Ruminate Magazine: Faith in Literature and Art

Dear Professor,

Hello. This is Lenard Beesman from your modern literature class. You do not know me well. I always sit near the door. I have brown hair, long fingers, and shoulders that are both broad and boney. I am writing this letter to inform you that I am dropping out of  school; yes, even now, six weeks before graduation.

And no, this is not a cry for help. 

You seem like the right one to receive this letter, having read my critiques and therefore knowing my sensitivity to dreary aesthetics. You see, professor, I am leaving school because I hate college classrooms, yes, the physical classroom. I hate that college classrooms all look alike, with indistinguishable furnishings. I hate how seatbacks creak and squeak only during tests. I hate how one overhead projector sits useless in the corner of  ten million classrooms. I hate shufling feet. I hate mold on ceiling tiles. I hate all of  these things and more.

I repeat; this is not a cry for help. Let me explain.

I have sat in windowless classrooms on winter nights and wondered if  I may, in fact, be in prison.

Yes, professor, prison—Lenard Beesman is doing time.

Consider the four cinder block walls coated in thin, white latex, the buzz of  fluorescent lighting, the grey, plastic trash can by the door, consider the paintings that do not hang on the walls; it is all a bit confining. As are the desks, which I have called shackles, which are in direct opposition to my lengthy physique, and to my left hand with which I write. Leave it to the politically correct to snub the left handers.

I have passed time in your classroom, professor, with my bic pens, taking note. I have taken note of the smells and of the small collections of dust on the white, tile floor. I have kicked at the dust with my heel. I have blown at the dust with my breath. The dust has stuck to the underside of my bag on several occasions, and that is such a nuisance. Dust is but dead skin, you know.  

I have passed the time in your classroom, professor, drawing caricatures. I have drawn scores of caricatures. To draw caricatures you must keep your head down and watch from the corner of your eye. I have kept my head down and drawn caricatures of professors and of my classmates and even of myself as a caricature drawing caricatures of  people seated near me. I have been caught once in this act, by Basil, the Palestinian baseball pitcher. He soon after put his fist to the top of my skull. He called it a donkey punch.

But all this history boils down to one fact, professor, and that is my leaving your classroom. I am leaving behind the petty little battles that are waged. Take, for example, the simple act of seating oneself in a desk -- it has been reduced to a crude, territorial contest and is an embarrassment to everyone. Even I have become competitive in this passive-aggressive game, and I am not much of  a gamester. 

I prefer the back row, and that is no secret. I enter and quickly take the blue seat nearest the door, across from the light switch cover and under the fire escape route. You have sometimes given me little errands to run because of  my proximity to the light switch. You have asked me to flip off the lights before a movie is shown, or close the door because of hallway clamor. Time and time again this door shutting has garnered sighs from those the door is shut upon. Time and time again their sighs were bothersome to you, I think.

I have made it my practice not to sigh. No, I have done my share of  sighing, and I feel the response elicited from a sigh is not something to be after. Pity is not something to be after, professor.

Rather, I am after my seat in the back row. I am after the power the seat affords, the way I can see the class and they cannot see me. The way I may, if need be, pick at my nose or ear and not feel the weight of so many students sighing around me. “Oh, he’s got a wax finger,” they would say. I have heard them say such things about ear pickers, and I have felt a hearty stew of pity for them. The stew of pity is churned by a bent old woman huddled on the underside of a great ridge. Under the ridge is a small concrete box where the woman lives, an outcast from a society of people who have grown numb and ferocious towards pity and regard it alongside manipulation as a terrible fault to stew.

I cannot say that manipulation is something I don’t admire. My mother and her mother before her were manipulators, and I’ve done my best to avoid manipulating, but I feel I have a sort of knack for it, and I make it my duty to stick to knacks when I can.

I have manipulated the students who steal my back row seat. I have stood over them and made a great deal of fuss, although not aloud, about my seat and the power it affords. I usually bend over them and rub my long, knotty hair until it begins to fall out. “Ah-ha, how do you like that?” I want to say. Of course they relent, feeling my sinewy hair on their necks and also seeing that I am serious about my seat.

There are so few serious people these days that they are taken very seriously when they are.

I don’t know if you have noticed these problems, professor, but I have. As you can tell by now, I have done a great deal of noticing. For upon entering classrooms I am prone to looking about.
And in looking about I have noticed classrooms set up with rows of desks. I have also seen classrooms set up with rows of  tables and squares of  tables and circles of desks but never circles of  tables. And I have sat in my back row seat, cracking my knuckles, speculating how much different your particular class might be if we were not in rows but in a square of tables, for I am told by my classmates that such squares of tables foster student participation, and this is interesting to me.

Why, on many days I have wondered if my participation was cutting it. Had I responded to questions or comments at all during the semester? Had it counted when I made that cutting witticism on the second day of class, or do jokes not qualify? And if they don’t, could I get in the act with a late semester rush of  queries and comments, or would the professor merely say... “Well, he didn’t desire to participate; he was only doing it for the grade.”  

Ba!—but what does Lenard Beesman know? I am distracting myself! 

Sometimes I wish I did know nothing. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have lofty ideas of classrooms. Sometimes I wish I never knew anything but dullness so that normal would be both dull and par and extraordinary, so that everything might just be, and I could go on learning in such places.

And yet, life hasn’t always been this excruciating. Did you know that, professor? I do indeed remember better days.

I remember ages five through ten, when I spent whole days in a single classroom, learning colors and numbers and letters. I remember the classrooms were full of  brilliant spectrums and maps and charts and other things, tied to strings, spinning above my head. I remember the faces on the wall, in the cartoon collages, the faces of America’s first heroes, of men with great ideas, great religion, and excellent facial hair.  

And it wasn’t just the decor; it was my wonderful desk, filled with artistic implements and paper. It was the toys and gadgets stowed away in the back. It was the paper space craft controls that I taped to the inside of  my desk so that I could hit a single button and leave whenever need be. I remember being found once, crawling on all fours, from my desk to the water fountain. I remember saying that I remember nothing. It was a freak shift in space time.

And it wasn’t just the desk; it was the line of  wide paneled windows. I remember sitting by the window, watching the November leaves fall.

I have seen the earthworm on the wet pavement. 

From my desk I could watch the sun’s halo, still, behind the passing clouds, and one time I bore witness to a solar eclipse through a simple cardboard viewing device. Those are moments within moments. Those are memories transcending memory. 

But now I know the great, dark evolution of classrooms. I know about the mutations.

After certain grade levels, the walls get less colorful; the windows get less accessible; the desks get smaller and smaller, and soon, the desks are not yours for a year, or a month or even a week, they are up for grabs. And the spinning letters and numbers disappear, and the portraits of our heroes vanish too, and when you least expect it, you look around and find yourself in a sterile room, with a dry erase board, and no windows, and sometimes it seems as if the cherished ideas of great heroes are ignored and we only study weaker, belligerent ideas from sometimes heroes, who laugh at religion and act as if they themselves were God.

This is a fact: Some classrooms do not have windows. These are our college classrooms, professor.

I suppose, at this point, that you are disagreeing with me. I suppose that you are reading this and thinking that I am a quitter, and that if  I leave the classroom, I go to face a world with even lamer realities. “The back row is nothing,” you might be thinking. “The light switch covers are nothing. He won’t last out there. He’ll come back for the degree,” you’ll tell your colleagues.

Well, I have confronted these thoughts as well. I have pondered the loss of familiarity. I have studied the philosophies of  success outside of the classroom, the philosophies of  scholars such as yourself, the philosophies of  pancake flippers, burger flippers, and finger flippers. And yes, I do admit to being trepid about this move away from our campus. But it is a move I must nonetheless make.

For, “What is a classroom, if not a great discussion?” (I am quoting you from two weeks ago, as we opened to Ficciones.) And I say you are right, professor. Like a church without people is no church, so a classroom without conversation is not a classroom. I like this idea very much: discussion is a classroom and discussion can be had anyplace. 

And so I leave, to pursue the movable feast of intelligent discussion. I will be off, in my car, in search of museums, cafes, and all of the small press consortiums this country has to offer. I will drive for the grain mills, the iron mills and the janitor’s closets. I will go town to town, interstate to highway, washing my hands and sipping tea over new ideas and new perspectives, leaving behind me the rows of desks, the circles of chairs, and that boy two seats to my left, who everyday sat down and promptly removed his sneakers.

But I do admit one fear, professor: That in driving about searching for new settings, I may grow tired, and the movement itself will become just another oppressive constant. That I will begin to grow angry and sick of eating with foreign utensils and sleeping in the unexamined beds of unexamined people. That change will never change and that flux will never flux to the point that I may want to stop and breathe. And if  I stop and breathe I may become comfortable, and I may end up right where I began, with a desire for a quiet classroom debate! 

Ah, well, I am not one about whom people say, “He’s mature for his age.” No, Lenard Beesman has always had to experience and decide for himself. 

So, Professor, please do no take any of  the above assertions personally; for it is the room that I loathe and not you; I think that point has been made. It is time for a cultured change. This letter should be passed through the academic ranks to learn from. And please don’t publish or grade this epistle, no matter how insightful or poignant you may find it. My martyrdom must remain quiet if I am to take this journey seriously.  

So I must leave now, before my gripes destroy me. I must leave before I end up old and bent and stewing barrels of  pity for myself and for crews of people just like me—people who yearn to move about but don’t because that seat in the back row, closest to the door, next to the light switch cover is so, comfortable.