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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 XVII: ever after
hello, darling, well, how are you? sighted yet? it's day three of classes. yesterday was the long day, which began joyously with a shining robin and ended with the dreaded neo class. and i'll tell you, the robin? i ran into him in the parking lot before class and had a smile on my face for a long while after. i love that man. also, i think his class is going to be rather a cinch. which is probably delusional, but there it is. the neo class was a bit nerve-wracking. i luckily had a class before that, so i didn't have that long wait in the empty classroom beforehand. the neo completely ignored me, which in retrospect was fine. i came into the classroom, which was rather full, and didn't look around, just took the nearest empty seat. i didn't figure out for a bit where he was, and is wasn't until i was passing the syllabus down my row, that i realized that we were about six seats from one another. i don't know what any of this means, only that then the rest of the class was spent in discussion with the brain about whether the anxiety was worth this class with this professor who is worth it. this is still the discussion. and then last night there was, of course, a neo dream in which i was going through his things--he had "disappeared," gone missing like someone on the news--and i found a stack of photographs on a dresser in this strange room that he had occupied. there were pictures from someone's childhood, but they were all of girls and i assumed in the dream that they were of his mother (they were from the mid-60's, kind of faded out in that way that old color photos do), and then behind them were more recent photos--pornographic pictures of the stripper he lived with. there was an earlier part to the dream that he was in, but i don't remember it too clearly. there was some discussion with him in which i realized that he was communicating very clearly, but that he was sort of, i don't know, gently insane? gentle but insane? do you know what i mean? not dangerous, but very, very confused--though it was all clear in his own head.
the next day: well, i just had a long discussion with x about the max/sublingua situation, which i began by asking him about his perspectives on max. anyway, it turns out that he was operating under the same assumptions you were about the release of information (which included the max's sexual "preferences") which x called (your conversation, not the max's situation)--wait, now i can't remember--something like, perhaps, "necessary, prolonged, uncomfortable awkwardness." it was an interesting convo with x, perhaps because he finds it very difficult to break through this kind of high-level discussion about very basic things. i used to run into it a lot with the chinese, who could science-speak at you all day, but if you tried to ask them something like, "how do you like working in an american lab versus a chinese lab?" the response you'd get would be: "?" because they just never had to speak about such things in english so they didn't have the vocab, maybe? maybe. so x. x doesn't, i think, have the vocab. or maybe he has all the vocab (he is montessori-derived, if you recall) but he doesn't have the switch that allows him to go from "my understanding of the situation at hand--and i recognize that this is only my understanding and as such is not a complete synthesis of the true situation" to "i feel." or maybe he chooses not to use the switch. don't know. but x. he had some very interesting insights and questions. things like, "did max consider what kind of life he was essentially going to place you in when he proposed marriage?" and that was a pretty significant question. mostly i guess because i don't know the answer. but also partly because i never even considered asking it at the time. i don't know. i hope he (x) feels a little better and more...informed? i did have to assure him at the onset (outset?) that he had some right to have some interest in the situation because he has been a part of our lives for the last eight or nine years and so it was okay for him to even just be curious about what was going on. but strange. boys are strange, aren't they, sophistica? i'm sorry to say that i have no further insight into the situation, so i will just send along little tidbits from home: the robin conversation (which almost inspired me to jump up and leave the room to call you immediately and give a full report): me, to robin, who was wearing a hugely bright promega t-shirt: "well, that's a bright shirt." robin: "it was free from promega" (goes on to explain about the order amount/free stuff ratio and how the "free stuff" is always t-shirts, coffee mugs, and pens that stop working after a week). me: "you mean, you didn't take it off the free table?" robin, laughingly: "you know, i don't actually dress myself from the free table." me: "oh, that's good to know. there's been a bet about that in the department for years." and cue the laughter. it was fun. i love that man. did i remember to say that i love him? because i do. also, ran into the mel (cue the obligatory neo news) who was the other drunkenbowlingkaraoke babe. she reported having asked the neo about me and his response: "we had a falling out." which was interesting that he even went that far. i was assuming that he would just completely sidestep the issue and report that he just hadn't seen me and leave it at that. shows how good i am at guessing--even educated guessing. anyway, i didn't give her any details at the time (max was standing there and i didn't want to subject him to the whole mess yet again), though i think i will. she also said, "he (neo) was kind of a jerk to me last time i saw him." which prompted a join-the-club response. i guess i'd really hope that people could be bigger than they are about certain things (ie, that he wouldn't take out what happened on other people who know me), but that has always been a disappointed ideal, really. (it's okay if you just tell me to wise up and move on, yeah?) x is taking chem from mama d--which you know. he's not sure he's going to stay in, but there it is. i tried to give him an alternative viewpoint on the mama but i don't think it'll take. i think you've unduly influenced his opinion of her, dearest. he's determined to like, respect and perhaps ultimately admire her. another one bites the dust. so weightlifting? ouch. i've been following ama around and doing her routines (which will stop shortly as she is concentrating on legs for soccer and i want to do more arms and upper body stuff to counteract this 98 lb. weakling image i have of my upper body anyway), and she is a monster. i'm a bit sore, but i find that it's like a kind of feedback loop in which i'm only not sore when i'm lifting, so then it becomes nice to lift because i'm not sore but then lifting causes me to be sore, so then it's nice to lift because... well, you get the idea. anyway, it's pretty fun though. i never thought i'd enjoy it, but there it is. i find it kind of funny to watch all the little girls preen in the mirror for ten minutes, then lift a three lb. dumbbell four times, then preen for another ten minutes. also, full hair and makeup for lifting? not sure about that one. and don't get me started on the obligatory pretty girl matching half-shirt and short-shorts lifting outfits. i might fall down foaming at the mouth. that's all for the moment. i guess i'll send this along though it's not so complete or even interesting. still, i don't know when i'll be near another computer lab (they aren't really a priority at the moment, as i find them huge time wasters oftentimes) or down at the other location, so i may as well send it now. all my confused loving-- sublingua
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