You’ll never catch me studying
I think I’ve spent seven hours at the library today. I said I was gonna do some studying—I even posted on my Instagram story that I was gonna do my readings—but I always knew it was never gonna happen. There are too many things to see.
Going to the library is like buying a pumpkin. Yes, you could scrape out the guts and plant the seeds of knowledge or whatever the metaphor is… you know what I’m getting at. All this ‘learning is like growing a plant’ nonsense. Oh wow, I just got distracted from my original metaphor right now. Point is, everyone likes pumpkin pie more and I’d rather make pumpkin pie than plant the seeds.
Today, my pumpkin pie was taking lots of ‘breaks’ via walks around campus and watching Breaking Bad. Going to the library is like being a meth cook: perhaps it’s safer and smarter to deal in small quantities on the street level, but the money making comes from moving in bulk with crazy and dangerous people. Do you know what I mean? I don’t know what I mean.
You know, I’ve actually compared myself to a pumpkin before. Pumpkins come in all different shapes and sizes and so I can say that’s humanity. I can say that I’m small and tall with a few warts just intriguing enough for the chance of a glance from a buyer. My stem sticks out in a clean swizzle and swoop that I have no problems with. But in the end, it’s the large round pumpkins that are picked from the patch for a Halloween catch. The jack-o-lanterns burn bright on that holiday night. I enjoyed writing those last few sentences actually. They’re cute if not a little nonsensical.
You know what’s a little nonsensical? This piece of writing. I mean, I haven’t really said anything at all yet. I’m at the library not doing any work because I’m getting distracted and because I’m lazy. That’s a one sentence summary. Working backwards for a moment, I think I want to end this piece by concluding that indulging our distractions can lead to beautiful moments. Whether that’s a worthy excuse will be left up to your interpretation. That’s a reasonable ask from a 700ish-word piece. So how do we get there?
Oh, you know what? I said that the last piece I wrote was gonna be my last weird writing for a while. I told myself that I’d write this as a normal, straightforward story about being a relatable freshman making their way through the world. Well, here we are talking about the nature of a personal essay in the very middle of said personal essay. Old habits die hard, distractions too. There’s a title in there somewhere.
That’s the moment I looked up from my laptop and saw it. A beautiful tree was built broad in the field. My eyes climbed up its wide trunk and into its leaves at the top where, to my surprise, something was growing. I took a step closer to the window and the view shocked me. Right in the nest of the branches and the leaves was a large, seedy, meth-flavoured pumpkin pie.
Okay, look, I’m still at my laptop. I completely made that last bit up, but I wanted to indulge my craving and I did. And you know what? It was kind of fun! I think if I had stuck with the pumpkin throughline, this essay would have ended something like this:
“I’m not a pumpkin, not in the way that I imagined it. We’re to believe that pumpkins are made for October, but in warm climates they can grow year round. Who’s to say I can’t be a pie in March or seeds in May? Who’s to say I have to be the best fucking pumpkin everytime? I am the only pumpkin that is me and all the other pumpkins are the only ones that are them. So we’re all special? And in that case no one is special. Therefore no one is better than anyone else and no one is better than me. That’s a comforting thought.”
Should you indulge your distractions? Did we have a magic little moment with this piece?
I’m leaving the library now because I have dinner plans. This is real life so the meal has nothing to do with seeds, meth, or pumpkins.