New Thrash

Today's supposed to be the hottest day of the year. Maybe it already is, but I haven't been outside to check, nor do I plan to. In preparation for this day Girlfriend put in a second air conditioner and so far the house is cool and shady--not a place I plan to leave. Unfortunately, our NYT didn't show up this morning, and so we're waiting to see if it will redeliver. In the meantime, we have four non-paper-reading hours to fill. Exercise? No way. It's too hot to even walk to the car to drive to the gym. But I'm jonesing for a run.

What does it mean that I woke up with Sublime's "New Thrash" running through my head? I like to think that the song in my head at any given moment is an index of subconscious thoughts, but I can't even make out the words to this song, let alone analyze them. And since it's a mosh-pit kind of a thrasher song, and since I'm sitting here feeling anxious and jitery (gotta eat some breakfast, I guess) it seems logical that the sound of the song is as indicative of mood as the lyrics. Okay, wait, I'm listening to it on headphones and I'm on line, duh, so here are the googled lyrics:

I got so much trouble on my mind,
That I feel like I'm always sleeping with the enemy
But I know the real world always gets the last word
And that's why you gotta kick reality.
So don't tease me and try to say I should care.
I might as well go out for mine
'cause everybody's going out for theirs.

Okay, so it's standard malaise. Sleeping with the enemy: Is this about my job? I work for spendy, middle class urban university, educating trixies and frat boys. The last two weeks I've been doing summer advising, which is great, easy money and a good way to figure out exactly what my students' educations look like (anyone else out there who really doesn't understand what their students have to do to graduate because you still see things in terms of your undergrad u's requirements?) It's been eye-opening though, as I see student after student bypass classes in African Black Diaspora Studies, Islamic Studies, Women's Studies, even Art History for god's sake, in favor of Intro. to Philosophy, or Medieval History (sorry New Kid). There are a million ways they can fulfill their liberal arts requirements, but they only want the whitest, safest, most familiar. Unless it's in the English department--they don't want anything that makes them read, no matter how canonical and white it is. In six days of advising I haven't managed to get one student into an English class. They would rather fulfill their religion requirement with Intro. to Catholocism (it's a Catholic U; most of them are Catholic!) or Intro. to the New Testament, than Buddhist Thought, or African-American Religions. Hello! You are wearing a batik shirt and a macrame necklace, and you reek of patchouli: I know that you got all that at Urban Outfitters, but given that you are posing as counter-cultural, don't you think you might want to explore a different culture, even just a baby bit? No wonder the university requires a sophomore-level seminar on multiculturalism.

So maybe the "enemy" I'm sleeping with is my status-quo university. Or myself, given that I offer classes that students fleeing from diversity might take, like the diva class, or my middlebrow lit. class. (NB: my classes are all about diversity, much to the disappointment of some students, and as reflected in ratemyprofessor.com comments that complain about my being too "political" in the classroom.)

Or maybe it's my department, which I really like, but don't entirely trust, since my transfer into it last year was met with a bit of resistance. Do they like me yet? Do they still think I'm too humanities-oriented and too American culture to add anything to women's studies? A year later, would they accept me more readily? or would they have more concrete reasons for rejecting me?

Or is the "trouble on my mind" related to girlfriend's job search and quest for a new direction in her life post-tenure?

Or is it the fact that I haven't been out to California to see my family in over a year and a half and they fully expect me out there this summer, but I don't know how to arrange it? I can't really figure out where to start, but that's wrapped up in many other issues--the panicked need to write (to justify my summer grant), girlfriend's job search, not wanting to leave my cats--and too complicated to think about on such a hot day. But the way it makes me feel is exactly what "New Thrash" sounds like.

Is it because we watched Nashville last night and my sleeping thoughts were puncutated by Altman's 30 year-old reading of a jingoistic, cynically-patriotic, empty-minded America that still looks pretty familiar? (And is it weird that I think Barbara Harris is really hot? You probably remember her as Jodie Foster's mom in Freaky Friday.)

Or is the "trouble on my mind" much simpler? Is it that our bedroom set-up just isn't working? I can't figure out a way to make the furniture fit correctly, and it depresses me to look at when I wake up.

Or is it that, because I sprayed leave-on conditioner on my hair by the side of my bed yesterday, (because it was in my gym bag from the day before) the floor next to my bed was impossibly slippery last night, and everytime I got up to go to the bathroom I had to walk very slowly and carefully, so as not to slip?