Thursday, April 13, 2017

Another Jueves


Moon past full hangs like a tethered balloon about to be punctured by the sagging saguaro. The week is heading downhill into a pile of loose ends. All I want to do is write, to work on the book, but the tasks I get paid for have stacked up on my desk like angry ghosts. Thursday is a long day: three classes, an admin meeting, student conferences, and sometimes more. At the end of the day I will likely be more behind than I am at the beginning. Not such a big deal, just what's on the plate. It's also time to get ready for the prison workshops. I can hear the voices already. "You know," they say, "this is all we have, all that gives us some sense of purpose." Not that it's pressure or anything. Just more of what goes on between my hairy ears. I keep wondering if I am doing the right things. And, in my weaker moments, why I ended up so low on the totem pole. Faculty much younger than I am earn two or three times as much. They are famous, interviewed on the News Hour, get Guggenheim fellowships. I don't make enough to pay my taxes; Jeffrey Brown has not been calling me. It's enough sometimes for me to say I want out, just chuck it, or worse. Not that I am bitter or anything. It's just that Thursdays, for some reason, are the hard days, the ones in which my heart aches for what never was, what will never be. Time to shut up and get to work.

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