October 22, 2021
Muncie, Indiana
Another strange dream about work.
The accelerator stuck careening down a hill heading back to work and I can’t uncross my legs to fix it.
Usually the dreams are about being unprepared and running late for teaching.
I make my lunch.
I have breakfast with my daughter and we talk about cryptocurrency, her next debate topic.
I say something about regulation and democracy and taxing the rich.
I go to take a shower. Bathroom in use.
I go play the guitar.
I go to take a shower. Bathroom still in use.
Teenagers!
I pack my bag for work.
I go to take a shower. Bathroom is free!
I get cleaned and dressed for work.
It’s a biking day.
I have a tender thought about the rusty old bike I use, eighteen years of riding and it’s still going strong.
I’ll never leave you.
It’s a crisp fall day.
Campus is empty as it’s not a class-changing time. Everyone is in their seats, I guess.
I need a glass of water.
I settle in to my office at the university and review today’s activity.
21 minutes until my first class.
I feel heavy.
I’m going through the motions and I know it.
I need to shake things up and start over.
I can blame the pandemic to some extent, but it’s more than that.
Maybe I’m becoming J. Alfred Prufrock.
Maybe I’ve always been.
My hair is thinning.
In today’s morning classes we considered a statement:
“In the end, the things we love don’t really change over time.”
We did some mining of our pasts at ages 7, 10, 15, and now, looking for patterns.
One student praised another’s intelligence in the most loving way.
Maybe there’s hope for us still.
Yes, I will write you a recommendation letter next spring. Thanks for asking so early.
But why are you rushing to get through all of this?
Slow down.
As expected, I get a great push from students to be let out to watch the bed races.
It’s Homecoming.
Of course I say yes as long as they promise to think about Aristotle.
I’m sure they all do, for the length of time it takes for me to say his name.
One student comes to see me about a personal matter.
It’s tough being 19.
So much to navigate.
Choking is a red flag, though. Run, don’t walk, from that guy.
And don’t look back.
It’s not your job to fix him.
I can never resist the unexpected donut, which appears at 2:00 today.
Thank you, William Fulbright.
I cancel my 2:00 class.
In the name of fairness, but really,
I just don’t want to do it today and I know they don’t either.
I do some planning for next semester.
There’s always next semester when I can start anew.
The university president waves to me as I approach on my bicycle, heading home.
Done for the week, I de-stress with some ambient guitar playing.
- O.the dog chases some balls with me in the yard.
Cocktail hour awaits.
I prepare the next steps of the deep-dish pizza we’ll be baking tonight.
Mid cocktail preparation, the older daughter wants a ride home. It’s raining.
But really, she just doesn’t want to walk.
We relent.
My Manhattan is delightful, the one good thing from my pandemic:
A new taste for mixed drinks.
Turns out, I’m a bourbon man. Who knew?
A vague letting go.
Cocktail hour has become our pandemic ritual on the weekends.
5:00, a drink, and an episode of Gray’s Anatomy.
Why that show? I can’t say.
You don’t really have to pay attention.
I draw while I sip and listen to the show.
I rarely draw what I see
Instead, one mark leads to another and eventually an image emerges, as if from the other side.
These two appeared last night:
What do they mean?
Nothing, and that’s ok. The form is the content. The content is the form.
This is my favorite activity.
After dinner, the wife and I watch Succession.
So terrible, and so good.
She heads off to bathe and go to bed.
I head back to the guitar to play out the night before younger daughter needs to be picked up.
Just shy of 11, she emerges from her friend’s house with purple chocolate pretzel people with faces on them.
We head home and I head to bed.
Day over.