I'm losing my hair

Stop me if I told you this before. Every year, I cut all my hair off to shock my students before final exams. I hope it's a way to inject a little humor into their lives and it's a way to humorously prepare for my future baldness. I think I talk about this in "Waiting for Gadot," but then again, I had only done it once back then I think. It's been a few more times now, so I think I can reflect on it again.

Apophenia and Hypochondria: The Week of Magical Thinking

There's this joke that's based on the misogyny that is still so common in our society which says that women don't simply say "I'm a feminist," they say "I'm a feminist, but..." There has to be some sort of capitulation to the patriarchy. This idea has been developed elsewhere by other people, I merely bring it up to set up my own joke.

So I got my COVID-19 test rests and: I tested negative, but...

"Just"

In high school, an underclassman complimented my writing. I was a junior or a senior and he pointed out how well I incorporated a quote into what I was writing. The quote was cited but if it hadn't been you wouldn't have necessarily known I was quoting anything. I'm not sure this is the best type of writing, but it is something I miss when reading students' writing these days. When I taught at the college level, I saw how often students would drop quote without any sort of introduction. I've done that a fair amount in this "radioheadhead" series but that's for artistic reasons. In good writing, at least in my opinion, you introduce all your quotes. For example:

1) Thom Yorke sings, "You do it to yourself."

2) Kurt Vonnegut writes, "Strictly speaking, I was rewriting an old play of mine. But that old play had been written by a right-handed stranger fifteen years my junior."

It's funny what making this an important part of writing prioritizes. Suddenly, you want to know every possible way to say "says." If the person is doing something else than just saying something, you use that. So they sing or they write. In less fanciful moments, they state, they consider, they relate, they find. It's a weird thing to focus so much time on but it feels important.

After writing "You," I had my dad read the prose poem. It's very compounded. It's saying a lot of different things at once. I think it's good and expresses how I feel about things but my dad's reaction was "Oh, it's a poem? That makes sense then, I don't get poetry." I wanted to take "radioheadhead" back in the other direction here so this is what you get.

I don't know what to write about.

Hi there!

"You"

This is the first one of these I think I've done that essentially includes all the lyrics of the song. It's also full of other quotes and references. I guess I felt like it was okay to have very little me in something called "You." I got tested for COVID-19 today so I'll know if I really do have it in a few days now. If you think you have symptoms and can get tested, do so. And everyone, wear a mask! It's for everyone else's protection! ("And why should I believe [protect] myself, not you?")

-5

THE CEILING

Construction Zone

I've got a couple more ideas that I want to address in THE ROOF and more will come to me, but I think I need to shut it down for a while. I'm using a construction metaphor for what I want to do, because I plan to reread and edit the parts I've already written, eventually (hopefully!) making for a more firm foundation underneath THE ROOF. Ha, pardon the pun! My other concern is that I need to take time to better learn who the named characters are, learn their back stories and personalities. I know I'm mixing metaphors, but this is sewing in a way and I want to go back through the character threads and fix any missed stitches.