it’s a farce, the great actors, the great poets…
The first thing I learned in school was how to pass someone in the hall. We received explicit instructions from our kindergarten teacher.
The first thing I learned in school was how to pass someone in the hall. We received explicit instructions from our kindergarten teacher.
Do not say hi. Do not hug, high five, or ask where they’re going. “Just smile and wave.”
I understood the discipline part of it, but why smile? We weren’t happy. We were in school, being shepherded from recess to class. There was nothing to smile about.
the great statesmen, the great painters, the great composers,
It’s freshman year and I keep having this nightmare where I’m trapped in a lab experiment. After a million tests, they blindfold me and lead me to the exit. If I pass this one, I’m free to go. I can feel the sunlight on my skin.
There is one simple question.
What would you rather be doing?
I fumble. Sleeping? Partying?
What makes you happy?
I don’t know, I say.
the great loves,
it’s a farce, a farce, a farce,
Rural Minnesota was supposed to be a place I laughed at while watching Fargo with my boyfriend the night before I left for college. It was fiction. Nowhere was really that desolate, and no people were really that bland. Anyway, it didn’t matter. I was headed for a little oasis called Northfield, where fresh coastal blood would cut through the vast white nothing.
Two years pass. I meet someone new. He grew up here, on a Minnesota farm, on one of those dots you pity from airplanes. I find out these dot-people are not helpless. They think originally, love deeply. They choose to smile because that’s what you do when it’s negative ten degrees outside and you see another living thing. Whenever I see an open sky, or a field stretching forever, I remember the calm in his eyes.
history and the recording of it,
forget it, forget it.
My new friend makes me feel like Forrest Gump. He’s on our national championship Quiz Bowl team and a delightful conversationalist, always a step ahead but trying to take you there. He claims to be socially inept. I know it’s true because he was the first person at Carleton to tell me what I needed to hear.
“You’re a good writer. You know that, right?”
Today he’s spent five hours in the library, working on his History thesis. Out of nowhere, a backpack slams down on my lunch table.
I understood the discipline part of it, but why smile? We weren’t happy. We were in school, being shepherded from recess to class. There was nothing to smile about.
the great statesmen, the great painters, the great composers,
It’s freshman year and I keep having this nightmare where I’m trapped in a lab experiment. After a million tests, they blindfold me and lead me to the exit. If I pass this one, I’m free to go. I can feel the sunlight on my skin.
There is one simple question.
What would you rather be doing?
I fumble. Sleeping? Partying?
What makes you happy?
I don’t know, I say.
the great loves,
it’s a farce, a farce, a farce,
Rural Minnesota was supposed to be a place I laughed at while watching Fargo with my boyfriend the night before I left for college. It was fiction. Nowhere was really that desolate, and no people were really that bland. Anyway, it didn’t matter. I was headed for a little oasis called Northfield, where fresh coastal blood would cut through the vast white nothing.
Two years pass. I meet someone new. He grew up here, on a Minnesota farm, on one of those dots you pity from airplanes. I find out these dot-people are not helpless. They think originally, love deeply. They choose to smile because that’s what you do when it’s negative ten degrees outside and you see another living thing. Whenever I see an open sky, or a field stretching forever, I remember the calm in his eyes.
history and the recording of it,
forget it, forget it.
My new friend makes me feel like Forrest Gump. He’s on our national championship Quiz Bowl team and a delightful conversationalist, always a step ahead but trying to take you there. He claims to be socially inept. I know it’s true because he was the first person at Carleton to tell me what I needed to hear.
“You’re a good writer. You know that, right?”
Today he’s spent five hours in the library, working on his History thesis. Out of nowhere, a backpack slams down on my lunch table.
“Hannah, academics are a lie!”
you must begin all over again.
I show up to Postmodern American Fiction ten minutes early. I’m supposed to be an English major and this is my first chance to prove it. Within thirty minutes, I’m completely lost. A sleepy-haired kid in the corner sticks up his hand.
“I don’t mean to derail our discussion, but…Hemingway was a great writer, but he shot himself in the head. Why should we listen to him about anything?”
throw all that out.
all of them out
all of them out
A Declaration of Major Form has been sitting on my desk for the past three months. I spilled beer on it at some point, but I’m too proud to get a new one. One night, I come home from a party, and tape it to the wall. A new game is born. Pin-the-tail-on-the-future! I don’t need a blindfold or a friend. The room is already spinning.
you are alone with now.
I like Biology. I get to do things with my hands. It’s concrete, it’s fair, and it will never make me insane. Yesterday, we learned about expressed genetic traits. Every dominant allele was written across my body, as if in plain black font: “I…am…normal.” I feel triumphant.
look at your fingernails.
touch your nose.
touch your nose.
I keep forgetting to wear long sleeves to Art History. The mythology gives me goose bumps, and it’s not like anyone has noticed, but it’s still embarrassing. They’d think I was…what? A hopeless romantic? A coward?
begin.
I’m a film major. I am trying to traffic in goose bumps. I am trying to smile at strangers. I’m five years old. I’m about to graduate. I have so much to learn.
the day flings itself upon
you.
you.
poem by Charles Bukowski
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