Sinister: it doesn't pay to be smarter than teachers, smarter than most boys

[miss lou]

hello, sinister.


well. perhaps i was too harsh about old dear
catastrophe.

for something i don't like, i do find myself listening
to it quite frequently. like. every morning when i get
ready for school. 

in the beginning, i told myself it was because i was
trying hard to like it. because, i said to my
roommate, perhaps i owed it to the band in some way,
or at least to the glory i always derived from said
entourage. 

but today, when i carried the little orange circle
down the two flights of stairs to my car, i realized
halfway to the university that the real reason i was
listening to it every day was because, well. i kind of
like it.

and i remember thinking, as other people have said,
that i would never really like the album as much as i
might eventually because it was released in the wrong
weather. but today, as i was driving through a classic
autumn in nebraska (overcast, windy, cold enough to
almost bite your ankles), i had a sneaking suspicion
the belle and sebastian had released those songs
during the perfect season. 

i can say that i love the hell out of piazza. and i
don't feel badly about that at all. 

as for the rest of it, well.....it's growing on me. 

so there. maybe i was wrong.

***

and saying that, i have been thinking i am wrong a lot
of the time about a lot of things. knowing this,
though, apparently does not stop me from speaking out
about those things i consider. 

i apologized for something i said in a class last
week. it's one of those english classes in which the
graduate students choose to continually, at 10:30 in
the morning, bring out all the largest words in their
personal lexicons and string them together into
sentences, almost disdained that they must lower
themselves to such a plebian verbal structure. 

so i said something about poetry. about dante, to be
exact, and the nature of his narration in the divine
comedy. and as soon as i said it i felt inferior for
using 'normal' language to say something that didn't
feel as immediate or important as what everyone else
was saying. and i usually never do that, even if i do
doubt what i am saying.

i suppose i want to always speak with the strongest of
voices. i have heard the voice of my poetry is strong,
and i like to think that is a true extension of me.

but when do you know what to say with strength?

in recent weeks, i've said things with confidence and
full belief at the time i said them, and later, i
wondered if i really believed in the words -- or any
feeling behind them -- at all. 

it makes a girl lose confidence, you know. all that
doubt. about life. and language. and love. and the
love for all the preceeding.

my professor sent me an email after the class.

and he said i should never apologize for what i say. 

he said he was glad i said what i did, and that he
thought it was an important point.

he is a good man.

and when i read those two sentences. i thought maybe i
worried too much about trying to figure everything
out. about trying to decide what is right and wrong
and when it is right and wrong to be one or the other.


so maybe i will say things even if they may only be
right at the time i say them.

maybe the rest works itself out later.

***

and to that person who sent it, thank you for the
crush vote. say hi. because this is me saying hi to
you.



xo.lou.

=====
www.somewhereinbetween.net

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