I (barely) awoke this morning, like every morning, for years, with one nightmare after another drifting into the twilight of my consciousness, forcing my heart to swell and deliver more pounding blood to a brain obsessed with identity, or lack there of, and a past with insufficient grounding. I awoke this morning with the thought, "I am a professor". This is who I am.
I read the greatest works of humanity and share those works with others. I write anecdotes of these meditations on Facebook, where I fight for the truth--no matter what good comes of it. "The Professor": This is what my co-workers at eBay--that "job" and effort to redefine myself outside of "the academia"--used to call me. This is my comfort...where I feel at home in my skin.
I make this fight in the basement of my home. Partner and children resting upstairs--despite my fears that some day we will be separated by fire, and a floor that drops out as I run. Self destruction and re-creation (dear I say "exploration" since there is nothing to find that is not created) is dangerous, and threatens to rip the delicate threads of love and friendship that hold me together with the others on this (nightmare) journey--I dreamed last night that my partner had finally moved me out of her bedroom while I slept.
As I walked up stairs this morning, and poured a cup of coffee, aware of my children sleeping through the doorway, I remembered : I am a father too. A professor and a father. A father first, in a dream and nightmare of a "professor."
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