Ceremonials

Have you ever stepped outside to see everything in high definition? The leaves on the trees in glorious three dimensions? The fractures in the asphalt, the oil stains in thirty shades of grey, and the skid marks like brush strokes painted upon the road? Or the sunlight shining through every blade of grass and the diffractions of shadows cast from the heavens onto the ground?

Today’s been one of those days.

Organic Evolution

I’m of a mindset that things must grow organically to be genuine. If forced, failure. My goals… sometimes they feel forced. My mind simply isn’t always upon them. But I promise it’s not for a lack of genuine concern, is it?

Sometimes I don’t know.

About Time

I’m in a foul mood for sure. Suppose it’s a bad mood rising. But I guess it’s not a bad mood, just a sad mood. The day started out so beautiful, too, so cheerful and upbeat and I was so high on life. Now I feel low. Now I just feel so low I don’t know how much lower I could go.

But I must be thankful. It’s about that time of week anyways.

Thankless Thursday

Thursdays are awful days to be thankful. Thursdays are not Fridays when the week is almost up and the weekend is right around the corner to look forward to. Thursdays are not Saturdays when I get to sleep in. Thursdays are not Sundays when a new week begins and there’s freshness in the air, inspiration everywhere, and new potential bleeding forth from every orifice of the world.

Thursdays are not Mondays when I get to return to the interesting topics discussed in my classes and see my friends after a lonely weekend. Thursdays are not Tuesdays when I get to go to my creative writing class and indulge myself in my deepest passions. Thursdays are not Wednesdays, the busiest day of the week, when I get to see all my friends in the SGA and then, in the evening, be thankful for surviving all the chaos that inevitably erupts every Wednesday.

But Thursdays are Thursdays.

Thursdays are just deep enough into the week to feel exhausted and overwhelmed, but not near enough the week’s end to look forward to relaxation or another week rising on the horizon. Thursdays are Thursdays–and Thursdays are awful days for thankfulness.

Mocking Winter

Yesterday was a fantastic day. And by yesterday, so we’re clear, I do mean Monday. It’s what happens when I sleep in late and have unexpected things come up in the afternoon and evening. Makes my days drag on and Tune Tuesdays never happen…. Music Mondays? Just not working out. Good thing for Tuesdays, or else my alliterative longing would’ve made maintaining Mondays especially laborious.

Anyways, today’s Tuesday, and I was talking about Monday and how fantastic a day it was. So, after our monthly clubs meeting (where I got to present a beautiful powerpoint on social media that I was so excited about!), I walked around campus hanging fliers for an upcoming event. Normally flier-hanging is an exhaustive task, especially with how windy it was, but a conversation with a good friend a week and a half back gave me an ingenious idea: Put the fliers in a bag. So that’s what I did. My hands were freed up, nothing blew away, and I had a receptacle to carry the outdated fliers I inevitably had to take down to make room for new material. The weather was especially beautiful–a little cool, but sunny. And the wind?

Have I ever said how much I love the wind?

Anyways, at one point I came across three employees on their way home, all of them bundled up in coats and scarves. The one was like, “Darren, where’s your coat?” And another was like, “How can you be out here like this?” And then the first said, “You’re mocking winter.”

Mocking winter. I liked it. Suddenly it became thematic.

Optimism Prime

For the first day in about ninety, I felt…relaxed. Well, not the whole day: I woke up convinced I had woken up early, and then went back to bed and overslept. I ran to get dressed, print my assignments, and then–remarkably–only arrived fifteen minutes late to class. I wasn’t even winded from the stairs.

Class went well. My second class was less a class than a test, and of the twenty questions, there was one I really didn’t know (and will kick myself for getting wrong, since I should have known it) and two more that I could have argued for each option. Not exactly the kind of feeling I like having after a test, but I got out of class an hour early, and isn’t that something?

Today, it really was something.

At the End of the Day

I’m at a loss for words. It’s not because I have nothing to say–there’s always something to say, and it’s the obligation of the artist to say anything in the most elegant way just because he can–but because I have no energy with which to say it.

It’s a strange concept. Yellow wallpaper and casks of Amontillado and roses make me weary with words and passages on past events elude me entirely. Heroes converse daily, and creation occurs now in its place. From driven snow to western apocalypses and fallen angels and odd-ball superheroes to clones with no memories.

I said my mind is chaos. And these are only homework assignments.

Restart (Rewind Button Malfunction)

It’s not that I didn’t want to, it’s simply the fact that I couldn’t. Or that didn’t if I absolve myself of forgiveness. Either way, point being, to tell the truth–and how many more words will I insist on speaking before moving past a meaningless introduction to the inevitable anyways?–I wanted to write here. I just didn’t make time to do it.

In a few words: This past week I had an extended work load at school and I’ve been fighting off a sinus infection (it’s this unseasonable weather, I swear!). None of this changes the fact that the month just changed, and since I can’t rewind time to do over what I didn’t get done, this new month allows me to restart my self-conditioning with another set of monthly goals.

Man, I really do say a lot before getting to the point.

Word Weary

I can’t recall a semester when I’ve been this exhausted at the end of the second week. Not when I had my first math class that was, for all intents and purposes, over my head. Not when I had fifteen credit hours plus work and family and student involvement. Not when I had physics and calculus and differential equations.

Yes, I came down with a stomach flu this past weekend and I think I’m not back to my full self again, but this is ridiculous. I yawn all day. I can barely focus on being awake. I could roll over asleep at any moment.

The culprit? Reading.

I love reading. I learn best by reading. But with four reading-intensive courses, the reading assignments are mountainous. Not only do I have weekly chapters to read in multiple classes, I also have “short” stories to read, reread, and annotate, stories for workshopping to read and review, and entire mythologies to tackle–and everything has a quiz attached to it. For example, yesterday I read the entire Iliad. Yes, I’ve read it before. But not recently enough to pass the test on it.

In a word, I’m word-weary. How can I read more in less time? How can I read attentively without expending all my mental energy on a single page? How do English majors do it all day long?

I’m open for suggestions.

The End At Last

It’s finally happened. Yesterday while I was at work my boss of over three years (and teacher a long time before that) came up to me and asked, “Am I correct to assume you won’t be returning next year?”

I looked at him and said, “My hope is to be at State, so… yes.”

It was only after he had walked away and I was walking back to my kids that I clutched at my chest and shook my head, whispering to myself, I can’t believe it’s finally true. It’s all suddenly real now. It’s hard to believe that I’ve reached the end at last.