Thursday, May 15, 2003

Do you ever get stir-crazy, gentle reader? I’ve felt like this recently, but I’m not sure why I feel like this. What I do know, however, is that this case of stir-craziness–and thank you, Terrence, for the useful phrase–cannot be remedied with a simple jaunt outdoors. It’s a different strain, you see; the generic strain simply makes one want to shake, shake one’s skin off and reboot, but this strain runs much, much deeper.

Am I making any sense, dear reader? At some point in the last few days, I inhaled an amalgam of senioritis, blithe denial of the thirty-eight days left of college, pensiveness concerning the job market, and faceless stress. There is a desire to move on, to make a clean break from college, but there is also an accompanying uncertainty and nostalgia. And I am tired.

Would that I could do it all again with some variations here and there; and would that I am only voicing the angst voiced by so many in the past.

“Don’t end up like a meat pie on the conveyor belt!” my violin teacher told me one evening in her thick German accent. She had just finished recounting how much she enjoyed “Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” one of Sondheim’s plays from which she pulled this life-applicable symbol.

Yeah, you were right all along. Play it again, Sam, but play it slowly this time, and get me off of the conveyor belt.