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Cleaning Out My Office After Four Decades

 

1.

My wife retired last September,

three months emptying her

office that held twenty-five years.

So I multiplied 3 months X

 

1.6 yielding “get your ass

in gear.” Now seven months before

departure, I’m in inventory

mode to disperse my academic

 

detritus, scientific journals,

paper reprints, even binder clips.

My faux oak desk chocked full

of professorial ephemera,

 

only to find that nobody wants

my shit. Science--relocated

to the metaverse, ones and zeros

the new alphabet, displacing

 

words on sleek, high-clay paper.

Reprints? What are those? Tears roll

as each glossy article flutters into

the grey recycling bin, and

 

these leaves from my colleagues’

hearts and minds crumple together.

Many are inscribed “To Gary with

best wishes,” and I reflux 

 

a teaspoon of regret while asking

Darwin for absolution. Our kind

custodian has moved the bin

into my office. A green walled,

 

windowed monk’s cell, still retaining

wisps of student’s grades and dreams.

But after today’s discard session,

only thirty-two years of academic

 

life remain, books and the small smells

of computer paper and printer ink,

and the thrum of my desktop computer.

Desktop computer? Who owns such

 

a dinosaur? Today’s world is all

about laptops, tablets and smart phones.

Bluetooth reigns, and brain implants are

the next rung on evolution’s ladder.

 

2.

My office is a large living

space, and many times I have

shut the lights, locked the door,

and lay down on the tight curls of

 

nylon carpet. My eyes close, breath

and pulse ease. Silently, I repeat

“hypnosis helps me help myself”.

Five reps later my jaws unclench as

 

I drift, conjuring a boyhood stream

and trout, as the stress--ants emerge

from my muscles, and march out my

feet like SS troopers. My mental

 

images of inept deans and deluded

colleagues: worn old pieces of

graphite, not diamonds from Tiffanys,

despite their peacock struts in the hall. 

 

 

3.

My office, my peace island. Sink

dorm fridge, cans of tinned herring

and smoked trout, a white coffee cup

holds forks and spoons, and rests

 

next to electric kettle and French

press coffee pot. All will move to the

women’s shelter thrift store as will

books on herpetology, animal

 

behavior and fish population

dynamics. Some will go to my last

two graduate students, strong youths

swimming upstream into the rapid and

 

 

complex currents of academe.

teaching, grants and research. The

family photos and award plaques

return home, as will the stained glass

 

fish hanging in my three windows.

(Recognition brings windows,

plaques, and jealousy.). Each

bejeweled fish represents

 

a decade of study and enough

published pages to feed both the

ego and front yard winter fire

pit, sitting on iced rye grass.

 

4.

But is there a mold to recast

my body anew--right arm to

poetry, left to sculpture, legs

to jogging, chest to gardening and

 

fishing? Forty years–fifty-two

percent of a modern life. My

friends say “you’ll love the freedom,

all your hobbies…” They know me well.

 

But when I still myself and listen

closely, I hear the soft grrrrrrs

of the Black Dog just outside my door.