The Ridiculous Failure of Concrete to Create Order

More than one moment has cycled past before I have jerked in a breath. It seems I have forgotten myself somewhere again and am in need of soul retrieval. It is happening more frequently. Perhaps more frequently than I know.

I am grateful for my badass new girlfriends. I am excited to be in this eagerly complex, perverse, creative and fierce town. And Some Day I hope I'll try to articulate what I have learned in just one month as a white woman at an HBCU.

But for now, I am grappling with a brave new world. There are many things in it that do not fit right. It is hard to say which of those things will become more comfortable with time. It is hard to reconcile feelings in my gut with any fortune telling prowess.

I have been asking myself hard questions about being an academic. A professional. Simply human. What I would need in order to become.

I tell myself to grow tall where I am planted. I hide under blankets and promise myself just one more episode, until I can retrain my bleary eyes back on work.

The work is more than I have ever known before. And the impurity of the exhaustion is only matched by the sleeplessness it engenders.

I ask myself the last time I remember not needing to ask these same questions.

I imagine a deeper, more nuanced structure of support and guidance and nurturing... the way I imagine myself going for early morning runs on the days I teach.

And then the new week begins.

I look around for divine inspiration. More desperately in the stew of a Tuesday.

I unavoidably lower my gaze ahead at the broken sidewalks. The incessant and almost ridiculous failure of concrete to create order in this swamp hole of a city.

Another one of those lost breaths comes in.

It is not that I am afraid of becoming salt.

But whatever has happened so far... I just can't bring myself to look back.

Namaste.





~`~Postscript~,~

I am a sturdy soul
And there ain't no shame
In lying down in the bed you've made
Can you fight the urge to run for another day?

You might make it further if you learn to stay