Springy.

I’m sitting at my kitchen table which is also my desk and which is in the ‘dining area’ which is basically also my living room (open floor plans are very difficult to explain) and I have one large long window that looks into the big central courtyard and pool area of my apartment complex (my life sounds rough, doesn’t it?) and the window is open and there is a nice breeze and someone down the court yard must have started a load of clothes in the common laundry room and used too much detergent because the breeze just filled my apartment with a very nice but perhaps too sweet springy flower scent. It was quite pleasant. It is a tiny reminder that often the little things are the ones that make the individual days good.

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I'm a Racoon.

Today I have had a long day reacquainting myself with the duties of a diligent grad student, which is to say that I realized that I have more crap to do than I have time.

I got a lot done today. I have a lot still to do tomorrow. For now, here is a picture of a baby racoon miming how I feel right now.

P.S. My life is SO HARD! I had to read stuff all day and then write about the stuff I read. Big tears here.

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Sukenick Knows.

So I needed something read this morning when I got to campus about 7:30 and so I did as I do and I wandered into the fun part of the library and quite at random I plucked from a shelf the very small novel “Doggy Bag” by Ronald Sukenick (it is maybe six inches tall and four inches wide and less than a half an inch thick, so really I grabbed it because I liked that it would fit in my back pocket) and it is a strange and fascinating little book and about 25 pages in I found this passage about the life of grad students. I think it is fun because it describes my life, but also -- I would imagine -- the life of anyone hunting an advanced degree. Anyway, if you ever wonder why I’m so moody, this is why:

But let me say something first about the life of a graduate student. Suspended as it is between the student world of the undergraduates and the workaday quotidian, and above all, between the perfection of the written word and the abjection of the rotten world, it lacks what you might call ballast. Without friction with the ordinary contingencies and tolerating a high level of anxiety aggravated by too much work and too little pay, it tends to exaggerated swing of mood.

This Sukenick guy knows his shit. Please be prepared for me to spout off more of him.

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Big Ink.

I would very much like it if the international ink pen industry (“Big Ink” as I like to call it) could finally get its shit together and standardize itself in such a way that pens are ALWAYS the color of the ink inside of them. This is probably not a big issue for most people, but I correct a lot of papers and I give notes on a lot of papers and it would really streamline my life if ink pens stopped lying to me about what color they actually are. Every time it feels like a little bit of a deception. I think it needs to stop.

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Misled.

Life is okay. Don’t be misled by that last poem. I just think it is a fun poem.

Money could be better and there is too much schoolwork and too little time and too too much rent to pay and too little money, but I’m okay. I get by with a little help for my friends. I think that’s how the song goes.

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Foxhole.

So I had a massively humbling and totally human moment recently and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Oh, the editors here at Standardkink have asked me to tell you that due to my ongoing nervous breakdown, this will be less of a “writing” blog for a little while and more of a “holy shit this guy needs some serious therapy” kind of blog.

Anyway, back to that profoundly human moment … I recently got some news that shook me to the very core of my person. In order to better protect the innocent, I’m not really at liberty to tell you much about what happened (it isn’t really my business to share) but suffice to say it will affect me in some way for the rest of my life.

The point here though is that all the fuses in my head melted and I couldn’t remember how to breathe or sit. I’ve done some googling and it appears I had an honest to god panic attack (I’ve only really ever had one once before, but it was nothing like this). I ended up spending the better part of ten hours just walking aimlessly around town. I probably walked twenty-five or thirty miles that day. By the end I had these fat disgusting blisters and my legs felt like jelly. At one point I went home to drink some water and I ended up – no kidding – praying.

I am not a religious person and it isn’t that I’m profoundly opposed to religion and I don’t call myself an atheist (though others might, and they’re free to if it makes them feel better) I’m simply not a religious person. I have trouble not seeing religion as myth; it’s the writer in me.

Yet all that notwithstanding, there I was, on my knees in my little bedroom, hands clasped together, deeply apologetic that I’m in my thirties and had never really prayed before. If God was paying attention he at least didn’t make fun of me. 

So I asked for what I asked for, apologized a lot, made some halfhearted jokes that were probably inappropriate and then said my amen, crossed myself all Catholic-like, felt strange about it, apologized again and then left the apartment quickly, as though leaving an awkward first date.

Clearly there’s something disingenuous about me praying, but I swear, the asking for help part was entirely genuine. Probably as genuine as I have ever been. So what does that mean? Or does it mean anything? Or does it just make me an opportunist and a hypocrite?

Probably those last two, huh?

I guess it goes back to the old adage about how there are no atheists in fox holes. Well, I was in my fox hole dammit and I reached out. Though in my defense, I would have prayed to Voldemort too if I thought it would have helped. I can say though, I appreciate now more than ever how soothing it must be to possess religious faith; to believe that someone supremely powerful is out there and cares about you and your happiness. It was a calming experience and deeply humbling, and I need a little humbling from time to time.

Now the postscript, of course, is that nothing has changed and my prayers have decidedly not been answered (surely God knows how impatient I am!), but that’s not the point of this post. I just felt it was a strange enough experience that it should be remarked upon. So there you have it, I guess, it has been remarked upon.

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