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03.05.04 - 4:20 p.m.
"for the world is deeply ailing..." who said that quotation? before i do a quick google search and filling in that blank, i think i'll sit with that feeling for a few hours still. mind you now, ailing is some literary buzzword for melancholy, which itself has been a euphemism for depression. ailing, as i'm feeling it, isn't even a sickness...i don't feel ill, or unraveling backwards. no, ailing is on the other side of the hump...it's on the other side of hitting bottom....ailingas i feel it is standing at the foot of a steep mountain, with a sense that i have the will to edge upward and even the rare confidence that i can...but i'm just so very weary at the thought of edging forward on the journey ahead. so, i ask myself circling, "why are you ailing my dear?" and i circling want to answer, "i'm ailing, but i'm not dying...i'm just so weary, and still, my god, what have i to feel weary about?" (woman, what make you mouth run so long?) circling around words, ring-a-round-a-feeling, it's friday afternoon. the end of a trying week. proctored an exam of 125 students...the prof didn't let me know that quizzes are his day off. i wasn't by myself (there are two other grads, but i've got more than 50% of the students)...and so, here i am. ms. authority. and in this large lecture hall, i find myself raising my voice and barking orders. i'm still chuckling at myself at the sargent i became: granted, i was in a foul mood from searching for over 2 hours on the internet trying to find traces of a paper that i *know* was either plagarized, or recycled from a previous class. and unlike my undergrad institution, this place does not have an honor code that puts the fear of god into students (i.e., students do not unequivocally get expelled or suspended for cheating here). and so, i just felt pissy all around. pissy that i'd had this suspicious paper, even after i'd read the riot act about plagiarism; pissy and guilty because the student suspect happens to be a person of color and damn it, i WANT this person to have been bright enough to have written this paper. but hell, the student hasn't said a word in class, has even skipped section, and yet this sophomore is busting out with these complicated phrases like "discursive realities," "amorous tropes" and "systems of representation". like damn, even grad students grapple with this jargon and we're supposed to know this for a living. so, as i'm about to hand out the exam, i notice students are sitting clustered together (as opposed to the routine one seat a part) and i'm like: "uh, uh.. NO... people, this makes me very uncomfortable (throwing my best new yorker street attitude into my voice). what do you think this is? you know how to take an exam - one seat a part!" a few students whine: "there isn't enough room" or, "he won't move his bag". and i'm like, gesturing with fingers and pointing and waving..."yeah there's room up in the front. come on down!" and i then walked up and down the aisles, directly asking students "excuse me, sir but would you kindly move your backpack so this person can take this exam"...even shoved a seat between two students, physically making them move. i don't feel ashamed for being firm. and i certainly didn't feel like a crazy black woman. maybe angry...but i know, that apart from one older non-traditional student in the class, i'm just about the OLDEST person in this room, and damn it, follow directions. cuz i am directions. sigh, so that was monday, followed by an obligatory leading a section. tuesday, i skipped out of work to attend a pedagogy colloquium run by my buddy jrf. i learned something, but it was half-a-face time appearance and mostly to give her support. although, the support i get is having somewhere to be where i can sit next to a person who i care about and who knows me...the opportunity to share company for two hours...before going back into boot camp alone (the grading, the teaching, the guilt and anxiety over how much non-writing there is). come wednesday, got a last-minute invite to entertain a visiting professor for lunch. i'm at the point where i'm less dazzled by the expensive free lunch on the department than, the opportunity for a balanced meal - with all four food groups and decent coffee that i don't make myself. and of course, since i came for lunch, i've got to attend her lecture, even if i didn't exactly read her material or plan on swimming in performance theory for 2 hours that afternoon. did i mention wednesday's super-crammed lecture (which i hadn't re-read the book for) - a turbo intro to freud that blew the students away...and again, discussion section follows...10 minute turnaround processing time to come up with some exercise to make sure that everyone talks and doesn't feel the class is a waste of time (including me)... you know, it was okay.. i turned the occassion into a useful meeting, even though i'm literally making up group exercises as i write at the board. come evening, a phone call from my mother catches me...and damn, the flood of ambivalence about her phone calls are the topics of therapy sessions, over and over again without end, amen. :-( pragmatic...news is always a downer, a reality prick that my current world is a bubble of false safety. my aunt who has had kidney failure and been on dialysis since last year is dying. not that my mom said that exactly. just that she visited her last week, and they talked about her vision for a funeral... and whereas earlier this week in a lecture Q+A i'm yapping on in high theory about the disintegration of the laboring body, the real life instance is happening with my aunt at this moment (from umpteen years of working overtime as a nurse) and what i believe killed my other aunt who died swiftly of cancer last october (from also working out her soulcase, nightshift geriatric ward nursing, never having enough money, never working hard enough to make ends meet)...
these caribbean women of my mothers generation don't complain...my aunt isn't frantically asking one of her five sisters to donate a kidney to her, i can't call it acquiescence or resignation or even pessimism...what i couldn't get across to my thickheaded therapist today is that these women have fucking worked their whole damn lives until the labor has killed them; can you understand while their not working like hell to save their lives. there's is not a slow suicide...and these women DO gain some joy out of life although i often struggle to remember when my mother last laughed or enjoyed pleasure just for the hell of it.
my therapist suggested that perhaps my mom was depressed. and again, silence. impasse from me. or rather resentful coming to blows from inside... how can i explain (without sounding like i'm dehumanizing my mother) that i can't quite say if the word 'depression' applies to my mother and aunts.
the therapist spews all this psycho-babble (which sometimes i buy, sometimes i don't), about how i can't sabotage my life to care for my parents...that my parents are responsible for themselves...and even if they find themselves in the worst financial situation (try since day one), it's not my problem if they're in a financial morass and i'm the one who can do something to bale them out.
excuse me, doctor, but who's wearing a $150,000+, 3 degree - 10 year-and-going pricetag on her head in this family?? who represents the frigging cultural capital to fire us out of this mess?
c'est moi, that's who!!...oooh she could hear the angry annoyance in my voice... "should i just go home and journal in my armchair about how i'm taking care of myself so well, when i have some income (all on loans yes) to help them out. as i reminded ms. therapist, my parents don't have the type of credit that i do with my big red guarantor permitting me to take out loans at the drop of a hat?)...ugh, i calmly explained that we had competing "notions" of what to do about my parents...meanwhile, i'm just itching to fucking walk out and not come back. this longing for a huge grand doorslamming exit. but i play it rational instead (for her benefit, not mine, which is what's so fucked up about going to a therapist and worrying about her feelings).
and so, when i say that i'm ailing, and yet recall the generation before me that obviously ails more deeply but can not speak that language flowing so easily off the tongue of ms.txpt...
how can i say that i'm ailing, when i can at least see the crest of the mountain i have to climb over, while i fear that my parents will never see, much less reach their horizon?
MUSIC: sweet silence after a hectic week
READING: quizzes
FEELING: ailing, but still
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