sublingua

The heart with a mind of its own.

(Be present.)

The mind with a heart of its own.

(It's past.)

The dream that is your waking life.

(Go there now.)

Letter to Sophistica
Wednesday, Apr. 02, 2003

Dearest Sophistica,

Yes, right at this moment, I should be in class, listening to Pucho�who suffers from panic attacks, as he admitted the other night, right before he told us he would use simple examples so that he might be home in time for Smackdown (and the other night, while we were working some problems that he likes for us to do in class, he was standing off to one side of the room and he suddenly says, �Did you see the Michael Jackson interview on the TV?� To which people replied, �?� So he went on, �I am from Puerto Rico. We are American citizens, you know, and I don�t think I have ever seen anything like that before.� Like, if you�re an American citizen from anywhere but Puerto Rico, you get a some kind of Michael Jackson immunization shot which allows you to build up Michael Jackson antibodies which then protect you from the weirdness that is Michael Jackson? I wanted to go up after class and assure him that, yes, Michael Jackson is a full-out weirdo all across this great land of ours, but I didn�t want to set off another panic attack)�tell us all about the fabulousness that is calculus in that cute little Puerto Rican accent. And, having ditched class tonight in favor of beginning to learn the loads of chemical reactions that I should have been committing to memory for the last several weeks, knowing that this next test is going to kill or at least maim me, you can guess what I am electing to do instead.

Right now Max is banging happily away on his new keyboard which he bought to use for piano practice as he is taking the piano II class at UNM. It has headphones, thank god, but I still hear this tiny whine and the clickety-clack of keys, thought that still puts it miles ahead of his last instrument, the trumpet, which, even with a mute stuffed into the horn, could cripple at thirty paces. (A crippled mute, now there�s a poetic image for you.) And I shouldn�t have to tell you that a piano played badly is infinitely better sounding than a violin played badly, which is the instrument he was playing badly when I met him. No, that�s not entirely true. Actually, he was quite good at the violin�though quite bad at the trumpet�and he�s quite good at the piano, considering that the last time he played piano, he was all of eight or nine years old and his teacher was a charming old woman who drew smiley faces in whole notes and plastered his music with stickers of little birds and so on. Now his teacher is some German grad student who likes to play �Stairway to Heaven� for the class and who refused to sing �Du, Du Liebst in Mir Hirchen� for them when the time came. And if you can�t get a German to sing a traditional German folk song, what good is said German, I ask you. What good, indeed? Goddamn grad student Germans. That�s what I say about the matter.

In my ongoing campaign to introduce myself to my teachers this semester, I went and spoke to my Renaissance drama professor, a big, beary Russian-derived Jew (does one say �Russian-derived�? Oh, no, I guess it�s really, �of Russian descent� isn�t it?). He offered me a letter of recommendation before asking what I was going to do with myself in the future, and before I embarrassed the hell out of myself by saying something along the lines of �Teach English?! Why, I�d have to be a complete and total moron to even THINK about teaching English?� (Wasn�t quite that harsh, but you get the picture�the picture of me hopping out of his office on one foot as the other was lodged somewhere behind my tonsils.) Anyway, he�s a real cutie, and I love him to pieces, though he has the terrible habit of saying things to me like: �Why don�t you ever come to class?�

That just leaves my Native American lit. professor to go and talk to, though I have the feeling that she doesn�t like me very much. Actually, I�m not sure if that�s true, though I have had professors tell me, even when I haven�t said a word in class, that I seem very skeptical of everything they�re saying. Must be my face, I guess, but I can�t actually help that, and I think as she is relatively new to teaching, I must be doubly threatening or something. Anyway, she�s not the kind of person I�d just go and sit and chat with in her office, I feel like I have to have a reason to go�some specific question that she can provide a specific answer so that everything can be by the book and no one has to lose face. You know the type.

We are just about to head off for dinner with Marvin the Martian ( I have not heard from Das Errant Boy of yours) at the illustrious India Kitchen, starring Mrs. Guptha. I�ll update you upon my return, or some several days hence. (Fucking Ren. drama. Gets you every time.)

Well, that was a bust. I swear, why I ever try to organize anything, I�ll never know. Anyway, the evening did not end with a delicious Indian dinner, but that is a story for another time.

Ugh.

Oh, hey, guess who I joked around with today! No, guess. Seriously, if I gave you like a gazillion times a googol guesses, you�d never guess. I could sit here until you have your PhD and I have my freakin� bachelor�s and you�d never guess. Never, never, never. I�m so totally not even just saying never and the answer is really April. Maybe even Rob Miller or Kate Vogel would be a good guess, but even then you�d only be about a bajillion miles away from the actual person with whom I actually stood and joked with. Okay, so I�ll tell you already: Robert Brother-of-Beret-Boy. No, really. Get off the floor, my dear, or people will think you�re having another fit�or that those lessons in grace were a waste of good money. Seriously. We. Joked. He was selling Patrick $30 worth of Girl Scout Cookies and I was sitting there and we had an exchange in which actual joking words and not just disparaging looks were used. Then, to make matters even stranger, he apologized to Patrick for some of his cohorts� assholiness (not a word one hears everyday, but it should be when referring to Robert BoBB and his gang) when ordering coffee drinks from Pat. And these words actually crossed his lips: �I�m sorry they were so rude�And these are future doctors!� And then a thunderbolt struck and I was too busy diving for cover to notice anything further.

Which brings me to the Cushion Situation: I so wish I could see this Dave Cushion that is causing all of this beating of breast and gnashing of teeth. You don�t have a digi-cam yet, why? I need photos of said Cushion in a native setting so as to more accurately gauge his suitability and/or use. Barring an actual photo�because I�m sure they�d just turn out all blurry and you�d be trying to convince me that the large shadowy figure disappearing into the trees was D.K. in a Yeti costume donned for the final Moonlight Snow-Shoeing Extravaganza on some recruitment weekend outing�I�d like some sort of physical evidence of his existence. However, do not try to tag him, especially on your own, as they usually wake up groggy and disoriented and are consequently not very amenable, despite the appearance of great obedience. Also, tracking devices tend not to be very accurate in the snow. And if I get any scat in the mail, it�ll just go to waste as I�ll put it in a big paper sack and leave it, flaming, as a final gift for Kate Vogel when she leaves the department chair.

Oh�I went and looked at your Daddy�s picture on the web. Hee-hee! He looks like my little turtle, Percy Shelley. Right down to the wee little glasses perched on his wee little beak!

That is all.

Sublingua

retreat or surrender

More lies:
Waking Sleeping Demons II - Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011
Waking Sleeping Demons - Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011
time - Friday, May. 20, 2011
- - Wednesday, Oct. 06, 2010
The Return - Tuesday, Oct. 05, 2010

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