November 8, 1985 (Revisiting the Past)

I'm going back through what comprised my senior year of high school and first semester of college in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Come along for the ride. New posts every day or so mixed in with other things.

November 8, 1985. I was still muddling through my freshman semester at M.T.S.U., but I think by this point I was only sporadically attending all but my freshman comp English class. I had hit if off with the teacher Ms. Hames (I don't think she was a full fledged professor) and she had even lent me a paperback Kerouac bio by Ann Charters. I was still carrying around my little National Brand college notebook and writing all kinds of stuff in it. There are bad song lyrics, poems, drawings, short-short stories, and just random junk that only a goofy naive 18 year old would pen. It's mostly terrible, but every now and then there is a glimmer of fool's gold. This is as good a time as any on this journey through the past which is almost over to start skimming through it. Read on, if you dare!!

Right after the time changed on October 27, 1985 I doodled this page: "It gets so dark so early mirroring life." Nowadays I just wish that our government would pick a time and stick with it.

More from the notebook on the next page: Frost on the windowpanes, nose prints from the past. When I was very young I would eat paint...what a stupid child. Thrown snowballs melt before they hit the ground. Glass eyes, plastic cellophane replacements ready. What have I written? Where have I gone? Blurry printed words glower. "Help I need somebody!" Newsprint lining Polly's birdcage. Polly wants a brain transplant. Polly wants a Jarvik heart. Will hangovers ever hurt less? 

Big test tomorrow. Linda Lavin really annoys me. I need a planned junket to nowhere...fast. 

That's all for now. Some comments from today: It must have gotten cold. Yes, I did eat lead paint when I was small. I can still remember the texture and sickly sweet taste of it. I must have not eaten enough to destroy my brain, my kidneys, or my reproductive system. I was definitely listening to The Beatles at this time hence the "Help" lyric. The Jarvik heart was a big story then. More interesting to me as a Generation X boy is the use of Polly. Kurt Cobain who is just a few months younger than me of course wrote a tune titled "Polly" so we both must have been exposed to lots of parrots by the mass media growing up. While I have since grown to appreciate Linda Lavin's talents as an actor and singer, she is still a bit annoying to me. I will say I liked her best in her brief stint on Barney Miller. 

I'll have some more from this goofy notebook as we go through November and December.