Maybe nothing is normal to me these days.
Maybe it is the pesky November rain, marking the final days of the wet season as they border on the much-awaited cool breeze of December. Or maybe it is the approaching Christmas season itself, with all its blaring music and commercial festivities, emphasizing the fact that I am here missing my wife all over again.
Lately, I have been feeling completely exhausted, trying to outrun an icky depression that has been trailing me since August. Perhaps in a previous life, I was an African lovebird grieving for a lost mate. I would just stare blankly past my short beak, looking for something that no longer exists, before finally declaring, "Okay, that’s quite enough for me." Then, you would hear a sharp thud and find me lifeless at the bottom of a miserable cage.
But the grieving lovebird in me has a brood of children to think about, a law degree to finish, and a burning desire to write its ultimate masterpiece.
Maybe nothing is normal when I find myself writing snippets of verse in my depressed states rather than when I am genuinely inspired. When nothing feels normal, as I have written in a previous blog post, I simply write instinctively. During a boring lecture, for instance—when the professor doesn't care what the students are thinking or barely notices my presence in the room—scrawling whatever comes to mind to beat back the tediousness is as natural as yawning. I will doodle lines and geometric figures on the margins of my notebook, or playfully sketch the person sitting directly in front of me. Other times, I draw my own hands, my toes, or my shoes, wondering when I will finally buy a new pair. Sometimes, I draw a semi-abstract portrait of the instructor, capturing all their distinct facial expressions.
What is palpably abnormal these days, however, is allowing myself to compose a poem in the middle of a law school exam. Who could imagine having the audacity to do that with such gusto?
Of course, you might argue that it depends entirely on the nature of the exam. Was it a breeze, or perhaps a very short quiz with a disproportionately long time limit, leaving me with the luxury of waiting for the first student to submit their paper before I handed in mine? Was it an insurmountable hurdle, where the questions demanded answers outside of anything I had read, causing me to stumble, fall, and give up entirely, choosing instead to sit awake for the remainder of the hour in blissful ignorance? Or was I simply feeling so low and broken that a Muse daintily crept in with a magical balm, soothing my mood and completely shutting out the world?
I could easily use the last two scenarios to justify my actions.
It was no ordinary exam, and it was entirely unannounced. It was a graded quiz for a major bar subject in law school. I hadn't opened my textbook, nor had I been able to peruse my notes and reviewers. A bit of justification, however, is in order: I had worked until 5:00 p.m. in the office that day. Usually, when I have an evening class like this one, I log out by 3:00 p.m. to give myself extra time to refresh my mind for the subject. The night before, and even during my office breaks, I had been cramming to meet a late-afternoon deadline for a regional literary magazine where I am a regular contributor.
Besides, I fully expected the professor to lecture that evening. Our class could no longer afford the time for oral recitations or pop quizzes, as we were desperately pressed to complete the syllabus. With only two meetings left before the final exams, I assumed the professor would simply hand out pointers or lecture on the remaining key topics. I arrived prepared to listen and take notes—not to be tested.
When the assigned proctor walked into the room and told our class to prepare immediately for a long quiz, I was absolutely staggered. There were only nine of us in the room, and we had no choice but to listen to the instructions, take the test sheets, and begin answering in utter discomfort.
Still, it was better than walking out. I managed to answer three of the five questions, though I wasn't at all confident that my arguments would satisfy our absent professor. The final two questions were pure agony; I could only guess the answers. “Just use your common sense, or at least be sensible with your guesses,” I remembered a classmate once advising. Yet, I had very little logic to support my assumptions.
What do you do while waiting for that dreaded signal: "Time’s up! Finished or not finished, pass your papers"? No one was submitting their work yet, and we still had a full thirty minutes left on the clock.
I tried listening to the rhythmic ticking of the wall clock. I stared at its face, noting a fibrous spiderweb clinging to its rim. Suddenly, my mind drifted to spiderwebs, and I remembered Spider-Man hanging upside down while his lady love kissed his exposed lips. That memory instantly triggered another: sitting snuggled beside my wife, watching that exact scene together in a movie theater. That thought led to another movie, and another memorable scene, pulling me into a haunting spiral of memories with my late wife inside various dark theaters.
I thought about standing up to do a ten-count jumping jack, or smashing a book against the lizard crawling across the ceiling. I suddenly craved the music of R.E.M. or U2. I thought of a million things, yet I remained tied to my seat, staring at the half-empty answer sheet in front of me.
I wanted to capture a fraction of this muddled, chaotic emotion, trap it inside a bottle, and smash it against the wall just to make the proctor notice. But he wouldn't have cared anyway; he was comfortably seated in the front row with his back to us, whispering softly to the girlfriend he had brought along to help him pass the time.
Okay, I thought. I placed the tip of my pen against the lined paper.
It began with a single line of uninhibited thought, followed immediately by another, and then another, gradually integrating the short, disorganized images floating through my head. You might call the resulting lines shallow, but their instantaneous release was incredibly therapeutic. Writing verse seems to come with such effortless ease when I am bored and distressed, paving an unhampered path to flex my lethargic verbal muscles.
Here is the evidence of those wayward, random thoughts born in an unlikely place:
As
transcribed below:
air exhaled gone before
it dispersed in a mist
but tears don’t dry up easily
in the absence of heat
now searching for the element
in a space beyond the cloud
hovering this misty morn
blocking up the grayness
of the sun.
if only I could
reverse the direction
of the wind
and bring you back,
to the meadows of our dreams
where the sun is yellow
and the air we inhaled
is tangible, in flesh.
The result of the exam was an absolute disaster. Except for one or two classmates, the entire room received a failing grade. By the end of the semester, only three out of the nine students passed the course.
Naturally, I flunked it. I had to re-enroll in the subject this semester. At present, it stands as the absolute last remaining hurdle I must clear before I can finally graduate from law school this coming March.
So, while the three passing students were celebrating and the rest of us were contemplating our fates—facing another semester of grueling lectures, tough recitations, and unannounced quizzes—I walked away with this poem as a souvenir. It remains a permanent justification, pro hac vice, for my beautifully abnormal act.
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