Sifting through the Whirpool of My Mind

Came across a little piece I had written a few years ago in college, while I was taking a particular short story seminar. It’s pretty eccentric, but if you had read what we were reading in class, you’d understand why.

NO ROOTS

“C’mon, tell me! What new life languages have you learned since you came to the university?” asked my English professor.

The language of God.
The language of Jesus.
The language of agape.

My classmates and I resist nervously. They are afraid to answer. I do not understand why. I look out the window and rivet my eyes on a silent seagull. I am afraid to answer. I understand perfectly why.

One Korean foreign exchange student finally breaks the awkwardness.

“I’ve had to learn how to relate to other people in English.”

Relating to God.
Relating to Jesus.

The Spirit squeezes my heart, trying to put active life into it, trying to connect it to my tongue.

The seagull perches on the windowsill, peering into the room. He is quiet and pensive instead of the making the usual raucous and annoying cries.

Only I can see it. Only I know the reason for its silence.

The moment passes and my heart loosens into its squishy place. Fear is my momentary god. All I can think of is Psalm 40:9.

“I have proclaimed the good news of righteousness
In the great assembly;
Indeed, I do not restrain my lips,
O Lord, You Yourself know.
I have not hidden Your righteousness within
My heart; I have declared Your faithfulness
And Your salvation;
I have not concealed Your lovingkindness
And Your Truth from the great assembly.”

The tree outside perches on the window ledge, staring at me intently.

It nods. In agreement. One day, it shall clap out loud. Until then, obedient silence.

I look down at my leaves. They are falling.

The tree turns around, giving me a lingering farewell glance that seemed to say apologetically, “No roots?”

The last of my leaves are falling.

I can no longer be a tree.

One night I was having difficulty falling asleep. Normally, I fall asleep just fine (as long as the husband’s snores are muted), but since I had taken a nap from 5pm-7pm, I obviously wasn’t very tired. But I have this weird phobia about getting less than six hours of sleep per night. So I went to bed anyways around 11:30 since I had to wake up early for work the next morning.

After a swimming a few Olympic-length laps in the bed (which created a lovely trampoline sleeping experience for my husband), I decided that the physical exercise wasn’t helping, so I moved on to mental exercise: counting sheep. I’d heard it helped.

So I started preparing for this sheep-counting extravaganza. I told my mind to set up the scene. Grass, check. Hurdle check. White? No, red like the horse hurdles near the bike path. Double-barred? Yes. So far, the setup was going good. I gave it a good lookover before bringing the sheep in. But I found something wrong.

“Crap, Mind, the side posts of the hurdle are taller than the top bar. That shouldn’t be!” I complained to my Mind.

The hurdle didn’t change.

“Dangit mind, change it!”

Mind finally changes it.

“Ok,” I direct it. “Let’s move on to the sheep. I want—”

“But what about the weather?” Mind interrupts.

“What does it matter?” I reply.

“Well, you did say you wanted to set up the scene. How can you have a weatherless outdoor scene?” Mind interrogated.

I sigh, exasperated. “Clear skies and sunny then!” Now can we move on to the sheep?”

“Yes, boss,” Mind says cheekily.

“Ok the sheep. Geesh! I can’t believe we’ve already wasted ten minutes on setting up the scene. Ok, so little sheep #1 scampers up—”

“–Little??” protested Mind. “It would be a LAMB then, not a sheep.”

“Lamp, sheep, potato, potaughto - what the hell difference does it make in this circumstance Mind?”

“Well,” Mind said. “Obviously it DOES make a difference. One form of potato that you listed is spelled completely differently than the other. And, depending on the pronunciation of each, different deductions can be made about accent, dialect, etc, like whether the speaker is British or American! Huuuge difference. Likewise, the difference between a sheep and lamb matters in this scene.”

“How?!?” I asked with the greatest annoyance.

“A sheep is heavier than a lamb and thus would have more trouble scaling the height of the hurdle,” Mind replied condescendingly.

“First of all, watch your attitude Mind. Second, I’ve been told that counting SHEEP, not lambs, is what helps you fall asleep. So I want sheep! And just give it a pole if ya need to - let’em pole vault over the hurdle!”

Mind stared at me, incredulous. “Sheep? Pole-vault? I ca–(stutter) –I can’t begin to describe the technical difficulties involved in creating that image. It’s ridiculous and impossible!”

“Fine, just let it be a normal sheep then. Just use your friggin’ imagination to give it hops like Kobe Bryant or something. After all, you ARE my imagination. Oh, and while you’re at it, please make the sheep British. I want him to say potaughto, no potato.”

“Yes boss,” Mind replied, monotone. “But if it doesn’t work out, I told you so.”

And so the first sheep runs up to the hurdle. It stops. Stops! It glances around nervously and baas,

“Whaaaaat aaaaam I supoooosed to doooo?”

“Ander has instructed me to inform you that you are to jump over this hurdle,” says Mind.

The sheep replies in an astonished tone (and, remember - with a British accent.) “What?? This hurdle in front of me? Bloody impossible! Have you seen my stumpy legs? and my round middle? A dolphin can jump higher than me, and it is legless!”

“For heaven’s sake! Just jump it!” I thunder from the sky.

The sheep abruptly cowers at my stormy voice but recovers his dignity after a few seconds, no longer scared, and gives a snobbish glance upward toward the source of my voice.

“I will attempt to jump it only if you sign a contract stating you will pay for any injuries sustained in this endeavor,” he demanded.

A shout of frustration physically rushed to my vocal chords, but I thwarted it, remembering my sleeping husband beside me. I sighed, realizing I was never going to fall asleep. I returned my attention to the sheep, and muttered menacingly under my breath,

“Just DO it or I will ERASE your existence from my mind!”

The sheep cowered again, this time devoid of any retort. He backed up a few yards, gave a little squeal of fear, and started running for the hurdle. I watched in satisfaction, eager for the lovely sleep that was to come my way from the boring scene of jumping sheep. He gained more speed and lifted off the ground, front legs tucked in, head turned to the side with squinting eyes in trepidation of possible injury. His dismount was good; I was sure he would clear the hurdle with room to spare, and then CRRRUNNNKKK! The sheep smashed shoulder first into the top bar, completely knocking the entire hurdle down and slamming to the ground like a box that was too heavy to be carried.

A few minutes passed, and the sheep looked up at the sky in self-pity indignation. I wanted smash another hurdle on top of him and make him the middle of a hurdle sandwich, but I withheld my malice. As best as possible. After all, he had just taken a bad fall. I didn’t want to appear heartless.

“Alright,” I said with resignation. “You can go. I will cover any chiropractic expenses that resulted from this accident.”

The sheep thanked me profusely (although I suspected its phonyness) and walked away, limping pathetically. He headed past the patch of tree shade in which sat my smirking Mind. As I shook my head disapprovingly at Mind and began to turn the scene black, I swear I saw Mind wink at the passing sheep. I sprang to give them a piece of my mind, but it was too late - they were gone and all was black.

Those bastards.

I think I fell asleep at 3am that night. I have never tried to count sheep since.

I mainly entitled this post “Beserk” because it rhymed with my original title: “A Day at Work.” And it is truly one of those rhymes that rests well with the soul because it is a synonorhyme. Haven’t heard of that word? Go look it up. Can’t find it? Come work a day at my job and you will.

Disclaimer: I am thankful for my job. But in my dictionary, the entry

thankful: a state of not complaining 

was misprinted into

thankful: often a complaining state

So, I drive to work, and as I park in front of the big dreary building wanting to leadbrake my head into the steering wheel, my oxygen supply gets carbon monoxonized by the six-hours-in-a-cubicle-monster. Short, clipped breathing begins.

I trudge up the stairs to work. There’s probably 25 total, but no matter how in shape I am, it always seems to add additional shortage to my breath. But maybe that’s the monoxonized air and not the stairs. Sometimes, I’m right along there with *Mildred,* the eighty-year-old whose antiquated voice and mundane comments have come to taste like a cool and refreshing ice cream treat amongst the dry tasteless quiet of the office, particulary chocolate ice milk, which, to my detriment, I have not tasted for numerous years due to my lac of lactose digesters. (K omitted intentionally all you Type A’s.) Mildred moves up the stairs as if each one was a sparse surfaced stone pathing a waist-deep river.

As I open the door into the actual office, I greet the stacks. Large stacks of journals whose articles never get read by me, only glanced at, mourn the attentiveness of my eyes as I trek past them toward by cubbie hole. Oh no, wait. Cubbie holes were fun little spaces filled by my imagination as a kid. So let’s call it instead my cube in hell. Much better and much more imaginationless.

I spend my first 15 minutes at work preparing my coffee and breakfast. I count this as work. Perhaps I shouldn’t count my breakfast, but I do since I make it while the coffee grinds steep in the French press. And making my coffee is justified as working time since work does not provide edible coffee. It should be a necessity, like clean water.

I go to the bathroom.

I take my yumyum gluten free cereal with berries and almonds and rice milk back to my cube in hell, along with my aromatic, enticing cup of Major Dickason’s, grind #12. At this point I usually suppose that I should actually start working, so I grab a batch of abstracts to proof. 

The next thirty minutes I think about my coffee while I proof the abstracts.

When I’m done proofing the abstracts, I realize I should probably reproof all of them. But I don’t. Fortunately, they go to Editor *Dakota*, who lets out a loud groan of misery whenever I pass them onto him for checking queries. He surely won’t mind the lack of pen marks.

I go to the bathroom.

Next, I try to find some computer task I can do so I can start chatting on G-chat. And looking at food blogs. I capitalize, I delete, I change “essay” to “article,” I put articles in the abstracts from Chinese journals, and I say to myself, “Next time they should pay someone who speaks English to do the English translation. But why would you, when you could pay someone who doesn’t speak English a lot less to do it?”

I ponder how my degree of analyzing Tolstoy, Poe, and Tony Morrison flew me to such ambitious heights of capitalizing letters that should be capitalized and were not. 

I go back to proofing abstracts on paper since the fuzz of my old monitor screen has grown mold in my brain. However, this time I have no coffee to think about, so halfway through page 2 of 26, my green proofing manual binder knots a plastic bag over my head, and I start suffocating. He likes to do that to me early in the day so that my day seems longer.

The clock moves like a slug.

I go to the bathroom.

(To be continued…)

I transformed from grumpy to delighted

As he took my hand in the rain

Dancing a silly dance

Laughing a silly smile

While the put-put of wet bullets

Sprayed the front porch

He twirled me around

To a romantic vista

Of the dog going pee

Which was what we came outside for.

Blueberry pie, apple pie, Kenny’s laughter and wrap-around hugs, Buckley’s cuddles and sleepy morning puppy breath yawns, Marky’s generous massages and video game glee, Jon’s voice, Magda’s soothing conversation, Lauri’s silliness, Jen’s mothering, Joseph’s RainCloud heart, Sarah Elizabeth’s hope, Cheryl’s soft quietness, Tim’s playfulness, Dara’s cookie night, Austin’s silly expressions, Aliyah’s cheeks and pouty lip, Doris’s quirkiness, Sparrow’s ballet, Golden’s bright eyes, Alyssa’s Europe heart, Stephen G’s John Deere fetish, Annie’s wildness, Camille’s home cookin’ and eatin’, Tara’s Jew pride, Trish’s King of the Castle face, Abby’s compassion, Liz’s art of worship, Mitchell’s Southern stories, Bunny’s cheer-infused greetings, Dave’s jokes, Mikey’s brotherliness, Nathan’s colorful language and honesty, Shannel’s ideas, Stephen’s humbleness, Kimberly’s Guatemala pants, Crystal’s cookie fetish, Grey’s sleepy newly awakeness, Jamie’s kindheartedness, Becker’s subtle humor…