Just talked to someone I met three summers ago, before I started at the U of C. Can't believe its been three years. I can't believe I'm only 6 days away from being done with college forever. Its been three painful years. I don't remember anything I've learned in class - all the adderall and smokes has terminated all superfluous memory. All those academics, all those theories, they seem so complex, so fake. Anything that's real, anything that's truly worth it seems like it would be a lot simpler. Some things are universal. And what's universal is simple... But I guess the material world is not so simple. And this world fraught with war and avarice also created symphonies and etudes. And my black leather boots. And swiss chocolate.
I, however, do remember carousing through the streets of Hyde Park, ribaldly singing "Summertime" in the dead of the Chicago winter, or staying awake long nights by myself just thinking. I remember late night talks with Cathleen. I remember feeling like the queen when I sat beside him. Those were good nights. I remember being so lost that I exorcised every moral and ethic in my being. I remember desperately searching. I still haven't found it.
When I last talked to Stephen three years ago, things were so much simpler. I worked as a waitress at Cosmic Cafe. I wore a t-shirt with boddhivsta eyes and I carried plates of hummus and sauteed portabella. The cafe had yellow walls and a fat hispanic cook. The world was still a beautiful fruit who's flesh I've yet to delve into. However, I wouldn't say I was happy then. I knew that I was missing something, but that empty feeling was a soft, harmless feeling. Now, I've felt more, seen more, experienced more; now that I've tasted the sweet fermented flesh... I am both poisoned and enlightened. I've been schooled on the terrors and wonders. What hurts me the most are those small, mundane realities. Those moments of adult life - taxes, making ends meet, kissing up to small minds in order to get ahead ... torturous and cyclical. Perhaps I am simply too greedy, since I want every moment to be ripe with my brand of fulfillment and meaning.
Life cannot be an extended orgasm. According to my English prof , life is about the delay between desire and fulfillment. So maybe I did learn a few things in college.
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