Neurotic as Hell

I slowly wound my way around the 11th floor of Buchanon Tower, the 1st level devoted to the history department, a somber and stuffy precursor to its nexus on the 12th floor, the lofty perch of cardigan-wearing, pipe-smoking historians and their horn-rimmed secretaries who don't like to be asked questions. I walked down the dimly lit corridor and rounded the corner, but upon raising my eyes from the boring carpet I noticed her, my professor. The one whom I fear and loath more than a thousand devils dancing around a fire in the depths of a haunted forest. I saw her, at the other end of the hallway, packed up for the day, clearly headed towards the elevator. This struck fear into my heart as I too was headed towards the elevator. What was I to do? How could I endure such an awkward ride in a confined space with someone that I had laughed at the last time we spoke. She'd told me that I didn't matter in my writing; I opened up my mouth and laughed in her face. Now I was faced with riding in an elevator with this malicious bitch. What indeed was I to do? I broke out into a sweat! What could have happened? my bowels clenched tightly! The first possible future is that we could have reached the elevators at the same time, exchanging awkward head nods and muffled greetings followed immediately by a polite scuffle over who should press the button to call the elevator. What could have endured in those long moments while the ancient elevator rumbled up to the 11th floor? What sort of terse comments could be made, what awkwardly school-related questions could be uttered? This awkward silence would continue as we - on pins and needles- entered the elevator. "Oh you're headed to the ground level too, what a coincidence!" I would press the big G, my salvation from this tiny prison, I would hit the "close door" button to speed up the process. I would divert my eyes, look around at the floor and ceiling, the many luminecent buttons on the walls. Are these walls getting smaller, is the nauseous lurching of my coffin decending into death and redemption trying to drive me mad? Will I explode on her in this cage, will I go over the edge and tell her that in an objective study it was deduced that 9/10 orphans would prefer to have Ebenezer Scrooge and Michael Jackson as their gay fathers to one day in her company. I probably wouldn't say anything, just do my heart a little more damage. Finally, after painfully stopping at every other floor we'd reach the end of our painful decent, I'd allow her to get off first and then I would bolt, run, hide from this insane power structure. This is only one option though...what if, what if she, while waiting for the elevator, did something infinitely more awkward and asked me to take another elevator, or perhaps less severe made up some excuse that she forgot something in her office or had to use the washroom or had decided to take the stairs for a change. Would she make that awkward sacrfice to save us both from the even worse fate of that elevator ride? We would both know the reason for this last moment cop-out, we would both feel the lead weight of true hate buffet the bottum of our guts. We would both understand that hate was reciprocated, a relationship from hell, a feeling of intense loneliness.

What actually happened, in that dark corridor as her back was turned to me while she locked her office door, not really her office, she was a sessional? What did I do, I thought quickly, all of the awkward possibilities stood stark infront of me, and I like a brave young warrior lurched into an alcove in the corridor, I hid, trembling with the fear of so many horrific possibilities. Obfuscated my soul from the devil who lurked the hallways, trying to push us into hell's gaping maw. How could I let this woman ruin a day that I wasn't obligated to listen to her blather on for an hour and a half. And that is what I did, I avoided the impending disaster on my mood and found hope for the future on the wall. I found an advertizment for a class called Philosophy of History, the class I have been seeking for my entire degree. I enrolled that evening. I also got a B+ in this woman's class, how very odd...

First Thought Good Thought?

If nothing gets done on December the 12th there'll be hell to pay and no one will be able to do anything about it. It'll pass by without a sound, without a thought, without a being. I'm not denying that it was ever there, just that no one will remember it, comfortably numb as we are. I think there's a show on the tube tonight, maybe I should watch it? Bother, bother, bother, what's my brother got to do with it? If I don't make an impression something dreadfully wretched will happen. Something like the skies will open up and angry monkeys with terrifying black eyeballs of pestilance will come scampering out like so many third graders onto a playground. Full of wrath, full of envy, full of pride, slothful and gluttenous lust- a slow kind of debauchery. There's nothing new under the sun and it's all getting less and less new, stained-tarnished like a rusted out toyota, but when someone does figure upon something new and unique, when life is created spontaneously from the most sorrowful depths of some poor mutants soul, it is magnificent, like a day that no one remembers, that slipped by on the calendar, undetected, a blank virgin piece of paper...