Appleby College - Argus Yearbook (Oakville, Ontario Canada)

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While Waiting in a Bar by Richard Woolley Part 1 (Him) The girl at the bar has long brown hair, an upturned nose, and unbuttoned shirt. Juhe-Ann. You sit by yourself, shunning their eyes, avoiding their silent advances. Why do you come and sit here, torturing yourself? Nightly vigil, sad decay. Are you waiting, waiting for a little peace? My God you have lonely eyes. Part II (Her) I like just to be here where you can ' t touch me. Away from the kaleidoscope colours and your vile smell. Pretty boy, with your pretty eyes, and your pretty friends, you may kiss my - It all rushes so fast, swirls around my eyes and head. I can no longer see my feet - the earth has swallowed them. Five little girls, All in a row. Play nicely now. Long blonde hair, neat new pinafore tied with a bow. Giggle and screech, around they run. But she ' s got dirt on her hands and her pants have slipped to the ground. Boys and girls and merry-go-rounds, make-believe and fantasy I want to go back, to go home, away from your mess and tired ideas. The Queen of tarts has lost her heart. The Knave took it clean away. Part III (Him again) This loud, smoky room — Bring us a drink -- has become crowded now. Yet you still sit all alone, An oasis, the edge of the storm. At last. Sit down. Have you just arrived? I ' ve been waiting. Good-bye lonely child. Time rots all things.

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WISH ON A STAR wish on a star you must think I ' m soft in the head you wouldn ' t catch me talking to the moon or catching raindrops standing, head upraised, mouth open standing in the street catching raindrops you might as well tell me to search for the end of the rainbow or four-leaf clovers you couldn ' t expect me to pick daisies and weave them in a chain for you split the stems, thread the heads and weave them in a chain for you you might as well ask me to write poetry for you. Graham Leggat

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Genius By Andrew Newell In every society, a small number of people have been elevated by the opinion of humanity to the status almost of a different species from the rest of us -- the men of genius. Genius is a word which inspires awe - awe for the inscrutable. We would like to know how the thought processes of a genius differ from those of ordinary men, but the obstacles are tremendous. We are not, after all, completely agreed even as to who is a genius. Some would accord the honour to a handful; others have based their judgement on an I.Q. level that would make genius a fairly common thing in our society. It would probably be best to restrict our discussion to those men who everyone agrees were geniuses, and ask ourselves how they achieved so much. Here our second great difficulty presents itself: the genius rarely leaves any record of the germination of his ideas. To illustrate our point, let us consider the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, possibly the greatest mathematician of all time. His book DISQUISITIONS ARITHMETICAE is considered a very difficult book to read. Since his motto was few but ripe , he never published a work unless it was a perfectly integrated whole. As a result, the contents of his book constitute, Uke Stonehenge, a very impressive monument - but one wonders how it got there. Nevertheless, the genius does leave us the finished product, which is certainly studied to great profit. The great geniuses were prolific: while some distinguished men have left behind a single work to posterity, the truly great had an outstanding output. The task of examining all the art of Michelangelo, the music of Mozart, or the writings of Goethe is appalling in its magnitude. It may be safely said, therefore, that men of genius exercised their gift constantly. Their devotion to their art is complete. Bertrand Russell once said that the thing which impressed him most about great men was their simplicity, a quality seen very obviously in Einstein, for example, who had a total lack of self- interest in the pursuit of his chosen field. Most thoughtful people rebel against the popular notion that genius is another word for sudden in- spiration. It would be wrong, however, to ignore in- spiration completely. A great thinker acquires a feel for his subject, and often he can visualize some new concept long before he can express it in terms that others can understand. One mathematician claimed that in periods of intense concentration he could actually see the fourth dimension. Our language has its limitations, and there is great wisdom in the Buddhist notion that silence is on the road to real truth. The period which probably taxes a genius the most is the time that he must translate his ideas into a com- municable form. To achieve an adequate translation, he must be painstaking to a very fine degree. Einstein admits that the months leading to his completion of the General Theory of Relativity were the hardest in his Hfe. Perhaps one question which may be important in the future is whether or not genius is hereditary. To what extent is it some immutable quantity handed to us at birth? Is the genius of an individual a manifestation of an evolutionary genius, in Shaw ' s words, which tends towards the creation of better men? The human brain seems, from all appearances, to have a capacity far beyond its actual use. Will science find a way to unleash new powers of the mind? Perhaps some new genius of the future will tell us the answer.