not the only ones who blush

along the arduous road towards my Ultimate Goal of slipping into graduate school before anyone realises what a disastrous mistake they have made, it is both the first step to the doorstep and a great cloak-of-invisibility to enlist smart and respectable advocates of one's own. many times, they will present themselves but, nonetheless, i have discovered that there are definite moments in which it is clearly to one's grubbing advantage to make another good impression. and a key aspect of doing so, i've found, is maintaining full control of one's (decidedly non-Hegelian) consciousness.

there are people whose opinion of your ideas matters so much that, no matter if you already know its almost unshakeable favourability, you prepare for hours before conversing with them. such is it with RB, who also happens to be the final candidate in my list of recommendation solicitations.

so, after everyone else has trickled out the door after his class and i have whispered my list of numbered points one more time, i launch into effusively regaling him with Balkan wisdom and its clearly delineated prospects for my intended project over the course of the next 5 years. meanwhile, i see, in the distance the telltale Black Fog with my head firmly in its sights. as one does—all the while knowing, as one does, that it is exactly what one should not do—but thinking, as one does, that there is nothing else to do (sitting down is so bourgeois), i persist in attempting to will it all away by talking more enthusiastically and throwing in badly-stressed Russian for emphasis. in the midst of some sweeping statement about the True Boundaries of Central Europe, i realise that if i don't tell the embarrassing truth—and quick—i'm going to have to deal with the even more embarrassing reality of passing out cold on RB's feet. only after mumbling something about being seated do i realise that there are, conveniently, no furnitures conducive to such appalling materialist behaviour anywhere in sight. somehow i stumble back into the classroom, not knowing if i am merely imagining the Voice of RB telling me not to worry. i become even more suspicious when i hear it revealing that it—he—faints all the time. then the voice is gone—only to reappear, embodied and encupped (borrowed from the Film Studies Center for the occasion, and, likewise, filled with water).

that which is quick to appear is often short to stay (leaving its characteristic headache, though it will).... but not before we have ourselves a warm little chat, swapping Most Humiliating Fainting Spells (nope, my mouth is sealed) and besting low blood pressure scores. and certainly not before RB pulls a small wrapped licorice from the pocket of his corduroy blazer (kept there for just such an event—of his own).