|
The Burrito
of Fear Matt Margolin |
 |
I'm at High Tech Burrito on College in Berkeley, California. I figured if I went to a place we both hate it might help me stay focused and complete the task you set out for me. And boy do I hate this place. This postmodernist, deconstructionist, self-consciousness thing has gone too far. Beyond too far, or is that the title of your dissertation? Sorry. They should call it, Fear Burrito. And you're right: it's too expensive. | ||
|
You've been right about a lot of things. I shouldn't use big words like pedantic when I mean, "uses big words"; I shouldn't say to people that my worst quality is that I'm "too hard on myself"; and I should become concerned when I describe my best quality as "I'm good at arguing, but I hate to argue." Anyway, sitting in this burrito place makes me think of a lot of things. I remember back in graduate school when I had a job as a busboy - for two days. I had never experienced stage fright until I approached a stranger's table to fill their water glasses. I can still hear that pasty white comp-lit guy saying, "Nice work today, amigo." Little did that Celtic-loving racist know that I would go on to earn my PhD in Media Literacy. Hah! (That reminds me: one reason that Fuzzy Zoeller story has so much momentum might be that the former chairman of the Masters Tourny apparently once said, "as long as I am alive, the golfers here will be white and the caddies will be black." Nice.) But it wasn't my stagefright that got me fired; in fact, the one moment that I didn't have stage fright got me fired. |
|||
|
|
About four years before we met, when I was an adjunct at St. Mary's, I filled in for a prof at a faculty dinner (that food was good). The dinner was in honor of Joseph Heller on the anniversary of Catch-22 being published, and I interviewed him in front of the entire faculty. Now why didn't that situation give me stagefright? Weird. So there I was spewing gradstudentese at poor Joseph Heller (I can define, "intersticiality" but I can't define, "intimacy." You were right about that, too.), and he said, "Thinking is media." For the life of me, I had no idea what the hell that meant, but I just pretended I did and went on with it. Do you remember in Catch-22 how the soldiers ended up with chocolate bars filled with cotton? | |
|
He said another thing that I didn't understand. He said the thing about writing that you said a bunch of times that I still don't understand, the thing about how when you write, it compels you like a bodily function (this burrito of fear reminds me of that, too). That was the thing that distracted me from my stage fright long enough to spill piping hot decaf on Chris Mullin. I still blame myself for his asking to be traded. I just ordered decaf. Weird, huh? Who ever heard of serving coffee in a burrito place? Should they call this place Cafe Fear? What's wrong with these people? Hey, I remember I made Joseph Heller laugh when I said that it was of interest that people scrutinize inner city African-American boys for wanting to be pro athletes, but they don't scrutinize suburban white kids for wanting to be in rock bands. | |||
|
|
So I got fired, then I got my degree, we met, now I'm washing down my pricy (but tasty) burrito with very good decaf (but not hot enough) and trying to write to you like you asked. What did we see in each other? Something good. Perhaps more importantly, you were right when you said we are - individually - contradictions. You are a patient, tolerant intellectual who is filled with this obsession to write, a passion (so you and Heller say) that acts like an involuntary bodily function. I am a lazy, judgemental romantic who is filled with the need to analyze everything, even emotions and burritos. Our relationship is this burrito, and it just dawned on me what Heller meant. | |
|
Please don't show this to anyone. See you Tuesday, Clivus. | |||
|
Matt Margolin filters Net Surf every day. Clivus is his pet monkey.
|
||
Back to Fillet
|