introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Office Hours three-o-nine...still raining - twenty first of march, 2001...the battle with the cold wages on. ~Office Hours~ white beard white haired beast loud insulting bitter man, you have not won yet. so. i guess this makes today a double entry day. somehow, that seems so...leud?...i'm not even gonna get into that level of thinking. right. blame the cold drugs, don't blame my twisted filtered view on the world. moving on. so i woke up to some email this morning, as usual. my inbox was aglow with the boldface subject lines of new email that came sometime in the night, when i was too tired (or too drugged?) to jump up to the sounds of robin williams letting me know it had arrived; to the sounds of robin williams reassuring me that "no matter what anybody tells [me], words and ideas *can* change the world". Yes, I am a nerd. I am a self proclaimed dork, but I'm down with that. Yes, my computer talks to me...a LOT. Yes, sometimes, I get more interaction with my wires and tubes and motherboards than I do from the living creatures in my Treehouse. I rather like the comfort I get from hearing the bleeps and dings and soundbyte movie clips letting me know that the state of affairs of the world inside my nearly extinct reptile of a computer are going as I've ordered. I like the feeling I get when Kevin Spacey tells me that Kaiser Sose will never be caught; telling me that my favourite facist has come online. I like the sound of an english boy's voice hailing his joining me over the wires, telling me he loves me, reminding me of the waves of his voice. I like searching for the perfect alarm for each individual, the hunt for the line that reminds me of my fondness for the person with whom i'd like to speak. For instance, the search for the perfect alarm to take the place of the generic beep-cah-ching to let me know that Tennessee T is joining me for some much hoped for late night "rapping". I *LOVE* that Robin Williams feels that its important to remind me how important my thoughts can be, how he makes me feel a part of his Dead Poet's Society. I digress. I didn't hear him at the ungodly hour of six fifty eight friggen' am when the message came in. I woke to the incessant whines of a puppy who'd slept as restlessly as I, a puppy who needed to go out to do her morning business. As always, I snuck by the box as i pulled on my sandals, not even noticing that Verbil had been using them as a new and improved chewtoy, but instead, noticing a very full inbox of junkmail full of news and horoscopes and banner ads mixed up with letters from people who've actually got pulses, if not souls. I left them alone for the moment and took the pup out in the freezing, driving rain that reminded me that spring is, indeed, monsoon season. When I came back, I sat down for a moment and skimmed through the headlines. Yes, yes, California is still blacked out; yes, politicians lie. Right. Horoscope:financial mayhem. Thanx. Got it. And what's this? A message from Tim: I hope you like :). So, with groggy eyes that were only half focused, my eyes scanned the lines of poetry before me. Lines referring to love, lines promising that I'm fine the way I am, and a line or two that really create the largeness of the thing: there is too much to tell you. I'm speechless, really. Is this what it feels like to be the glass hearted boy? And I've been in his nike's too many times to not know where he's coming from. You've got all of this passion and all of these feelings and it seems unimaginable that all of those feelings could be denied acknowledgement. I know where Chris was, now...or at least I have an inkling. I'm in a position I've never been before. When I put up that little line of bullshit happiness on the bathroom mirror that said "don't frown; you never know who's falling in love with your smile" and resolved to smile more, I didn't expect that someone really would fall in love. I am, after all, not easy to deal with. I am a grump in the morning til I've had tea or coffee and an hour to deal with the fact that I'm actually awake. I am cruel and unkind hypocritical-political individual solitary...and inviting me to acknowledge love is inviting trouble to your door, trouble that only a few will ever really ever be able to handle. I'm the Taming of the Shrew to those who don't really know where I'm coming from. In short, I don't think Tim knows what he's getting into. Yes, Tim, I liked your poem. No, Tim, I'm not ready to dive into anything. I've gotten too used to being free spirited and there's a certain saftey that comes with the internet boys that I can't get from the boy down the street. I can turn them off and go to bed if I get uncomfortable. Ack. So then, I went back to my fitful sleep, unaided by NyQuil. Boys are more trouble than their worth, I tend to believe. My puppy must not like the idea of me turning up the electric blanket to its highest level to try to force this fever to break. Quite frankly, neither do I. I've got this constant fear that the ancient thing will go up in flames with me under it, gasping for air. In my dreams, I never remember to stop, drop, and roll. I would like to think I'm more intelligent than that and that in real life, it'd be the first thing that comes to mind. I got up and took the steamiest shower I've had in weeks. I must have beat everyone to the bathroom is all I can figure. The gurlie girl i live with takes her damned time in the shower (at LEAST 45 minutes) and I can't imagine what she's doing in there, but I do know that I always get stuck with the icey cold water pumping out at me at diabolic pressures. I was glad for the warmth and the steam. I donned my brown v neck and warm wool hat and headed out with Nacho across the rainy streets and intersections and up the stairs of Sutten Hall to do battle with a dragon. Er. No. We piled into the elevator and just as the door was about to close, I heard the booming voice of the white haired white bearded monster as he called for us to hold the lift. Keeping in mind that i'm illin' bigtime and that i obviously look as though i'm one or more of the following: 1. feverish; 2. coughing; 3. congested; 4. irritable. The man, who I shall from here on refer to as the Beast (because of his noteable like for all things animal and nature and, probably by no chance, his resemblence of the beasts of the woods wit his white hair and white beard and big staring kanine eyes...perhaps i go too far?) puts his face close to my chest to read one of the buttons decorating my favourite blue messenger bag. "vote Nader and LaDuke", it says. "Vote Nader and LaDuke?" he says. "Why?" "To protest the 2 party system," I say. "Because the other two candidates are evil. Because I didn't want to choose between the lesser of two evils. Because there has to be change. Because politicians lie," I continue, somewhat caught off guard, the election having taken place months ago. "But look what happened," he says. "Now we have some moron in office because people were voting for your Nader." "But I voted my conscious," I retort. "Blame me, then," I offer. "I don't blame you," he replies. "But now look. He's renigging on his taxation agenda". WHAT THE HELL DID HE EXPECT? How do I reply to that? Of course he is. Bush is a politician, and worse still, a republican. PLEASE! I'm convinced that the elevator in Sutton Hall is the slowest lift on campus. I was beginning to wish I'd taken the stairs. I was beginning to hope he'd aquired some of my germs. The elevator reached the fourth floor, our destination. "Ladies, first," he said. I grumbled and forced my way around him to get to the door. Sometimes, there is a time for politeness and manners. A cramped elevator isn't one of them. As if we hadn't just battled the first of what i believe will be many battles to come, he disembarked the lift and cooly headed for his office. Nacho and I strolled past der Kommissar's office. Terri was there, too. "I'm sick," I said. "You sure are." Apparently, my illness is just as visable as I imagined. I just wanted to be sure. Where do I validate my parking, please? The Beast insisted that we wait 20 minutes til his office hours officially started rather than just let us get to the point. 20 minutes fly quickly when you're feverish and biting nails, dreading conflict. I was beginning to wish I had the plague. We came in and sat down before him. I hardly knew where to begin. I've never argued a grade before beacuse I've never felt as though my writing has been graded unfairly. In this instance, a C simply wouldn't do. I've also never encountered a more rude, jaded, unthoughtful, simply hateful old man in my life. He reminds me of my father if he'd been raised by wolves. The more defensive he got, the more his examples hinted at him wanting to inflict bodily harm on us. The more my polite attacks won over his badly written exam questions, the louder he got, the less he listened, the more he wrinkled his nose. As an English major who prides herself in her writing, one might imagine how well I took his comment that perhaps I was not ready to write on a college level. Now maybe I'm being cocky here...or maybe I'm just nursing my hurt ego. Never has anyone insulted me so. Sick, and hoping only to infect this beast of a man with whatever it is thats ailing me, I packed up my papers and put my tail between my legs. "Are we finished, then?" I asked, having been coached by Terri earlier. I nodded at my own question and readied to leave. On aquiring this evenings lecture notes only after threatening outright to enrich his air with some of the germs that are currently making war with my immune system, I turned to go. "Miss Walker," he said. I turned around. He didn't say anything but his eyes were twinkling a lot like I imagined Santa's would when my mother used to read that Night Before Christmas peom to me, only this...this was something evil and unholy. He smiled. I looked at Nacho, who had darker circles forming under her eyes. She looked on the verge of tears. She looked how I felt, having had my one and only true love crushed up and smashed like yesterdays newspaper in the wastepaper bin. He'd insulted the only thing I sometimes think I will ever truly love: my writing. Perhaps this will only make my writing better in the future, somehow stronger. Nacho is withdrawing from the course. I have a feeling that the war is not yet over. I refuse to lay down and quit. I will take the challenge. I will kick his next exam's proverbial ASS. "Miss Walker". I turned. He said nothing. We left. We trudged home. My house bleeds heat and its really no warmer in this room than it is if I'd been typing out on the curb. This reminds me: alert prospective tenants about the traffic on Sixth Street. Offer Earplugs. Right. So. Its raining. Happy fucking spring. I hold Tennessee T personally responsible for our most recent rain spell. I thought I'd made it clear that I didn't want his rain. :o) I guess this once is alright. The crocus need it, as I told him. I suppose there is a pizza shop thats making pies that would be more than willing to make me a nice cheap I-card special one topping dinner. Pineapple. It has to be pineapple. And then, its studying time. I've got one hell of an exam tomorrow. I'm really beginning to want to give up. Maybe its just my cold and my fitful sleep. Maybe its the pressure that comes when you don't wanna say something you know you've got to. Maybe its cuz I wanna fly south. Maybe its just the plague. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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