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27 LASKA P.J. LASKA REFLECTIONS FROM THE SHOP FLOOR The meaning of unreality is hidden in all the forms of the world. What a mystery! What a problem! What a headache! Everything meaningful is postponed, and the formula that cripples daily postures and presents itself as a healing balm. Ha! what does it all mean? The pay increases, and so does the load I'm carrying. There used to be six of us on the floor; I'm the last one. After me, what? Any way you look at it we labor under bad odds. Each case is different, whether it's a lost eye, a bad liver, or a severed hand. The abuses are no longer painful. And the possibilities of deception are infinite. Holidays are no escape. The masques of unreality, reinforced by fear do not rest their defenses. Everyday there are new interpretations of what happened the day before when nothing happened. The unreal car sits in the garage. The unreal furnace cuts on and off in the night. In solitude the silences of unreality are unbearable. And in the morning, the joy of greeting is paradise prevented. 28 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW GRANDMOTHER MARY I tried to see her face running through fields at rabbit's pace; all I ever saw were lines of age and illness, the weary asthmatic cough in dog days of August, and the crying sometimes at night; rising next day she would cook breakfast and talk of old times in her village near Novozypko. She tried to go back once, with all six kids, after the First World War, when Alex died in a car wreck and the bank took away the farm. She didn't understand the civil war between the Reds and the Whites. She appealed to a Charity; they contacted a sister who sent her a telegram she never forgot: "living in caves and holes in the ground— if there's a crust of bread in your hand don't come back." 29 LASKA INTIMATION OF DEATH IN ARIZONA AT THE HANDS OF THE AVENGING INDIAN The dark lobby of the Geronimo Hotel, like Plato's cave, casts shadows of unreality. Geronimo, carbine on knee, squats above the Christian Science writing table. Below, the TV flashes and the old warrior's scowling face appears as background ad for a credit card. Then, in the dim light the silent residents of better days see the wrinkled hand on the rifle barrel move, and hear above them the quick sound of death like the cock of a hammer distant but true. ...

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