Life in the Mind

by Moshe Dann (March 2014)

Opening the window, he listened to the grinding of a mechanical street sweeper and an argument between a policeman and a driver who had just received a ticket for parking on the wrong side of the street. An early September Indian summer day, Howard thought, as whirling metal brushes scraped the street, leaving the asphalt black and gleaming. Leaves were beginning to fall from slender trees shimmering in the morning sun, traffic moved slowly along Eighth Avenue and beneath, as if subconsciously, the distant rumble of the subway.

Nine-0- three, Howard looked at his notes.

Howard looked at his shoes. As a child, he was expected to shine his shoes before going to school. It became a habit that set him apart, a sign that he was meant to achieve, a mark of distinction. Still in grad school, he had married a woman of appropriate social standing and parental approval, an early romance that withered after two children, reality and the feminist movement. He remembered her scowls and thorny silences that grew between them, a sense of unalterable destiny. Renata, he thought, redeemed him from bitterness and disappointment, a passion that rescued him from regret. Now grown and independent, his children would survive as best they could, he thought, trying to make sense of themselves, searching for their own paths in a bewildering world.

he said, handing the file to Howard.

Howard looked at his arm, his legs weakened by standing, his office door still slightly open, waiting for someone to enter, trying to center.

But we are civilized, educated. We love Beethoven and Brahms. Our cities are filled with churches, our libraries with books. We have laws. Loudspeakers are calling names.

I do not understand. I do not.

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