I Got the Spirit

Maybe drinking on Thursday night was a bad idea. Sometimes I get it wrong and it upsets me more than anything else. Sometimes I drop to the floor of the elevator and lean against the corner looking at the lights in the ceiling and just breathe when I go back up to the apartment. They say Christmas is the loneliest time of year, for those who are into that sort of thing. I'll find out soon if there's any truth in that claim. I hear voices but they never get close, and after a while they all melt into one unintelligible, throbbing drone that I'd like nothing more than to shut my ears and hide from.

Scientists, what have you done for your loved ones lately? People think we're going to cure cancer or something. Hell, some of us even think that. Especially some of the people in my physiology class. Those health-oriented kids run the risk of becoming self-important. But when it comes time to publish or perish we're knaves down to the last man. When was the last time you offered sympathy instead of rationale?

Living up on University Parkway means I walk by Mudd Hall, where the biology department is, whenever I go to or leave campus. Sometimes I find myself walking by the building very late at night. I can see into a couple of the labs in the basement through some fairly large windows at ground level, and even when I walk by at midnight or later, one of them is always lit, and this one woman is always there, running some experiment or another. Even weekends. I want to bang on the glass and yell: where is your family? Where are your friends? Why aren't you with them? What the fuck are you still doing here at this hour? Do you honestly think this is the point of it all? And for all I know it could be, but that's kind of terrifying to think about.

In other news, I'm somewhat obsessed with the blogs of Writing Seminars MFA students.