The Soundtrack to My Life

There is something not right, I said to my roomate, when I want to listen to Mariah Carey all the time. Sunday afternoon, on my way home from a run, I had her new song in my head (as it has been for the past two weeks), and it's just so damn catchy. Perhaps I'll have to turn it on now, and give Shakira a break...

...There, that's better. Completey irrelevant to my current romantic situation (no, I have not lost someone), but oh, Mariah, how you draw me in. The one line in particular which I sang over and over again while washing dishes


Tryin' to keep it together, but I'm fallin' apart.
All out of my element, throwin' things, cryin,'
tryin' to figure out where the hell I went wrong...

Sigh, let's all have a moment for "tryin' to keep it together."

I'm so close to the end that I can taste it, but in that interim, shit is gonna go down. We just got [what I consider] a shitty grade on a presentation for one of our grad classes, and the disjunction between what I am currently studying and what I want to be studying is now presented before me in that much starker relief. Oh, for a film class! Oh, for a literature class! Oh, for a theory class! Oh heart, heart! O bleeding drops of red! Shit, I didn't write that, did I?

I miss the abstract, the theoretical, the second-hand, the altered, adulterated, the already-interpreted. I hate "best methods" presentations which rely on diagrams and posters. Booooooooooooooo. Note frustration expressed by repetition of multiple "o's." Return me to my Ivory Tower, O Princes of Philology! I think they're going to kick me out for good. Can I have an Ivory pedestal to sit on? A small Ivory Country Cottage?

I miss archaisms, the Romantics and their fucked-up ideals, Jane with her seemingly well-intentioned cultural critique, and Umberto with his Ego (yes, that's a Capital E.).

Maybe it's the antique fair that I went to on Sunday, maybe it's me re-reading selected quotes from Quijote and the Pendulum, maybe it's thinking about learning Italian all the time in my TESOL class, but for some reason or another I am having a longing for all things old, all things nostalgic, all things far from my present state of being. My students, and I believe ninth graders in general, do not have an appreciation for the richness, subtleties, hypocrisies, and palimpsests of history.

I suppose I shouldn't get mad at them, and just give them a chance to "grow up" but it's so hard.

Damn, how did it get to be this late!?! Every night, the same. O, for eight hours of Sleep. Yes, that's a capital S. The Shins complete the Soundtrack to My Life for now.

I'm trying hard not to give in,
battened down to fair the wind.
Read my head, at least pretend
Allow myself no mock defense