October 2011
Listen
Halloween - The Misfits.
“Stones in the road? I save every single one, and one day I’ll build a castle.”
—Fernando Pessoa
“We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wished, right then, that the whole world was a street.”
—Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Fall semester: I haven't put this on my UC application.
Anthropology:
- my professor enjoys anthropology, not students
- we watch animals get slaughtered via video
- on the regular, like, every other class
African American History:
- so attracted to my teacher it’s not even funny
- the worst part is, he’s a really good teacher
- whenever he looks at me, I start to blush
- and yeah, slave narratives are sad too
Ethics: Environmental Issues
- well, how does one think like a mountain?
- I sit in the back to obscure my vision
- this class is making me stupid
Art Appreciation
- what a fascinating bunch of slides
- most of these people are dead
- but whatever, I bring snacks
“I should have gone inside right then, but I needed another minute to take it all in, and acknowledge, if only to myself, that I really did have it made.”
—David Sedaris
Kurt Vonnegut: if you're reading this, you were wrong.
We talk about the difference between humanists and atheists, outside on benches that are older than I am. There is moss, and that strange leafy substance that only pretends to be moss, just winding itself around the bars beneath me. It’s there. I know it because I can feel it. I don’t question it, don’t even think to.
The last thing I believed in this strongly was a fawn-colored bulldog. She’s seated in the back of my mind under an air hockey table, next to a black dachshund. The two of them, that memory - they’re an eternity I don’t question.
Between midterms and applications, going through the motions all over again, I’m sometimes afraid that I’m shredding the bigger picture in the process. I learned at an early age that the little bits and pieces are every bit as important as what they make up. The sand creates the beach. The leaves shape the trees. Sure, but what I worry about now is balancing the two perspectives.
I don’t know shit about heaven. I just know that if there is one, my dogs are there. And if Kurt Vonnegut didn’t believe that, then that’s one point we can disagree on. He said in an interview that writers write for an audience of one. Now that - that I believe. That’s why I wrote this one for you, heaven or no heaven.
