Expert of Nothing

Wall. Coffee date. April 2011.

When it comes to school, I pride myself in not being a BSer. I do all the reading. I am honest when I don't understand things. I research extraneous information for context. Yet, sometimes, even I end up saying things in class discussion a little too positively, a little too sure. Then I have classmates who outright say in passing they didn't read, they don't understand concepts, they don't even like the class...and they speak anyway.

I mean, that was the majority of my undergrad experience, but this is grad school, and it still happens. How did we get programmed to be happy to do what is least required of us? And this is how I understand people just...don't KNOW what Stonehenge is. Because information gets passed from one generation to the next under a veil of laziness. Through a river of BS.

I am an expert of nothing. It boggles my mind that so many people in academia pretend they could ever be an expert of anything.

Last night we went out to the orchard in the snow.
There in the constellations, the big dipper far below.
We walked through the blackness, felt the endless space around,
and you bent down on your knee and picked an apple from the ground.

Leaves in the River (A Sunday Tribute to Fall)

Kyoto. September 2008.

Some Sunday things: Brown's Chicken, looking out the back window of Chevy Nova, Mentos, improv rehearsals, hymns
Some fall things: pumpkin pastries and hot drinks, Japan, Halloween, candy bars, nighttime, leaves, Speech season

I met a girl on Halloween
when she was lost, and I was drunk.
And it was dark and cold out when we left.

And as we walked the rain started.
The leaves softened with every step,
and all around us people slept alone with their dreams

The wind came down from up the planes,
and blew the leaves all through the streets.
I wondered how far leaves could really fly.

Would they rest in suburb yards
or make it to the city?
Or would they end up in the river just to float away?

She pointed to a small brick house
and said it was where she grew up.
The lights were out-- she asked if we could stop for awhile.

Her hair was still just getting wet.
The water running down her neck
collecting in the handprint in cement beneath her feet.

Apparently there'd been a death,
someone close and nothing left
because she hadn't left him in the end.

I saw her blush when I asked
if she always talked like that.
She said it only happened when she drank.

And later on I felt her hand
slipping into my cold fist.
She promised me a kiss as soon as we got home.

Her costume had begun to tear.
She ran ahead and turned to me.
Her laughter echoed through the empty streets.