Living like a College Student

[image: Tulips from Lauren Westbrook last year]

Funny. Yesterday the NYTimes, my link to civilization beyond my neighborhood, ran one of those interesting articles about a guy who wanted to upgrade from living like a college student to . . . to being respectable, I guess. Grown up. And here was I, wanting to stop being grown up and live like a college student. As in, You got something against dust bunnies?

The way I see it, "being grown up" is an idea. I don't mean I want to be irresponsible and skip out on the rent, or drive a piece of junk with dangerous tires, no, never again. I mean something more pervasive, ideas of how respectable people behave, which assumes that there are people who don't deserve respect. Living for some idea.

As a college student I was fearless, especially in grad school. Why would anyone judge me on my housekeeping, for example? I had better things to do, more important things. If anything, some of the hippies in my department (they are perennial in English departments) probably felt I was too respectable. Think of that.

Well, how other people see you is a subject of occasional interest to us, perhaps, but not to a wider audience. So I will close by noting that the sky is blue today, the sun is out - the second day in a row after something like 24 days in March with no sun. Everything is melting. I myself am melting and feel like being useless, evidenced by spending a lot of time this morning writing a concrete poem, one whose text would form the shape of a tulip. If you know how to get more useless than that, let me know about it. I'm always on the lookout for new vices.