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epitome of incomprehensibility
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I keep writing or saying things that are beside the point. I'm doing it now. But beside_the_point still implies some sort of relation...?
Yesterday in my earliest class, Ger. prof. Gerlinde went over colour symbolism in the excerpt she'd posted from But_I_Live. There's a launch/speaker event for the book on Tuesday and she's one of the organizers. She was encouraging us to bring friends. Relations.
I thought of the people at the Lawn Chair Soiree, the poetry evening I was attending. That related. There was a connecting line, un lien. Die Zeile, das Ziel, the goal: bookish people could be told about books.
...
My last class - midterm land. Language Acquisition's in the language I already know but have difficulty organizing. Especially with a tired mind. And such questions! They managed to be both general and pointed: Give two pieces of evidence for such-and-such a phenomena. No names of authors, few references to theories as guides.
And I'd dance around the point, trying to remember. I think most of it got onto paper, with accumulated excrescence: here's the authors of this article, here's also what their paper was trying to prove even if your question is about a slightly different point.
A tear of frustration trickled and dried. I'd told the prof I wouldn't need the extra 33% time the ACSD allowed me, that writing the test in the usual classroom was more important than having more time, that I probably wouldn't have any difficulties with a midterm like this because it didn't involve mathematical calculations and was in my first language.
Which was also extra information: all she wanted to know was how many test papers to bring!
I finished two minutes before class closed, as students of the practical engineering seminar after us threatened to burst the dams of the doors. Pressure on materials.
...
That's also why people found my book-launch statement funny, I guess: the unintended non-sequitur. Flush with success at reciting Garlic_Is_a_Funny_Bulb from memory, I pulled the large-format But_I_Live from where I'd awkwardly leaned it against the wall. Pointing to the book, I gave time and place details, then "It's kind of a heavy topic, because it's about child Holocaust survivors, but there's going to be free food."
I wasn't trying to make people laugh, really, just wanting to give the relevant information in a digestible way - a caution and a coaxing.
...
After all, the catering service at Brock was what brought me to one grad-student event that was completely unrelated to anything I was then doing. Not beside, besides. Something about getting science lab jobs.
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But back to that Mar. 16, 2023 evening, as people left the non-lawn-chaired Lawn Chair Soiree. One of the poets paused with her hand on the railing of the stairs. She called down to me with a couple of questions about the Tuesday book launch. I answered her; I slowed down a little to match the pace of her and her partner behind her; but by the time we were at the bottom of the stairs, my mind had traded the exchange for other trails of thoughts. Talking with lots of people usually exhausts me, even if it makes me happy.
A few seconds but many Kirsten-thought-trails later, at the bottom of the stairs, she asked, "Oh, are you Jewish?"
Blink. "No." Pause. "My cousin is."
A relation which had no relation. But I added that because I was confused why she'd asked - the only thing that came to mind was my family connection with Lia.
So she went something like "Oh, just wondering" and "have a good night" as I said bye too and went out the door, berating my speech production apparatus: you ALMOST avoid embarrassing yourself, and then... Obviously it was about the book. People of the book launches.
Union street. Anglican church above. Lights strung between trees. Cold air. Bit of a morbid connection on Samara's part, wasn't it? Even if she is Jewish, more likely with a Samara than a Sameera - which is what I'd mistakenly called her earlier, blending her ethnicity with her boyfriend's somehow. Lia, anyway, might find her question odd: oh sure, associate us with the time someone tried to kill us all. But Lia was besides the point.
I love you, Lia, but you're not relevant here. Let me bring you up when I'm puzzling about your peculiar views of autism, which to you includes ADHD. Maybe it is all the same. We two both have weird ideas of categories. Why have I insisted for so long that "blanket" include sheets?
Well, it SHOULD. They're the same shape, just a different thickness. Maaaany less-related objects are lumped together. Maybe we autistics ("we" indeed) are more logical because we're less resistant to social pressure! And maybe I'll now fall into line with two other poets walking to the McGill metro station! But that's not unoriginal because they're originals, both natural: Mariana, like the deep sea; Willow, like the tree. Willow writes poetry a bit like me, but better.
...
Everyone is the same in some way, I think later, walking up the stairs from Lionel-Groulx into the cold air again. I think I'm Buddhist sometimes.
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