Americana

Hiroshi Oh was an alarmingly fragile man. In the lecture hall he would ease into his chair in careful stages, always on the verge of blowing away, and then he'd smile desolately at his children. Tall blond milwaukees-prepare for Zen! I always enjoyed that opening smile. It was the smile of the bored Orient, tired of truth, bound in inland stillness, indifferent to westernization. The lecturer's chair and desk were on a platform in front of the huge sanitized hall, which resembled a cafeteria in the second-best pavilion at some international exposition. There were enough seats for two hundred students but only thirty of us were enrolled with Dr. Oh. We were well spread out, a half dozen or so at the very back of the room, the rest scattered here and there, presenting a difficult target, some of us seeking camouflage in the depth of our suntans, which matched the burnt sie

Sunlight and viscid insect juice were the colors of those Monday afternoons. Zen had little in common with dead Englishmen and no one dared to drowse. It was total sleep or total awareness. All chose sleep, yet it seemed to elude us; it seemed always seconds away, a magical sleep filled with the soft tempera of spring, with new green trees standing alert to the wind, with the odors of earth pulsing and the riddle of a petaled woman crossing a footbridge. It was the perfect sleep but it never quite descended. It filled the hall above us and waited at the frontier of every mind. We desired this sleep because we were twenty years old and already begi

And we rose. We gathered in the sun lounge and took a poll. No one had slept, not one of us. Wild told us to get ready. The corporations were indeed coming, with charts and natural shoulders. He stood and gave us a simple nonde-nominational blessing, not knowing the formal procedure for last rites.

"We spring from a humane tradition," my mother said. "One of my forebears interceded with President Lincoln himself on behalf of the poor misguided Indians of Mi

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"The University of Virginia was good enough for my forebears."

"He wants to go to this place out West. Let him go where he wants."

"I've made up my mind," I said. "That's definitely where I want to go."

"Your father and I have been arguing over Princeton and Virginia for three years now. Suddenly you come waltzing into the house and a