You are so beautiful and I am a fool to be in love with you...

...You know the days I am talking about. You got to sleep in so you wake up feeling good. You take a nice, long shower. You use a clean towel that still smells like detergent. Eat lunch while watching your favorite television show. Grab a cold Diet Coke out of the refrigerator. Get ready for the day. You look okay. Your hair isn't doing anything weird and you are wearing your favorite shirt. You feel good, but then boom! The boom is not you getting run over by a bus or hit over the head, it just seems like your mind has hit a impenetrable wall. You're in a funk. All of this to say that today, I am in a funk. I am not sure why. I had plans, big plans. Plans to post photos on my blog from Thanksgiving and lyrics to a song I have been listening to recently, but I am feeling totally apathetic. Maybe it's because tonight is my last meal with my roommates. Maybe it's because I have all of these unresolved emotions towards people in my life that I don't know what to do with. Maybe it's because I stayed up reading C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves when I should have been sleeping. Maybe it's because the premise of that book has had me questioning certain things in my life all day. Maybe I woke up on the proverbial wrong side of the bed, even though I always sleep and get out of bed on the same side and I wasn't in this funk yesterday. All of these are definite possibilities. Do you ever just get in a funk? Sure you do.

So, since classes were over except for finals this week I have been reading everything I can get my hands on because I actually have time to read what I want. This week I have read collections of Billy Collins' poetry, as well as some C.S. Lewis. It is so nice to be able to sit down without having to read a certain amount. That is the travesty of English classes. I am a Literature grad student obviously because I love literature, so the teachers take that love for granted and they say, "You love reading so much we are going to make you read hundreds of pages a night of crappy books like The Autobiography of Henry Adams, but that's okay, right? You like to read." See, they take our love for granted. I actually made the statement earlier in the semester after reading a bunch of crappy novels that I hate to read. I cannot believe I said that. I really love reading, but why can't we read what we want and report on that. I am sick of teacher's thinking I will enjoy books like The Writings of Benjamin Franklin. They could not be further off. I don't think they have ever heard of modern literature, or God forbid post-modern literature.

Anyway, I will probably not post anything this weekend, seeing as how it is going to be absolutely crazy-busy. I guess I have nothing more to add today. There don't seem to be any words coming to mind, just emotions and they are hard to convey through typing on a screen. Language is limited in that way I suppose. I will, however, post a poem by Billy Collins. Here you go:

"Nightclub" by Billy Collins

You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool
is another one you don't hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

For no particular reason this afternoon
I am listening to Johnny Hartman
whose dark voice can curl around
the concepts on love, beauty, and foolishness
like no one else's can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette
someone left burning on a baby grand piano
around three o'clock in the morning;
smoke that billows up into the bright lights
while out there in the darkness
some of the beautiful fools have gathered
around little tables to listen,
some with their eyes closed,
others leaning forward into the music
as if it were holding them up,
or twirling the loose ice in a glass,
slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,
borne beyond midnight,
that has no desire to go home,
especially now when everyone in the room
is watching the large man with the tenor sax
that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage
and hands the instrument down to me
and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips
and blow into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish,
my long bebop solo begins by saying,
so damn foolish
we have become beautiful without even knowing it.