I’m writing on my iPod, post nightly Ambien, on purpose. I wanted to slow down my thoughts so I make sure I say what I mean.
Last week I posted a question on Facebook: why do you watch Lost? I know that not every one watches it like I do. Then again, I don’t think anyone I know wakes in the middle of the night and yells at Ivan to move it. Except Ivan was an orange tabby and the one I’d just kicked off the bed was a brown calico. I was confused and turned to Karen except it wasn’t Karen.
It took a few minutes to realize that Karen left and took Ivan with her nearly three years ago, and the woman asleep next to me was Amy, the woman I love. I snuggled around her, forehead firmly between her shoulder blades. She woke up enough to say “I am here. You are here. You are safe.”
It was enough. I didn’t sleep but was able to lay there, touching her softly as she slept.
We talked about it the next day and Amy said “I think your reality button is out of whack.”
I don’t disagree. I’ve struggled with it for a long time. Why? Why is my psyche broken, refusing to be content with just one timeline?
This is why I watch Lost. I need Answers to my questions. I need to be sure I’m asking the right questions.
Jack: Why is it so easy for you to believe?
Locke: Why is it so easy for you not to believe?
For any unsettled individual, that is the question to ask.
Do we have faith in ourselves? Our surroundings? What is it about sleep and dreams that disorient us from ourselves? Why am I susceptble to these mirages of memory?
That’s why I watch Lost. To get answers. Or at least form a fictional support group with Desmond and Daniel.
Last week I was working for a couple days at the University of Minnesota bookstore. I stepped outside of Coffman Union to have a smoke, near the Washington Bridge. There were three police cars blocking off one lane of traffic, and in front of the police cars was an old Chevy Van, conspicuously parked at a perpendicular angle to the actual lanes. There was something about the perfect 90 degree angle, and absence of any detritus, that led me to believe that it wasn’t an accident, and my first impulse was that someone had jumped.
I’m not sure what that says about my state of mind that I first thought suicide. If it was, there was an element of tragic poeticism about the scene–mid-morning on the coldest day in Minnesota in five years, a silent, unmessy death (if they hit the river), the weekend before the beginning of a new semester, right underneath the sign that welcomes people to the University of Minnesota.
Granted, I have no idea if that’s actually what happened. But the scene should have represented so much hope–a new beginning and a temperature that could only go up, at a place of learning. But often, education isn’t viewed as hope and rather as insurmountable pressure, and this country needs to find a way to fix that.
I’m attempting to write at least one essay a week right now, in the vein of my new homeboy Theodore Dalrymple. I’m currently caught between two topics that I’ve been floating in my head for awhile now, so I thought I’d let y’all choose.
The first is a meditation on sexuality and faith, or the absence thereof.
The second is an observation on race relations in white-collar professional environments, specifically the mental health community.
The third is a response to public reaction to Minnetonka Public School district’s plan to create a 3rd-5th grade elementary school specifically for gifted students.
Or if there’s something else you’d like to see me write this week, let me know that, too.
