Themes

"When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all."

-- Paul Simon, "Kodachrome," on There Goes Rhymin' Simon

--

Been thinking about a conversation I had on my last trip to Hillsdale.

Listen to the paraphrase:

--

"I hate the way I was taught to read in high school."

"Yeah."

"They would tell me to look for things like motifs and metaphors. Like figurative language. That was the buzz word. 'Always look for the figurative language. A simile is different from a metaphor because of the words "as" or "like," but both are examples of figurative language.' I hate that."

"I think theme was about the same way. 'A theme is what you think about when you read a book.' But what if a passage about Hester Prynne makes me think about my third-grade English teacher and how she looked really nice in knee-length skirts? Is the theme of The Scarlet Letter my pubescent crush on my third-grade teacher?"

"God, I hate that."

--

Fast-forward to today.

Again, I'm wading through McCarthy. And reading this dense--Sundahl would say "gritty"--material while riding in a van while Britney Spears' computerized voice sings on the radio; while the accelerator screeches up hills, and the brakes hiss and squeal down them; while someone says that reading is about quality, not quantity, and someone else replies (half-jokingly), "No, it's about quantity," and laughs; while school banners proclaim that "READING MAKES YOU A STAR;" and while people read Perez Hilton's celebrity-gossip blog aloud...

Trying to understand McCarthy in the midst of this is like trying to remember what my third-grade teacher looked like in skirts while I'm looking at a fat chick in running shorts. It's hard to do.

--

Anyways. One man's ceiling is another man's floor, right?

Today, while changing in a men's room whose flourescent light had burned down to a faint glow, I decided to crack the door open just a little so I could see my turtle suite better. I dropped trou. Within seconds, a woman-teacher from the school swung wide the door, took a look at my skivvies (and me stumbling around with half a leg in green spandex) and on her face was a look of existential horror. She apologized, I sighed and said okay, and I finished changing in the dark.

It was a day. I have exactly six more days of work like this before I make a gleeful return to an ugly cubicle. But the scratchmarks on the desk and the unsightly stains on the carpet are like golden trim and Persian rugs to me. I'll tire of the office life in a few weeks, I'm sure, on a day when the A/C is down and the phone hasn't rung in hours and I'm shuffling papers and making rubber-band trains and paper-clip chains to make it sound like work.

But I still can't wait.