Academic survivalist

I'm not sure what I'd do without my notebooks and paper. I suppose I'd become an archaeologist, or make pizzas.

Professor S, in a recent class, asked us to think back to a time without our technologies of writing. The time of memory and speech-- when scops ruled the scene and orators got the ladies. In order to even begin to grok those times, I needed to at least be able to remember what it was like to not write or read.

So I started my mimetic time machine.

So I laid back in my bed to remember.

And a smoking gorilla punched the side of my car while I took the first exit out of Fargo.

I had fallen asleep.

Washing my face and eating a cold slice of pizza I tried again.

I slashed through the vines that had long since enshrouded my first house. My parents were there, still together. I remembered a blue Frisbee with the image of an eagle imprinted on it. I remembered a baseball net and the cherry tree that my mom harvested once a summer to make cobbler. I remembered our unfinished basement and my bucket of legos.

Eventually, I wandered into my old room and shut the door. I picked up an old stuffed dinosaur and started shuffling through old scribblings. On my racecar desk was a large vase of mourner's flowers. Those weren't supposed to be there. I heard my mom yell at my dad and the crash of a broken plate emanated through my skull. Their dueling screams slingshot me back into the present and I found myself on my coporeal bed feeling dizzy.

OK

So I took a shower, went to Spectators for a beer, and returned to my room.

Turns out there are certain things in my head that I should avoid. Landmines. Good to know.

I turned off my lights and resolved to try again. This time, I gave myself an anchor. Placing the first CD I ever purchased into my computer, the speakers started humming the lyrics from Cream's "Disraeli Gears."

I drifted back into my past, trying to find that moment when I thought without glyphs. The stream of Clapton's crooning led me to my first guitar, my 50 watt crate amp, and my first violin lesson. Susan bobbed to the metronome as I scratched out the spine scraping screams of a nine year-old behind a fiddle. Susan bent forward toward the stand and wrote something:

"Practice this section"

not far enough.

I pushed back further.

My mom had taken me to my lessons in a green Subaru... no ... wait, that was my Dad. Shit, things were muddled. (Still are)

A slight clap from the speakers and my addled mind sent me somewhere else.

Ginger Backer's drums echoed in my head. I found myself in a foggy room with trembling mermaids and tales of brave Ulysses. In front of me flashed the face of Homer Simpson eating donuts. I looked to my right and saw various instruments of personal destruction strewn on the ground next to the futon. To my left my old roommate sat with a grin on his face and piece of General Tso's chicken stuck to his shirt. He looked at me.

"Dude, hey, can you pass the grinder? Hey, pass the grinder, I need to pack this before the next episode starts."

I passed him the spice grinder as music echoed through the smoke filled auditorium of my collegiate freshman year. Glancing down, I looked at the business 101 book, "Brand New", sitting by my feet. The lettering was clear to me, reading was tough, but I knew what I was doing.

As "we're going wrong" came on, my present self drifted into slumber.

(To be continued)