what depression feels like

You know when you're at the dentist and they need an x-ray of your teeth and they put that really heavy vest on you?  It feels like one of those is on all over your body and especially on your brain.  Everything is so boring and horrible that you just want to cry all the time.  (And you do.)  The best thing is sleep and the second best thing is re-watching The West Wing on Netflix.

I wish nights were longer.

Lately when I get up in the morning I feel really sad that the nighttime is over.

Gosh, sometimes I say the dumbest things on this blog. (Hi, Mom!)

But seriously, I want to go back to sleep. It's not that I want the weekend to come because sleep isn't as satisfying on the weekend when I can sleep until whenever I want.

MJ

The first tape I ever owned: Dangerous. I asked my mom to get it for me, and she brought home (from the grocery store) Thriller. I was devastated (What did I know?) because I really, really wanted to be able to listen to "Black or White" (Shocker.) whenever I wanted to. Mom exchanged it for me.

update (9:06 pm): For the record I had never seen this video until just now. No cable in our house in the 1990s, no MTV. This is one of the most WHAT. things I have ever seen.

"I'm thinkin-a tryin out for a scholarSHIYAP."

A student of mine has four hour-long detentions he needs to serve with me for wasting four days of class last week. And today, he was on the time-wasting track again. So I said, "Wasting this hour will get you another detention. That will be five. Is that what you want?"

And then, in my head, I said, "You mess with the bull, young man, you'll get the horns!"


(And thinking of that movie, and how alarmingly similar I had sounded to Richard Vernon, was really the only thing that could've helped me out of this funk I'm in over my students' not-up-to-par work -- and clearly my not-up-to-par teaching -- on these research projects. Ungh.)

:(

I'm sad because Cassie discontinued her blog, and I loved it. As an homage, I tried to find and repost here this one really long list she wrote on it that was hilarious and super-poignant. But it's gone-zo on blogspot and my Google reader only has it archived back through the end of July. Bummer.

I guess a few of her there's-bats-in-my-room entries will serve just as adequately:

I have so much to say.

from cassiv by Cassie

You know why? Because I have a project due that I should be working on.


I want to talk about how much I love American slang, why there are Sheriffs dressed like Sheriffs from the '70s here, how I am living with four bats, how an almost mute documentary film maker slept on my couch, who, by the way, might be the only mature person I've ever met. I want to tell you about this photography book from 1961 I bought from a garage sale here, and how I cut out all the incredibly ridiculous, posed black-and-white high school photos and hung them all over my room. How charm is deceptive, and beauty fleeting, but oh how enthralled we all are anyway. And, on a related note, how wonderfully dressed Michigan boys are. I mean the ones with tattoos and the ones that pretend they don't care what they are wearing in the first place. They obviously do. But it works. I deceive myself to let them deceive me.

I like hats.



Okay so I guess I will settle for the bats story. It has the most drama, and is continuing, so maybe there will be a sequel.


No. I can't. I don't know what happens. I have really good blog stories and then the moment passes and I don't care anymore. Maybe if I get a photo I'll work my way around to framing it in words.


Until then, here is a drawing for you.

What Larry said as he slit the last dead bat's throat

from cassiv by Cassie

(locked in a room, alone with the bat, me outside the door listening)

"Yeah, I know. This is really messed up. But I have to do it because you got yourself stuck and you keep gettin in."

the bat did not reply.

This is not normal.

from cassiv by Cassie

Today I sat in a rare book room with my fellow "scholars" trying to read scrawly, inky 19th Century letters written by an American poetess. She used f's for s's. For example, "selflefs."


Why is Mos Def so fine?


Can I somehow relate contemporary Haitian literature with Victorian realism and/or film and visual culture studies?


I'm collaborating with my one of my favorite professors, Martin Wolske from U of I, on a book attempting to formulate action research based approaches to scholarship, which will be based on the past 20 years of the East St. Louis project I participated in.


My new roommate is a 30-something divorcee pilot with a 60-inch TV.


He just texted me, even though he is in the other room, to ask me if I have the full length version of Browning's Aurora Leigh, because I told him I'm studying Victorian Poetess politics and then he wikipediaed it.


My landlord called me today to tell me he is giving me a gift certificate for being nice. My ex-landlord sent me a letter yesterday telling me she is suing me for $4,400 for failing to live harmoniously with bats.


The other day, as mentioned previously, I sat in the park reading Shakespeare and discussing philosophies of art with a classmate.


The day before that, I went over to the house in which four girls in my cohort live, and two of them proceeded to spontaneously, and simultaneously, recite some Renaissance poem....


The fifteen students in my class year are called my "cohort." "Group" is too low-brow and "posse" is too mafia... duh.


Seriously, with the exception of those weeks I spent 8 hours a day walking alone in a foreign country, eating berries, wild mint, and sleeping in a tree hammock or with monks, I think this may be the weirdest my life has ever gotten, and that includes my time as a 12-year-old flannel wearing, mullet sporting adventurer with Jill Sparenberg. Now 2, Camino 1, Childhood 3.

morning routine

Every morning, I wake up, put on a pot of coffee, make some grits or oatmeal, and get on my computer to read news. It's sometimes the best part of my day, not because the rest of my day is bad, but because it's such a damn good morning routine.

Today, the news I'm reading is a little weird.

silver lining

Earlier this week I inadvertently deleted every single document on my computer -- moved them to the "Trash" and then selected "Empty Trash." Yeah. Not smart, I know. Anyway, some saint in user services at the University recovered everything today to a neat desktop folder called "documents." But all of the documents were completely unorganized and named "D00467" and the like. So I've been spending the whole day reorganizing all my shit. A sort of blessing in disguise, because now I've got this compulsive little project that will take me a few days.

Anyway, the best part is rediscovering all of the sweet shit I've got on this computer. Like I found this photo: