Idiot Wind
I woke up this morning with a nasty sore throat.
My only real bit of homework last night was to write a one-pager about what I think poetry is. Mikey and I watched the Bears v. Colts game on ESPNHD, and I learned about the difference between indicas and sativas--violently... and for about an hour.
So I ended up writing my one-pager during the monster break between my international politics class and my class of the American Presidency. Both classes require way too much reading for anything other than an English Lit class.
My Tuesdays and Thursdays are going to be pretty packed.
So are my Wednesdays and Fridays, when work gets added to the equation.
...But my ENG 354 class--Twentieth Century American Literature Between the Wars--should be awesome: there's a good lineup of people in it, and it's my favorite period in any writing, American or otherwise. Anything could have happened, and they knew it, and you feel it when you read it.
But/So
I am so depressed. I am so depressed that school is in full force starting now. " " " " that I have two real classes in the same dreary basement room of the second dreariest building on campus. " " " " that I don't know what I want, except for it to be summer, still. " " " " about this sore throat, which I've now concluded has to be due to sleeping on the floor of an air conditioned room, which Grandma Connie warned me about this summer, and which I brushed off. And, I'm depressed about what's going on in Cortland, because it's fucked up.
During the long break between my two serious classes, and after I'd written my one-pager, I picked up Chronicles and started reading, and I exhaled, and I felt free.
The previous week had left me drained. I had gone back to the town of my early years in a way I could never have imagined--to see my father laid to rest. Now there would be no way to say what I was never capable of saying before. Growing up, the cultural and generational differences had been insurmountable--nothing but the sound of voices, colorless unnatural speech. My father, who was plain speaking and straight talking had said, "Isn't an artist a fellow who paints?" when told by one of my teachers that his son had the nature of an artist. It seemed I'd always been chasing after something, anything that moved--a car, a bird, a blowing leaf--anything that might lead me into some more lit place, some unknown land downriver. I had not even the vaguest notion of the broken world I was living in, what society could do to you.
-from chapter 3, New Morning
I pictured myself on a fall afternoon, chasing a soccer ball in the backyard of the old, brick ranch we lived in before we moved into the woods, as my dad raked fallen leaves into a gigantic pile that we'd both play in after he'd finished. Mom stood by the house, wearing a brown dress and a turtleneck, holding her camera close to her face, ready to take our picture the moment we entered her frame.
Emily came over for a little while this afternoon, saying she didn't feel like she exactly had a life down here. I never felt like I had a life down here, either, until last semester.
When we were children, this didn't happen. This couldn't happen.
It's not dark yet,
But it's getting there.
Crying,
Andrew
My only real bit of homework last night was to write a one-pager about what I think poetry is. Mikey and I watched the Bears v. Colts game on ESPNHD, and I learned about the difference between indicas and sativas--violently... and for about an hour.
So I ended up writing my one-pager during the monster break between my international politics class and my class of the American Presidency. Both classes require way too much reading for anything other than an English Lit class.
My Tuesdays and Thursdays are going to be pretty packed.
So are my Wednesdays and Fridays, when work gets added to the equation.
...But my ENG 354 class--Twentieth Century American Literature Between the Wars--should be awesome: there's a good lineup of people in it, and it's my favorite period in any writing, American or otherwise. Anything could have happened, and they knew it, and you feel it when you read it.
But/So
I am so depressed. I am so depressed that school is in full force starting now. " " " " that I have two real classes in the same dreary basement room of the second dreariest building on campus. " " " " that I don't know what I want, except for it to be summer, still. " " " " about this sore throat, which I've now concluded has to be due to sleeping on the floor of an air conditioned room, which Grandma Connie warned me about this summer, and which I brushed off. And, I'm depressed about what's going on in Cortland, because it's fucked up.
During the long break between my two serious classes, and after I'd written my one-pager, I picked up Chronicles and started reading, and I exhaled, and I felt free.
The previous week had left me drained. I had gone back to the town of my early years in a way I could never have imagined--to see my father laid to rest. Now there would be no way to say what I was never capable of saying before. Growing up, the cultural and generational differences had been insurmountable--nothing but the sound of voices, colorless unnatural speech. My father, who was plain speaking and straight talking had said, "Isn't an artist a fellow who paints?" when told by one of my teachers that his son had the nature of an artist. It seemed I'd always been chasing after something, anything that moved--a car, a bird, a blowing leaf--anything that might lead me into some more lit place, some unknown land downriver. I had not even the vaguest notion of the broken world I was living in, what society could do to you.
-from chapter 3, New Morning
I pictured myself on a fall afternoon, chasing a soccer ball in the backyard of the old, brick ranch we lived in before we moved into the woods, as my dad raked fallen leaves into a gigantic pile that we'd both play in after he'd finished. Mom stood by the house, wearing a brown dress and a turtleneck, holding her camera close to her face, ready to take our picture the moment we entered her frame.
Emily came over for a little while this afternoon, saying she didn't feel like she exactly had a life down here. I never felt like I had a life down here, either, until last semester.
When we were children, this didn't happen. This couldn't happen.
It's not dark yet,
But it's getting there.
Crying,
Andrew