Stress, who? Me?

Stress – a topic par-excellence for me today. Porqué? As the VSU set well knows, this is the week of finals. That means that papers are due, or papers will be returned. Grades must be in by next week. We’re down to the short rows. (For the non-redneck, non-farm-raised, that means that when you’re harvesting your crops and begin to get near the corner or end of the field, the rows are usually shorter.) Near the end, but not the end. Still some work to do. I usually get tired near the end or just plain sick of working on a project or paper. I liked the old quarter system better. By time you started getting sick of everything, it was over. The most stressful thing just now is the angst I’m feeling about not knowing. Not knowing what, you may ask? In English 7000, in which I am a student, I am waiting to know my grade on a monster of a paper that I turned in last Wednesday. Did I do good enough? (I know it’s supposed to be “well,” but screw it.) I made a spreadsheet to figure my grade and have entered in several different scenarios. Provided that I get a 95 on my second journal, according to my calculations, I can get an 82 on the paper and somehow, through the magic of averages, by some "miracle of rare device" ("A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!"; gratuitous Coleridge reference #1), get an A for the class with a final aggregate score of 89.5. (That sentence structure you just saw is what is known as a "proviso" clause in Latin. "Provided that" intimates a conditional situation. You render it with the adverb "dummodo" and follow it with the subjunctive; the main clause would be in the indicative.) But this is cutting it close now gradewise, but that’s “A”-OK with me. (That’s supposed to be funny because it's a pun. Some say the pun is the lowest form of humor. I disagree.) And why might I be stressing about all this? Because, the way I see it, I’ve been busting my ass since August in this class and driving back and forth to Titletown USA (This is for Sir Shane: "We ain't trying to read no books."), burning up gasoline; I’ve read eight books for the class (Si, yo dije OCHO!); I’ve written out dialogic journals that fill two, 100 sheet spiral notebooks: the first notebook was front and back.

The frikkin’ paper was about the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I’m so sick of that g.d. albatross that I could, I don’t know… Twenty-nine pages not counting the works cited PAGES. Three pages of citations. Any you know what, the paper just is what it is. “Que sera, sera.” (That's France-talk for "what will be, will be.") I bet if I had time to sit down and watch a Doris Day movie, I’d feel better. I know the monster paper isn’t my best work, but it’s not that bad either. I’d never written a paper where I had to do a review of literature. But I did it. So automatically, the temptation was just to copy and paste a bunch of that crap from the lit. review into the paper. And tempted I was. That’s just what I did. I took fifteen pages of what was nothing more than an annotated bibliography really and made it into a paper. But you know what, as bad as it is, it’s got to be BETTER than some of the journal articles I read while researching the topic. When I get some more letters behind my name, then I can tell ‘em what’s what.

Well that’s enough about that. But, you know, there has got to be a better way to write about literature and do literary criticism than the dry-as-dust research-style essay. I’ve always wanted to write something like:

Then Wordsworth was like, “Your damn poem sucks ass.”

Then Coleridge goes, “No it don’t; you’re not the boss a me. I’ll write what I want!”

Wordsworth fires back, “It’s your fault that Lyrical Ballads didn’t sell worth a shit! If you weren’t trying to bed down with all your friends’ sisters you might could write something decent once and a while. And it doesn’t help that you’re high as kite on dope all the time.”

Coleridge retorts, “You know what, bitch, you can take your frikkin’ Two Part Prelude and cram it where the sun don’t shine! Hell yeah, mofo!”

What I want to know is how does one talk in italics?

So how to deal with stress? I’ve been told that I am the most laid-back, uptight person ever. I’m not sure what this means, but I think I know. It seems contradictory. But what’s not a contradiction, that’s what I want to know. Everything and nothing at the same time. Sounds strange, but it makes sense to me. On the surface, I may seem calm, cool, and collected. I seem to have that devil-may-care attitude. But that’s not how it goes. If you don’t believe me, ask Shane. He’s been witness to several melodramatic meltdown episodes this semester. It’s kind of ridiculous the way I act. Beneath my calm exterior lies a seething cauldron, boiling and bubbling, toiling and troubling, with uncertainty and woe. (That's a Macbeth allusion in case you didn't notice. Refer to lines 4.1.20-21. But I know that you know. I don't ever want to be accused of plagiarism.) It’s not a fun place to be unless it is. Woe have I for the future; for not measuring up to some high standard I’ve usually set for myself; for letting someone down; for not keeping my end of the deal; for hurting someone’s feelings; for creating bad karma; for the past; etc.; etc.; et-damn-cetera.

I’ve discovered that various chemicals can relieve stress for a short time. Nothing illegal, mind you. I’ve divided the options for stress relief into two categories. It’s really simple. You just choose something from each category and partake of the two simultaneously. The first category: Coors Light, Heineken, Bud Light, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, vodka, red wine (preferably Tuscan*), or white wine; basically, any alcoholic drink will work. It’s your call as to what you prefer. The second category: Beechnut chewing tobacco, a Montecristo or Macanudo cigar, or even a few cigarettes. Now my formula can be a problem if you don’t abuse the hell out of tobacco products. I'm sure you're wondering how one goes about chewing tobacco and drinking beer at the same time too. It's a seemingly grotesque yet near-superhuman buccal feat that is only the province of and only can be accoplished and executed by the reddest of rednecks. But, yeah, ATF. Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. That’s what’s missing. Maybe if I walked around a fired a pistol into the night like Lord Byron used to, it’d help too. I’m really not crazy; it just sounds like it on paper. Really I’m not. I hope I’m not scaring anyone. Will you still be my friend? Maybe if I just listened to .38 Special while self-medicating/poisoning myself, that would connote the idea of "gun" and be a lot safer. But the secret formula only really works when you choose something from BOTH categories. I’m not actually an alcoholic, but it sure does make things easier sometimes. Especially around 9:00 PM or 8:00 AM when you need to wind down.

*Tuscan - Tuscan is our English rendering of the Italian Tuscano, an adjective used to refer to the region of Tuscany. Tuscany is that part of Italy that lies between the Arno and Tiber Rivers and the ancient home of the Etruscans. The Romans referred to these peoples as the Tusci or the Etrusci; in modern Italian, the Etruschi. The Greeks called them the Tyrrehenoi. The Etruscans called themselves the Rasna or Rasenna. It is also interesting to note that Norse runes resemble the Etruscan alphabet. It is my theory that during the late Bronze Age the peoples of Nothern Europe were in contact with the people of Italy for the purposes of trading metals, though the Alps surely posed a formidable barrier. The early Italic peoples were master metallurgists as testified by the remnants of mines and slag heaps on Elba and such place names as Piombino, a still-existent town in today's Etruria. The name comes from the Latin plumbum, or lead, thus the chemical symbol Pb. Note also how the Latin pl and fl goes to pi and fi in Italian. Flor > fiore (flower); flumen > fiume (river); plumbum > piombo. For instance, unleaded gasoline is benzina senza piombo.

Which brings me to my next topic. I don’t know how I did it, but I had another paper due this Thursday, and well, actually it is still due since it’s not Thursday yet, but I am kind of finished with it except for proofing and editing. (The pluperfect seems to make more sense in the second independent clause of sentence preceding, but it messes up the time sense of the sentence! I think you understand. Yes, I know you do.) But anyway, the second paper is about Che Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary who helped Castro overthrow the Cuban government in 1959. Well somehow I was able to quote Paradise Lost twice. It just worked and I was real happy with how it came out. (I purposely left the comma out of the sentence preceding this parenthetical intercession because I saw somewhere that not using a comma before “and” with two really short independent clauses was OK. Edith Hamilton does it all the time in her mythology book.)

Now stress can really make you sick too. Once upon a time when I was in the banking industry, I stayed sick all the time. Constant stomach aches. It got so bad that I went to the doctor. I had to undergo the colonoscopy and all that fun stuff. Nothing physically wrong. The doctor told me to quit my job. Several years later, I did. For a career as a teacher and student. It’s the student part that’s wrenching my gut right now though. I stopped getting stressed out about my 1101 class I was teaching pretty quickly. I wonder, I wonder if she’s graded my monster paper yet. Got to go check my e-mail.

(What a sorry ending! I guess I just got tired.)