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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.) | |||
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Part XX: a rhinestone kind of people
dearest-- oh, my god. is it time for the dreaded neo situation class update? yes, it is. so, here's the thing: there's a milton conference in tennessee at the end of october. one is held every two years, so the next one would be oct. 2005. and since i intend to be firmly entrenched in graduate school in a course of study intended to do some good in the world and perhaps provide me with a means to make a living and that, to me, certainly don't mean looking to increase the number of poverty stricken milton scholars in this world by one, the beloved milton professor suggests that i, at least, try going to this conference. not that there's money for such a thing to be had from the english department of course, but there it is. yes, it's only $90 to attend (not including air fare, hotel, most meals, etc.--but, including all of these things, the cost comes out to about $400 dollars). long story short (or maybe short story long, or maybe long story longer), it might be worth it to try, if only to roshambo stanley fish, whom i dislike intensely, and who will be there with bells (and athletic cup presumably) on. so i was talking with mel, rockabillybabe extraordinaire, in a general kind of way about splitting costs and she commented, "we can do a road trip and take my car," to which i replied, "we could probably take my car, only it's a vw, and quite small," and neo pipes up, "i have a minivan." and, yes: what the fuck? so this person, this being, this "we're no longer friends, so leave me alone"-spouting boy is suddenly offering to spend nineteen hours--each way, mind you--in a car with me and mel? yeah, yeah, i'm sure he just wants to go to the conference or is just trying to impress the professor and damn the consequences to anyone's psyche, but let me reiterate: what the fuck? (and, no, i didn't deliver the "if you need someone to talk to" speech this morning. i'm not quite up to it. brain needs to run through many, many more scenarios before this can happen. i need to figure out whether i need to be standing angelic'ly in some sunbeam of light, or whether my accessories should be a bible and a fifth of jack daniels or a tall latte from starbucks and a copy of the decameron or whatever. so. don't know, i guess is what i'm saying. so far, however, i find myself inadvertently going with the mayflower solution--which i know is always (or almost always) a mistake--of being "professional" or whatever. but i'm also mulling--or brain is, anyway--the "walk away from it" option. i'm not real big on that one--never have been--but maybe that's the lesson to be had from this one. maybe it's what i'm intended to be learning. but it feels a bit wrong, too. it feels like i'm hardening my heart when i'm supposed to be keeping it open, despite all onslaughts. which one is the lesson? and why isn't there some primer for said lesson? and why can't i just stop thinking? and why does the brain need to chew-chew-chew? why can't brain be happy with physics? why can't brain desperately want to memorize organic reactions?) but otherwise, there has been little else to report. it's the third week of school and i'm kind of wondering when it's going to begin. you know that moment when you look around you and realize that suddenly you've sunk into the semester? suddenly everything stops seeming new, and you are in the middle of it and you didn't realize it until that moment? there is that. it feels too easy, this semester despite my being overloading. and i wonder if i'm just in some kind of...i don't know. warp, maybe? there has been, as you know, a fair amount of the x to be had, which has been and continues to be shockingly delightful. i love that boy. i love the long rambling questions he asks in robin's class which make robin stand there looking sort of vaguely distressed and/or distracted while he contemplates an answer (which usually turns out to be "i don't know" delivered very quickly, with a small, apologetic smile). i love the whole five o'clock shadow look at eight in the morning. i love the unexpectedly revealed ability to feign tourette's syndrome in a very convincing way. that boy. i'm just glad he's here. it's nice to have a smiling, glad to see me face in my life once or twice a week. (and how sad is that, really?) oh, so the prof (she of the "shoes as soft as your...hand") story of the day? as we were talking about the milton conference, she told us that one night, after talking milton all day, she and some others went into the bar for a few drinks. while they were drinking near the locals ("milton scholars don't really know how to mix very well," she explained), there was this sort of, i guess contest going on in the bar in which all the "ladies" (i swear she put ladies in quotes in speech without doing the little bunny ears thing with her fingers) got to line up onstage. so she, being a "lady," goes up. "they had this big bowl of diamonds," she says, "and they gave us tweezers" (at this point, i'm kind of smiling too big and on the verge of falling out of my chair) "and we had to pick out a diamond. and then they put them under a machine" (miltonists, not the most technology oriented people in the world) "to see if it was paste or a real diamond." (does anyone in the world say "paste" anymore? i thought we were more of a rhinestone kind of people.) "no one got a real diamond, so we all lined up again with the tweezers and picked again." so that time, she got a diamond. "only a small diamond," she said modestly, "worth about five-hundred dollars. and what do you do with such a small diamond?" to which mel piped up, "maybe put it in a nose ring?" and fresch found this oddly delightful. i said, "and then you'd have a nose ring AND a great story!" and we all laughed. i love that woman. i really do. and on that note-- sublingua
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