The song is always the same.
My heart is always on the line
I've traveled all kinds of places
The song is always the same
Got lonesome fuel for fire
Got 45s to play at night
Got books to spend with every weekend
The story's always the same
Got lonesome fuel for fire
I always thought feet were meant to get dirty.
They're settled there under the stocks of your legs like wheels on a shopping cart or teeth on a rake. You drag them under you wherever you go and they, in turn, face unforgiving floors and worldly walkways. They kick up the filth of the earth at groundlevel where you don't have to see it or touch it.
I walk barefoot outside. My feet don't know the luxury of padded walls or laces. I shock them into cold, heavy grass. I march high-stepping through sopping mud. I tip-toe nimbly over prickly, pebble-strewn concrete. I check the mail without slippers. I take out the trash without flip flops. I pace the lawn philosophically without socks or sneakers.
In summer my feet are rarely clean. I take that for granted now. Even after I've showered and scrubbed the wrinkled callouses on my heels - they are never pink and soft like some delicate paws. I don't care; I know they'd get hard and blackened again after a few hours.
They do all the dirty work for me. They stop the ground beneath me - they meet all the small rocks and shards of careless garbage lazing between blades of grass and under leaves. They thicken themselves with meaty callouses and carry me through unplanned jaunts without complaint. They blacken like the chimney-sweeps of Dickens novels or nachos under a ten-minute broil. They catch forgotten dust and crumbs on unswept tile like fleshy lint traps. They blister under the fashionable rubbing of tight high heels and rough-strapped sandals.
My callouses didn't hold. I bled today.
I bled on the carpet in B037 of the JFSB. I had no band-aid, no kleenex to stop it up. It bled and bled until a little black shelf of caked blood formed on the rim of my heel.
It hurts to step.
I have been paying more and more attention to school lately. I've been wrapt in reading, writing, and tutoring - wandering through the jaunts of an academic day almost mechanically. Blissfully, but mechanically. I wonder if that is possible.
Even now I am going between writing response papers for my Internship and writing this journal entry. I feel like I am ducking in and out of separate wordy conversations. I don't know which one I care for more.
I got up staff meeting early this morning. "Early" is a word which here means 7am. For someone resolved on spending the next eighty years of her life tucked beneath down and cotton until at least 8:30 every morning, that is saying something. I despise the morning. Everyone expects you to be out of bed, dressed, breakfast scarfed away, lunchbox packed, fly buttoned, hair smoothed, and eyes rubbed free of those crowding crusty globs that sift between eyelashes before you wake up. There you are - that ready pair of bright eyes just popping with anticipation for the new day.
They expect so much.
I like staff meetings. This is the first one I've been to, but I think I like them. All the Writing Center Tutors and Interns pull up a circle of chairs and talk about writing. I feel out of my element among students as smart or smarter than myself, but it's slowly warming on me like the first five minutes in a hot tub. It's a comfort that seeps in and lingers even after you've stepped out and towelled off. There are people in the world who think like I do. How comfortable.
I spent a few hours reading one inch thick of printed-off articles for my novel class. It was tangentially fascinating - gothic novels, artistic didacticism, frantic virgins fleeing through underground caverns after the near-ravishings of her would-be father-in-law... I read for just over two hours.
I ran into my novels class late and flushed. Professor Mason walked on eggshells until I seemed able to choke out a laugh or two at his scholarly jokes. Lesbian literary critics and modern gothicism - what a funny guy.
We studied Yeats in Modernism today. Yeats seems the Modernist posterchild for poetry. Obscure, alienated, complex, and so very beautiful. He's too deep for me. I'll go in up to my hips and not know how to get out. He's a genius. I will say that I at least mostly understand his theory of the gyres. It's beautiful. I won't try to explain it.
After Modernism I felt stretched and overworked - like soap rubbed between dry hands. I carried myself heavily from my classroom to the bookstore. I bought vanilla soy Odwalla and drank it slowly and thickly. It was cool and refreshing, but my mind still felt beaten and drained. I skipped the second half of my evening literature class - the impersonality of that room felt too poignant today. I didn't do anything productive until ten thirty.
I watched internet videos poking fun at the president in quintessential Juvenalian satire. Stephen Colbert is heroic. Why did they invite him to the White House Correspondents Dinner? They must have known he'd just spend his entire speech tearing down the presidency by every word Bush has ever slipped.
I think I'm allowed to laugh at the president because I know what "Juvenalian satire" means.
And Bush doesn't.
I came home and the lights weren't on. Jessie and Joel were propped up on the couch beneath their laptops. Joel spent today pounding out a ten-page research paper on the effects of aphid-milking ants on apple trees. He was a bit grouchy and nearly left without saying goodbye. Jessie packed her laptop up and Joel trailed away after.
I called Dad to ask him if I could delete some files off his old computer so I could start writing and saving papers. He asked how I was doing and that felt good. I didn't mean to get off the phone so quickly, but I had work to do anyway, so I let him go.
I try to bury myself under the callouses of schoolwork, try to lend myself to academic distraction and muddy up the feelings of isolation I've inherited all over again. It's no one's fault but mine, I suppose, but that doesn't make the sting any fainter or the caked blood any less painful. I found myself reaching comically and pathetically for some sort of human contact all day but was put off. I didn't even meet Rachel between classes like I usually do.
I wanted to sit out on the couch without grumpy Joel staining the air with his moodiness. I wanted those phone calls I get every other day but today. I wanted to hear my name more than I heard it. I walked over dead leaves and looked up at the mountains. I don't know why today felt so heavy, but it pressed on my footsteps and sank me into an oblivious melancholy. I was blind to the company I had and wanted the ones I didn't have to really miss me.
Today I bled.
I'll build myself up again, but I bled and bled today. I don't know why. It was gloomy.
I have hopes for tomorrow. I've already decided to make it better than today - to ignore those fashionable rubbings of self-indulgent self-pity, to tease away the blisters of bitter isolation and focus on the sweet comfort of people who know me and love me, even if they can't tell when I really just want them to tell me so.
The callouses of resiliency will toughen and I'll be ok again.
I bled today. Just today. It'll build up again. I'll bleed again, too... but after I'll toughen even more.
Time for the cycle to start again. Yeats would be proud.
Feet were meant to get dirty.
Fuel for fire, a bitter ending
to a sweet, sweet day
Fuel for fire, the sour note inside
the orchestra wail
Fuel for fire, the uncomfortable pulses
between famous last words
Fuel for fire, missing persons
in a small, small world
I dug beneath the wall of sound
I ended up back where I started
The song is always the same
Got lonesome fuel for fire
And so my heart is always on the line
I've traveled all kinds of places
The story's always the same
Got lonesome fuel for fire