April 26: Patterns of Your Mind, Friendly Bastard, P.O.E.T.S. Day Meetings

"The patterns of your mind.  Your mind runs in--Listen.  I'm nor giving an elementary course is psychoanalysis.  If you're interested, call him up and made an appointment.  If you're not, don't.  I couldn't care less, frankly."

I put my hand on his shoulder.  Boy, he amused me.  "You're a real friendly bastard," I told him.  "You know that?"

Old Luce doesn't have much patience for Holden.  In fact, I'm surprised Luce puts up with Holden's questions about his sex life and his Chinese girlfriend and psychoanalysis as long as he does.  There's a certain air of entitlement about Luce that gets under my skin, however.  I enjoy Holden's small digs at Luce's ego ("You're a real friendly bastard").  Holden has a way of cutting through bullshit, especially when he's dealing with privileged phonies like Luce.

Most of my P.O.E.T.S. Day is going to be spent attending meetings at the university.  I am attending an English Department meeting and a meeting of the contingent faculty committee.  I expect both forums to contain a lot of bullshit, as most meetings do.  That's par for the course.  Today, however, there will be a larger quotient of it.  It's political and nasty.  Imagine a room-full of Old Luces sitting around and holding court about the way things should be run.  That's going to be my day.

I know these kinds of situations can't be avoided.  As much as I would like to think that all my coworkers/colleagues want to be fair and kind in their professional dealings, the events of the last week or so have proven this thought wrong.  Unfortunately.  I have a feeling what I'm going to learn at these two meetings today is simply the degree to which some people will stoop to obtain/regain/or usurp power.  Because power is what it's all about.

That's the way the world is.  History bears this out.  Ask Nelson Mandela or Aung San Suu Kyi.

Saint Marty really hopes he's proven wrong.

Will we overcome?