Flickering Fragments of Lost Love
One. My thumb rubs delicately against the mouse-key pad. I prepare myself for the usual routine–size 8, small font style, even smaller hope of getting it right. If only the blinking line that scrolls along the very white screen could tap out inspiration. I like to imagine that great truths are communicated to me through the flickering line’s steady morse code. It relays the secrets buried beneath the tapping keys. It tells what is still unknown to me. Flicker…Flicker….Failure….Flicker… I have been assessed. Excuse me, the computer assessed me. Is that grammatically incorrect; can a computer “assess”? Is it significant? Passive or Active–I only know tense. The kind that results in grinding teeth, fingernails digging into the skin, and breathing as a labored task. Proper grammar, perfect word choice, brilliant research, intelligent content, they all communicate the same thing to me. And the flickering line never stops chiming in with them, reminding me of the truth.
Eight. The bound spines, stacked high atop each other, face me. They overlook the words coming out of shaky hands, one per ten minutes. Stowe in her outdated but hopeful romanticism chants “you can do it!” from the porch of Uncle Tom’s cabin. “Wiseblood” seems to stare me down. If I was not 20 and of a sound mind, I would have leaned over and fiercely mumbled “I hope a car runs you over”. Instead, with expended frustration quaking through the vocal cords, I contemptuously say “Go to hell. I hope a car runs you over, throws it in reverse and goes back over a few more times for good measure”. But it only stares back unmoving. I swear the modernists, sandwiched between the hopeful romantics and the depressed post-modernists, are wrinkling their pages and jeeringly raising their drinks towards the ever ticking clock or never shrinking list. Is there much of a difference anymore? How quickly minutes slide into hours these days. My eyes are trapped looking at each spine begging to understand why I feel emptier and emptier by the moment. I wish to fool myself and chalk the hollowness down to the fact that Fitzgerald and Faulkner have been left out. But I’ve learned to detect the lies I use to deceive myself. My hand itches to pound through the stack. How quickly the love fades into contempt.
Eleven. I dragged my mother to the library twice a week. Sleepless nights would be spent devouring books. The stack of books was always depleted by Wednesday and we’d have to return for more. I owned a special purse that perfectly fit 15 books lying down, one on top of the other. On a rainy Wednesday, while staring at the shelves I realized that I had exhausted my reading choices. There was only rereading left for me. My abnormally light bag swung beside my leg as I went in search of my mother. “For Grown-ups” most likely did not run across the top of that door but the picture in my head says it did. Through that door I went eyes wide I gaped at shelves and shelves of unread books. My mom, where she came from I don’t know, asked what I was doing in this room. My eyes pleaded with her, seeking the approval to be called grown up. She rolls her eyes and points me towards the classics section. The smell of old books, musty, dusty, I am unsure of the adjective–delicious, yes delicious without ever taking a bite. Finger grazing along the spines, I quickly gathered the plunder and filled my sack with gold. Pulling out my credit card of library exchange, I smiled wide as I approached the front desk. There were no bells, kazoos, or balloons in celebration. The librarian had not been informed of the huge feat that had just occurred. One, two, seven, fourteen books came out of the bag. The smile stayed wide, against the boring normalcy of my check out, my excitement could not be squished. I delicately stacked the books back in my bag and with a last glance at my new world I went home to consume the new discoveries.
Fourteen. Penguin Publishing has a website for kids that explains the steps in making a book. One, it all “starts with an author’s idea” put down on paper. Then “much, much later”, when the author finishes his book, he sends it in to a publisher. (I’m not sure Penguin is fully appreciating the much, much later part.) From there the manuscript is evaluated by the editor and if she likes it she takes it to the publishing meeting, where they decide if they will actually publish the book. If yes, the author gets a contract set up and lots of people become involved. Editor, marketing manager, designer, sales manager, production manager, proofreader, and illustrator, they all play a part. When the book is designed, proofread, and illustrated (if it needs to be) it gets sent to the printers. At the printers “sheets of paper are folded, gathered, and bound inside the cover and trimmed to the right size”. The story has become a book.
Twenty-six. I heft a new pile of books up the library steps every week. Criticisms, Commentaries, Biographies–each genre is involved in a love-hate relationship with me. They have the potential to be fascinating when time allows one to be bored enough to read them. The student worker, a fellow English combatant, sends a sympathetic look my way as he checks the new batch out. I shove the books down into my bag and trudge home. My back has come to resent the library. It’s only a matter of time before the rest of me join in singing my aching back’s tune.
Infinity. Flipping through pages. Fishing for key words. Finishing is a long way from now. There is a system to the madness. One, find key words. Read around key word and decide if it’s useful. Red, blue, green, yellow, orange tabs soon grow out of the book. Tab important pages, write two word summary of significance on note card, and move on. A whole lot of time, a whole lot of research, and a whole lot of feeling as if you’ve accomplished nothing. At the end of it all, you have a stack of books that look like they have been attacked by wet skittles, who left streaks on the pages as they dashed away to escape death by tedium. And that same overly white screen with that good ole’ flickering line made no step closer to completion.
Sixteen. In a matter of hours the fate of my grades leaves my control. Though it feels as if that control was removed weeks ago–life, unlike a book, is a series of uncontrollable episodes. And that flickering line on my screen joins in the noiseless revelry of mockery. Flicker…Flicker…Failure…Flicker…honestly, I already know my fate. A kite inside a tornado. A lawn chair on the beach watching the waves being sucked out into sea and the tsunami thundering in. A shingle gripping the roof in a hurricane. A tree at the bottom of the mountain watching the rocky avalanche crush its way down. A house on a side of a mountain awaiting the annihilating eruption of rock, ash, lava, and pyroclastic flow. Ironically, the splintered feelings about my future make more sense in fragments.
Six. I look to my right, a second stack of paperbacks. Spain, France, and Russia are apparently the only countries contributing to the European novel. I sneer at them with hollow resentment. Read, tested, put to paper–in the world of credits they are now useless. In a different time frame I would have fallen in love with them. With a different end result, I could have looked on them in fond remembrance. I look back to the left at the pile of American dreamers stacked high. There is still a slim, fading hope that I will take their credit with me into the new year. Deadlines approach, wasted money, wasted efforts, wasted typing, and I even feel a sense of wasted reading. Somewhere in the chaos I lost my love. Experimentation has turned to conformed, rubricated, and reproduced junk, confident freedom has turned to hopeless doubt, and the fond smell of old pages has turned to into a hated reminder of another resented night without sleep.
Two. I watch the hours clock by. The deadline is thundering up upon me. Books stacked and ready to go, coffee in my largest cup, peanuts to snack on, and that obnoxious flickering line on my white Word document. Flicker…Flicker…Failure…Flicker. I do not type, I can not type. The defeatist in me asks if I remember why I keep fighting. My mind can not stop thinking long enough to think academically. I type a sentence. I delete two.
hmmm college drop-out?
