It’s that time again

Ah, the first week of class.  Always an interesting compilation of intriguing class introductions, and the equally interesting albeit strenuous period of the teachers’ culling of the herds. 

Oh so you want to take my class with three times the approved limit of students crammed into every nook and cranny, every space against the wall occupied by another laptop carting body.  Well that shouldn’t be a problem, just read this over the weekend.

The funny part about it is that next week in class the teachers are going to have this funny look in their eyes when they pose easy questions to their audiences and receive only sleepy, befuddled stares in response.  We are asked to go into this zombie mode to have even a remote chance of completing the work they assign the first week – and then they inevitably wonder why we are not exactly on point by the time we finish such a gauntlet and walk through their doors.  For that matter, exactly how much coffee would you like me to drink trying to finish all this?  I happen to have given up all other, more effective and destructive, stimulants long ago.  You want me to read faster?  Well, I refuse.  I read how I read and it suits me.  I think about things, go off on tangents, pull out corollaries and points of interest, and fill the margins with a large percentage of what occurs to me as I read the text.  To me, this IS reading.  Anything else would be merely glazing over.  I want to digest what I read. 

I think, in part, this compulsion to break down what I read is a common delusion of mine that I can get anything done in one pass.  The same operation can be seen in so many little things I do:

Yes, I can make it out of the car (while locking the doors), across the street, and over to my apartment – with a couple hundred dollars of grocery bags cutting into my arms (and wrists and fingertips) – and still manage to get out my key and open the door.  Why?  Well two (or five or six) trips would be silly… 

Yes, I can burn off over a thousand calories at the gym (or so the ‘trustworthy’ machines tell me) – practically killing myself for hours on end so that walking back to my car I look like an individual who is quite certainly missing her cane – because going several times a week for a reasonable amount of time and pain would (once again) be silly…

So where does this leave me?  Slightly bitter about being assigned more than is reasonable, but hey, I like the challenge.  I will read everything assigned.  I will read them as thoroughly as if I had several weeks to finish them at my leisure (which ironically would most likely lead to my becoming distracted and therefore reading less of them).  I may be a little run down, but come next week I will be fully functioning as I make it into class.  And, importantly, during all this I will not drop off the face of the earth from all friends, family, and blog associations.

Introspective Danger

The only things that seem consistent in life are the inconsistencies.  I get that.  I get that we are all searching to define ourselves in a world that doesn’t seem to enable any true definition to exist.  Nothing can be explained, nothing remains explainable save the futility of this attempt and the essential inconsistency of an existence that is entirely subjective and fleeting.

What I don’t get you ask?  I don’t get how everyone continues on with this knowledge – or non-knowledge if you will – how everyone is able to continue on as if nothing had changed.  As if realizing this, or accepting it, doesn’t change you.  Okay, so lets see, supposedly everyone knows this and nobody cares.  Lets Proceed.

I can hear it already.  You want to offer up some cliche.  Something along the lines of – ‘Everything is meaningless,’ ‘All you have is today,’ ‘Enjoy life and live every moment like its your last.’  Let me tell you – none of that means anything.  A while back I spent a full year of my life [no breaks to come up for air, no imposing reality, all alone in a discussion with my stream of consciousness] living out of my car because I was living, breathing, and at times making methamphetamine(speed) – all mind you, in the pursuit of some greater ideology.  I wasn’t screwing up I was, ahem, ”experiencing life,” I was, “living as if I was dying,” I was – and actually told myself repeatedly – “conducting a psychological/societal experiment – placing myself in the role of an objective observer who must assimilate herself into a different culture to more fully understand”. [You see I didn't have those 'causes' that you hear others speak about - I had an amazing, fortunate childhood with supportive and loving parents.  I did well in school. I simply glimpsed a world I didn't know existed and became obsessed with the desire to know and understand that of which I was (and despite it all, still am) ignorant of]. 

I spent a good while doing this, writing down anything and everything I thought of along the way – and what did I end up with?

 After shedding my ‘assumed’ role of druggie, attempting to regain and rebuild what I felt should constitute my life – what was I left with?  What lasting impression or grain of wisdom have I discerned – - – that people will do just about anything to escape their present reality.  My usual justification was that I needed to remain “fucked up” (a term I use in an almost endering  sense) in order for me to pass from this reality into the rabbit hole of a new, alternate meaning – and my ultimate goal?  To arrive at the other side, to see past all the confusion.  To find an answer.  I have spent my whole life questioning – and I was sure this was the way to an answer.

 Was it?  Who knows.  I have a tendency to block out, skim over, and plain forget memories that do not coincide with my present sense of self.  Unfortunately (or fortunately?) what I gained in shedding my assumed role and re-learning to live sober is my complete and utter loss of self.  My sense of self – of who I am – is now only as strong as a passing whim or a breeze upon the arm.  Its fleeting to say the least.  I said ‘after shedding my assumed role’.  I lied.  Yes I shed the role of a drug user, along with various other labels I have acquired during my life, but the only sense of reality, the only role I have is one of assumption.

At times it’s entertaining.  When I am alone I look at other female (girls, women?) passing by me as if I am flipping through the pages of a catalogue.  This ones too tall, too blonde – not that one she seems – get this – too self-concerned and involved. Ha! What a hypocrite. I’m ridiculous.  Believe me, I am more than well aware yet find myself unable to do a damn thing about it.

 The only things I am sure about:

I am not religious, yet I have always had and continue to have an incredibly strong sense of morality.  I do what is right. Why, I have no idea…I used to consider myself as moral but wavering on a ledge between what I believed to be good and bad.  Now I am just moral, there’s no denying it.  I always want to do what I consider to be the right thing. I think it must have something to do with all the people I hurt through my using.  I will always feel a sense of being in debt to to my family for their continued support and love  – and perhaps providing me an avenue to find my way back through the fog to life.

There is this hidden bravado, cockiness - that smirk in your eye –  that always sneaks its way back up to the surface of my personality.  While it tends to be short lived it is truly addictive and returns when and where it decides.  It’s as if this sense of myself know something and finds the whole of everything to be just a bit funny. 

 [As a side note: reading Luigi Pirandello's One, No One & One Hundred Thousand is adding fuel to a fire I normally try my best to push into the darkness and cram into a closet.]