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Done teaching my last class of the day; my brain is fried (I use this phrase too much). Cliche or not — it’s accurate: most days my day does feel like that. Fried. Toast. Like garbage.
Teaching at an urban high-school in New York is hard. But so are the other things I could do with an M.A. in English.
(In bad faith) I tell myself: this job has nothing to do with who I am; it doesn’t reflect my real talents or ideas or vocation. (And it doesn’t — I don’t think; it’s not my telos — my endpoint). But I have no real proof to the contrary; no proof that the future will not resemble the past (or be worse than the past). I simply have to accept that for the foreseeable future I’m going to have a fried brain.
I’m listening to the soundtrack from the movie I saw last night — Call Me By Your Name. The film was lovely and deserves the praise its garnered.
I don’t normally listen to soundtracks, but the music ties me back into the aesthetic space of the film, which is to say — it lets me escape back into the imaginary space of the film; an Italian summer. In a New York winter, an Italian summer has more than its usual appeal. It is manifest paradise.
American life really leaves no room for paradise; I’ve not had a real vacation in years. I’m not sure if I’ve ever even had a vacation in my adult life. I’ve been working towards something — laboring, networking, hustling — since before I turned 22. I’m burning myself up for a goal I don’t quite understand.
