I never did men­tion that I’m going back to school. Well I am, and it is not the after­thought that it appears to be here. I really am try­ing to upgrade my life, and I have made a few sac­ri­fices in the mean­time — not all of them insignif­i­cant. When I’m in class, tak­ing notes, every­thing I do makes me feel like I’m doing what I should be doing. It’s a feel­ing I haven’t had in years, and I rel­ish it like a drug. Though I still feel a lit­tle out of place at times. Walk­ing up the steps the other day I rounded a cor­ner, nearly bump­ing into a girl. “Excuse me, sir,” she said. I can’t be more than two years older than her — if that — and she addressed me like I was one of the fac­ulty. Since then I’ve taken a few more steps to look like I belong, if only to blend in a lit­tle more. That led to this exchange, more in the right direction:

“You look like… what’s the word for out of time and place?“I instantly replied.

“Anachro­nism.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Anachronism.”

Of any­thing that I’ve been called, that is what I like the best. It’s neu­tral, nei­ther com­pli­men­tary nor deroga­tory, and paints me as nei­ther above nor below my sur­round­ings, but both ahead and behind.

Then a lit­tle while later, it led to this:

Fros­tily trot­ting
on the cold steps
mouth tight
word­less
spec­u­la­tive in nature
coarsely ground
to a finely finite
fin­ish.
Twenty-dollar words
bot­tled up like old wine
maybe vine­gar by now.
Maybe.

I used to feel that my inter­ests are far to broad to be put to good use in a blog. But I’m reconsidering.