Read-through?

(I stole the end from a previous post...)
My speakers are blaring the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I have a subwoofer in the trunk, which I try to hide because I don’t want to be flirted at by guys who are attracted by my sound system. I wouldn’t have paid extra for this noise-making capacity, but the previous owner of the car thought the sound system was the selling point of the vehicle and claimed to be sad to part with the car because of it. Whatever. The driver’s side window won’t roll down and there’s a crack in the windshield.
“This life is more than just a read-through...” And I’m sitting here, stuck at a red-light, tired and wasting my afternoon. I’m a perfectionist and have always had a difficult time achieving an appropriate balance of priorities. Currently, this problem is manifesting itself in an obsession with fruitless research for my senior paper.
I’m an English major analyzing marriage in the six completed novels of Jane Austen. Her novels are absolutely full of marriages, so I’ve narrowed my focus. I have identified three marriage categories: marriages motivated by the lack of options for females, lover-mentor marriages, and what I’m calling “equal partnership” marriages. I haven’t narrowed my focus enough.
Fellow honor’s program colleagues, a generally obsessive bunch, are throwing together papers and posters. The scientific orientation of the program committee resulted in a set of guidelines requiring a poster for the public presentation of “method,” analysis of evidence, charts and graphs. I don’t have charts and graphs, and analysis of evidence is a 50 page paper. My real problem, though, is with my method.
I am looking at more books than I have time to make use of, ordering articles and books through inter-library loan at a rate that confounds the freshman library workers and garners unwanted attention from the inter-library loan director. Worst of all I’m driving through Lexington traffic, hot bright sun in my face, heading toward the UK library. I’m spending Friday afternoon heading down I-75 for more books when my room is already full of them. I have stacks of books, notebooks, note-cards, outlines, drafts, random ideas scribbled on scrap paper.
For some reason I have decided that I don’t have enough books. Perhaps the problem is that the ones I have are not the right ones.
My AC is on, but it’s hot. I feel as if I’m suffocating in a greenhouse, but my fingers on the steering wheel are somehow chilled. The sun is putting me to sleep through the windshield even though I’m on caffeine. I had coffee this morning in the student center between theory and philosophy and a Coke with lunch. If I drink soft drinks frequently, I don’t enjoy them, and it seems incredibly wasteful of good health to not enjoy a Coke. But it’s Friday, and I generally choose to indulge myself to celebrate the completion of another week.
I want desperately to fall asleep.
What am I doing here, getting more books? I don’t really need them. Do I really think I have time to read another dozen books on the subject? Do I really expect to find something stunning in any of the books I’m seeking? Does it matter if I do?
I have stumbled upon the real question, the one that drives me to such avoidance tactics as this library pilgrimage.
I’ve staked the past 20 years or so on this educational project. I’ve been in school almost my entire life. I’m about to graduate from college having never made less than an “A,” and I’m feeling simultaneously annoyed with myself for wasting so much of my time playing along and with everyone else for failing to recognize my achievements.
What do I want? Recognition for playing the game well?
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I think I’m trying to drive myself crazy. I am listening to the same CD over and over—the same songs. Two of the songs are extraordinarily satisfying to me for some indefinable reason. Conversely, a couple annoy me excessively. I either skip them or listen to them and enjoy being temporarily irritated. This irritation is a sort of catharsis for me, I think. I don’t want to recognize that my own choices have made me miserable, so I look for something manageable. I could skip the exasperating tracks on my CD, but I don’t. My destiny is in my hands.
I’ve been doing this for two straight days, trying to drive myself crazy. This afternoon, I tried to convince myself that I was delighted to have the opportunity to spend my time writing a literary analysis paper. It’s a lie, though, one I recognized even as I repeated it to myself like a mantra.
A few minutes ago, I decided to give my desk chair a spin and focused my eyes at a fixed altitude as the chair rotated. As a result, I became quite dizzy and slightly nauseated. I knew this would happen, and I felt the growing discomfort as I spun, but did not stop the chair. Oh, no, I seem to want to make myself miserable.
I ate six Cadbury eggs with cold coffee this afternoon. Then I decided to put on some eyeliner, which I rarely use, just for the fun of it. I started playing boggle by myself. It was unsatisfying, with no one to exchange words with afterwards, but I went at it with enthusiasm for two rounds. My roommate got back and we had grape-fruit juice with spicy Pringles that tasted vaguely of soy sauce. We made tea, and I had more chocolate eggs. (No wonder I feel lousy.) Then we played a few rounds of boggle. I read a page of the dictionary in search of new words in order to postpone my return to my paper.
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It’s Saturday afternoon, a beautiful day. I’m still in school. I’m at my computer researching for a presentation I’m giving Monday and listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers again. The sun is too bright, my feet are cold, and I’m tired.
“This life is more than just a read-through…”
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Déjà vu nightmare: I’m stuck in traffic again. The light won’t turn green. Finally, it does, but under the roar of the AC and the speakers, my car has stalled. I pump the gas and flood my engine….
Wait a sec. Wake up. I’m not so stupid that I can think of nothing to do with my life but pour it down the drain. I mean, this idea of educating myself isn’t completely selfish or an utter waste of time. Right?
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I’m alone in the world, listening to distant traffic, trains in the night, and twittering birds who are happy because they can fly and don’t remember the existence of killer cats and the fact that they may be carrying the latest deadly diseases, Asian Bird Flu or West Nile Virus.