"Call for the High Road Once Again...."

I'm missing one class to finish pelting out a nerdy-sounding academic response to a lit theory class! I'm also hiding out from Nazi creditors. I had my finances perfectly delineated before the screwballs in Swords Hall (Where my own Grandma worked for 33 years!) decided to put a halt on my loans til' this wed. If Uncle Mike hadn't slipped me a five spot I'd be living off of pocket lint and cold coffee.

"The text (or message) serves as the crux in Jakobson’s basic schemata of linguistic communication. It is through the text that the reader comes into contact with the Context, the Addresser, and the Contact Code. Using Jakobson’s text oriented schemata, the reader is capable of, as Sheldon notes, actualizing, “what would otherwise only remain potentially meaningful” (Sheldon 48)."

Came home beat from work last night. I still look pretty good for averaging less than five hours of sleep the past half-decade. I need to squeeze the emotional harness on excessive caffeine. I need to eat better, or at least eat. I need to flush out that breakthrough story so I don't drown in the jaundice, stale hallways of academia. Or maybe so I don't just plain drown. Most importantly I need my loans to kick in so I can become a student. I've NEVER had a semester where I wasn't juggling at least thirty-hours of menial labor on the side in addition to a full load in the classroom. Normally I have little-to-midland trouble, but this semester I'm honestly drained. I'm sick of serving my Mara ( Mara=Bradley sick opulent study body) --A Mara who has short-hair and daddy's trust fund and who gives me shit at the Reserves desk just because they lack the perspicacity of the avg. toddler to open a net file.

Seems like I'm always in stiff competetion with these snooty short-haired northside lads. I'm envious of their country-clubs, their cruisers, their clothes, their deep pocketed parents who toss out cash like stale new years eve confetti to the college or interest of their spoiled progenies choice. Parents' who support their careers.

The envy is mutual, I suppose. I know my boobless Mara's are envious of my poetry, my drug-connections, my street smarts; they'd stomp their Steppford Wives out of the bedroom in a second for a round with the feral,untethered females I seem to attract. They're envious of the implicit freedom I've found in having zippo stock in material commodities and having everything stored between the lobes of my ears, the ribbed prison of my chest, the calloused tips of my avid fingers, incessanlty chiseling away at the topography of the keyboard until I linguistically sculpt the face of the one person I seem to have lost. The person I couldn't be with because, unlike them, I was broke and my father was shaped less like a millionaire and more like an ash tray exhausted and filled from the heavy smoke of happy hour.

Bakhtin employs Onegin’s authorial centered schemata to enforce his notion of textual importance and language systmes. The text is instrumental in forming a zone of dialogic content with Onegin’s centralized author. An appreciation for language systems such as polyglossia and monoglossia arises when the reader notes the interface between text and author. As Bakhtin notes, “The author participates in the novel (he is omnipresent in it) with almost no direct language of his own. The language is a system of languages that mutually and ideologically interanimate each other.” Using this schemata Bakhtin observes that, “It is impossible to describe and analyze (the novel) as a single unitary language” (Lodge 110).

****

Ick!Too much pessimism! Too much arid academic laced prose! Just got back from a spontaneous meeting with my creative writing prof. He forced me to sit down and shoved the first three pages of his novel WHITE LIGHT in my face.

"I've spent over 1000 hours just writing these three pages over and over again." He said.

Three prismatic beautifully well-written pages. Each word a delicate verbal pedal, pluck one and the paragraph topples like a game of drunk college jenga.

My prof. talks with a looming nostalgia; too much time monopolized in academia trying to make it as a writer, not enough time being able to write. I gave him the best advice I know.

"Don't worry about rewriting. Just write everyday. If you do, things will happen. "

"We'll talk about grad school sometimes." My prof. says. "You never know, it's all about money. If you have enough money, you'll be able to do well. But maybe they'll give you money if they like your stories. They're crazy stories, but maybe some liberal arts college will gnaw into them and foist them off as the next big thing."

"Yeah, maybe" I concede. I try to be positive. Writing is a very isolated profession, one, at times, that pines for attention. The act of a solitary shadow brushing himself against a pebbled shore of subatomic thoughts and words, yelling out for momentary companionship, hoping some facelss reader will care enough about your hobby to hold you in her palms and slowly savor each labored syllable.

"Just write everyday." I tell him, my hubris is speaking. "And jettison everything you know about literary theory. Just have fun with it."

The prof inquries about my friend Nick the writer. Like all of us, Nick's sacrifieced everything to have a life in the arts. Nick's a few years older than my bloggin' buddies.

What I tell Nick is that we can't hold onto it (this writing) all the time. Can't get obssesed to the point where the husband always has to know who his nuptial half is hanging with.

"What I tell Nick is this, 'We can't let this lifeboat become an anchor. We can't let this one thing that we've invested all our faith in to save us, sink us.'" That's what I tell my professor. Crazy david, who writes stories his mom won't even read. Crazy Nick whose parents have disowned him because he shapes sentences everyday and may not be paid in three years.

"Crazy life," I tell my prof, telling him that I'd feel honored to read his manuscript once he prints it out. "If we write everyday, things will happen."

I tell him this. Crazy David who never sleeps and who's been an undergraduate slacker on and off for eight years and who still can't get his own life straight.

******

Uncle Mike and I talk about poverty and smile. Mike's just purchased a huge house so he can hold Baha'i socials. We both have checks scheduled to come in on the 29th.

"It seems like the Concourse really doesn't care about money." I say.

"No, they really don't!" Uncle Mike comments, almost excitedly. It is two in the morning. I've been working all day. Mike is watching television.

"It seems like humor they approve of, and finances are just secondary."

"I'll tell you why," Mike says. He grows quiet. There is subtle glow to his face like a copper penny just dished out from the wash.

"The Bab, Bahá'u'lláh, `Abdu'l-Bahá, Shogi Effendi." He counts there names off slowly, granting a finger's weight to each.

"They all could have been very wealthy if they wanted too," He adds. "Bahá'u'lláh came from one of the most wealthy families in Persia. He easily could have had the foresight to siphon off all of his wealth in different accounts before he was exiled and imprisoned." Mike notes. I've been working all day, all weekend. I should be exhausted. When Uncle Mike talks I become alert and keen.

"Shoggi Effendi, too" Mike adds. "We have records of how much he spent. He was very frugal. He gave up coffee for a year because he thought it was too much of a luxury."

I smile. Mike talks about his time in Hafai.

"I was having dinner with Khanum one night and she said that when she and Shoggi Effendi were married he only had one good suit. At the time of his death, he only owned one good suit--the same suit."

I smile. It seems like everything that I hardcore stress out about will eventually fade into oscillating protons and neutrons whose meted weight is significant yet invisible. That this albatrose of asphyxiated fiscal burden, will pass. That what we as human beings place material emphasis on; my abhorrence for foppy rich boys, my own incurred debt, my workalholicsm, my dreams of being a writer, all of it, at times, seems of little importance.

After all if one lifetime suit was good enough for the guardian of the world's religion.....

******
" Call for the high road once again
Come the day of judgment
Where will you be, my friend?"

-Freudian Press, Lattergasthall Symphony