minutia

A few other random things.

In the midst of the Althusser, I suddenly vividly remembered the first time I read this essay. It was in the coffeeshop in the LSU bookstore. I was drinking vanilla tea and scarfing a danish before class, trying to read quickly because I hadn't done the homework and Mitchie was a hardass. But I couldn't go too fast because I was fascinated by the essay, amazed with how it framed our entire way of being. Deconstruction was my introduction into my fascination with literary criticism and how it relates to our daily lives but Althusser and Foucault really cemented my desire to study it. Alyson tells me how happy I look when I leave my independent study and it's because I'm doing something that constantly challenges, amazes and fascinates me.

Nancy and I were eating lunch together yesterday and I heard someone making a odd gagging noise.
Me: Do you ever just suddenly imagine wild scenarios playing out?
N: Uh...
Me: Like, I just heard what sounded like gagging and I thought, "what would this whole cafeteria do if someone just started spewing all over the floor?"
N: Probably vomit ourselves.
Me: Gross but true.
N: Do you know why people do that? It's because when people are in groups and someone starts vomiting, our bodies immediately react to the possibility of poison being in our bodies, because groups typically used to eat the same thing.
Me: One time, I was on a school bus and I threw up scrambled eggs and we hit an incline and it slid to the back of the bus and another kid threw up as well. Everyone had to lift their feet to avoid it. Come to think of it, I had a real problem with public vomiting as a kid. I can think of at least 4 times in elementary school that I puked on myself.
N: *horrified* I'm glad you grew out of that.
Me: No, I just became a bulimic and learned to direct it!
*laughter*

My parents are probably divorcing soon. My dad's alcoholism seems to have gotten the best of him again. My mom is close to a nervous breakdown and every time we talk, I don't know what to say, I don't know how to help. I try to tell her about addiction, how my dad and I have the same personality when it comes to these things (something I loathe in times like these), how he's not trying to torture her, he's just so caught up in his own ideas of escape and control that he can't see beyond that. It doesn't help either of us forgive him. There's so much to unpack there...I alternate between feeling empty and feeling so full with my own emotions that I could gag.

Wise 'Wiss words: "It wasn't bullshit, you took a shot. Don't ever regret that."