heads, tails, and semesters

Forgive me, father; it has been thirteen days since my last confession. In those thirteen days, I have massacred. And worse still, I am proud of my work, of the death toll. I am a dictator, crazy with power. I have destroyed, I have undermined, I have selfishly indulged in childish fears, in adolescent rebellion. There were supposed to have been 76 heads on sticks, but three got away. I am a mad scientist, but without Frankenstein's output, without the sanity to attempt to reverse my mistakes. I am recklessly creating a new generation, if they will let me. I don't want them to be bitter, but I want to make them vulnerable, like me, to expose themselves, to feel every tender prick in the world.

This was my April curse. Well, the first of two parts: there was this terroristic madness, but it was coupled with an intense examination of said madness. The idiom goes: "April showers bring May flowers." And, for the House of Brown, every year since '74 has brought a stormy April. This month has seen members of my immediate family injured, robbed, killed, or otherwise devastated. I thus approach April with (and I think I'm not the only one in my clan) a sense of impending doom. You may call it a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I have hence been struck by the curse this year, not in the usual way--this April I was cursed with a sickening, despicable case of Nostalgia. So now, safely in May, I recount the symptoms of this disease.

I love about the academy what I loved about the theatre: the ephemeral nature of it. Each semester begins and ends, and thus leaves little tiny openings for the devil Nostalgia to run in and grab you by the throat. I could call him Reflection, or Reminiscence, and thus lend some significance and maturity to the process; I could refer to Michelet and Freud, who both thought that woman is the vessel for the repressed past, devoted to reminiscence. But both would be evasion. (Ironic how the most powerful language comes from a desire for clarity and a desire for concealment all at once. Words: demons, eaters of souls, sending us off in packs like innocent uniformed schoolboys about to discover responsibility. And girls.)

And so, at the end of this particular semester, perhaps my last at this particular university, I find myself crying: Goodbye, Suck City; I love you. There, I said it. As I start packing up books, I feel a responsibility to this city, this place, Bowling Green, Kentucky. I have been a horrible lover; I am like the mother who held a car above her crushed son for a full five minutes, just standing there--I saved myself, but only after standing there, for a full four years.

But this is my Ode to Home, what was to have been the purpose of this particular blog. How it has all changed. Here is where my coming into being is still coming, where college follows me like a puppy, and I am passing through beds, being resigned to an unremarkable life, feeling like cement churning sluggishly in a truck, remembering when I "hitched my wagon," walking by dormitories, standing in the stairwell in the light booth, watching Travis being followed by a photog, and all of you with your cigarettes--why did I never smoke?, I'm in the experiment on Center, I'm with the Mimosa girls, I'm wearing all the Halloween costumes, sitting at Froggy's when it was Baker Boys, glaring at Wayne when he hated my shoes, wanting the show to never be over, feeling my legs turning blue but there's still one more left, painting circles and watching Tim Burton, annoying Gretzsky on the ice, planning ahead at SATCO, at Cattie's, at Kessley's, dancing with Susan and Shea at State Street, holding 'meetings' at Spencer's, walking ominously up those cobwebby steps at Jason and Jeff's, receiving a naughty gift from Aimee, being "found out" by Missy, remembering that Louisville is one way and Nashville another, and here is the place in between.

To what extent, I wonder, have I lived "by the rules"? And what have I hoped to accomplish when I transgressed?

All this Nostalgia. Emerson says it's ok--it's my job as a scholar to Think. Michelet and Freud say it's ok--it's my job as a woman to Think. But then there's all of you-and-you-and-you out there, still alive, who call Reminiscence and Thinking "worrying" and "impractical." But I create, I know, you-and-you-and-you "in my own image"--and can there be any other way? We are all gods, some of us better than others, creating, multiplying, eating and breeding. It's disgusting. But perhaps by expelling here, I hope to purge that desire to colonize my students.