May 1: Empty and Forlorn, Packing Up, Leaving

...The Fair Grounds were soon deserted.  The shed and buildings were empty and forlorn.  The infield was littered with bottles and trash.  Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all.  No one was with her when she died.

Sorry I was away yesterday.  It was kind of a depressing time.  I packed up my belongings at the medical office in the morning.  Seventeen years' worth of stuff.  Books.  Notebooks.  Pictures.  Mugs.  Cartoons.  My goal was to erase all evidence of myself from the place.  By the time I was done, I had accomplished that goal.


When I left at the end of the day, I looked back at the desk.  It used to be my desk.  Now, it's just the desk.  It could be anybody's desk.  Impersonal.  Clean.  Uncluttered.  I actually got a little emotional walking out of the dark office.  It didn't pass until I got home.

Then, I graded exams and papers.  Thirty-five exams.  Ten or 11 essays.  It took me until well past 11 p.m.  I had every intention of posting after I was done, but I was absolutely exhausted.  At the moment, I'm sitting in my classroom, handing back those exams and papers.  It's quiet.  I'm watching the film Capote, which was not a good choice given my current frame of mind.

When I'm done here, I'm going back to my university office and packing my belongings there.  I'm being moved to a new building this summer, so I have to box up my books and binders.  I don't have much.  I've learned, in my long career as an adjunct instructor, not to put down roots in any office.  It's an impermanent kind of faculty existence.

So, I don't have anything wise or thought-provoking to share.  The Fair Grounds are empty.  The buildings and sheds are forlorn.

Saint Marty will turn out the lights when he leaves.

So long, and thanks for all the fish, as Douglas Adams said

September 16: Tipping of the World, the Future, Magic 8-Ball

It's a tipping-of-the-world day.  One of those days when my comfortable life may change permanently.  The air is cool; the sun, bright.  It's like the afternoon is a pane of glass that could shatter into pieces.  That fragile.  One tossed stone and everything is gone.

There is a meeting tonight at church, and, at that meeting, a group of people will decide whether to keep paying my salary or eliminate it from the 2014 church budget.  If the vote goes my way, I keep my job and can pay my mortgage/bills.  If the vote doesn't go my way, I'm out of a job I've had for close to 15 years and five pastors.  I will have to start looking for weekend employment, and eventually, quit doing a lot of things that give me a great deal of satisfaction.

That's what I mean by a tipping-of-the world day.  The axis of my planet is about to shift, and all I can do is sit back and watch the storm clouds roll in.  The future is uncertain.

I hesitate to ask my Magic 8-Ball question because I think the answer I'm going to receive will simply confirm the way I think the vote is going to go tonight.  However, I have nothing to lose, metaphorically:

Will the church board vote to maintain my salary tonight?

And Holden's answer is:

I left the Lavender Room pretty soon after they did.  They were closing it up anyway, and the band had quit a long time ago...

I should have known.  Leaving.  Closing.  Quitting.  Catcher in the Rye isn't exactly the happiest book ever written.

Saint Marty should have picked a more uplifting book for 2013.  Like Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

 

Maybe next year