Spring Sunshine ...Finale ...The Rime of the Jaded Professor
A simple coffee interview for the campus newspaper has turned into a heart to heart with one of my students.
Actually, Shannon is more than just another student. She’s incredibly beautiful and in ways I consider her a Muse.
But right now for some unfathomable reason we’re discussing my failed marriage.
It’s one of those slips that’s less Freudian and more akin to what Jung calls synchronicity—as if I meant to be reserved but opened my wallet to pay the tab and all my personal photos fell out.
“Her name was Sylvia,” I find myself saying.
“We grew up on the same street—were high school sweethearts—lived together at university. Eventually, we married and bought an old house in the Annex. That’s when we slowly began to drift apart.”
She’s looking at me compassionately. “That’s so sad.”
“I guess the symbolic end of our marriage came the night our old house burned down—faulty wiring apparently. Neither of us had the heart to rebuild it again. I guess Sylvia felt that way about our marriage too. She took off to Montreal and I haven’t heard from her since.”
She sighs compassionately and stares off into space mulling over my disclosure. A few students come in and recognize us. They whisper conspiratorially, a few tables away.
“I think we’ve been made,” I joke, nodding in the direction of the now-hushed table.
“I don’t want to embarrass you, Matt—maybe this wasn’t a good locale.”
“Would you care for a drink?” I say impulsively.
She looks at me, eyes huge and dark.
“Where do you have in mind?”
“The Roof Terrace of The Park Hotel.”
“I’ve never been,” she smiles.
“Ah well, the view of the city and campus is breath-taking and the atmosphere"— I nod in the direction of our hushed audience, “definitely more subdued.”
We drive to the Hotel in my Porsche and take the elevator to the roof. I order Shiraz and we talk and drink and watch the red-gray sunset.
The Toronto skyline lights up and the car lights along University Avenue turn into luminous strings of pearls.
A warm breeze flutters her hair. In the darkness and candle lit tables I pry open my heart even further revealing my deepest secrets to her.
We talk and drink late into the night and end up at my apartment. The rest of the night is a blur.
I awake as brash sunlight forces itself into the room. She’s gone—fled to home, her dorm or wherever coeds go.
I sit pensive, on the edge of the bed, on the verge of nullity, rehearsing events.
Who am I now, you may ask? —Because I, like Prospero, have many reinventions.
I am the Phoenix.
I build my own funeral pyre—sweeten it with myrrh and spices, only to consume myself and rise again.
I am the Serpent devouring his own tail, spiralling in infinite regress to nullity.
And also I have no idea when I get back to the college if she’ll even be there, or if like Sylvia, she’s already fled.
I gather the lecture notes for today’s class. The paper with the portion I’ll read aloud, lies on my still-unmade bed:
If it is worth while really
To colonize any more the already populous
Tree of knowledge, to portion and reportion
Bits of broken knowledge brittle and dead,
Whether it would not be better
To hide one’s head in the warm sand of sleep
And be buried without hustle or bother.
I’m tempted to slip back under the covers—to no longer rise like the Phoenix and greet the new day.
Just let me once indulge myself and my humour, and defy spring sunshine, I pray...
And bury myself beyond creaks and cawings
In a below world, a bottom world of amber.
This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
@c-squared runs a community witness. Please consider using one of your witness votes on us here
Thank you!
I'm sitting here with my cup of coffee, wondering how I feel about thsi story. I do not mean whether well-written or not. Just, where it took me to.
I know...I do that sometimes myself - I decided to end it where I did because it seemed a more realistic slice of life - we're not always sure in life how things are going to turn out, so maybe stories shouldn't always have the traditional trivium of beginning, middle and end because life doesn't. Life isn't brown paper packages tied up with string - sometimes I don't put a bow on top, lol
A short story I posted today ends at the start of the story...so I understand what you are saying :)
Yes, I read your story and see what you mean - it began in media res and ended the same way. It was a strange feeling of powerlessness - very Kafkaesque :)
I did not expect you to read it - thank you.
you're welcome, Arthur - I enjoyed it
On the Bright Side , The Professor did not turn out to be an Ed Kemper devotee?
ha ha, fortunately not a coed killer :)