100 Days 2010.68 Myopic

Please view my inspiration piece at:
http://johntimmons.com/video/archives/402
http://steveersinghaus.com/mediaplay/

Myopic

I used to have a schoolgirl crush on a college professor of mine(now I call it an intellectual crush). I think besides being a college professor, he was also a carpenter in between semesters. At least once during a lecture on "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" he told us a story about having been stuck on a raft with another carpenter. Whether the story was true or not, I'll never know.

One night in 2005 I had a dream about that carpenter that was so powerful, so realistic, so laden with the presence and absence of emotion that the dream stayed with me for days, no weeks. So powerful was the dream that I am wholly convinced the dream caused neural pathways in my brain to shift and allow me to enact behaviors I previously wouldn't have. I hadn't seen the carpenter in years but the mere presence of him in my dream (I have convinced myself) unleashed a tsunami of desire and passion that led me down some dangerous paths.

I blame the dream for so much, just like in freshman year English when I blamed the tragic end of "Romeo and Juliet" on Rosalind. If she hadn't rejected his advances, he never would have been at that party, never met Juliet, so on and so on. In this myopic view I blame the dream, like I blamed Rosalind instead of fate, not the desires and passions which is ridiculous of course, the passions and desires were already there.

Walking back from the pool with my husband (who is definitely not a carpenter) yesterday, I reached for his hand. He rolled his eyes begrudgingly grasped my hand back. "You used to hold my hand all the time" I said. "Do you really want to go down that road?" he asked, pointing out the myopia of my question. We walked the rest of the way back arms swinging at our sides.

Now I try to tell myself that it is ridiculous to claim an intellectual crush on a carpenter who writes about such meta topics as dendrological scansion but that would ignore that this same carpenter writes such beautiful short fictions as On Breathing and On Precision. Now I tell myself to take the long view.