Decrying Gravity

Last week was... interesting.  Low points (completely uncontrolled senior class going crazy and disrespecting like utter punks), high points (an impromptu poetry hike with the sophomores, students liking my cookies, reading in the sun with almost full class participation), and another week down.  One to go.  And, as time winds down, I'm beginning the period of reflection preceding the next big phase of my life. 

And, indeed, the depression is falling off like a winter coat.  I haven't been that depressed, exactly, but I'm actually feeling somewhat unburdened.  It's refreshing but also terrifying; for the burden keeps caged the myriad human weaknesses, needs, and idiosyncracies that I'd otherwise contain with little effort.

For instance, attraction.  Ironically, the hormones are diminishing my sex drive and yet, with spring and my concerns lifting, I notice thighs and sighs and the memories  of the way a body feels, increasingly distance and yet tantalizingly close.  I was walking one of my students through The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, and she was commenting about how his behavior was so foreign to her.  If she wants something/someone, she cheerfully asks.  But for me, Prufrock sings.

Thought has always been my bane and boon, my tragic flaw and peak appeal.  I think.  It's what I do.   I plan and imagine, revise and edit, methodically moving towards some large goals that always seem just out of reach.  I am not the type to impetuously ask, to "presume" and see where the night and tresses falling over fiery eyes take me.  Prufrock sings his song, and I dance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGyRpdKbSy4

Cat Power has a cover of the Stones "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction)," but part of what makes it so wonderful is that she cuts it up and makes it her own song.  She never actually says "satisfaction" and it turns into a tale of searching, searching with no luck instead of an ode to lust.  "Can't you see, I'm on a losing streak" is hung upon, laid out in an up-to-that-point apathetic song and it's clear that beneath the veneer of carefree dissatisfaction is a core of longing and inefficacy. It's how I feel. Not tormented, like in some of her other songs, but the longing's there, beneath a droll waiting. Oh, and waiting it truly is.