college of law

Writing in the College of Law, on a Friday night in the winter.

Writing in the College of Law because I can think of no place better to go, nowhere quiet where I can be to myself, not bothered, either intentionally or just from the noise that kids, or adults, or any sort of human being makes that isn’t trying to concentrate, trying to pull hidden secrets, thoughts and stories out from inside themselves.  That can only be done in quiet, with great concentration as if without such solitude the act is about as likely as pulling one’s own heart out. 

Writing at the College of Law I look around at those I have joined: Me trying to write – they, law students, half my age or nearly.  I think of the difference between us - them and me – to be who they are at that age – to be that together at 23 or 25.  To have finished an undergrad degree; to be so certain of their future path; to have not only chosen law school, but to have been chosen by the self same.

Writing in the College of Law at 42, on a Friday night, hung over – at least mildly, just now embarking on a graduate degree – a rather soft one at that – still looking around at those I share this space with, I realize that at 23 they have more together than I do or ever will.  I am unshaven, wearing clothes I’ve already worn for 2 days – 2 other days than this.  I stayed up too late last night, drank too much, was unproductive at work.  They in preppy, perfect, clean clothes, hair cut just so, and shaven – maybe more than once today.  They don’t look hung over.  They don’t look like ‘humanities majors’.  They don’t look like anything but respectable little suits that already drive nicer cars than I.  It’s not that I want what they have, not that I desire the life they will lead, but the difference between the types of people we are, is staggering.

At 42 I still feel the pangs of guilt in my own acknowledgement of the person, the profession and the life my parents would have rather I become, no matter how far away from childhood I travel.  This feeling of guilt and sometimes self deprecation will most likely never entirely leave me – I thought I’d forgiven myself, accepted myself, given myself permission to be who I am.  But writing at the College of Law, I realize this will never be so.  This permission is not mine to grant.

Writing in the College of Law I look at these others – these few elite, wondering where their impetus comes from, what they think about at night, what they dream of when they are bodily dead and I realize it is the solid continuum: the job, the money, the house in THE neighborhood that they are expected in.  Like some train station for which they have a punched ticket and printed itinerary complete with arrival time and cozy berth in which to sleep until finally, in suburban heavens they too spin across lawns on snappers, perfect their golf swings, wash the Escalade, preserve the Ohio State season tickets, and ensure their properly bathed and dressed children receive their own stamped and dated ticket with specific departure and arrival times.  One generation to the next, dust to dust, but shining during the interim, the assumed existence, gathered up with strong, slender fingers.  “Shall we pray another rosary - our progeny to have math skills? That they do not, cannot become artists?  Oh, God no!  Not an artist!  Is there amniocentesis for that?  Genetic engineering?”

Writing in the College of Law my thoughts depart from them and converge upon me – who I was then and who I am now.  Much as these people are merely younger versions of judges and prosecutors, I too have changed very little.  When I was their age what were my plans and goals?  They were nothing like something that could ever be called a plan or a goal.  My appetite for beer and marijuana; for music and poetry; for paint and chalk; for traveling in sweat soaked cars in deserts until the gas ran out.  My unquenchable desire for tattooed girls with heavy black eye liner – my confusion about men with the same, except I know now it wasn’t confusion.  And hitch hiking, sometimes in foreign countries, where my outstretched thumb pled with every passing windshield framed face:  It did not say “homeless and out of work”.  It didn’t say, “Jesus loves you – anything helps – God bless”.  No, my thumb said – “I want to travel in a meaningless direction with no thought of tomorrow other than more of the same.  And I may be on the other side of this same road tomorrow – moving and searching with no particular reason and I hope you pick me up then too.”  It said – “I want to move at a constant velocity and see, taste, smell, touch and bite into everything this obscure life has to offer before I’m dead and cold and nothing more than the asphalt like that I walk upon today.  I want to move and live and breathe so time cannot catch me and make me into parents or my neighbors or students in the College of Law.  I want to move and it is worth all the risks.  It’s worth being robbed – it’s worth risking that knife you may have beneath the driver’s side seat, which I pray to God you don’t show me tonight.  I want to move and never stop but most importantly man, I want to do it for free.  Any takers?”

Chew

When he eats, his teeth don’t mesh properly – they make you think: eww, they make you think: he has a rough tongue plagued with moss – the bacteria that will not stop smelling.  His breath smells like garlic, pork fat, cola, because he eats little more than bologna and Pepsi.  His teeth mesh so poorly that watching him chew is a train wreck; you wait for the collision, the derailment, the dentist bill.  You ask him, “wouldn’t it be better if you didn’t, I mean, if you just gave up chewing all together, because I would feel so much better if I never had to see that again, but I know you will be in my house again in a month, or perhaps six, eating a cheese cracker or a cocktail shrimp and making everyone nervous about that inevitable collision you go around smiling at everyone with as if it were some sort of Cheshire cat set you picked up on ebay - but it isn’t, it’s something that even George Washington would have thrown out.”  But there you are and you keep chewing, dodging at just the right moment, just out of the way when we all thought for sure that tooth upon tooth, or tooth upon lip was inevitable – another near miss, the fall guy of the dental world.  But the truth is, I can’t stand to watch it.  I can’t have you over to eat and I can’t come to your house and now I can’t even watch you talk because all I can do is look at those teeth and put the pieces, the tooth puzzle you call jaw lines, together in my head and suddenly, while you are busy being smug and pompous, you are being political and atheistic, I begin screaming and begging you to stop and pulling at my hair and you think it is because you have made a compelling point, that you have finally driven me over to your side out of your shear logic and superior mental acumen, but really it is my own lucid imagination hearing the terrible squeaking scrape, clatter and crash of your teeth as they finally make mal adjusted trajectories through a nacho and into one another.  I can’t watch. You should try pudding.

February Night

She lives in a painted row house.  It stands out because it is painted a creamy white.  All the other row houses are plain red brick and when you look at them you think, ‘why did they even make a seam or separation between them - why not just start laying bricks and keep on going until you hit the intersection.’  But one building, hers, looks different, but just because it’s painted and the paint helps you see the separation, the demarcation between it and the defined red brick, to the left, to the right – like two inches or less.  Or maybe more.  She lives on the second floor, the only floor with burning lights at two in the morning, the only apartment NOT afraid to keep the shades pulled up, drawn high and open to the world.  She lives on the second floor where the palms grow – the only palms in the inner city of the semi grown up, but desperately ancient city of the Midwest, the Cincinnati, not the Cincinnatus, not the Nati because there are no palms growing in the Nati.  She lives in a second floor apartment in the OTR, in a cream colored, paint saturated building among palms and disintegrating tapestries, sleeping in white billowing taffeta, stretched over oaken slats that mate with her spine like bruised, grating lovers.  She lays, illuminated by incandescent revelry that no one extinguishes, that she doesn’t even know how to shut off -  which always and continuously streams from the windows, even in the daylight when you cannot see it – it is still there, streaming out from the bulbs and tubes, from the second floor where she lives among the palms and ferns - where the ceiling fans always spin, exhaling the same breath that has never left the second floor, that is always in the second floor, that is the same air breathed in by extinct German immigrants.  The same air that lived for a time in their lungs, bringing things into and taking things out of - them – it now does the same to her lungs, to your lungs if you visit, but it never leaves the second floor of the inner city cream painted row house.  It floats amid the palms, ignoring the surplus oxygen they try to contribute.  It swirls past the brightly lit bulbs, past the decaying tapestries, refusing to be stirred or influenced by ceiling fans or the hot constant belch of the forced air furnace.  It stands its ground as it pushes against the wide transparency of the windows.  It does not yield as it sucks the glass, clings to the walls, ignores the door.  Please exhale before you go, leave the air where it belongs, because, you are new to the neighborhood if you are anything less than 151 years old.  She is 151 year old.  Your lungs are now, 151 years old.