Full Ramblomation: Operation "M Speak"

I'm currently in the office (Sloan 118), slogging through five-point-five hours of required office time. It's not such a bad thing, really - the combination of the monitor in this room, which is quite nearly the size of Jupiter, and the executive-like feel of saying to peers and parents that I'm currently "in my office hours" makes me feel like some kind of big-wig - but it is certainly eating into time which I could be using for . . . I dunno, something, I'm sure. Really I am doing just what I would be doing during any other stretch of time spent in my room, procrastinating. The only difference here is that I'm somewhat professional and have appointments, don-cha-know.
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Now, the real meat of this posting is coming from a current despair I've been wrestling with like a greased-up Mickey Rourke (disturbing imagery, ho!): the difficulties of maintaining interpersonal relationships (especially those of a romantic nature) while attending graduate school and while searching for a professional degree and subsequent teaching position.

As some of you may be aware (though most may not be), I am currently firmly planted in the realm of 'Taken,' or 'In a Relationship,' by Facebook standards. Alex and I have been dating for a smallish bit of time, but it has been quality nonetheless - no qualms on this end, at least, and I like to think the satisfaction is mutual. Put simply, she's pretty much the bee's knees, so to speak.

Where the apprehension arrives, then, is in a cosmically-influenced hindrance to our otherwise best-laid plans: she's a fair bit younger than me and will be graduating in 2012; I am on a track for May '10. In an over-arching sense, this is supremely minor. In a minutiae sense, however, this is abysmal. I will be applying for graduate schools in roughly two months, trying my hand at several places that are rather far removed from the roots I've planted here in humble Mount Pleasant: esteemed epicenters of literary scholarship like Cambridge, Oxford, Cornell, Brown, NYU, and several others, I'm sure. Thinking in the best terms possible, I will be accepted someplace - maybe not one of those, but someplace nonetheless. This creates a long-distance relationship which will be at best cumbersome and draining and at worst volatile and defunct. I do not see the latter happening, but I roll abysmally on my Scrying checks, as I am no Wizard.

Now, this is a minimal setback on the grand scheme of shit that could happen. If all goes well - that is, we stick together through the portion of our lives which will separate us greatly - then the issue moves to one which is somewhat more dire. I am pursuing a professional degree in English with intentions of teaching at the collegiate level - a pretty barren job market with its own pitfalls, but I'll dodge those bear traps as they come - while she plans on teaching at the middle school and high school level. Our dreams would entail becoming a sort of tandem duo akin to a straight left and a right hook. She would drag them into the field of English with some cursory looks at early American literature, maybe a bit of modernism, then I'd go for the jugular with surveys, theory courses, and the occasional study in an author. It would be fantastic.

It's also fantastical. The odds of me getting a job in this market are bad enough as it is; the odds of her getting a job are equally poor. Combine the two into a single probability statement and you get something roughly equivalent to the odds of pencil gaining sentience, realizing its own relatively low worth and its own expendability, writing a bestseller in which it relates its life as a product to be consumed, used up, and thrown away when it no longer performs its function.

shit, I need to write that story now on this god-like monitor.

RKS out

-a tale told by an idiot

More Insomniatic Meat

This is insomnia at its finest: the kind in which the insomnia creeps throughout the body's structures, moving between mind and flesh in an intricate dance which never leaves either in the same state of wakefulness. They are as oil and water, never truly meshing in the same degree, always whole of themselves, one suspended in the other, waiting to separate when enough time and stillness allows.
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It started as an exquisite restlessness in my body, particularly my legs and my aching knee. From there, it shifted to my stomach, where it began to toy with my digestion and shape a malevolent tightness in my chest cavity which has yet to dislodge itself. My mind was, at this point in the cycle, quite exhausted and prepared for a restful night. Such a blessing was not in the cards. Just as my body finally settled into comfort and began to feel weightless, my stupid mind snapped into awareness and forced me to stare into the backs of my eyelids. I pulled my eyes open, gazed out the window, listened to Joe snore beneath my bed. His mouth is like a seaside cavern, yawning and amplifying the incessant winds of the equally restless ocean. Perhaps tonight he merely echoed my own fitful churning, as a cavern would.
Alex lay next to me, warm, silent, motionless. She was fidgety earlier in the night, and it set me on edge for no apparent reason. My knee is aching dully now, reminding me of that exact moment when I got frustrated: how stupid it was, how foolish I am. It mocks me through analgesics, through icings, through massage, stretch, and ibuprofen. It is rheumatoid when my emotions flare up like a storm crossing the plains on a hot summer afternoon, aching, foretelling the fleeting dissatisfaction and anger I am sure to feel sometime that day. When my own anvils roll in, thick with rancor, it laughs, biting deeply into my nerves, aching like a joint that needs to be relocated but never will.
I sat up in bed after a quarter of an hour, knowing I would find no solace in my mind. The gears were cranking along, waiting for their part of the cycle to finish, for my body to find its second wind so the mind could shut down, leaving me awake in the most hollow way. When I arose to a seated position, I felt her warm hand caress my back, noted how fondly her fingertips traced a path along my spine, reassuring me in her own particular way. I was amazed at how knotted my dorsal muscles were, holding the weight of consciousness upon them.
When I got up to apply Icy Hot to my knee, get a drink, collect myself for a second round of trying to sleep, I could feel disappointment lying in the growing space between us. I feel horrible. I feel like a broken piece of machinery which, knowing it is now expendable, turns its back on its owner, thinking itself useless, only to see a single tear, filled with an entire race's worth of sorrow, fall to the ground. I will return.
My knee aches more profoundly now. It harmonizes with my disgust, amplifies it, like a cave by the sea.
I am driving all of these sounds, like the mercurial ocean, but I am so caught up in the sound of my own surf that I cannot discern a meek cry from the roaring noise of my own stormy consciousness.
My knee is at its limit: it surely can hurt no more, throbbing in a self-sustaining chorus of echoing pain in a time similar to my body's dilapidated circadian rhythm.
It is time for my return. I shall calm these waters if it takes me a night and a day, or forty, or thousands. I shall discern, and sleep, and dream.

RKS

Weekend from Mt. Pleasant

I had the busiest Friday known to man last week, for a guy who has no Friday classes this semester. Suffice to say, it was laden with down times where I thought, 'Gosh, I could probably go run. . . ' then decided not to do so. My spare moments were always less than an hour in total, with the one exception where I was able to slink off to the SAC and run a quick 3 mile workout before going ice skating. It's still not my absolute favorite thing. I fell a few times and it was quite painful and humiliating.
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Saturday, however, was where the real action was, so to speak. I ran a 15 miler from around 11:30 until around 1:45, or 2 hours in actual running time (time spent standing about, waiting for traffic subtracted). Total time: 1:58:57. I was very excited about that little tidbit. I was not expecting to run the distance that quickly - truth be told, the run was meant for a slow run, not a speedy one - but the conditions were right and my body was ready for a fast-paced long run instead of an easy one. This bodes well for me, though, as it means that I'm probably going to be on track for a 3:40 or better marathon - which would be an outstanding achievement, if I do say so myself.

Saturday night, however, deflated whatever awesome dreams I may have entertained about being some kind of sweet distance runner/feeling well today/being at a respectably fit weight for the run. I went out drinking with the roommates and everyone, sabotaged whatever diet I've been calling this, and ultimately ended up with a massive headache and some kind of screwed up hunger system. I'm back on the late-night hunger binge, which must change once more back into an early morning hunger pang.

Sunday was unproductive until just this last 20 minutes. That's life.

I do not believe I'm going to continue running marathons much after I finish this one. It will be awesome to complete one, sure, but I get insanely bored running the training runs leading up to the marathon itself. My mental resilience is pretty good - I can deal with the long runs, obviously, but it's not as much fun as the more 'middle' distance runs I'm partaking in, such as the 6 to 10 milers - but I'm pretty sure I'm reaching a limit. Maybe it's because I run alone, but even running with a buddy doesn't mitigate the realization that I am taking upwards of three to four hours out of my day for the sole purpose of running. That strikes me as crazy. Maybe I'm too used to 5k distance training, i.e. no more than 8 miles at any given time.

Beh. Time for something else, possibly more productive than this. I'm sure I had another point to make with this, but I can't remember it. Onward to finishing homework.

Oh yes.
Huzzah for the last week before a long, much-needed break!

RKS