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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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A Short, Itemized Demon
Item 1: It�s snowing. And it�s fucking beautiful outside. Item 2: Today is the first day of school, an activity that is accompanied by the usual drop in optimism (a state that is ridiculous really as this is the first semester I have nothing to lose, already having graduated. And it is the first semester in which I�ll act as though I have something to lose, which is also ridiculous (just in case you�re keeping score at home.)) Already, I am making no sense. Because I just left a chemistry class. Quantitative analysis, if you must know. And here are a couple of quotes from my divine quantitative analysis professor: �Let�s say I scrape this thing off my�whatever. And I want to know what it is.� �That�s not the right answer, isn�t it?� I�m guessing that it may be a bumpy ride. The day�s other class, the infectious organisms class, is being team taught by two men: One, a man I used to work for and whom I respect, admire, and trust; the other, an evil little troll who should be banished to the far side of the sun. Also? The TA for the class is a woman who, in the time honored tradition of six-year-olds, hates a really good friend of mine and so by extension hates me. So we�ll see. Item 3: The Demon Detector hasn�t gone off yet, though I have spent a lot of time thinking about my demons�too much time, though if you relate the amount of time to the amount of aching, it�s decreasing. I should start making some kind of tick mark on a piece of paper whenever I think about the on-campus demons, only I�m afraid that this would greatly increase the number of dry ballpoint pens in the universe in such a way that my karma would be adversely affected. (It�s the damn analytical chemistry screwing with the coherency quantity, I tell you. Just bear with me. Soon all levels of coherency will return to previous, if not normal, levels.) The demons are not thick on campus today�at least in my neck of the woods. They are all English majors, and I am, thankfully, taking nary an English class this semester. The only demons I have to wrangle are demons who know chemistry and biology As an example, there was the woman who leaned across at me as my name was called in class this morning and said, �Hey, Sublingua! We�ve also got infectious organisms together!� And I had, for one brief, vertiginous moment, no idea who she was or what she was talking about. As The Brain uselessly tried to work out the answers to these (and other) questions, she asked, �How did you do in Christopher Robin�s class?� And then I remembered her: She was the girl who sat in the front row and slept her way through my beloved Dr. Robin�s class. We actually had two classes together last semester, though, this girl and I: The C. Robin�s class she mentioned (principles of eukaryotic gene transcription) and physics II. I only found out her name (Emily) because the professor called it a moment later. Item 4: A phone call from Sophistica last night that began well enough, but which ended with an argument, my trying uselessly to apologize and Sophistica in tears. It seemed, like so many arguments between friends, to be about something other than what it was about. It was, on the surface, about approaches to relationships. But underneath it was about the importance of personal opinions, an unresolved hurt from weeks ago, the insertion of oneself into matters that aren�t one�s business. I hung up the phone feeling miserable. I�m aware that my words habitually and often self-protectively carry the force of anger despite my lack of such. And I�ve learned over the years as an excuse to avoid having to learn or practice sensitivity in a given situation. And, yes, I know that it�s wrong to do this. But I do it anyway. And I feel badly about it afterwards.
More lies:
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