His active love life has been frequent fodder
I am at work. It’s 5:44 and I get wistful here at night so sorry about this. I’m walking back to work after an on-campus dinner. Outside the mess deck, one of my favorite students, Baby Bluehawk, eying my load of manila folders offers to help me finish my grading while she is at work. She’s starting her shift at the library and will be there until ten. A group of five sweating students on an Indian run passes me on the left, chanting militant nonsense. It’s getting dark and there is a light on in my office. I hate to quote indie rock on my blog but this has stuck with me for weeks:
“we sailed away on a winter’s day
with fate as malleable as clay
but ships are fallible, i say,
and the nautical, like all things, fades.”
In the distance, a tugboat squeezes a barge out of the Carquinez Straight towards open water as the sunset casts the San Pablo Bay soft pink. I should know more about that–barges and things. But I am just floating through all of this. My energy is focused on things that will surely collapse. People who will surely fade. And I cannot stop myself.