These desks are white, a muted sterile clinical white. My computer is a greyer shade of this clinical mandate. My computer looks like an odd tumor extending from the counter top.
My stomach is 500ml of caffeine and sugar. My throat and my eyes are a dusty haze of itchy dryness. It doesn't matter how long I swallow or blink, it is that same scratchy dusty itch.
Three inches from my left arm sits about forty to forty-five final exams--they are not graded, but they will be. Its 9:20am and I have until 12:30 to get them done. I want to believe that they will be done. Thy will be done.
I just told my department head what classes I want to teach next year--I didn't tell him that I am not coming back. I watched an interview with Mitch Hedberg yesterday. In response to what drove him to make it as a comedian, "he said, well you got to have a job that is worse than comedy. You got to have that sort of desperate need to make it, because you got nothing else." Allen Ginsberg said his dad was a poet. His dad was also a high school English teacher. He said the difference between him and his dad, was that he had nothing to fall back on.
These tests I am about to grade are a pillow of convenience.
Jamie told me to stop dreaming about the future, and to just be present. I told her its my favorite past time, and the Internet always indulges my fantasy.
My recording microphone didn't make it to her house in time. Jamie is going to give my mic to Annie. Annie is coming in March--I will record pretty things then. I can't get too hung up on clarity just yet.
When I try writing my play, I put the song "Burma Shave" on loop. I don't care too much about the story Waits tells, but I like the voice; I like the chords; I like the poorly articulated vocal control; I like the ambiance.
I just read a poem from a student. She wanted suggestions. She is contemplating the need for acceptance and self-acceptance. After reading the piece, and after responding I landed on the notion of irony--as I understand it. Our lives our battles between what is and what is expected. Often times, our thoughts and actions are geared towards fitting into the expected. We are trying to swim with the current, even if where we want to be is up stream and bautiful, we head towards the falls, because that is where the other fish are flowing. Bubble bubble, gulp.
I have the innate feeling that we all possess some insane piece of greatness, but it is hard to tell if the dream has already been tainted. Hypothetically, I just want to play music in a band and travel the sea of humanity. The dream is music and the connection between souls in the night. The dream is then tied to fame, and dreams of TV and stadiums and fans, and ego. Soon the dream is about TV and success. The true end has become the means, and I am sitting wondering what is true. Is art just a tainted thought of how to be what society wants me to be--a productive contributor of capital and labor?
So, its a cloudy day in mid December. The students are gone, and the grades remain to be given. Hangovers trickle down the hall, and sneezes sneak around corners for conferences with allergies and soar throats. Somewhere a suit kicks up a shiny shoe, and dreams about pay checks and institutional advancement. Some of these teachers are dreaming of better days, true paths, and escapes; others, are dreaming of neat writing and constructive commentaries--objectivity and tidy grades. Me, I am just sitting and dreaming. Coffee is coarsing through the synapses, and my legs twitch as I type.
"They say dreams are growing wild," and the exhaust out of the taxi tailpipe is just another breath of fresh air. To the dreamer in us all.
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