|
My week was supposed to be very straightforward:
- I work.
- I go to class.
- I come home exhausted.
- I do some homework and housework.
- I fall into bed and sleep like a rock for a few hours, then repeat.
Not much fun, but efficient. Definitely efficient.
Instead, though, I've been getting sidetracked. Monday night Earl
phoned me to let me know how his German final went, and we had a nice
conversation filled with trivia before I let him go eat dinner. I also
did two loads of laundry. Last night, post-class, I went to Jumping
Java and was flirted at by the guy behind the counter. Cute, blonde, a
little shaggy, way too young. It was flattering, though. Marith met
me there; I ate ham-and-swiss on a croissant and we talked for nearly
two hours. It was good to have a long conversation with her that wasn't
full of our mutual angst.
(It occurs to me that 'way too young' means he was probably about my
age. Maybe a few years older, even. I'm not sure what this says about
my mental image of myself... well, yes I am. I think of myself as
being in my late twenties even though I'm not. This is going to be
embarassing in a few years, I can tell already.)
I put on music when I got home -- the OCR of Sondheim's Assassins
, which is a (fairly controversial) musical about people who
tried to kill American Presidents -- and started in on my homework.
Finishing the first problem set took me about an hour, which is
somewhat worrisome; I have six more to do in the next week, and at an
hour each I'm not going to have much of a social life.
Then I started listening to the music.
I'm susceptible. I'm so damn susceptible. Any well-written and/or
well-performed piece of drama is going to hit me in the gut. I
listened to just the fourth track of Assassins, which I'd describe if I
thought a description would mean anything to anyone. I listened to it,
and was hit by so many things, so much emotion. Memories of a time
when I was falling apart (quietly and politely, mind; very few people
who knew me during that period had any idea how miserable I was) and
this musical was my lifeline. I played it incessantly. In doing so I
gained an appreciation for American history that I'd never had
before.
That wasn't all though. I empathise easily, probably too easily.
Listening to the music it was so simple to feel for the characters, for
the real historical person who thought he was fighting a war for
freedom and whose name is almost completely unknown. Leon Czolgosz,
the assassin of President McKinley (bet you didn't even know McKinley
was assassinated, did you?), had a miserable life as a factory worker,
got involved with anarchists, and killed McKinley in order to strike a
blow for downtrodden workers everywhere. He's been chalked up as a
lunatic ever since, but from all accounts of those who spoke with him
between the assassination and execution (he made no attempt to struggle
or escape) he was perfectly rational. Would we argue that someone who
assassinated Hitler was a lunatic?
American history is full of incredibly icky bits. I wish I'd known
this during high school, as it would've made my history classes much
less boring.
That was definitely a tangent, but probably more fun than listening to
me recall two-year-old angst.
|