Professors roost on the debris teaching old books to brained students who lay comatose or dead in the gravel. I pass by one classwreck after another. The professors seem to have new springs in their pedagogical steps. Their eyes are sparkling and I can see their teeth and they’re gesticulating with animation as they read aloud passages from assigned texts and pause to discharge canny hermeneutics that flow over the students like expanding rings of fire and ensure the certain fossilization of their bodies into the bones of the ragged earth.
It’s a good dream. I’m sorry to see it dissolve into reality.
54
Existence is an illusion for the Blankness on the Other Side.
REVISION: Existence is an illusion for the Blankness that is the Otherside.
REVISION: Existence is nothing but a curtain that, yanked open, reveals the Empty Stage.
(NOTE: Stop capitalizing the first letters of select words in order to incite Big Signification in those words. It looks forced. And very dumb.)
REVISION: Existence is nothing but a big curtain that, yanked open by a fat man, reveals the organs that skim across the surface of the body electric like deranged waterbugs.
REVISION: One day deranged waterbugs will usurp the tyranny of bureaucratic echolalia.
REVISION: The harder you study, the dumber you get.
(NOTE: Cliché. And poorly written. All of it.)
REVISION: I can’t get the theme song from that movie out of my head. Did I hear it recently somewhere or did my unconscious usher it onto the stage of my consciousness?
REVISION: I don’t like my roommates. Not one of them. I miss my wife too. Not enough to call her. She’ll just get mad. I’m mad enough for everybody.
REVISION: Madness is like life: it goes on and on and on and then somebody passes the baton.
(NOTE: No rhyming. No alliteration. No assonance.)
REVISION: There is only one Quasimodo. Everybody else is a crude imitation at best. And when the earth swallows the bell tower, all that remains are sonic memories and matte bronze skies.
REVISION: I don’t want this for me. I don’t want this for anybody. I’ve had too much coffee. I haven’t had enough wine. One needs wine. One needs wine. One needs wine.
FINAL REVISION: Too much coffee, not enough wine.
55
I feel like I’ve lost something. Myself perhaps. Or somebody else. The rub is: Who is the Father dictating the angle of this adamantine repose?
The professor is explaining what we need to do for our upcoming essays. I don’t understand what he means. I raise my hand. He calls on me.
I say, “So should we include a title page?”
The professor says, “No. As I pointed out about fifteen seconds ago, don’t include a title page.”
I say, “So no title page?”
The professor says, “No. No title page.”
I say, “All right. No title page.”
The professor says, “Yes. No title page.”
I say, “I just want to be clear. You don’t want a title page, right? Is that what you mean?”
The professor says, “That’s right. No. I don’t want a title page. That is precisely what I mean.”
I say, “All right.”
The professor says, “All right.”
I say, “Why?”
The professor says, “What?”
I say, “Why? Why don’t you want a title page? It introduces things, like.”
The professor says, “Title pages are superfluous. A waste of space. And paper. Center your title at the top of the first page of your essay.”
I say, “Center the title at the top of the first page of my essay. Right?”
The professor says, “Right. Center your title at the top of the first page of your essay.”
I nod. Then I say, “Will we get points taken off if we include a title page? I’m only curious.”
The professor looks at me.
I say, “Professor? Are you ok? You’re just looking at me. Should I repeat my question?”
The professor says, “Again, no title pages. You shouldn’t include a title page. There shouldn’t be one. Don’t include one. Don’t include a title page. I don’t want you to. Don’t do it. No title page. Don’t do it.”
I say, “Don’t do it.”
The professor says, “Holy Christ.”
I say, “But let’s say we do it. Include a title page, I mean. Hypothetically, like. Will points be taken off?”
The professor says, “Whoever fights monsters—“
I interrupt, “Don’t give me that Nietzsche shit. Everybody quotes that one anyway. Articulating that aphorism is more of an indication of a lack of erudition than an assertion of epistemological prowess. I’m talking about a title page.”
The professor says, “Somber is human life, and as yet without meaning: a buffoon may be fateful to it.”
I say, “That’s a little better. But Nietzsche is really off-limits. Too commercial. If you want to sound smart, quote somebody like Feuerbach or Binswanger. Only real scholars know who they are. But I find it troubling that you can’t come to grips with this title page debacle. I mean, for God’s sake, who cares? It’s not a big deal. I have ideas for fonts and so forth and you’re really throwing a ratchet in my machinery here. I just want my essay to look as good as it can. A title page can make things look sharp, you know? Well.” There’s something else I want to say but I can’t remember what it is.
The professor says, “The abyss.”
I say, “That doesn’t make any sense. Speak in complete sentences. That’s a fragment.”
The professor remains silent.
I say, “I assume your silence means a title page is ok. What else could your silence mean? Nothing.”
The professor remains silent.
“Sir? Hey, you. You there. What the fuck are you doing? C’mon. Seriously? C’mon. No? Yes? Ok. All right. Yes or no. Don’t answer that. It wasn’t a question anyway. No. All right. Well. Well. Thank you, sir.”
The professor remains silent.
I turn to the rest of the class and say, “Do you hear that? Title pages are ok. Go ahead and include one if you want to. Or don’t. It’s up to you. It’s always been up to you. Nothing else matters but subjectivity and the unique arc of the human spirit.”
56
I don’t talk much about my fitness habits. I drink a lot of wine, but I hit the gym six days a week, sometimes twice a day, and while I will occasionally sip wine during cardio, particularly on stationary bikes and elliptical machines, for the most part I keep it clean. The point is, staying in good muscular and cardiovascular shape is part of my routine. The spectacle of my physique does not require the crutch of language.
57
On another, similar note:
I go to a college bar and they’re shooting pornos all over the place.
In the restrooms.
On the dance floor.
Behind the bar.
I have more or less forgotten about pornos since they are shot everywhere, all the time, in every nook and cranny of college space and life. They have become as normative a fixture as the air I breathe.
Something about this particular spectacle piques my interest. It incites obsession, in fact, and I must drink large quantities of alcohol in order to exorcize the demons from my innerspace.
Drunk, I call my wife.
I try to tell her how I feel.
I slur my words and she gets mad and hangs up on me.
I call her back and tell her I’m sorry and hang up on her.
I call her one more time and assure her that I didn’t mean to hang up on her. She didn’t deserve that.