This means I’m a writer, the typical one, the one that jumps from journal to journal and project to project. So what did I do… oh yeah, started another book idea. Today. In head, walking from cafeteria where there was no open anything to get coffee, and then a longshot attempt up the stairs to that café up in the library. Could have sworn that would be open. Why isn’t it? Why is nothing open, where a student or teacher can get some caffeine, coffee, or Yerba-whatever. Nothing. In this building, it’s quiet. And I mean funeral quiet. Ghost town. Post nuclear wipe-out-everything silent.
With this new book, I’m here. On campus that doesn’t feel like a campus, but more like a stage that’s been left. Or closed. All the actors and actresses, stage crews and directors, producers or whomever, gone. Just leaving me. The writer with his new book idea. Another one. Where I’m sitting now, I’ve done so a hundred or more, definitely more, times. Sat here and wrote before class started. Collecting finals tonight, then, well, that’s it. The semester’s over. Then starts another one. One where I’m only teaching one class. To be honest, I’d rather not be. Seriously. I’d rather be traveling and writing while I travel and coming back with a new book. I know, why don’t I do that. Thank you, motional numb-twit. This new book, I know what I want to say. I think— No, I do. Just wrote the first couple sentences, here, with this knowledge of where I am, in this Now, and how I here arrived.
Now wine before coming to campus, which I thought of doing but tonight’s a no-wine night. Running tomorrow morning, early. 4am. The “God Hour”, as I call it lately telling myself that 4am is God and I need be faithful to it, or some shit like that. Quiet in this building. Probably the most quiet, and most isolated and alone I’ve ever felt here, in this building or anywhere on campus. Something new, like yesterday in that coffee shop. Could use a coffee now, horribly. But I type with what natural pace and blaze I have in these current ways.
Much of the new book I think, maybe, I honestly don’t know, will be an exploration of where I am as an “educator”. And questioning, essentially, if I’m even an educator, qualified to educate. Why, ‘cause I have a Master’s Degree? Not sure that’s proper knighting. Class meets in 17 minutes. Sweater off, hot in this room when I stepped in and sat and know I want it back, back on. I’m uncomfortable listening to my jazz tracks and before class I need be un my most formidable of characters, one passionate and loud and direct with his offerings.
The new book, not so much a disputing of college, the community scape or university, but … An exploration of? I’m just writing a book and hopefully I’ll finish the fucking thing, I’m saying to myself. Full-timer walks in, gets something from the other room, and walks out. Doesn’t say a word to me which isn’t surprising, but laughable and maddening concurrent.