2002-10-23 - 1:15 a.m.
I sat in the bright early afternoon at a table outside the Four Winds Cafe and tried to stay awake. I had been up all night, but really only for about 20 hours. At the moment I concentrated on the book in front of me, trying to remind myself that I needed to read this book and that I had budgeted until 3:30 to read for that purpose. The book, Priests & Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali, seemed fascinating when I picked it up from the bookstore -- the water temples of Bali sound exotic enough -- but the book was proving to be an unreadable jungle of jargon.
The hot stillness permeated the air as my eyes refused to move, my brain refused to comprehend, and my hand refused to turn the page. The people at the next table were talking gently, and their voices carried as if I was hearing them from a great distance, although I tried not to hear. It was an administrator I shall not name talking about how he could be doing other work, but resolved to "spend more time with [students]" this year. I tried vainly to concentrate.
A fly landed on the page. I read a passage at the end of the page:
...plantations, wage labor, the breakdown of sealed and changeless village society. History begins when the labor process starts to shape new social relationships. Or, as Avineri concludes, "Since Oriental society does not develop internally, it cannot evolve towards capitalism through the dialectics of internal change, [so Marx] necessarily arrives at the position..." [page break]
The fly shit, leaving a speck of small green feces in the margin just below the above passage, which is on page 14 and typical of the book. I decided to abandon my plan to read the book there, at least in part because the small voices next to me had become shouts in my ear. I would read the book at home, where I will be better able to concentrate on its theory, I told myself. Then I would drive back to campus for class at 3:25. I knew this was a lie the moment the thought entered my head -- I told myself this -- but this alternate plan for success seized control of my motor functions until I could get home, in bed with the covers wrapped around me for a brief, rejuvenating nap.
I did manage to set my alarm, but what transpired made me grateful for all the mysteriously times I slept through class without knowing if I hadn't set it of if I had reset it in my sleep. What I remember is waking up and deciding that since I hadn't read the book, it would be okay -- even better --- if I went in went in late. The only real reason to go, I remember thinking, was to turn in my term paper prospectus (which happened to be true) and so I set the alarm forward. This happened twice.
The resulting shame when I regained consciousness several hours later incapacitated me. Basicly, it removes any question as to where evil is located: I knew that going back to sleep and missing class was wrong, and the evil justifications were not even jokingly entertained as the truth, yet the desire to sleep through class came from the will, and that's what I did.
These feelings were accectuated by the fact I did the same thing the day before, which was the reason I slept into the evening then. This was two weeks ago, the last week of classes of the mod, and it was that disgusted-with-myself feeling that probably led me to -- despite my every intention -- not contact the professor by e-mail or drop the paper by his box for the entire break, even though I was here and as far as I know he was too.
In fact, the class I slept through on Thursday was Brain's Urban Sociology, and that morning I had placed a response paper in his box three days late, with no prior clearance. I attached a note saying "I hope this okay -- I will ask you about it in class today." In that class he also gave out the mid-term exam. My embarrassment led me to put off even trying to track down someone in the class until after break started, at which point I decided it would be futile to try to track someone down and sent Brain a sheepish e-mail. He responded, "I wish you had contacted me sooner. Unfortunately, I am out of town and don't have the ability to send you the midterm questions. All I can suggest is that you might contact one of the other students in the class."
Which on Wednesday, I finally did, moments after arriving on campus to try to do so. That was I also got invited to the Memories Lounge.
So back to campus, now the first day after break. I go to return Michalson's book, which he generously lent me to work on his story, to his office. I had it for over two weeks, but had left it in the Catalyst office and totally forgotten about it. Arriving at his office, he happened to step out into his secretary's area as I arrived. He asks me what I thought of it, to which I, unprepared for this rather-obvious query, tried to egg out "I liked the first half of the first chapter, which is all I read," But then he asked, "what did you think of the last chapter," to which I had even less to say. The last chapter was about Marx.
So I leave, and finally manage to place the original term-paper prospectus in the professor's box, although to my horror when I get into the Social Sciences office I realize I've misplaced the little apologetic note I wrote to go along with it. I later find it on the floor of my car. This is a professor I've never worked with before. Fuck it, I say to myself, and leave it is his box with a trepidation, which struck me as mysterious even at the time, that it will be rejected if not accompanied by a penitent note apologizing for my transgression.
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Obligatory quoted passage from Bright Lights, Big City. This is after you end up in the apartment of a recent co-worker who the New Yorker's Department of Factual Verification who was trying to befriend you after you were fired, took some of her Valium with wine, made a drunken lunge at her and wake up with fuzzy memories. She's gone but has left a note saying don't worry about it and there's breakfast food in the kitchen.
You should leave a note for Meg. You find a pen and a fat pad in which every sheet has memo written across the top.Dear Meg -- Thanks for the bed and board. Dinner was delicious. Now What? Should you acknowledge a full loss of recall? I guess I nodded off a little early. The question is, what did you do before that? For that matter, what about after? What you need is an all-purpose apology. Something to cover each possible misdemeanor. Please excuse my lapse from gentlemanly comportment. Let's get together soon, maybe for lunch.
You rip this up. On the new sheet you write: Dear Megan--I'm sorry. I know I'm always saying that, but I mean it. Thank you.
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That last note is just about what you--er, I put in Uzi's box with a paper over a week late just before break, and it of course went through multiple drafts. ("Please forgive my lapse from dutiful scholarship. Let's get together soon, for a thesis chat" didn't make it off the pad uncrumpled.)
Anyway, so I left this unapoligized-for paper in the professor's box and made my way to Urban Sociology, where I sat dreading the Brain's entrance. And dreading. And dreading. By about 3:40, students had determined he's not in his office and wasn't in Social Theory that day, and probably wasn't coming. At that point most everyone left, but not me, although I regarded the extra hour-plus as a blessing. As I told the two people who waited with me, I'm waiting fifteen minutes not because I expect him to show up, but because as someone at the University of Maryland told me, "You leave after five minutes of waiting for a TA, ten minutes for an untenured professor, and fifteen minutes for a tenured professor. And for the head of the department, you don't leave." When she told me that, we were probably waiting for Mark Leone, who was probably his average of 40 minutes late. The first day he told us, "I will be late. You cannot be."
So I waited my fifteen minutes and felt downright responsible as I walked out of College Hall. The time I spent had far more symbolic value than tangible value--it's like how in One Day in the Life of Ivan Desonivich will eat the fish eyes if they're still in the socket of the fishhead, but not if they're floating in the soup. The other prisoners mock him for this.
The next day, the professor went around the room passing out the paper prospectuses, and I tried to get his attention with my apologies before being cut off as he handed my paper back, with only a facial expression to tell me my apology is unnecessary.
I left feeling happy, and planned to go home and crash. Now, over 12 hours later, I'm awake and the rest of my week is in the same state it was last week. It goes on, Judah. It goes on.
