Everywhere I've been--from my living room to the kitchen, from the top of the stairs that lead to the basement to the bottom of the stairs in the basement itself, I've been faced with one question.
Why don't you ever update your blog?
It's not an easy question to answer. I'm a complex guy, filled with individual thinking and stuff. But when the crazy old man across the street who throws rocks at cars and screams in a made up language to children, asked me (after he noted we were wearing the same orange sweater) "Where's your blog been?" I knew I had no choice.
Okay, he didn't ask me that. But he does exist, of course, this rock-throwing guy, and he does seem to own a sweater that is eerily simila
r to one I own and this (as it should) concerns me.Where will I be in twenty-five or thirty years and what are the odds that it will involve me wearing that exact same sweater and kicking my legs wildly, waving my arms randomly, and screaming at children? I mean, I think I have the longterm potential to be fairly stable, but there are things we can't predict. Still, I'm going to pride myself on saying that's a longshot, a 75-to-1. Still, that photo of the sweater (taken mere moments ago!) does show me posing for pictures while wearing pajama pants and an orange sweater. And that is so crazy guy across the street. So let's make it 65-to-1.
So here are the current odds (going all Vegas and what-not on you) of what I'll be doing in twenty-five years:
--Walking into a composition classroom at a middling university where I've been adjuncting for fifteen years, running my fingers through my long and wildly unkept mostly gray hair, and saying, "so, my young composers, let's talk about our feelings." 2-to-1
--Driving. 8-to-1
--Eating a big ol' hunk a cheese. 6-to-1
--Working on my second academic tome about poststructuralism and polyphonic tendencies in the work of playwright Robin Runyan. 150-to-1.
--Basking in celebrity after taking all the credit for some massive volume that Chapel has written about global religions. 5-to-1
--Getting really good rejection slips from Mid American Review that tell me you're almost there! Try again? with a smiley face underneath. 3-to-2.
--Working really hard to update my blog (or maybe by then they'll have flying blogs. Oooh). 4-to-1.
4 comments:
How about still basking in your Big Brother fame?
Where can I lay down my bets?
For instance, I've got $20 on that adjuncting thing. Mid American Review won't be around in 25 years, so I need odds to bet AGAINST that.
--Discovering that the right use of assonance and alliteration, coupled with a very complex serious of throat clearings will actually solve world hunger. 4-1.
--Finding an image of Sylvia Plath in an looped oven mitt and selling it on eBay for $27.43. 800-1. (Liz Knapp will buy it for $30).
--Believing in yourself, landing a book deal with a self-help company, and redefining what poetry is on a cross-country circuit self-help program tour entitled, "Thinking Enthusiastically and Poetically with Jason Olsen." 2-1.
Molly, you're sweet, but honestly we must all admit that j-drive is about one head knock or panic attack from the old man across the street who kicks invisible objects on his rounds of the neighborhood.
Jazzzon! This is not to be mean, I myself am so close to bunny slippers and lithium that I ALREADY have the bunny slippers! oh yeah! Poets...geesh. I find us charming (and potential world savey!)whereas I find some potholder purchasers unpoetish...that won't save the world, well not one I want to take my lithium in.
(someday I'll write poems with crayons on giant paper...because a pen would put my eye out.)
Mandie
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