Melancholy. This time of year, with the rains pouring down and the short daylight hours, melancholy ruminations float like mist on a gray lake. The lonely sound of your own footsteps echoing in an empty hallway. I remember thinking I was crazy, I must be crazy back when I was a sophomore at Bowling Green State University, because the lonely sound of my own footsteps echoed back to my ears in a strange strange way. And it set off a melancholy disconnection that was scary and kind of neutral at the same time. I felt as if whatever I consisted of was too heavy to carry, that the thing that made me me was a burden too weighty for my fragile frame. I felt like the women in Africa with their heavy loads balanced on their head, but unlike them I could not bear it gracefully, I could not walk with my head erect, a calm matter-of-fact pride in my expression. Unlike those women in Africa, I had no training since childhood, no one had helped me learn how to bear this heavy load on my head for mile after mile, day after day, no one had coached me in the finer points of balance and endurance, and I felt as if this burden had been loaded on my head in the middle of the night in my sleep, that while I slept invisible forces had attached this weight that I could not put down, and as I walked down the empty hall with the cold hard linoleum floor and the 14 foot high ceilings in the gloom of the early winter twilight the weight of it came back to me in sound, the cadence of my own footsteps echoing off the cold linoleum, bouncing off the concrete walls, and back to my ears which reeled at the weight of these heavy sounds, my ears which shrank back at the approach of these heavy echoing sounds of my own slow staccato footsteps bouncing and reverberating in the hall, and even more acutely in my head, until the me I knew was very small, and sat as if on the edge of a very deep and very wide pool, shivering under a gray but featureless sky.
Bowling Green, named after the flat green manicured lawns of a game played by the rich was in fact quite aptly named, a flat green featureless plain with a very long long green horizon that curved back into itself in a bright airless day, conjuring images of rich people casting small wooden croquet balls down wide wide alleys of green cropped grass towards distant pins, while chuckling ironically at their prowess. Bowling Green was the logical place for me to be in 1973, studying English literature, creative writing, and psychology.
I remember the beautiful girl from India that was in some of my classes, and leaving class in the crowd of people that filled the hallway afterwards, they would began to disperse as we walked, and I would glance behind me to see the beautiful woman from India. Once in a while, our eyes might even meet, but I would look away, and just imagine what it might be like to walk up to her and say hello, to start a conversation. She had long thick black hair, a proud regal face, a strong Aryan nose, and bronze skin that had a glow unlike any I had seen. Her body was full, with beautiful breasts and a nice a shape. She seemed self-confident, but I never heard her talk to anyone else, I only saw her during and after class, and imagined talking to her, but never did.
Bowling Green, named after the flat green manicured lawns of a game played by the rich was in fact quite aptly named, a flat green featureless plain with a very long long green horizon that curved back into itself in a bright airless day, conjuring images of rich people casting small wooden croquet balls down wide wide alleys of green cropped grass towards distant pins, while chuckling ironically at their prowess. Bowling Green was the logical place for me to be in 1973, studying English literature, creative writing, and psychology.
I remember the beautiful girl from India that was in some of my classes, and leaving class in the crowd of people that filled the hallway afterwards, they would began to disperse as we walked, and I would glance behind me to see the beautiful woman from India. Once in a while, our eyes might even meet, but I would look away, and just imagine what it might be like to walk up to her and say hello, to start a conversation. She had long thick black hair, a proud regal face, a strong Aryan nose, and bronze skin that had a glow unlike any I had seen. Her body was full, with beautiful breasts and a nice a shape. She seemed self-confident, but I never heard her talk to anyone else, I only saw her during and after class, and imagined talking to her, but never did.