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ken*againFirst Edition, May 2000
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Boslet Pickles 
by Pamela Boslet Buskin '63
My dad was a pickle guy.
Which is weird because he was such
a fussy eater,
and you wouldn't think a fussy eater
would like pickles.
Well, he didn't like all pickles,
they had to be very particular pickles,
of a certain degree of sourness
and crunch.
Maybe because he grew up in Brooklyn.
"I am seeking a certain pickle,"
my dad told the deli man where we lived now.
"It must have a certain degree of
sourness and crunch."
It was an old German guy in an old
German deli. It wasn't Brooklyn.
"Here. Try this."
No good.
"Here. Try this."
No good.
But my dad was a good customer and
a nice man.
"We'll special order."
They special ordered a lot of different
pickles.
Finally, they got just the right
one, and for a long time,
they ordered them, just for him.
They named it after my dad:
The Boslet Pickle.
Dad was very happy.
On a bitterly cold February day,
he died.
He was just napping on the couch,
and he died.
I had to make the arrangements:
first Beney's, then Bahnhof's—
the funeral home and the deli, for
the gathering after.
Beney's welcomed my dad with open
arms.
Bahnhof's preferred living customers.
"Sorry, we can't do it tomorrow,"
the deli man told me on the phone.
"But the funeral is tomorrow!"
"Sorry."
"But my dad was one of your best
customers."
"Who was he?"
"Mr. Boslet. Remember Bob Boslet?"
"What did he look like?"
"He was tall…" (I can barely get
the words out, he only died yesterday) "and very friendly… and he always
wore a hat…"
"Doesn't ring a bell."
How can this be? What happened to
our small town?
Well, it used to be a small town,
but now it was crowded with all the city people moving out for the schools,
and Bahnhof's was a madhouse, you had to take a number now.
"Please…"
"I'm really sorry."
Click.
My dad is dead,
and now there will be no potato
salad at the party.
I walk back into the kitchen and
tell everyone the awful news.
Everyone is stunned.
We are still sitting there in stunned
silence when the phone rings.
It is the man from Bahnhof's.
"Boslet Pickles! Why didn't you
tell me it was Boslet Pickles?"
They come with the food the next
day,
platters of ham and turkey and roast
beef with little sprigs of parsley,
Swiss cheese and American cheese
and Muenster,
bowls of potato salad and cole slaw.
And a big complimentary plate of
Boslet Pickles.
The pickles sit there on the table,
a sad little reminder of Dad.
Nobody eats them.
Nobody else likes them.
I take one and stand it upright
in the potato salad,
like a little tombstone.
My dad would have liked that.
by John Delin '60
half empty half full
no essential difference
meaningless phrases-
if not for the void inside
there would be no cup
Tao
by John Delin '60
Dewdrops make love
as they bubble and
merge
We look for a cricket
Under painted city-shoes
Below a red fragrant bowl
Slant your tongue
It is the sky
--Fall 1962. Reprinted from Fomalhaut, copyright
1995
Mirrorsby John Delin '60
I await the day when
mirrors are melted
all
When you come to me
not your reflection
and there is no light
to cast shadows
in your eyes
--1962. Reprinted from Fomalhaut, copyright 1995
New York Lyric
by John Delin '60
A slight drizzle
Walking weather
Smell the delicious streets!Pace on
A castle is near
Sense upon sense
I know! I know!But now I must
Swim the acidic moat
Nothing for it but
To go home
I could have swallowed the sun
--1962. Reprinted from Fomalhaut, copyright 1995
Untitled
by John Delin '60
I came with the vesper tide
Buoyant upon climactic cliches
But submerged in trite tragedy
Thus, clothed, I entered your worldI found you on the shore, crowded
A knowing smile my only wish
I crouched and waitedIt is morning tide
My tears like dew
Form a crown in your hair
--1962. Reprinted from Fomalhaut, copyright 1995
Miriam Magazine
by John Delin '60
(Beer-can curtains and a tattle of tin)
You are part of a magazine I'll not subscribe
Yet I receive each issue with a warning:
Reader, you haven't paid your bill
We regret we may have to cancel your subscription
I still read every issue & it is not forced but there
Woman, the curtains are warm & easily bend
I see you 'round the corner through jagged
Partings (eaves) sitting near the trademark.
Child, can you really expect me not to love
You the way you are now?
( A chorus line of wine bottles
Splitting in my mouth with each kick)
Of late there are very few versions
Visions are always plentiful..
If you come back, I'll forget you.
--March 1964. Reprinted from Fomalhaut, copyright 1995
Prologueby Charlie Weidig '62
I imagine I shall love tomorrow,
And love not so mournfully
As now.
For love is exaltation,
And now is but a wish
For joy;
A wish that only gathers
To fall, a broken crust
Of faith.I hold
but cannot grasp;
I sense
but cannot know;
I weep
for a Passion lost.I plead for the wondrous beauty
That stands before me;
Afar;
A beauty spared
For a painful harmony
Preserved,
And wonder if
A fairness, once lost,
Returns.The Bliss is foolishly lost,
And yet I hope.
If desire is not achievement,
It appears to gratify
As much.
If tomorrow finds my hope
And comforts my restless desire,
Today will be not at all.
But now for my anxious love
I weep.
--Reprinted by permission of the author from the Spring '62 edition of ken*,
the Syosset High School literary magazine, Syosset, New York
by Charlie Weidig '62
(based on a theme by the Modern Jazz Quartet)
How often is soft beauty seen and realized,
complemented;
Broken.
Then severed, yet to rise in a crescendo
of complementary dissension,
To a screaming absurdity
access
to a howling Passion.
Then diminished
in a haggled complement
to a striving elegance.Discordant beauty,
softly restored to dominance.
Echo of brutality,
pursued by a creeping tenderness.Then erupts a sudden Panic
resolved to the pattern.
The former dominance responds,
complemented by a throbbing modesty
that is soon to rise above.Stunted beauty swarms,
fades, and returns,
Ushering in a multiform struggle--
resolved into mutual dominance.Rising dissension leads to silence;
Our lives drop out.
--Reprinted by permission of the author from the Spring '62 edition of ken*,
the Syosset High School literary magazine, Syosset, New York
PROSE
- Whose Funeral Is This, Anyway? by Pamela Boslet Buskin
- Babyface and the Blues by John Delin
- Frasier the Lion by Carole Ingrao Tunstall
- Swallow by Peter Van Oort Keers
Whose Funeral Is This, Anyway?
by Pamela Boslet Buskin '63
I am at a stranger's funeral. His name was Danny, and he was the brother of my friend Michael.I hear Michael, his voice breaking, eulogizing his brother, but in my mind, I see only Bob, my own brother. As Michael speaks, I fantasize I am at my brother's funeral. My feelings are confused, intense: sorrow for Michael, sorrow for Danny, sorrow for my own brother, who is still alive.
Although Danny and Bob never knew one another, their lives were connected by a tragic theme. Both had been young men with bright futures. And both would endure something terrible happening to their lives, their dreams, their brains, something that would continue relentlessly for the rest of their lives.
The horror that invaded Danny's brain entered slowly, but once inside, it never left. He was only 15. In spite of everything his family, friends and doctors tried to do to help him, Danny wound up homeless, living on the streets of New York. Over the years, Michael tried desperately to help, but Danny, like so many schizophrenics, would not take his medication. Michael once dragged him kicking and screaming to a hospital; a policeman who watched the scene told Michael that he must love his brother very much.
And then, one ordinary night, Michael received a phone call from a hospital in Brooklyn. Four days earlier, he was told, a Good Samaritan had called 911 because Danny was in some sort of distress on the street. Danny was admitted to the hospital. The hospital did not notify Michael until a half hour after Danny died.
Michael was devastated. The last contact he'd had with Danny was a few weeks earlier, when Danny had called at seven on a bitterly cold Sunday morning, asking for clothes. Michael arranged to meet him, gathered up some warm clothing and drove to the designated corner. He waited for over an hour. Danny did not show up. Michael drove home and put the clothes away for the next time. The next time never came.
So now, at the funeral, Michael is mourning not only his brother's death but also his life. Danny was never jailed, yet he was never free. He remained a prisoner of his own mind until he died, surrounded not by family and friends but only by the hordes of demons from whom he could never escape. He was 42. It is a terrible tragedy. And yet it is over. Danny is finally free.
But Bob, my brother, remains trapped, imprisoned in his own body forty years after his brain was invaded not by voices and apparitions but by shards of bone and clots of blood. Unlike Danny's, Bob's tragedy didn't take years to develop; it happened in an instant as he was driving back to college after an afternoon at an auto race. And another family was shattered by a phone call from a hospital on a perfectly ordinary evening.
A Buick had slammed into Bob's Triumph and sent him spinning into a coma in which he remained for a year. At last, agonizingly slowly, he began to respond. We were overjoyed and had high hopes; after all, at the time of the accident he was only 18 and an athlete, a sprinter who was used to pushing his body to do more, go faster. And Bob, when he was finally able to communicate (at first, by blinking when we'd point to a letter on an alphabet board I made and, much later, by speaking in the barely intelligible voice that he still uses), had high hopes, too. He said, with great determination, "I'm going to walk again." It hasn't happened.
It's been many years since he's talked about walking. Now he sits in his wheelchair in a nursing home, skeletal, slumped over, shaking. His doctor wants to insert a feeding tube into his stomach because his throat muscles are atrophying and he chokes on his food. He refuses. "No tubes," he says over and over. "No tubes." Then, slowly: "It's been a long time." I explain to him what might happen if he doesn't get the tube put in. "No tubes!" He is adamant. I don't think he wants to die, but I think he's ready for it. And then, again: "It's been a long time..."
And for the first time in the forty years since his accident, I start to cry in front of him. I sob and sob, embarrassed as the doctor watches silently, uncomfortably. Bob reaches out and grabs my hand with his shaking, twisted one. "I'm still here," he says. And maybe that's why I'm crying.
And maybe that's why I'm crying at the funeral, too. Although my heart breaks for Michael, I know that Danny's pain has ended. Now Michael can truly grieve for his brother instead of agonizing over where he is spending the night.
I, of course, know exactly where my brother will spend the night, this night and every night and every day until he dies.
by John Delin '60
In the spring of '64, I was working a day job for night money and met Leah at night. She was Lisa right out of the movie "David and Lisa," certainly physically. Leah had medium-long black hair with bangs and was almost chubby, but not quite. She bared her midriff proudly and her body was solid. We had a brief mind-bending fling of which I remember little—I was drunk and stoned much of the time. Living at home and crashing in the Village, I decided to get an apartment in Brooklyn Heights—I needed a crib to woo my Bronx Bagel Baby hippie. But I never got the crib and I lost her. I almost got drafted and after that decided not to get an apartment for a while. She wandered away and I went upstate to Binghamton on weekends and met other neurotic women.
I couldn't afford a place and neither could my friend Dan; we decided to room together again as we had in Beat, Black Binghamton in 1961. Dan was and is a musician. He plays mostly by ear: piano, organ, guitar, harmonica or anything else he fancies. He's also a boxer and runner. And after many years, he got an English Lit degree from Columbia. He is white. Dan plays gospel music for black churches and is also a court officer who packs a gun on Long Island—the day job. If any white man has 'soul,' it is he. Forget the famous white bluesmen: Dan is the very best though few know it.
In '64, Dan would go to Harlem, looking for Babyface Lindsey—a legendary blues singer and harmonica player. He had met Babyface in Morningside Park and they jammed, so for a while he haunted Harlem. Babyface had told Dan he lived in the Bedford-Stuyvesant part of Brooklyn. Then he vanished. Dan wanted to exchange more riffs with him.
Dan and I looked for an apartment but never found one. One night he called me and asked me to go with him to Brooklyn to find Babyface. I wasn't sure the man even existed (Dan is a dreamer and I thought maybe he might have only seen him in his sleep). I said, "Where? Brooklyn? Bedford-Stuyvesant?" It was, but I was not afraid; I went everywhere, I was naive; plus I was physically very imposing though I dressed like a 'beatnik.'
We drove to Brooklyn in Dan's old Willys. We parked the car somewhere and set out on foot. It was very dark with few streetlights. This area was an urban nightmare, not safe for whitey or anyone else. Dan played his harp and I drank wine from a paper bag after I did a joint. We just kept walking. We went to a housing project where Dan thought Babyface lived. We knocked on a door and heard, "Don't open it—white people out there." This went on for a while, everywhere we went. We were both shunned and feared as 'the Man.'
We were walking down a street and suddenly, from a distance, and then getting closer and closer, came the blues from a wailing harp. Then a small, middle-aged figure approached.
"It's Dan, my man! Wow, man. I can't believe you folks is in this neighborhood."
"Babyface. Hey, how are you?"
I said nothing but gave Babyface a taste of my Gypsy Rose wine.
We walked down the street while they played the blues. Babyface took us up to Big Laura's. By then I was really twisted, but feeling good. Big Laura was a madam or maybe an aging whore and she lived with a guy named Slim. They were friendly and we drank wine. Babyface and Dan jammed. I faded out into drunken blackout, blissfully. Live blues. Maybe the best blues. Or just blues. Never recorded. But I was there to write all this down, and now I have at last, in the year 2000.
by Carole Ingrao Tunstall '60
The definition of the word "legend" is: "a story handed down from the past, especially one that is believed but somewhat unverifiable." The story that follows is recounted from memory, but the facts contained were verified by the Orange County Register, Santa Ana, California, on July 11, 1972, in an article dedicated to an extraordinary lion named Frasier.
In the 1980s, Camp Frasier was a summer camp located at the rear of Wild Rivers' Water Park in Irvine, California. The camp had been associated with Lion Country Safari, a wild animal reserve which had previously occupied the property. Camp Frasier was named after Frasier, a 20-year-old Mexican circus lion who was put out to pasture at Lion Country in the early 1970s. There, he was free to roam among the pride while we humans drove through locked in our cars.
By the time Frasier was donated to the reserve to live out the rest of his days, he was a pitiful sight to behold. The years had taken their toll on poor old Frasier, who was best described as lean and emaciated. The most obvious sign of age and dissipation was his tongue which no longer had any muscle control and just hung out of his mouth. Poor old Frasier...or so everyone thought.
Prior to Frasier's arrival, Lion Country was having a difficult time cultivating an atmosphere conducive to reproduction: their lionesses did not choose to accept the males in their pride. The ardent advances of the young, virile, male lions were consistently proving to be in vain and altercations between the sexes were not infrequent. In our world, candy, flowers and a candlelight dinner may work wonders, but at Lion Country the lionesses were just not buying the attentions or intentions of their suitors. The future of the Lion Country Nursery looked grim as there were no prospects of cubs being born.
Enter Frasier, the 20-year-old, dissipated and emaciated lion whose tongue muscles did not work. It wasn't long before the officials at the reserve noticed a difference in the behavior patterns of their lionesses. Imagine their elation when it became obvious that one or two were even in a "family way." Lion Country was finally going to have some cubs for their nursery.
By now you may have guessed that the lionesses just lov-v-v-ed good old Frasier. It was easy for imaginations to run rampant when Frasier was frequently seen walking with the support of two lionesses, one on each side, as he was not steady on his feet. So enamored were the lionesses that Frasier's dinner was fetched by his admirers and placed in front of him at feeding time. It became obvious that a team effort was in progress to save Frasier's strength and treat him like the King he really was.
Frasier sired 30 cubs during his first year on the reserve. This was documented by Lion Country and the reporters who came to observe him in the hopes of discovering, for all mankind, the secret of his success.
It was not uncommon then for visitors to go to the gift store on the reserve and purchase a bottle of Frasier's Vitamin Pills for someone they cared about. But now, after 28 years, there are very few reminders of the legendary Frasier. Up until the late 1980s, when cattle roaming on the property knocked it down, there was a white cross, high on the hillside, which was visible to motorists from Interstate 405 at Irvine Center Drive. This grave marker was a token of the high esteem in which Frasier was held and proof of the affection of all who shared this experience with him. Frasier, who was the equivalent of 90 human years of age, will be remembered in awe.
by Peter Van Oort Keers '62
It was on the unseasonably mild morning of Saturday January 1, 2000 that I first became acquainted with the strange case of Mr. Simon Swallow. It was shortly after eight o'clock and I was strolling up the Central Park side of Fifth Avenue when my attention was arrested by the sight of a gentleman, not much more than four feet tall, who was gesticulating to me from just within the Park entrance directly across from 72nd Street. The sidewalks and streets of the City were, with the exception of the occasional cleanup truck and delivery van, virtually deserted in the aftermath of the prior evening's New Year's Eve festivities.
I was inclined to give this gentleman a wide berth, so incongruous was his entire aspect and bearing as he stood there in an Edwardian frock coat which would have been stylish fully a century ago. His monocle, freshly cut carnation, silver handled walking stick, pomaded hair, and waxed mustache were, however, too much for me to resist and I found myself ineluctably drawn to attend to his overtures.
My incredulity was intensified as I approached this singular being and recognized the distinctive and unmistakable features of Mr. Simon Swallow, who, alas, had, somehow, become miniaturized. Whereas I had known him as a very large man, standing fully 6’ 3” in height and blessed with a commanding bearing, this titan of technology and commerce now measured no more than 4’2” and all of his dimensions had, in fact, been reduced to precisely two thirds of their previous size. The transformation was, of course, rendered even more bizarre by the anachronistic costume and persona in which he was now encapsulated.
Recognition is, perhaps, a term which requires some clarification in this particular instance. Simon Swallow's form and features were familiar to me, but not as a consequence of any prior immediate or direct acquaintance with him. In sharp distinction to a personalized relationship, I was familiar with the image, rather than with the actual substance of this renowned figure whose presence on television, in newspapers and magazines, and on billboards seemed, at times, to be ubitiquitous. This gentleman was clearly a force of the first order. As the scientific eminence who had been responsible for the translation of "Virtual Reality" from theory and concept into a fact of everyday life, he was among our nation's most honoured citizens.
Without ever leaving the friendly confines of one's residence, it was now possible to spend two luxurious weeks in Hawaii during the dead of winter for a fee equal to around 40% of what an actual trip might once have cost. A fortnight's visit to Paris in May with accommodations at a five star hotel; casting oneself into the Bogart or Bergman roles in Casablanca; participating as an Olympic athlete; or undergoing the experience of being born, falling in love, or of dying; all of these options, and hundreds of others, were now accessible upon demand due to the offices and ingenuity of Simon Swallow and his associates at the Zentropa Corporation. The previous epoch, during which Zentropa had been run by financial wizards such as Alexander Drum, was now becoming a distant memory, although, in point of fact, not that many years had passed since Drum's retirement.
Such in brief compass, were the antecedents of Mr. Simon Swallow's present predicament. Of more specific relevance, as I was now finding out, Swallow had, over the course of the prior eighteen months, been experimenting with an extension of the Virtual Reality concept into Time Travel. Thus it was, in adherence to that most ambitious objective, that he had recently embarked upon a voyage to the London of 1901 in order to attend the coronation of Edward VII as King of England and its dominions. These were the essential facts which were related to me as I found myself face-to-face with a truncated version of this inventor and entrepreneur as the New Year bid a hearty welcome to all of us.
The events which followed my initial encounter with Mr. Simon Swallow were, if only from my own perspective, no less curious than the account which I have just rendered. Following our conversation, I accompanied him to the Zentropa Corporation headquarters, at 277 Park Avenue, where he was examined by the medical staff.
Aside from the obvious fact that he was now, in his truncated incarnation, no larger than a young boy, and that his knowledge and understanding of the specific physical and mathematical principles underlying Virtual Reality had entirely deserted him, the doctors observed nothing of an irregular nature. Swallow was pronounced to be entirely sound in body and mind. He was discharged at precisely 11:47 A.M. with the appropriate certificates firmly in hand. We exchanged cards and promised to keep in touch.
On the following Monday, January 3rd, Simon Swallow was redeployed by Zentropa as a bicycle messenger at a small fraction of his former compensation. The media showed some initial interest in this strange case, but the general public had become quite inured to bizarre happenings, and, as a consequence, it was quickly forgotten and my new friend was able to resume a normal life without experiencing any of the intrusions, which had once been the lot of fallen heroes and other American icons.
His equilibrium once regained, Mr. Simon Swallow, formerly the Master of Virtual Reality, now refocused his energies in a more pedestrian vein. By September of that year, he was directing a Zentropa subsidiary, staffed entirely of undersized bicyclists, none of whom stood more than 4’2” in height. It is this group, which consists of Swallow and his acolytes, who have revolutionized the vehicular messenger services industry throughout the metropolitan New York area. The streets are far safer now and, more remarkably, the Edwardian costumes, in which these bicyclists are invariably attired, have become the new vogue for the City's sophisticates.
--Reprinted by permission of the author from Metropolitan Visitations, by Peter Van Oort Keers, Vantage Press, 1997
