The Glacier
Issue Two
Winter 2023

MEETING THE BLIND BORGES

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.
Jimi Hendrix Borges

The original is unfaithful to the translation.
Charles Barkley Borges

for HH

I have often bragged about meeting blind Borges when he drove up from Michigan State, where he was doing some visiting gig, to receive an honorary degree at Alba where I was a student. But I didn’t bother to meet him.

I just discovered my Spanish prof, Hilda Hoffman, died at age 92, outliving Borges by 5 years. I am sad that I stopped sending her Christmas cards, since I was one of only 144 students she guided through their academic careers. She died alone in the Masonic Home. No survived by.

Hilda got wind of Borges blowing up from Lansing and said we must do something! I am riding with blind Borges in his sophisticated air-car thinking about Hilda who never married and was built to play nose tackle, who taught me a thing or three about Borges and Lorca and Lope de Vega whose name made me giddy and thus I spoke it more than necessary—my hand rising to gesture as I spoke: Not as good as Lope de Vega! It reminded me of the name of a Dominican beisbol player whose trading card I once owned. A Rookie Star who faded back into the minors. Who decided what players got to be rookie stars?

92! Blind Borges swaying in cap and gown up the aisle of the gym, too frail to speak in public, resembling a priest who just wanted to retire but they kept trotting him out due to a shortage of priests, a dearth of rookie stars in the pipeline—Father Mike smoked dope with us, then married my classmate Carla Bohinski after ditching the vestments. What job did he find to pay the bills?

I could've gone to meet Borges at the small reception of invited guests. Invited by Hilda Hoffman, blitzing the sleepy small-town college with Borges! Hilda, who kicked my ass with Spanish, despite her awful accent. Had she ever left the country to habla español? Instead, I ducked out for a date with Tanya, a heavily mascara-ed freshman whose name may not have been Tanya. We had nothing in common, but she was a Tanya doll in her beauty, and would I ever have the chance to date a Tanya again? What did we do on our date? Sip milkshakes out of the same cup? I have no memory, just blind Borges swinging the incense holder with his agnostic views.

I slept with one of Jim Morrison's (many) old girlfriends—this one wrote a book about him and consulted on the movie, but I did not touch the hem of the garment of blind Borges. How could he walk unaided? When I walked down the graduation stairway lined with faculty members, I tried to hug Hilda. but she blocked me away. Good for her, damn it. I probably reeked of pot, given the State of my Union then. Where was the stoned priest when I needed one?

I did my thesis comparing Lorca and Whitman back when being gay wasn't part of the narrative in those books, or maybe it got lost in translation. My mother is blind and hanging on at age 91. Borges had his mother to help him out for a long time, pre books-on-tape, which keep my mother alive. We're all blind—shit goes on, and we miss it.

Was that Borges in that Cadillac? I liked odd Borges and so did Hilda. We smiled over him as if we both knew something none of the other (4) Spanish majors knew, and that may have been true, though Kate and I dated briefly. Awkward in that small class. Briefly was my life back then, unable to whistle or snap my fingers, roll my r’s.

Borges, I'm sorry for thinking—what?—not thinking it was an opportunity exceeding that of the Jim Morrison affair?—oh, you remind me of Jim, she'd say. How? I'd ask, How? His poetry, self-indulgent. He seemed like a total asshole. Hilda woulda kicked his ass. She would have whacked his pee-pee for his smug sneer.

Hilda, I'm looking at your photo in the obit. You, who brought Borges to Alba College. Who liked a good pork chop down at the Main Café. You sat on the Zoning Board. You kicked a lot of ass for a woman in your time. I didn't write any of this on the unsent postcard I found partially addressed to you (and even stamped) from the time I was in Mexico translating myself out of another disastrous relationship.

Kate, why'd you give up on me and Borges? Why didn’t you trust Lorca? I was enamored of upside-down question marks: ¿¿ 144 question marks on your grave, plus one more for Borges, swaying up the aisle, bent by age into question. What is the punctuation mark for regret? Getting a smile from Hilda was like escaping The Labyrinth. Lope de Vega Lope de Vega Lope de Vega.

JIM DANIELS’ latest poetry collections include Gun/Shy, Wayne State University Press, and two chapbooks, The Human Engine at Dawn, Wolfson Press, and the forthcoming Comment Card, Carnegie Mellon University Press. His new fiction collection The Luck of the Fall, Michigan State University Press, will be published later this year. A native of Detroit, he lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.

BACK

ISSUE TWO HOME