I just rediscovered a bankers box full of scattered homework and assignment notebooks from my sophomore year in collegiate academics at Arizona State University, never to return. Strange relics to come across and with no practical purpose other than to take them out on a day like today in order to feel odd. Feels like remembering the best part of a broken-off relationship. This is the content of the soul and all the repetition should have instilled a good amount of this work into my memory. I recited these passages and felt estranged from the beginning.
The top item is a yellow-covered notebook that says ASU in maroon. In between the cardboard and the first page is a stack of fellow creative writers and their first fiction workshop. Definitely potential talent in this pile. Some of these stories were wonderful, though, many stylistically unrealized. First college-ruled page is notes taken for sociology of deviance dated to january so these papers are madly out of order. I will now dive into them without commentary and write down interesting observations during breaks or lulls in curiosity. It is 10:38 am
"we have internalized society and society has internalized us"
(lost senses of community) when it comes to cigarettes, peers override parental influence. Whose values do we adhere to?
I copied down the questions and answers to online homework like a nerd. All of these notes were optional so I believe I was a powerhouse of a student. (we are all born without self control, says Travis Hirschi)
"going native"
moral enterprise: the 'crusade' can be exemplified by the racist, bigoted, good-christian man yelling at passersby about how homosexuality is a sin on hayden lawn.
no smoking in bars - spend 8 hours in smoke-filled bar and that is equivalent to having smoked 1 cigarette
folk devil
----- now an empty page with a small doodle on it... the back of which has a random note about Zola for a different class and serves as a transition in the notebook to anthropological notes, in all their painful glory. Biological anthropology. Scattered notes. Not much, really. Just a few pages. Most were torn out of here I think. To serve paper airplane purposes. And the computer literacy class notes. I nearly blocked that one out of my head completely. What a joke it all was.
next item is an 8 page essay entitled 'Long Day's Journey Into Drunk' about the connection between alcohol use between the characters in Eugene O'Neill's play 'Long Day's Journey Into Night' and the characters in his own life, growing up.
now an English titled sustainable notebook. "So you are into being sustainable?" "Oh I don't know. I just got this and it happened to be sustainable." just remembered a conversation that ruined any sort of relationship from forming. Concrete vs abstract.
Magical realism.
my god, remembering the 20+ page study guide anthropology exams. the seriousness of the topic to the professor and his funny outbursts to a class of 100 that should contain 500
what does it mean to master a math equation months prior but then to look at that same equation and see hieroglyphs? it is gibberish. How can I retain anything? Exercised that part of my brain but not for good. Practice must be consistent. No one ever remembers the equations from their college math or science classes.
Just teaches me that anything is possible. This stuff was easy at one point and could be again very quickly. It takes patience and attentive hours spent crafting the ideas.
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11:06 pm realizing my old roommate never called back. his friend visiting I denied conversation with because of my insolence and ignorance when discussing the difference between positive and negative song lyrics. (Buy your own god damn boots I don't care, however you want to assimilate into your new role. I will not oblige.)
I hated feeling clumsy and moving around, in my mind, considerably less. No room on stage as well. But harmonies were nailed. Light box more uncomfortably high. Staggering like a drunk attempting to unlock his car. An idiot without a brain in charge of his functioning. We are all alone again again.
