|
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.) | |||
|
part V: milton, bobo, rufus, and monkey, esq
my dearest sophistica, i don't think it's unfair of me to say that the first week of school tried to kill me, what with the sardonic (versus crazy)russian calculus instructor who looks like a young alec guinness and who informed us that indefinite integrals are best found "by torture of equation," and what with the physics instructor who is determined to keep his vacation plans by shaving a week off an eight week semester by quote keeping us longer and working us harder end quote. and should these men fail to wring every last drop of sanity out of my spongy little brain, there is, as backup, the english professor who doesn't so much as blink at a dreiser novel in three days and who hands out a supplementary five or six pages of photocopied material every day, each of which, in the fine print, suggests another twenty or so pages of reading material that might further one's understanding of the text. and of course, in the middle of all this introductory craziness, there had to be bowling. and karaoke. and--need i even say this?--beer and shots. (i guess i ran that backward, as you have to know that the beer and shots are the unassailable prerequisites for bowling and karaoke.) yes. bowling and karaoke with dave and the neo-stephen and the crazy 21-year-old rockabilly chick mel and her boyfriend x (who showed up quite the ringer, with granddad's bowling ball in a bag and his own shoes). and dave bowled. dave bowled, which is more than the universe usually allows on any given day, i think. on the other hand, the universe was probably still reeling from my getting up and singing "don't mess around with jim" with mel (or perhaps it was my drunken rendition of "rocket man" with the neo-stephen, whose little mind couldn't quite bend around my changing the lyrics to "you're not the man i thought you were at all, oh, no, no, no"). later: these last three days i've been so exhausted that i have experienced everything with this continuous feeling of deja vu. and, thinking back over the events that have transpired, have this feeling that i lived it all before, before having lived it. last night i actually slept more than three hours in a row and, of course, woke up thinking of neo-stephen who is becoming a problem--who is becoming the problem that knows it's a problem i think. yes. and i'm finally coming to realize that, despite the fact that i have been wanting to believe that no one can see or hear what i've been broadcasting out in a three mile radius, loud and clear, that this is likely not the case. and, night before last, standing in the bathroom of a bowling alley, more drunk on rum and tequilla and guinness than i have been in many, many years, i had to have a serious talk with myself in the mirror about who and--perhaps more importantly--what i am, what kind of person i am and what kind of person i want to be and how my actions are not reflecting these beliefs. turns out, though, that holding serious talks with oneself in the bathroom of bowling alleys is of only limited utility, so i guess the lesson would have to ultimately be: i am not a professional, and should not be trying this at home. what i have been trying to do is to put this all in perspective without talking to the person who i've chosen to have hand all the time and who i usually confide in when faced with dilemmas, though never before with dilemmas of this nature. this has meant some pretty dangerous things. for example, i was almost desperate enough one day to confide in pat, which is a lot like being desperate enough to invest in a loudspeaker for the top of my car through which i could inform every person within earshot of the current craziness. unfortunately, patrick knows all the players involved, so i caught myself in time and went and undid all the mcguyver wiring i had added to the volkswagon. but, leaving the subject for a moment, there was a fabulous dinner last night at the home of one of the artists i work with at the studio (the rhino lady), who lives in this home that made me a beautiful shade of green with envy. i'm talking charles bragg paintings over the mantlepiece, zaftig porcelain German angels hanging from the bookshelves, and a bathtub big enough to host swimming competitions in. it struck me then, the strangeness did. the strangeness of sitting all day in classrooms with the growing-younger-by-the-minute children who are trying so hard to sound intelligent (generally by using the word "existential" a lot without ever having read any works by the actual philosophers who invented and/or advocated existentialism--and don't even get me started on the quote discussion end quote about social darwinism with the same crowd, whose introduction to social darwinism has come only experientially (existentially?) and who would be hard pressed really to say who darwin was or what the basic premises of his real arguments are) and failing miserably and then to switch gears to being with people who have actually spent time in the real world. even later: there has been bernardo to make it all okay, however. the bernardo surfaced in max and the neo-stephen's latin class, and so he's was dragged along to many coffee dates last week--and it was during one of those coffee dates that he expressed the view that this crazy country should just go ahead and make it a law mandating the ownership of monkeys by rich eccentrics like michael jackson. after this, of course it was necessary for me to ask my famous question: if you had a monkey, what would you name it? bernardo said, "milton." max said, "bobo." neo-stephen said, "rufus." pat said, "monkey." which is why we probably should employ only our sharpest AND longest sticks to prod pat. it's later than even i had previously thought: well, i should be doing calculus homework even as we speak, but there is the inevitable...you know...procrastination with which to deal first. actually, having so much to read for english makes procrastination a pleasure, really. for example, i have just spent the last hour and a half in the bath with some kate chopin. last night it was dreiser. and the night before that, henry james. tomorrow night, who knows? i am quite the serial monogamous (is that spelled correctly?) reader these days. i say this not as a subtle way of letting you know how well-read i am becoming quite against my will, but rather to cover up the fact that my calculus homework is not, even as we speak, getting done. max says you called and left a message. we will be quite happy to come for you on friday. i am in class until two, have no physics on fri., and only have dave to fetch between five-thirty and six usually. other than those times, i am completely at your disposal. should the need arise, we can also draft x and his family-sized x-mobile. although sadly he has been quite the recluse these days, only pausing in his penitente rituals to send me very short and very cryptic emails which resentfully remind me that i have been, for several weeks now, promising him indian dinner. we shall, i think, find it necessary to stuff him full of puri while you are down here. this, i don't think, goes against the prime directive which has previously been entered into the record and which states, if i am recalling correctly, that the boys are not allowed to choose restaurants. we would eat indian anyway, is what i'm saying. yeah? so, i'm off to the math of the damned (the damned sardonic russians, i mean). i did promise pictures this time, but this was pure folly as it would kill me dead at the moment to have to open up photoshop and look at the neo-stephen. i actually had about two and a half minutes earlier when i wasn't thinking about this and wasn't comparing us to edna pontellier and robert lebrun. possibly a record. possibly a broken record. i'll call you tomorrow after physics, yeah? that would be monday at around 7, my time. sublingua
More lies:
|
|||||