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So we kinda covered the majority of yesterday's post in my lit class today. Enjoy where you are. The moment. Slow those moments down and take them as they are.
William Carlos Williams was a little pissed off at how much Americans seemed to bounce around from one thing to another, always running around like fools, never concentrating and understanding.
And through a poem about a small, red wheelbarrow he exposed our attention deficits.
I wonder if erratic thoughts will ever have a place in prose. It may just be my only hope.
So it's the start of another 30 minutes, and Sally's still riding. I'm not yet to the point where I'm coming into these with an idea, with a purpose, or with an outside motivator other than a girl miles away who wants the best for me. It's really nice how that works out.
Bullheaded. Stubborn. Pain in the ass. Strong willed. Exactly what's needed.
So I've been doing some research on my credit hours needed until graduation, and my DARS audit tells me I just have 36 more to go. I hadn't really kept tabs on them, only looked at the report to see which classes I needed to take. And of course I've peppered in classes that interest me, because if there's one thing my mother told me about college, it was to at least take a few classes which I think would be fun. Hasn't let me down yet.
I've learned symbolic logic and it's argument solving puzzles, and enjoyed the hell out of it. They should put derivations in the Sunday paper alongside the crosswords, hell, maybe even a weekly running. Maybe I should talk to the Guardian (the school paper) and see if they'd be willing to do something like that. Just a little in joke for the nerds.
I've taken Stoicism and found out that if there was one class that I was made for, if there was one class that the Creator had in mind when he shaped my ass from clay and dirt and mud, it was Stoicism. Great ideas, but of course I'm biased. Now when people ask, I can tell them my philosophy.
Make the best out of what you have. Enjoy it now, because tomorrow it might be gone. Don't worry about it being gone, but enjoy it fully now. Preparedness and involvement. It's amazing how they rationalize the two going together.
I've taken Ethics. I've fussed with the Trolley Theory, I've played devil's advocate, I've dis-proven my own points in papers, just like a good boy should. I've learned that very few people know what life on a farm is like. The image of slaughtered pigs and bulls and sheep have been all these kids have ever seen. Not one of them has harvested their own food. Not one of them has killed their own dinner. I almost think that should be a pre-requisite for that particular discussion, but then again, I'm just as inhumane as the worst factory farmer in the world.
I've taken Linguistics, and learned the different between tensed and untensed. I learned the IPA, and all about boundary accents. Localization was an awesome thing too, and now I know why, when I drive back home, my twang comes out loud and proud. And also why it comes back when I'm drunk.
Anthropology. Dramatic writing. Mental Health in Contemporary Fiction. Things that keep me entertained and cross over into other classes.
Did you know the French used to punish their school children for speaking any other language than French? Did you know that there are some African cultures that did the exact same thing? Persecution from your own god damn language. How terrible is that? One of these facts I learned in German. The other I learned in Anthropology. Which is which? It doesn't matter.
You learn one thing here, it's going to eventually be applicable there.
Don't be afraid to branch out, to try something new, to dig into a subject that might seem completely irrelevant to your goals in life. And this isn't just for school either. My understanding of paintball equipment helped me understand the procedures in my last job. My leisure became integrated into the mundane daily activity that put food on my table.
Hopefully my German will come in handy with my Technical Writing. Hopefully my Creative Writing will come in handy with my Ethics. Hopefully my Stoicism will come in handy with my personal affairs, those every day matters that mean so much.
But I digress. Fully and completely. Without digression, there really isn't any fun. You're just mundane and to the point. But is that what people want? I dunno, maybe I should take a Psychology course.
Actually, that's not a bad fuckin idea. I always wanted to be a psychologist, or something of that sort. Now I just know people too well. But it's certainly interesting. (Mental Health in Contemporary Fiction. That was taught by a Creative Writing Ph.D. and a Psychology Ph.D. Amazing how shit lines up.)
But now I'm just rolling along here, I'm afraid I bore people with this. Who's paying attention and who's just smiling at the words on the screen? Is any of this making an impact? I
Just like it says on my gay little nameplate for Communication Graphics:
Translate, Write, Design, Impress someone.
And with the help of a certain someone, I feel like I can do that now. I know if I typed in another window I'd be chastised and told "it's not 10:00." Damn that's a good feeling. This is a good feeling.
It's like the back of my brain is surrounded by beautiful scenery and a hand is reaching in, just above my right eye, squeezing its way back painlessly. Those fingers just stroke along the folds and bumps of my brain until they can palm the back of the lobes, and gently but somehow forcefully pulling back towards my eyes, sending my brain spinning, flinging those trees and flowers and blue skies all over the inside of my skull, smearing the paint all across the inside like a masterfully painted panorama.
I can almost feel it tingle across my nerves, as my entire brain becomes a singular eye itself, looking at the hectic patterns of the walls, shifting from limb to petal to wing to blade. It's almost like I can actually see what I want to throw down onto my keyboard. It's a hectic scene, but for me I think writing's always been a cluster fuck of image and emotion spread across the vast eternity of my thoughts.
And every time I think the scene has been said, that these images have been laid out for you to see, something new drifts in for me to latch onto for a paragraph or to. Those fingers reach back in, maybe through my nose this time, past the hair and boogers and other gross cootie stuff, and swirls the background around again. The blue skies become dark and star filled, a wolf pack trots out from the tree line, the crickets hidden deep in the grass begin to strum on their violins and the music notes take on visual aspects and flow out on a perfect 5 lined scale in 4:4 time.
But I have to leave something for later, and I let the ink and paint and pencil lead sift back together. But it feels like they funnel into the folds a little closer to the front.
We talked of lobotomies, freaking out the kids on the bus.
That's how you know you've got someone good, when random shit like that pops up.
So here's my thirty minutes. My pleasure.
(I can hear my upstairs neighbor pissing off his balcony. Fucking shit.)
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