A youth between boy and man; an awkward, gawky young fellow.
"Oh gawky youth" is a phrase I may never have uttered aloud but which surfaces in my mind at times. My use of the phrase is meant as a reversal of the words on the frieze of the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. That frieze quotes Ecclesiastes with the word "REJOICE, O YOUNG MAN, IN THY YOUTH," a phrase that seemed righteous to me when I saw its commanding presence on the wall of that (to me, at the time) august institution in 1990 but which new seems like a hoarse inspiration.
It is a bible verse whose providence I think could be challenged. Raw, barbaric yawps of youth are rarely beautiful or of much merit, but as a culture for which only the past is golden we mine youthful jeremiads for their sincerity and money-making potential. Depending on the context the verse could imply that one should exalt themselves in any medium they fancy, a philosophy which is possibly to blame for Karaoke.
In the more prescient context it reminds me of the impressive introductory address given to the freshman class by the president of my college. He said "Screw up big time." He may have used expletives to make his point, which was that college and youth are the times in your life when screwing up is allowed, and when learning from mistakes is most valuable. These opportunities to get away with getting things wrong become fewer and fewer in life, and you would regret not screwing up if your life came crashing in under the weight of that first error of judgment.
A small bubble in glass or on water.
"Bubbles?"
Puzzled pause.
"Bubbles?"
"Yeah. Bubbles."
This was the substance of a conversation between myself and a grade school friend as I attempted to describe to him the sensation brewing in my digestive system when I was nervous or experiencing anxiety.
In fact this sensation was virtually constant.
I might further have explicated the slight clenching feeling that turned in my stomach, a sensation others might describe as "that sinking feeling" portending some bad omen.
It was the bubbles, though, that perplexed my friend, and which seemed to require elaboration on my part.
Instead of expounding on the nuances of the bubbles I think I gave up on the topic, which I introduced to explain the back-story behind my status as the throw-up king throughout much of grade school.
The chief culprit behind my seemingly routine barf episodes, I thought, was a digestive tract sensitively tied to my nervous worries, the word "nervous" used not in its cliché sense of ego self-preservation but in the sense of involuntary bodily and mental tics arising in response to earthly matters of unnatural conceit.
The spontaneous vomiting I experienced through school has largely eased as an adult. I can, however, reliably expect to feel that clenching feeling of bubbles in my gut during and after an oft-repeated dream. In this dream I never graduated from college and had to go back to school (nearly 20 years later) to get my degree. In some of these dreams it seems I never even left school, and had been endlessly pursuing a college degree from 1986 to the present.
That dream is based in genuine anxieties I experienced as my college graduation approached in 1990 and it appeared I might not make it out in 4 years. I did graduate in 4 years through the magic of a crafty (and perfectly legitimate) sleight-of-hand called "retroactive credit." I invoked this trick to bump up some credits on my transcript, and after telling a few friends about it it seemed like everyone was doing it. In fact I'd say quite a number of people in my class who might have otherwise not graduated that year did so after learning about the retroactive credit loophole.
In retrospect it seems the stakes were nowhere near as high as I imagined them at the time. If I came up 2 credits short I would probably have been allowed to be part of the graduation ceremony, though my diploma folder would be empty until I finished a couple of courses either at the school or elsewhere.
It often takes me hours to snap out of that dream after I wake. A half day might pass before I stand up in my mind and announce that it can't be real, and that I do not have to return to school.
I would think that type of anxiety dream is common enough, but its vividness makes an hours-long impression on my wakened mind, renewing the turgid, bubbling gut-churn that has mostly vanished into my adulthood.
Work of little or no value done merely to look busy.
I had an uneasy relationship with a college advisor who sponsored an Independent Reading for me. An Independent Reading is a form of coursework (done for credit) that covers material not included in any of the school's courses.
I don't know if my interest in Independent Readings was unusual or how many other people did them, but I ended up with two of them on my final transcript after making several attempts to find unique subjects for study and professors to sponsor.
The focus of my first Reading was the history of the recording industry and the way it influenced the development and history of music -- with particular focus on Thomas Edison. That was a great subject, one worthy of a full class I would think, and I seem to remember getting a good grade for that project. The freeform nature of the Reading suited me, and I looked for subject matter for another one.
I tried for a wide-ranging topic of the Phenomenology of Music, hoping to draw together disparate musicological resources -- everything from artwork on sheet music covers to subtleties of Rachmaninoff's orchestral scores -- into a coherent focus that accounted for human's interest in music.
I may have been reading too much Carl Dahlhaus at the time, as in retrospect I see that my vision for this Reading presumed obscurity right from the start, relying on the obtuseness of impenetrably allusive rhetoric.
Because of this seeming lack of direction the professor who sponsored the Reading became increasingly skeptical of it as the semester progressed. At one point he asked me, using a word I'd never heard until then, if this was "just a big boondoggle." I don't remember my reply but it seemed like a harsh question from one whose ardor for the project seemed limitless when he agreed to sponsor it. He was a new professor at the school and I came to think that he agreed to sponsor the Reading in a bit of newbie enthusiasm, going against what would have been better judgment had he thought about it more.
Nevertheless, by the end of the semester we were on the same page again, his enthusiasm renewed even as his time available to evaluate my work lessened. He never showed up to most of the scheduled meetings in the latter part of the year, but his evaluation of my final paper was glowing and I believe I got an A.
I don't know if the "boondoggle" comment had any influence over things or if I genuinely managed to convince the guy that my motives were sincere. My approach of taking seemingly disparate elements of study and reining them in under a broadly contoured theme must have come from my love of the television show "The Paper Chase," which aired on the Showtime cable network during my college years.
I may have imagined myself as the character of Hart, whose tenure as the editor of his law school's "Law Review" journal was embattled over Hart's desire to ask his writers to take the articles they had written (and assumed to be finished) and "turn it around" to see the stories from a point of view that none would expect.
Hart's heavy-lifting approach to the "Law Review" left his writers begging for mercy but ultimately earned him and the staff an unprecedented congratulatory visit from the mighty Professor Kingsfield, the imperious professor whose every word and tic seemed to speak volumes. In the history of the journal there was no memory of Kingsfield openly expressing admiration for any individual issue or article, but Hart's far-reaching approach to his first issue impressed Kingsfield and prompted his un-announced visit.
I never had my Kingsfield. I had good professors but none whose reputation and influence within their field of specialty even vaguely resembled the authority of Professor Kingsfield in "The Paper Chase." I think the closest I ever came to the Kingsfield form of tough-love education was the day I got the boondoggle question, and somehow I don't feel it challenged me much.
