A PROFESSOR OF
PRACTICALITY...
OR
A RETIRING 'PROFESSOR OF PRACTICALITY' AT
ONE OF THE MANY VOCATIONAL ACADEMIES IN AMERICA
DEVOTED ENTIRELY TO THE TEACHING OF PURELY
PRACTICAL THINGS
NONETHELESS, IN THE COURSE OF HIS FINAL LECTURE
BEFORE HIS SOMEWHAT ASTONISHED STUDENTS,
SPEAKS OUT IN FAVOR OF THOSE DECIDEDLY MORE
THEORETICALLY-MINDED TYPES OF PEOPLE
WHO DO NOT AGREE THAT 'ACTIONS ALWAYS SPEAK
LOUDER THAN WORDS'
1.
My dear students, please do not faint!--but
in closing this class & bringing to an end alas
While some seemingly disreputable, congenital
layabout who--
May come to seem to most folks, like somebody
at whom they should throw rocks!
2.
And yet the "Practical Life"--as I myself
have come to realize only relatively recently--isn't really
all
For despite the thrust of academic studies
here at this, your own dear old Alma Mater-to-be,
--As full of them as the expression "Actions
Always Speak Louder Than Words"
--Please forgive me my dear students but as
a man who has always professed respected for education,
3.
Just what those Great Riddles actually are
In this particular year
--& Even though, from all the unsmiling
& indeed even frowning faces I can see before me now,
I must confess that my entire career here
as a "Professor Of Practicality"
4.
--But what I do know for sure is that suddenly
for some strange reason,
Someone as yet unknown & possibly looked
down upon by virtually everyone around him
Seriously working on the problem!
A Professor of
Practicality, a poem about a retiring vocational school Professor
who towards the end of his life begins to question the purposefulness of
so-called "men of action" & who speaks out in favor of independent thinking
& the value of disinterested research. Earlier version appeared in 1992
in Agni #36. Like many other Of-poems, this poem praises
private values as opposed to more conventional, public beliefs, & it
speaks out in a confrontational &. pro-active way which has something
in common with political speeches & other public orations. (Poem also
has something in common with certain opera arias, too). This Webversion,
© 2005.
'Your
Life Is Your Own Life...'
Home Page of 'The Thesaurus & Other
New Verse'
--or perhaps
unalas!--my long academic career here, I would like to point out
that:
In a so-called "Practical" world in which
"Actions" always really "Speak Louder Than Words,"
virtually
every average, run-of-the-mill, conventionally restless nervous
wreck
with a
mildly problematic but otherwise really perfectly ordinary
motor-tic
Which tends to render it difficult for him
to simply sit still for even just ten minutes in a row
--For example, some shaky character afflicted
by some low-grade, jittery mental condition
endemic to his make-up & closely akin
to what medical experts call "The Fidgets,"
& which
condition keeps him on his feet pacing & re-pacing the floor like some
helpless laboratory rat which has found
itself attached to a treadmill--
May be mistaken by unthinking people for some
kind of totally involved, thoroughly representative
contemporary
"Man Of Action" &/or 21st century Cultural Hero;
even when
feeling exceptionally lively & unusually filled with vim &
vigor--
Arises only occasionally & then in the
main mostly just to get up & sit down again,
primarily
to get a better perspective from which to contemplate his own
navel
But who for all we know, may actually be busy
thinking at warp speed
& solving
some Really Great Riddle Of The Universe!--
that it's
been cracked up to be!
good old
"AVSFDCS"--our beloved "American Vocational School For Dedicated
Cloud-Stompers"--
Where as we all know only all too well, the
curriculum is strictly limited to things strictly practical,
&
where for a long time please believe me I've worked like a dog at fever pitch
& single-mindedly
(Just like you will too, at your own chosen
careers, for most of the rest of your lives after
graduation)
Is it not true that the Universe still remains
full of a great many highly significant but still
largely unsolved Riddles?
suddenly
seems to me at this late date in my teaching career
& even
with me here at long last practically wallowing in
tenure
Not only unintelligent but also quite ridiculously
short-sighted; & besides that IMFAO full of shite!
I suppose
that I too, have continued to go on learning...
& at this penultimate moment in my
long teaching career here
As I stand gazing fondly down at you from
behind this podium in my long white beard
I must confess that I for one no longer have the faintest idea!
I gather that you're somewhat astonished by what I've just
said
(So that Mary Jane, our gifted undergraduate
with Emphysema & whose term-paper
exalts "Industrial Nuts & Bolts" is
alas beginning to turn fuchsia;
While John, our brilliant Graduate Student /the
focus of /whose thesis is
"Recycling Feces," has unfortunately just
passed out on the floor)
Lecturing for year after year to generations
of diligent, ever-so-ambitious, diligent, &
eager-beaver
students such as you, on topics ranging from "How To Merchandise
Even The Very Air" to "How To Turn A Profit
from Boiling Ceiling Wax"
Has really been far too concerned with things
this world considers pragmatic
to permit
me to study much less grasp
Abstractions such as the solving of "Great
Riddles"--whatever those Great Riddles
may in fact actually be today!
I sometimes feel curiously
happy
Just to think that somewhere out there--either
here or there or/either far or near--
There's probably some type of determined intellectual
reprobate,
harmless social
deviate or other type of of obstinate, stubborn maverick
Yet who--with regard to the identification of & possibly even the
solving of those Great Riddles--
Is for the enlightenment of us all
