Editor,
This letter is in memory of Professor Hector Torres. At one point, I didn’t feel qualified to write it. I only had him for one semester, and only went to his office to turn in my final paper. But such blasphemous thinking is what Mr. Torres taught against. He called me a neocon when I rejected Roland Barthes’ “Death of the Author.” Mr. Torres believed that the word issued from some other world.
He was Catholic, but rejected the exclusive Magisterium of the Church. He believed that laypeople were free to interpret scripture. He was an Army vet, but felt that the service cultivated a false brotherhood. “Love is a pebble laughing in the sun.” That’s a line he used to illustrate some literary concept. He seemed taken by it, and said it more than once. Here, there is no pain of unrequited love.
On Tuesday, I thought I saw little tufts of cotton blowing from some barren winter tree. Then I thought they were falling seeds, spinning slowly down like mini helicopters. There were dozens of them. They were little four-winged ants, fluttering and landing softly in still air. The night blew in wet snow. When it was cold, Mr. Torres wore a dark gray beanie. He folded the edges high, like a Soviet.
He is remembered as affable, but when writing anonymously, I believe, he was something of a contrarian. He said the University changes people irreversibly.
Iain Thomson teaches that we’re living in a Nietzschean age — that our beings are informed by a pervasive meaninglessness. Mr. Torres may have used an online handle that suggests he rejected this theory. The world is teeming with beauty, even if the wonder it evokes is its only significance.
My peers and I were often baffled by his lectures. It seemed as though his ideas were so profound that there weren’t adequate words. But once, he suggested that he suffered from some kind of communicative disorder. Now, I’m not quite sure what the distinction is.
When I went to his office to turn in my final paper, he offered me a seat. He said that my smiles encouraged him during class. I pretended to be uncomfortable with this comment, and ended the meeting there. There was a picture of the Virgin Mary hanging on the wall.
Corey Davis
UNM student
