor at least once. I mean
yet to be an exam that we can't get a 'B' walk up to the front of the room and play-
on with three hours of studying. ful jab him in the ribs and say, "Oh,
come on," or at least shake.his hand or
IT LOOKS LIKE maybe there wasn't pat his head,
anything good to say about it after all. The teachers will realize, as will the
Maybe we learned from the people we students, that they are not dealing with
connected with as a result of the courses. a vaporous apparition but a real guy who
Except we didn't get to know them, re- eats peanuts and everything. The class will
member? And we didn't care either, be- relax, people will talk to each other when
cause we're doing all right in our own they don't have to, and life will be rough-
lives. ly 25 times more pleasant.

ft

4

Sunday morning

He and she in the search for times lost

By JIM NEUBACHER
' SAT DOWN in the Mug with my tray and my newspaper and started to eat. My
old girlfriend walked by. Now that's something that doesn't happen everyday, and
I wasn't in the least prepared for it. This beautiful girl, this girl I was still madly
in love with and hadn't seen for four months was right here.
I had a moral crisis, or rather, an ego crisis. I choked out a greeting, and sat
waiting for the judgment to fall upon me. I didn't know what she'd do. She turned
and looked.
She was looking good. She sat down at my table and I got that feeling of

S
t
w

superiority that every man gets when a girl
Look at me.
HE
Well, uh, how's it going?
Well, some better than others. I'll come
out okay in the end. I just hope I pass
French.
I know what you mean about getting
behind. I've been putting in a lot of time
at the Daily and it's.
Yeah, I've been working about 35-50
hours a week over at the Daily. I really
love it though. It's almost like my sec-
ond home.
You mean you don't subscribe?! (Mock
outrage is one of my specialities). You
missed all my pulitizer-winning efforts?
You rat!
I'm just kidding, really. I love working
there. I'm sorta planning on majoring in
journalism, I signed up for 201 next
semester.
I guess I wouldn't like going away for
a whole semester. I don't even like going
home for the summer. I really like it
here. I guess the Daily is the place I'd
rather be.

like that deigns to sit at his table. WOW!
SHE
HI!
Ohwow! really busy. How're your class-
es going?
Me too. I got behind in psych but
otherwise, I'm all set. I really can't wait
for this semester to end. The reason I
got behind in psych is because the depart-
ment chairman gave me special permis-
sion to take an individual studies reading
course. I don't have time to do anything
but read psych it seems.
I read one of your articles in the Daily
the other day. The girl down the hall
showed it to me. I, uh, haven't had the
chance to get a subscription. I . . . where
do you get them anyways?
Well, I .. .
Ohwow! I don't know what to do. I got
the chance to spend next semester in
Germany, in Munich. I could stay with
my uncle and go to school there. I think
I'm going .

ON RE-CREATIVITY

The

last

She was enjoying life. It annoyed me. I almost felt a perverse wish to see her
lost and unsure. I wanted to see her admit she had decided wrong when she left me.
It wasn't a strong wish, just a little point of resentment tucked in the back of my
mind.

Have you seen any of the kids from
home?
Hamburg? Oh, he's in good shape. Did
I tell you he pledged a fraternity? He
really likes it there.
Oh, he's a Chi Phi. Its a nice house. I
went over to see him yesterday.

Oh, I saw Lynn the other day. I see her
a lot. That's about all though. How's
Mike?
Mike!? Joined a fraternity? I don't be-
lieve it. I didn't think he was the frater-
nity type. Which fraternity?

By MICHAEL THORYN
THE TIME HAS COME the walrus said.
Or as one junior sagged at the end of a
night of memorizing: "I'm 15 hours closer to
getting out."
The best thing most students can say now
about classes is that after ten weeks of going,
three weeks of skipping, and time out for va-
cations and national days of strike, e i g h t
o'clocks can wait until after the Bowl games.
But finals must first be weathered. (Fresh-
men note: exam time is not fun time.) It isn't

100 day
the faculty's earnest correcting comes home to
roost. Wise students who don't hand in post-
cards with their Christmastime address may
not find out their marks until mid-January.
Of course, finding out your trimesters' grades
too early may ruin most of the end of Decem-
ber.
But other things can ruin a vacation: Par-
ents who are good for love and money, t,
deadly quest for a summer job, the girl back
home who already has a date for New Year's
because you are a fitful writer.

I

I

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