Out on the Lawn

The registrar said the grades were due today.   The final papers were only turned in a few days ago.  I would have been well within my rights to have told them, listen, it’s not gonna happen on that time frame.  But this is a case where our interests our aligned.  The sooner I get it turned in, the sooner I get paid.  Getting paid’s a fine thing.  So I huffed and I puffed and I stayed up very late and got up very early and graded one five page paper after another until they were all, sometime around noon today, done and graded. 

Then I could in my mind turn to all the other things I’d left go fallow.  But it wasn’t that easy.   Someone.  A good someone.  Called and said, hey, can you get me a rendering of all your team has done this week.  I need it.  Sure.  I’ll get it.  Another good man called.  Aren’t we on for now?  Everyone else was sure we were not.  But I took the call and went through things one by one, solo.   Another fire drill and I wrote my client about a challenge from my prospect. 

The sane thing might be to just go to bed.  I’m tired.  I’d imagined a nap all day.  I just ran out of run way for it.  My best chum in the whole world has just moved to town.  They got a new apartment in the same neighborhood I used to live in, long ago.  When he said he needed to get up at and be somewhere by in the morning I quickly backed off of having him come out to my place.  And then I considered the fact that I’d be out of the house by 5:30AM to catch a plane.  I guess I think of myself as someone who can take it.  I’m not daunted by the little things, like waking up.  Perhaps I can catch a nap on ride down town. 

It’s a silly song.  And a rather serious song. But the song I’ll call “Nuclear War” from the Sun Ra album, “Fireside Chats with Lucifer,” has a cut where in Sun Ra says: “Nuclear War.  Nuclear War.  It’s a muthafucker.  It’s a muthafucker.  And the Arkestra repeats.  “You can kiss yo ass, good bye, good bye.”  And what did that make me think of besides Trouble and her This is the Modern World show where I first heard the song?  I thought of being a teenager when people were regularly terrified of nuclear incineration.  I remember my high school Social Studies teacher telling me back then that if we learned that the bomb had gone off . . . why he’d invite everyone to hold hands and go sit out on the lawn.  I realize that sounds silly as rendered, but this was no ordinary Social Studies teacher.  He possessed great gravity and it struck me as just about as good a way as any at the time, to kiss my ass goodbye. 

Thursday 8/01/19