"And, though cut piece by piece, the hero never abandons the battlefield." - The Guru Granth Sahib, Sikh holy book
There comes a day in every semester when you realize, concretely, that all joy in your academic life will be sucked dry, much as when a sea-lamprey accosts a sea-bass. First, it nudges its nasty, sightless head into your gill and secretes an anti-coagulant into your bloodstream, causing near instantaneous hemophilia. Then it feeds, and then when it is done feeding, it feeds some more. You find yourself wandering in the Memorial Union for hours, unable to even muster the strength or desire to feed yourself. When you lope listlessly to the fun fireplace room to try to find a couch to heave your bulk upon, you are met with hundreds of other students lying about in heaps like a still from a genocide documentary; ordinarily, you couldn't care less, but this somehow galls you like nothing ever has. Quieting thoughts of machetes and the cruel equatorial midday sun, you fall asleep reading the instructions for your homework only to awaken when someone's cell-phone rings (The "Brady Bunch" Theme song; rot in hell, bitch, rot in HELL) for a solid five minutes before the insolent hussy who owns it awakens from her blissful sorority-girl slumber to flee from the lynchmob that'd hastily formed near her couch. By then, it's too late. Things that, even when spoken about in whisper, turned you on now seem like work. The sea-lamprey slides its boneless head entirely into your gill, and you find yourself thinking: hey! I already HAVE one degree! Isn't it pretentious/unChristian/communist to have more than that? Plus: when am I ever going to use my knowledge of the Book of Revelation's Seven Churches of the Apocalypse for anything other than making my friends dislocate their jaws yawning?
Yet another night of translation. Yet another night spent cradling a mug of pumpkin spice coffee, grim charm against the encroaching desire to bed myself. Yet another night where I wonder if I should have taken the $38, 000 job at GE when I had the chance.
In a rustic faux oldy-timey picture frame on my desk is an ethnographic artifact that I took from the Milford gurdwarda. On paper printed to look like the cloudy sky, scripture from the Guru Granth Sahib is written in English and in Punjabi (with accompanying transliteration). "Once you put your foot on My Path," it warns, "then lay down your head without reluctance."
[neck outstretched]
I mean: YAY TURKISH! YAY OTTOMAN TURKISH! YAY FRENCH! YAY OTHER CLASS THAT HAS NO NAME BECAUSE ONLY TWO PEOPLE ARE IN IT AND YOU AREN'T GOING TO MEET AT ALL!
The coffee has lost.
Have a great night, Bloomington.
Dom
1 comment:
Hush, little baby, don't say a word,
Mama's going to buy you a mockingbird.
And if that mockingbird don't sing,
Mama's going to buy you a diamond ring.
And if that diamond ring turns brass,
Mama's going to buy you a looking glass.
And if that looking glass gets broke,
Mama's going to buy you a billy goat.
And if that billy goat won't pull,
Mama's going to buy you a cart and bull.
And if that cart and bull turn over,
Mama's going to buy you a dog named Rover.
And if that dog named Rover won't bark,
Mama's going to buy you a horse and cart.
And if that horse and cart fall down,
You'll still be the sweetest little baby in town.
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