Buffalo Seminary - Seminaria Yearbook (Buffalo, NY)

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Y , - -7 -5 -W 7 HONORABLE MENTION ANN ALLAN

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26 SEMINARIA 1944 Space What is space? Really nothing at all-yet to live without it would be imposf sible. For while so full of nothing it fills the mind with many things. And it serves a material purpose as often as does the earth. Thus everyone must have some claim on space and 6nd it useful in one way or another. One way is by flying. Man is not by nature a winged creature, but given the desire and the ingenuity he has made wings for himself. Flying may be his attempt to free himself from the world that holds him, or it may be the outcome of his curiosity about space, for space is a curious thing. It can be blue, gray, white, or black. It holds the moon and the stars at night-the sun by day. And it has no beginning or ending. Perhaps by flying we people of earth are hoping to reach the moon and the stars and to see if there is an ending. Another way is gazing. Windows in houses have come to do more than just let in the light, they are a gateway open wide for wandering thoughts. It is easier to think clearly when one's gaze is Hxed on the sky, for the sky is clear--a vast surface on which ideas come and go, like winds on still water. We love the sky because it shows us what is in our own minds-like reflections in still water. And we find there glimpses of truth-like shadows . . . Even the most practical person has a use for space. He must make buildings that tower into itg he must make fires whose smoke rises and disappears in the sky. To children and to unsophisticated grownfups, the sky is Heaven. Thru the clouds a child can see fthe face of God, complete with a white beard and a kindly twinkle in his eyes. Perhaps the child looks too far, is too romantic, for nothing in childhood is quite real. And space is really nothing at all. -MARGARET NICHOLS, '44 AGE TO YOUTH I gathered the pearls of wisdom from my heavyfladen braing And recalling the years of life and love they had taken me to gain, I showed her these pearls of wisdom sewn on experience's thread, But she preferred the shiny beads and shook her foolish head. '-'PRISCILLA BAssn'r1', '44

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28 SEMINARIA 1944 'I'imu's Pell Hand I was surprised when mother came home tonight and told me that Mr. Zof lonkowski was dead. Somehow, I had always imagined that Mr. Zolonkowski was immortal. He was eighty-seven years old when he died, but he had a kind of vibrant, almost childish exuberance that had given me the impression that he was deathless. There was something about his bent shoulders, thin delicate hands, long white hair, rusty black cap and sharp, twinkling blue eyes that made him a kindred spirit of all who are young at heart. Each time I saw Mr. Zolonkowski, he put me under an unearthly, hypnotic spell. It was not that I did see him very often. Mr. Zolonkowski had an Art Gallery where he sold everything from lovely handfwrought silver pins to soiled birthday cards and calendars, and occasionally I would go there with mother when she took a picture to be framed or to buy some old flower prints. But from the first time I entered the dark, cavernflike room that was the Art Gallery I would go immediately to one pic' ture which stood in a corner that was a little dustier than the rest of the room, hidden behind old gold frames and odd lengths of taffeta and velvet that seemed magnificent to me in spite of their faded condition. It was a small picture, as Mr. Zolonkowskfs pictures went. The frame was not as pretentious as most of his ornate gilt ones. And the picture, I suppose, would never have won a Prix de Rome. But to me, at the impressionable age of twelve, it was the most wonderful, most gorgeous, most eloquent painting of all. Underneath the landscape was a little copper plate with the words The House of Dreams Untold inscribed on it. I did not know exactly what those words meant, but there was something about the large house framed in the golden sunrise, the peaceful cattle grazing and the tall, quiet poplars that stilled a rest' less surging inside me, and gave me peace. There was a certain mystical, clairf voyant beauty about it that held me enraptured until mother called me to go, and a kind of promise of fulfilment of my dreams untold that quieted and placated me when mother refused to buy it for me. It was not very long before my house of dreams became a family joke. But I did not mind, because, after all, in a way, I was wiser than they, for I knew that dreams are the only real things in the world, the only things on which to pin one's hopes, and my picture made me realize what they had known, and forgotten, that in the abysses of one's inner world, everything has a meaning. No, only Mr. Zolonkowski shared my secret. In a way, he was a part of it, the door' keeper of the unattainable house, and whenever I went to his shop for a brief furtive glance at my picture, I had only to look at Mr. Zolonkowski and he would nod understandingly, pull the picture out of the corner, silently dust it off, and beckon to me.