19 May 2004

Class was horrible today.

I felt sort of shitty from the beginning; even sipping at my tea made me feel pukey. My professors didn't have a damned thing to say, which is hardly atypical, and so they brought up some "ethical" question or some shit, and had the class "discuss" it for awhile... Wait... I need to interject here...

These so-called "discussions" are generally frustrating as hell for me. Yesterday, it was on the subject, "what if there was a twenty-seventh letter in the alphabet?"

Kill me now.

"Well," said somebody, "I think if there was another letter, it should be a letter for the pauses between words..."

(Sorry, dear, but we have punctuation for that.)

And as it turned out, our professor who was leading the discussion did not actually KNOW the linguistic definitions of a consonant and a vowel. He THOUGHT he did. He was wrong. He also said it's people like us -- college-educated people -- who will be the movers and shakers and changers of language... And that too, is utter crap, because it's well-documented that almost ALL change in ANY language takes place at the margins of the society, among the poor, uneducated, outcast, and oppressed groups. That's true. If you want to argue with me, you can, but you're wrong. I don't know why a PROFESSOR (he HAS a PhD for gahd's sake) would be spouting off crap that's just freakin' WRONG... That really makes me mad. Class discussions always suck my ass.

I paid no attention to the discussion. I read instead.

And then... then I had to join my workshop group...

Ordinarily, I like my workshop group. I get to say mean things to them about their writing, and they get to say mean things to me about mine, and then we all go home happy.

Well, they didn't have anything mean to say about mine. And I had a great abundance of mean things to say to the other kid...

He had written this piece about tripping on acid in Amsterdam. Which is all well and good, of course; I kind of like a well-written drug story every now and again. I've never tripped, though (Sudafed doesn't count), so it takes a little bit more to impress me than just any old crap... And this kid just didn't impress me. He's a good writer most of the time, but I don't give a shit about a story filled with sentences like: "And then my idea of perfection in space and time was unfolded within reality."

I tried for almost an hour to get this kid to understand that the more abstract he was, the more freakin' boring his story would be, and the more I would think it was a piece of trash. "If I can't SMELL your idea of perfection," I told him, "I don't want to hear about it. It's not important unless I can feel it too."

He acted like I'd just run over his dog or something. But then he apparently decided that since I don't indulge in putting unnecessary toxins in my body, I was like, a second-rate reader or some shit. He got all defensive and kept yelling at me. It was fucking stupid; I've always liked this kid and our workshops have always been good. This was honestly BAD writing, and I thought by now we would be able to tell each other that without taking it personally and becoming all shitty.

Blah. I'm beginning to think that maybe stoners think they're something fucking special because they THINK they're on another plane of reality. Maybe they ARE on another plane of reality. That doesn't automatically make them good writers on MY plane of existence and shit. Actually, I don't think I've EVER read a good drug-piece by anybody I've ever known.

I left the workshop still feeling pukey.

...especially when I realized I was alone in the room with my professor who may or may not hate me.

So, I bit my lip, took a deep breath, told myself I wouldn't throw up, and approached him...

"Uh... hey Bill?"

"Yeah?"

"Um... I was just wondering if you had a couple of minutes to talk about some of the work I gave you the other week?"

"Sure... what's up?" (Those were his exact words, but he wouldn't use ellipses... I would though. I am taking artistic liberties.)

So, I babbled on about my progress, and how I'm not satisfied with my work, and so forth. It's probably always a good idea to tell a professor you're not satisfied with your work. That way, if they don't like it, they're at least under the impression that you hate it too and want to do better. It's a sneaky, underhanded trick. I highly recommend it. Generally, I admit, I'm not satisfied with my work, but I rarely do much about my dissatisfaction. They don't need to know that part.

"Well, I read those pieces you gave me," said Bill, "and they really are professional-quality work. My advice is just to do whatever it takes to push on through and..."

I kinda stopped listening there. Professional quality? ME?

ME???

Granted, I had never heard of my professor before I enrolled at this college, but I had heard plenty of things about a guy who wrote with him for a bunch of years. And he IS a professional writer. Wow. A "real" writer liked MY work.

Weird.

Professional quality...

Hm.

So, my self-imposed homework assignment for this week is to write my own thing about drugs, and being fucked up, and experiencing stuff that's not exactly "real," exactly. I'm up to that part in the Book anyway... My goal is to make everybody who reads it feel kinda fucked up.

Whatever; I'm hungry, sort of. I gotta go...

May your idea of perfection come unfolded in reality. Or whatever.

~Helena*