Hypothetically, now that I’ve finished with the classes, the finals are all handed in and there is nothing required waiting to be done, I should be relaxing.
In the starkest of realities, finding myself free to let my brain roam about other valleys, I see that the surrounding mountains are very steep and it will take a lot of effort to get my thoughts into higher places. The facade of industrious behavior has melted and I’m sloshing around in its slushy remnants. I have way too much time to think about where I am and what I am doing here and is it really possible for me to get where I want to go and so on. I look to the skies, into the swirling powders, clutching at my head in an effort to deny the call of the Costanza that whips within the winter winds.
By the time I got through with the first 170 questions on my final final, my brain was done. I didn’t complete the final 3 questions concerning SQL queries. I only managed to nail the first before I realized that in order for me to pen the query, I’d have to understand what it is exactly that the exam wants me to find out. There was a lot of muddy language about invoices and line items coupled with abbreviated headers like l_item and p_price and my business language wasn’t up to par at that moment. I don’t know how much success I had with the first part of the exam either. I’m very much disappointed with myself — which just digs the valley deeper. I know the material — but I succumbed to testing anxieties.
The holiday season isn’t helping. The commercial aspect of it makes me feel inept. I’m working on gifts — it’s supposed to be the thought that counts — but it looks like most of you who will be receiving anything — cards or whatnot will be receiving them late. Like…real late. Like…if ever late.
The joyous feeling I’m describing here is further amplified by the knowledge that after tinkering with the .htaccess — it appears that most of the 700+ visitors we’d been seeing daily were actually robots bent on marketing male enhancement products and other bits — so much so that earlier today — when the count was at about 530 passers-by or so — less than half were unique — and over 365 of those robots were leaving behind 403 errors. (A 403 means they’re forbidden by me to see anything here — though they aren’t here for the sights. They are here only to leave their slime like the trail of the snail — which glistens in cyberspace in the form of a hyperlink to their respective vendors in my referral stats — which I haven’t figured out how to stop.)
Yes — these robots act as if they would like to speak. They feast upon the cgi files – drawing that bandwidth brink ever closer — encouraging the illusion of readership in the false forms of ghost visitors. It is all too exhausting. It is almost enough to step away.
Where will those steps lead? I already fear the toils of reaching the lofty peaks but even finding a rock in which to press my weight upon so that I have some support in my stretch and gra is somewhat dizzying. Should I retreat into the past for a few days of diversion? I wonder whether or not doing so would just illuminate further the Costanza I’ve become? I wonder constantly whether any of this matters at all — and how I can possibly erase my name from the “internets” before it comes back to haunt me. Doubtless, it already has. And the fear has set in.
Somewhere out there, my 7th grade teacher has her evidence. She loves the fact that she was right, that I now must realize that you are all laughing at me, not with me. (I’m reminded here of that line in Happiness, where Joy states: “But I’m not laughing.” Although that was reversed — where they were laughing with her and…oh…never mind. It was just a moment of levity until I realized that Joy is simply the feminine Costanza.)
That’s that. I just needed to let some of that noxious gas that’s been poisoning my being loose — into the void. I thought it might do something for me. Blog therapy isn’t what it used to be. There used to be a wonder to it. Escapism. Now it seems I have nothing to return to.
It’s funny, after writing something like this — then looking about for a while and coming across something similar — but not quite the same…Tom: on breaks, endings, process, divisions and great grand narratives….
check your hotmail account.
Ohhhhhhhhhh Horkheimer.