Torpid Smoke
prufrock
of all around me--my professors, my friends, my singing/drinking buddies, my
'rents--only to realize that, sometime long ago, all of it stopped mattering
to me?
I find a friend at a party and switch on "talk" mode--it doesn't matter what
comes out of my mouth because it's a party and hey, nobody will take it ser-
iously anyway. I never really realized the shallowness of the party scene
until I came here to the University of Virginia, where partying has ceased to
be an art form and has become something of an industrial byproduct like the
five-day work week or ulcers.
I have ceased utterly to care about classes; quantum mechanics, classical
mechanics, electronics, Nabokov are all alike; all blend into each other like
lumps in the shoreless ego of Freud's polymorphously perverse infant. They're
all just there, neither interesting nor particularly challenging (unless, of
course, they're impossible). I experience an odd floating feeling in some
of the classes, as though I'm watching the back of my own head as I nod.
Even the 'net people that part of me would really like to know: as I'm
exchanging mail and articles on one level, another part of me says why
bother? It's all absurd, and everyone who claims to have met their current
s.o./spouse/whatever is delusional. (Solipsistic, yes, but I suspect this
is part of my overall angst.)
I don't think that even my angst is real. It all smells too much of
constructs. "Would that this too, too tired flesh would dissolve into a
dew." Kafka: now there was a man with mother problems.
There is an eraser shaving in the crescent of coffee grounds slowly
drying in the bottom of my coffee mug.
My subconscious has completely subverted my preconscious. I feel like
Ronald Reagan.
Even my angst about angst has gotten unreal. I'd better stop before I
start getting angst about my angst about my angst about my angst.
Sorry to waste bandwidth with this crap.
prufrock (to...@fermi.clas.virginia.edu)