Title: Life's What You Make ItArtist: Talk Talk20 plays
Life’s What You Make It - Talk Talk (Life’s What You Make It [Single], 1985)
Every ounce of fluid inside the body massed under my right eye as some sort of cruel joke. Turns out this lingering ick is a wicked sinus infection likely borne on the I-80 freaktrain of early January. There’s something else though, not as sure as the welling eye. Everyone in one huge contraction. Our shared winter of the west. Even though I might seem silent underneath it all I’m going hoarse shouting at your side. I too am Running Up That Hill.
Early this morning the train felt like opening your eyes underwater. Our commute of soft bloat. Even though the train was mostly empty for some glorious reason, the fading orange and red alternating pattern bore down on everyone cruelly. The large man with white hair and glasses licking the rim of his yogurt like a cat with tuna. The sleeping construction worker coated with a thin white dust. I sat down across from a woman wearing leg warmers and bright sneakers. Her hair was a fountain from old French films. Somewhere between 72nd street and 42nd street the 2/3 hits a 40 second stretch of magic. The train curls into a whisper. The tunnel disappears. Everything floats. The warmth of a memory not yet acrid. My favorite 40 seconds of the day.
I have not been able to motivate my 800AM class at all this semester. There are a handful of students who are really great and always present and ready but the rest of them are woefully unprepared, unfocused, and seldom come to class. One bad class out of four is not a bad ratio but I sill feel like I’ve failed them. Buying into all the process-oriented theory I hold dear, looking at this experience as something I can learn from and adjust to for the future, feels like a goddamn joke through the sting of one collective yawn.
It finally feels like something different than August. The close air of those rooms or that train hurtling toward January. Christ. I’m so thankful I get to fail here and pick it up again. Our slow winter of frozen joy. Burying progress in the clouds, how we learn to linger on.
