The Last Days of Summer

Autumn cold and golden leaves and morning frost just a few weeks away

I wake up in the morning too early and find myself behind a computer or hassled by an insistent telephone or in the middle of one logistical crisis after another by 9AM. Before work there is no quiet morning read, no puttering with the patio plants whose latin names I've forgotten but whose nicknames seem more apt (Yellow belly, Agnes, Larry the Creeper, and Brother of Larry), no coaxing them to grow or muttering encouragement as I groom them.There is no walk along the water, no 'hail fellow well met' to the start of day.

The alarm clock rings and the day is started with a cup of coffee that lately turns my stomach sour and a quick shave, if I remember, and I trot to the bus to catch one of three that run along Hastings on my way to the Burnaby Campus. I can barely finish a paragraph before I'm disgorged from the belly of one public transit whale into the belly of another like some unwanted Jonah and then as soon as I walk in the door and unlock my office the world begins to roar and rattle my windows until I can't take it anymore.

I've been trying to read the 1978 novel by Larry Kramer, Faggots, between bus rides and meetings and meetings and bus rides. I opted out of seeing Tomi Swick (I'm sorry Tomi) to sit in a downtown cafe to drink red wine and eat a Cobb salad and not answer any telephone or listen to anything. I read and eventually stopped reading and just sat.

Yesterday, I telephoned the Princess. She didn't answer. I called her from the street corner where she lives. I put my Treo away, went home, crawled into bed and slept until dawn.

I am so fucking tired I could die.

Who invented this working for a living? Who invented this life? Who the fuck cares whether Adobe or Canadian Tire access their market or whether the school's demographic are properly served by its corporate sponsors?

Does anyone?

Wouldn't we all rather drink a bottle of wine and and talk about Roland Barthe?

M