Black slime, that is. Something viscous and abject. The coming week is looming, to be sure. I'm dreading spending another day in the vapid wasteland of North Campus. Somewhere, just peeping around one of the twists and turns of my cerebral cortex, is a ray of sunshine. I just haven't made it there yet. Today was average, quite. Eight hours of work followed by nine miles on the treadmill.
Jane Tompkins admits to worrying about the state of her soul in an essay I've spent several class periods, across several states and just as many universities, trying to explain to bewildered freshman. I don't worry about the state of my soul so much as my measurable quality as a person. Being a blackhole is contagious. You end up sucking in the people around you and smearing a glaze of negativity on everyone you come into contact with. Today I was in the car, having a minor battle of wills with C, when I was struck with one of these moments of doubting, not the metaphysical state of my soul, but my uselessness/usefulness. Black slime. Then came the tortured doubts about my prospectus thinly veiled under a banal lack of concern for all things academic, fantasizing stupidly about dropping out of grad school. Not meaning any of it, really. There's always the crouching, snarling, beast of Montana--my own shadow beast--warning me away from such action.
Maybe in a nice pink future, we'll spoon our brand new Nissans, worry about taking out a second mortgage, whether to rent a house at the beach with two or three rooms, thirty or fifty yards from the crashing waves of North Carolina.
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