Individuation

“In the last analysis, every life is the realization of a whole, that is, of a self, for which reason this realization can be called ‘individuation.’ All life is bound to individual carriers who realize it, and it is simply inconceivable without them. But every carrier is charged with an individual destiny and destination, and the realization of this alone makes sense of life.”

–Carl Jung

I slept late. I’d finally fixed the motorcycle. Rosinante was parked on a volcano that was about to explode and I was running towards her. Wading through falling ash and molten lava, I realized that I rarely park on volcanoes, I didn’t own a pair of boots that could wade through molten lava, and I couldn’t remember where I got the new engine anyway, so I woke up. I had less than an hour to get up, get dressed, and get my butt in a limited seat for an 8:30 Early American Lit class.

The campus looked like a prison, set up into the hillside with a handful of cinderblock buildings and far enough from developments that one might easily imagine razor wire fences and barking dogs. Honestly, after a few years on and off, I couldn’t tell the difference either. They kept changing course titles and numbers, and every time I got close to graduating, I returned a few semesters later to find that the works were scrambled again, and I still had two more semesters of Critical Theory left to finish.

Parking was stupid, and the line to buy a temporary day pass was thirty people long. I was stuck standing in line behind a couple of guys. Both wore khaki cargo shorts, both wore white Nike baseball caps backwards. Both wore t-shirts. One said: “No fear” and the other said: “Dare to be extraordinary.” Honestly, if they were both in a line up, I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between them; they were just white guys, waiting in line. And I stood in line behind them, to buy a ticket, to pay for parking, to make sure that nobody would take my spot, like lemmings waiting to jump off a cliff.

After a few minutes of analyzing the shirts, I decided that I was better off hard charging my class. Fuck the tickets, fuck the lines, fuck the fucking same as everybody else t-shirts. I came here to get booklist, not to further my experiments in herd mentality. If it came down to a forty-dollar ticket, or missing a class, I decided it was worth the gamble, just to get the hell out of there. I left the line and charged up the hill.

The whole place was a maze of stairs. By the time I made it to the top for a registration form, I was sucking wind, and about ready to pass out. Although the University took great pride in its cultural diversity, the student body was mostly white suburban kids whose parents were paying to put them through school. On the first day of the semester, the commons area was a cross between a fashion show and a sales floor. Kids walked around in new clothes, harassed by people peddling everything from extracurricular activities to old time religion. I got glares for smoking and the guy in the necktie and shiny black slacks with the Bible under his arm eyed me as I slipped in for a green page.

Back down the stairs, I hunted through the basement of the library for a classroom and slid my butt into the chair with a few minutes to spare. There were a few empty desks at the start of the class, which was a good sign. I aimed for the course because it was early, and the new kids were likely to drop or oversleep; whatever it took to get me into a spot. The prof said there were supposed to be fifty students but I counted just under forty. That was a good sign. Despite the fact that he waited for stragglers, I was optimistic.

Early American lit is all about the settlers, the first ships to arrive, and the early plantations. It was about wars with “Wild men” and unlimited resources. Judging by the syllabus the prof passed around, we wouldn’t get into slavery and abject white male oppression until the middle of the course but given the sort of America we were living in, it looked like a promising class. It was all about manifest destiny, and the slaughter of innocents. White men doing what white men do. Some things never change.

If the empty seats weren’t a good sign, I figured I ought to try and sink the hook, make an impression on the prof. Short of punching the kid next to me in the throat, kicking over his desk and standing over the wreckage screaming “I am Noskivvies, you pathetic wannabe academic pissant. I am back from the dead and I have come to steal yer damn spot!” I figured maybe answering a question or two might be a good start. This early in the morning, the Californian kids were a little slack-jawed with the books.

“So how do we define Literature?” the professor asked.

After a few moments of silence, a dude in the corner asked: “Is it something written?”

This is an upper division Literature course. Nobody takes it unless they plan to finish up a degree in English and probably go on to teach more slack-jawed teens about the written word. Glancing around the room, I got the feeling like most of these kids might pick up “Highlights” at the dentist’s office if they were really desperate for pictures to look at. Most of them kept checking their phones under their desks but nobody was bothering to Google the textbook definition of big ‘L’ Literature.

An acne prone kid sitting up front in a greasy bowl haircut and glasses cleared his throat and said: “It is a piece of writing which is, for lack of a better term, artistically or stylistically written.” He leaned back.

‘For lack of a better term’? What a dumbass. Blah blah academic blah blah. I couldn’t wait to pick on that kid. I should have sat next to him. After a few more attempts, the prof was still searching for something. I gave the rest of the kids a chance, but nothing was coming.

“Film, drama, poetry or prose which speaks of the human condition.”  I said, mumbling. The prof glanced towards the back of the room. I raised my eyebrows.

“Exactly,” he said, and went on to define the difference between the modern term and the early term and whatever.

At the end of class, I got to the front of the room with my green add slip and slid it onto the desk. The professor was a blonde guy with short cropped hair and a deep tan, like Arizona sort of deep tan. He didn’t look up. “This course is closed,” he said.

“Do you mind if I wait for the drops?”

He glanced over at my slip. “Open university. What brings you here?” he asked.

“I was in Seattle until yesterday. It rained for thirty days straight. My basement was flooding, and I ran out of dirty socks to soak it up.”

He continued checking names off his roster. “What makes you think there will be drops?”

I glanced around at the handful of kids left reading schedules, scrolling through their phones, or collecting their books and papers. Clearly, I had failed to impress him with my concise textbook definition of literature. Maybe I really should have punched out a student and stood over the crumpled body. “Look, most of these kids don’t know why they are here. Their parents are paying for school and so long as they don’t drop out entirely, they’ve got a free ride through the next four or five years of upper division high school. They don’t much give a shit. They tend to drop off after the first week.”

He glanced up at me, eyebrows raised. He was probably only about a decade older than I was. This guy didn’t really look like the stodgy old pedagogue type, but he definitely had the act down. Maybe I stole his thunder with the proper definition. “And you?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I worked construction in the pouring rain for a week and a half to pay for this class alone, and at least another week to pay for the overpriced anthologies I’ll undoubtedly have to buy. I pay my own rent, pay for my own food, pay for my own education, and I’ve actually seen the real world. Do you know how many dirty socks it takes to soak up thirty days of rain in a shithole basement in Seattle?” I only hoped he would see how serious I was about getting back into school. “I know why I’m here.”

He snorted a smile and glanced back at the green admin slip with nothing but his course number and course title scribbled on it. The old Profs would have known how serious I was. This guy was new. There was a reason I left my name off the admin slip. “Are you planning on graduating here?” he asked.

“If I can drop into all five remaining courses, I’ll get my degree this summer.” I nudged the slip towards him.

He took the slip, glanced it over and set it back down. “You do realize that you have to be a student at this University before you can graduate from it.”

Fuckin’ details. “Yeah, like I said, I was in Seattle until yesterday. I didn’t really plan this out very well. I picked up a standby flight to get here, and if I can’t drop in this semester, I’ll matriculate for the fall and take a few more courses or whatever.”

He leaned back and shook his head. “What makes you think the University will allow you to sign up for any courses, even in open university?”

I shrugged. “It’s not the first time I got bored and dropped back into college. As long as the check clears, they generally let me hang out and take the classes.”

He nodded slightly, glancing around at the few stragglers still clearing out.

“Look, dude. At least I’ll do the reading.”

He looked me over for a moment, smirked, and signed the slip.

One down, four to go, and I didn’t even have to beat up a smart kid and steal his desk. If I did though, that kid in the front of the room with the bowl cut was chewing linoleum first.

The bookstore would undoubtedly have a line stretching out through the cafeteria. Were it not for the coffee shop, I’d have little reason to go down there, but I needed caffeine if I was going to make it through my next class. Excusing myself through the herd of clean and eager bodies, I found my way to the coffee cart and stood in line behind people ordering mochas, lattes frappafuckinchinos and whatever else just to order a medium coffee. Black.

I was having troubles blending in. It didn’t help much that I scowled at everybody, or that my skin, fresh from the northwest, was almost translucent under the Southern California sun. On top of that, I didn’t buy my jeans “pre-distressed”, I didn’t own a pair of sunglasses yet, and I wasn’t walking around campus with a phone firmly fixed in front of my face. It might take a few days of sun to get over the seasonal depression and despite my escape from a record deluge in Seattle, I missed my damp, dark, slowly-flooding basement. I needed a dark corner somewhere to make the transition back into the sun and fun bullshit Beach Boy culture. I made my way back down a few sets of stairs towards the library and a dark corner where I could find some wi-fi somewhere in this brutal plastic shithole of a prison.

Everything I owned was covered in playa dust; my laptop, my books, my backpack, and after a few minutes of carrying the load, myself as well. A cloud followed me into the library and up to the front desk to ask about wireless internet. I found a spot in the corner to unleash my private dust storm, and after blowing off the screen and keyboard, there was a fine layer all around me. It seemed to be bothering the guy sitting next to me quite a bit. I felt bad about it and all, but if the fucker thought college was going to be a joyride, he shouldn’t have sat down next to the pale guy wearing the spray-painted jolly roger hoodie.

I pulled my earbuds from the bag and plugged them into the jack. In a few minutes I was online, streaming music straight into the back of my skull. I opened a Word file and scrolled down to where the cursor blinked at a fresh edge. This is where the word was fresh and raw and begging to move forward. This was a brand new scar, something itchy that needed scratching. I blew at the keyboard again, releasing another tiny dust storm.

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