(Getting the) Sickness
Music: Roxy Music: "A Really Good Time"; Big Star: "You Can't Have Me" I'm sitting in the office watching a downpour the likes of which we've yet to see here in some time; the scene outside my window is blurry. I regret spring hasn't quite sprung, so the usual treat of wet t-shirts . . . well, I'll leave off with that. But, her Hotliciousness just walked by my window without waving. Umbrellas bob along as students are starting to leave class; soon, there will be a swarm under the canopies that frame the green.
My class and I got locked in a classroom today after class, presumably because I slammed the door during my lecture on Freud (I get excited talking about libido and, of course, slamming doors is a good exemplar of sublimation; I was actually scolding students in the hall who were making too much of a racket for me to concentrate on the lecture). The students were amused and then distressed; I wasn't terribly bothered by it myself, imprisioned with and by youth. There is something terribly liberating about what Larry Rickel's calls The Great Teenage.
I do not have anything of interest to write today; I thought about sharing--student just popped in to say that he really "dug" my office, which is lined with movie, rock, and pin-up posters from floor to ceiling--I thought about sharing my plans for writing about answering machines, which I hoped to do tomorrow. But then my mind is a sieve and unfocused thinking about all the other things I must accomplish: overdue drinks with A Master Poet and fellow Spanish Townsian this evening; Flogging Mollys tomorrow night at the House of Blues; DJ-ing a 5-year old's birthday party on Saturday; hanging out with a colleague on Sunday . . . yeah, I don't think much writing will be done.
I'd rather be fishing; or rather, in the Eurythmic argot: "No, it's not raining with me."
I former student who graduated two years ago wanted to meet and discuss graduate school studies last week. I took her to lunch and we talked about her interests. Eventually, however, the conversation turned to the abuses of religion. Indeed, the conversation we had was not unfamiliar to me, as a number of students often want to discuss religion: how they feel constrained by it, or how they have escaped it, or sometimes, lingering fears about going to hell. I think this is, in part, because I often reference my own religious background as an evangelical in the class room for examples (you cannot separate rhetoric from religion in this country, and I defy anyone who claims otherwise to prove it). I think I happened upon a metaphor during that conversation, one that I think was ripped from a favorite Grateful Dead album of mine: Live Without a Net.
"Learning to live without a net," I said, "is really though." Religion is a nice net to fall into if you stumble, but the choice to jettison religion and retain spirit is much harder because, well, there is "no net." Having a partner can be that net for many, too, but if you're a single guy like me whose ideal of a partner is "two independent friends who happen to enjoy each other's company enough to sleep together," that means there really is no "net" there either. Or at least I try to avoid making another my net (not like I've had the opportunity here to really tempt it, though).
Well, that seemed to make sense for both of us. I told her about a night I had last week where I was in bed but never got to sleep. I kept mulling over "what the hell am I doing with my life?" Actually, I asked myself "what the fuck am I doing?" but I didn't want to communicate that extra edge. I have nights like that every now and again, in which I'm made painfully aware of not having a net. Networks are great, so are support systems. I have those. But there's no certainty to what I'm doing with my life. I said to her that I didn't think that this feeling really ever went away (it is, indeed, that sickness unto death). Funny, but when I have these heart-to-heart talks with students (who are coming in some sense for counsel, and sometimes worse, for answers), I often end up in this place: "I toss and turn and continue to have doubts like you."
I think this essential insecurity helps me. God help me from ever becoming certain, from taking up knitting.