"I loathe thee"
if it's all practice
for life, a dress rehearsal
for the real
then all this preemptive doodling
is the preparation for madness
when a superior who is your age
a 2001 graduate of kissass university
patronizes you in such a way
that you want to smack that bitch up
without feeling anything about it
you know the overworked underpaid credo
for what it really is
a rehearsal for insanity
a formula for losing one's g r i p
the handholding of reality is to cease here and now
as one's productivity and efficiency
get a little slap happy
making me want to kick a copier,
go on a smoke break,
and pretend like i don't know
what the fuck i'm doing
-- EB, 4 February 03
This as a reaction to my shittay day at work yesterday. If you finish one project, they just have another for you. Why be efficient? You could get paid the same amount without expending half the effort. Without giving a damn. I don't care if they meet their reunion fundraising goals. I don't care who comes to reunion. It makes me think of firebombing, but I'm only twenty-two. My solace this morning was thinking that even though my superiors make more money than I do for a job that I could do without a doubt...at least I'm following my dream of what I want to do. Unless it is secretly Adrienne's dream to raise money for Vanderbilt University. I (at least for the moment, but give me a couple more and maybe I'll change my mind again) like to think that I have a loftier purpose in mind. That sounds snooty, and maybe it is. But I don't really give a damn for money. I just want to learn and teach and write. The role of the intellectual...I figure that shelling out what I am currently getting loans to shell out is enough money to keep VU alive. To hell with fundraisers and functions.
But more on the intellectual. (I will feel like Flynn as I quote in length here from Michel Foucault in that I hardly ever take the liberty to quote at such length. Here it is...):
The role of the intellectual does not consist in telling others what they must do. What right would they have to do that? And remember all the prophecies, promises, injunctions, and programs that the intellectuals have managed to formulate in the course of the last two centuries. The job of an intellectual does not consist in molding the political will of others. It is a matter of performing analyses in his or her own fields, of interrogating anew the evidence and the postulates, of shaking up habits, ways of acting and thinking, of dispelling commonplace beliefs, of taking a new measure of rules and institutions...it is a matter of participating in the formation of political will, where [the intellectual] is called to perform a role as citizen (Foucault
Remarks on Marx 11-12).
This is going to play a role in my newest buzz / paper on American democracy, individuality, responsibility, and freedom. It will be an existential analyses of the colonial period as seen via the lens of Alexis de Tocqueville. Wish me luck.
Either way, I have to be off to class momentarily, as my marathon day surges on.
Dream note: I had a dream the other night about meeting Mel Brooks and walking on crutches. If you want to know details, just ask.
Extra note: The shape of the above poem didn't come out published the way I wanted it, and it refused to edit up to what it is supposed to be, so BLAR! I dunno.
