April 19: Horde of Locusts, Grading and More Grading, Twilight Zone

A man lay down to sleep in a horde of locusts, Will Barker says.  Instantly the suffocating swarm fell on him and knit him in a clicking coat of mail.  The metallic mouth parts meshed and pinched.  His friends rushed in and woke him at once.  But when he stood up, he was bleeding from the throat and wrists.

It's a terrifying image.  A horde of locusts enrobing a man's body.  Clicking and pinching like some 1950s radioactive monster movie.  A nightmare.  But, when the dreamer wakes, he is bleeding.  Perhaps it's a night terror, the sleeper clawing at himself.  Perhaps the attacking horde is real, chased by screams into the black air.

This morning, I would have paid to stay in bed, even if it was crawling with a carpet of hungry locusts.  I was more than dead tired.  I was living dead tired.  All day long, I stumbled around like I was starved for brains.  Even though it was Tuesday, it felt like Monday.  I was not operating at 100 percent.  I was barely functioning at 50 percent.

Tonight, I have loads of work to do.  Grading.  Lesson planning.  More grading.  And, when I'm done with that, more grading.  It is that time of the semester when all the chickens come home to roost, as Malcolm X would say.  For the next couple of weeks, I will pretty much remain in a zombie state.  Not really alive, not really dead.

Saint Marty is in the Twilight Zone of the semester.

Well, it felt like Monday to me.