ok we have just under 15 minutes to do this fully pointless thing megan is taking a nap in my bed i just ate a steak and some grilled brussels sprouts; it was good, but not as good as when i made it last night for me & lib cel is over next door playing the beanboozle challenge with nariyah; she announced so matter-of-factly that that was what she was doing; it was a perfect instance of her perfect blend of childlike and self-assured i feel as though those should be nouns but i can’t think of one for “childlike” right now i feel fat greasy bloated my head feels like a overstuffed uncomfortable couch cushion i haven’t been doing a very good job at my job lately; i feel disconnected from my students and most of my colleagues; i passed up a chance to get a comp sci certification in four or five probably easy classes just because it was on mondays and cel has swimming; instead of grading i take all day to piddle through emails and make possibly important but definitely not urgent tweaks; i still don’t know how to make an eSession really direct and tight and engaging; i ramble; i think the things I’m talking about are so fascinating but what I really need is to listen more, but my classes aren’t really set up to prioritize student voice my classes aren’t really set up to prioritize student voice #gull #glow-worm i feel that there are so many changes i could and should and want to make, but i will never ever have enough time + energy to actually make them i try to make them a little bit at a time but i then often feel i’m getting lost in the picayune; i want to throw everything away and start over, but then i kind of always feel like that, except when i don’t which is oh i don’t know that kite hit the ground. what do you want to do now? is the puritan work ethic real? because i want to do: - not this - walk around - daydream - collect alien poemforms and stick em in bottles to bring back to the mothership - eat - drink - fuck - play drums - be warm - take baths - have some fucking friends - god dammit i forgot what else; i keep coming back to that. I have irritable bowel syndrome and some tits. i think i know what i need but i don’t know how to get it. i accept provisionally that i might not know what i need; that knowing what i need could be one of the things that’s standing in the way of getting what i need i slap my own face every time i go down this road, because literally no one cares, not even myself. this is just burning time until a catastrophe gives me a get out of existential angst free card. what is it going to take? A heart attack? Cancer? A stroke? Getting fired? What is it going to take before I actually venture “out” into the “world,” whatever that is, and actually force myself to interact with people, the same people, in the same set of ways, consistently enough to actually start to generate the conditions under which friendships can possibly form? When am I going to walk down off this rocky gnarled hillside into the lush loam beside the river? It’s right over there. There’s no fence. I can go any time. Why don’t I? because i’m afraid my metaphors are too dumb? god, no. John Cage said he thought music was like people talking, but just sound, just sound was just sound, and he didn’t need to hear people talking. OK, all right, OK, sure. Cool. But at the same time, I kind of need to hear people talking. So I guess if I go on this campaign, is what I’m saying, to eradicate all my obvious metaphors, I’m not necessarily going to be doing anything to help myself in the present time and place. Maybe combinations of words could be just sound. but is that what i really want? Or do i just want to metaphors to be a little less obvious and dumb? In other words, we didn’t make fun of that one guy in Mixed Company because he was trying so hard to connect with people and failing, we made fun of him because he was failing to properly conceal the fact that he was trying to connect with people. We liked to pretend we didn’t play that game, but what we really meant was we liked to believe we were better at it; that our version was somehow more pure, more legitimate, more justified. In other words, we laughed at him because he was a dork. We were so enlightened. With our drums and our smoothies and our nachos and our working for food credit and our three eighths of weed that we bought from that kid that looked like a goat, outside, next door, in the shady vestibule in front of the community arts building. A lot of time has passed since _____. All I want to do is waste more of it. Run out the clock, my friends, run out the clock of your life; go the distance and you get, what-- What is the reward? Why do you need one? Fool, rewards and metaphors and music are all just people talking.