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epic

if we're to sleep in the beds we've made for ourselves, pray someone offers a couch.

men are too men to admit when they're ashamed.

what will we do with your sadness? she wants to know
only when i smile to make her feel better, silhouettes of bats and ravens fly across the brown of my eye, and startled she jumps back.

when i pray it is never to thwart the tragedy, but to have legs (and will) enough to outrun it.
perhaps that says everything right there.

our mothers and fathers held hands and put rainbows into one another's bodies to start our engines. and we grew like vines and soft-spoken pandemonium, till we were born and wrapped in blankets, delicate handfuls of lily petals altogether the size of loaves of bread, and our fathers nursed our crying hellos and named us Bobs and Bills and Sarahs and Janes and maybe even kicked around a birthday or two before eventually heading off to remember us once again on a couch or long distance drive or nursing home death-bed many moons hence.
___and like all solemnity we grew and shed identities like snake-skins until at 27, 35, 42
___the inevitability of normalcy eventually crystallizes when one morning we sing the songs
___the radio dictates on our way to our whatever-job whatever-operation whatever-cause of death.

when i grow up i'm going to be a prophet,
they will mock me and curse me, but i will say my piece:

i will sneak around at night and chant flying dinosaurs back into the ears of once-were dreamers and declare it time for lovers to give each other ultimatums: so that we meet halfway between your heart and mine, and we find words enough to last us a dinner and we f*ck hard enough to sweat or by Jove, we drag the failure out the front of our suburbanite homes and bludgeon them to death with the blunt end of a spatula,
___i'll grab heads and slam them into the walls till they remember posters of Ferrari's and jets and muscle-cars that once breathed life into their bedrooms, one morning, where the occasionally bloodied body of failed spouses leak their bloodied sorrys down the gutters, thousands of 4-door sedans will go up in blazes, when over-weight mothers of two named Darlene and Sharon and Rosary flick matches into front seats soaked with gasoline and filled with beauty magazines and old VHS pornos and their sons' good-enough-to-be-average B+s and 81%s and stand back finally smoking the joint and sipping the rum they've forcefully avoided for decades.

children will rebuild the carousels and slides and swings that gangs and law-suit-fearing councils removed.

ordinary teens will open their pill bottles and notice for once and maybe even (cross-your-fingers) finally that the little fairies within their chemicals have long since died and these two fossils i take twice a day with water are the dead crusts and rough teeth of magic that alchemy denied us.

and mad and depressed and unmedicated and violent and drunk and plastered and enraged and horny and confused and lost and with voices in our heads and electricity in our brains we'll storm the streets and burn khaki pants and mid-season sales and standardized tests and prenuptial agreements where we find them. the midgets will find giants to dress as their jesters and the nerds will sport leather jackets and teach the jocks to pronounce Aeschylus while they drop acid and have threesomes and while the jocks will divine a new geometry.

as for hopes:
those our parents entrusted to us,
those we woke up after 3 hours sleep and with raw eyes and tirelessly faught for,

those whose hearts stopped in wars and car accidents
and discretionary marking and job reviews

those that arson gave back to the soil behind our backs,
those that we realized were beyond us:
___barred by inadequate minds
___start-up capital
___height and weight restrictions

those that arson gave back to apathy within our chests,
and charred and spitting ash we called our mothers to say we're fine mom and smiled to avoid questions from our wives and children, (while smoke signals drift out our noses, and our lips are ashed)

a rage, a plague, a torment upon such will be my religion.
and like Prometheus they will bind me and tie me to the top of a car and leave me like a cockroach pinned to a wall for the summer heat to molest.

and like Prometheus i'll be sorry i tried to defend this life.

and our mothers will smell the blankets we were born in for the scent of lily our skin once had.
then they'll knock on our doors and find us lying under our coffee tables with the lights off. staring at nothing and lacking energy to dream and quoting Beckett in response to every question, holding pens the way one holds chopsticks and using chopsticks to draw lines in the sand we know mean nothing by tomorrow morning.

goodnight.
and
good

luck___:

since god knows nothing else has the might to play chess with fortune.

sing me my pavanne,

i do not know how many of Milton's paradises have become lost for me.

___

16 mikrokosmos

I wish you were here
beside me, I'd talk until you were dizzy.

___from After Laforgue by John Tranter








untitled, by batak


___1.
'take two more.'
fitting words for drunks, addicts, hungry deserters
and unsupervised children.


___2.
'it was a fitting end'.
yes. __well. , even Orestes
___when paused his marathon to catch his breath
found a funeral prepared and an impatient procession
ready to bump him into the hole.


___3.
the child asks his mother to explain her mood to him.
wherefore she sits him upon her lap,
in utter silence, occasionally lightly blowing some air
over his ear ; so that he shivered with something not quite fright.
but not quite anything else either.


___4.
do you have a coffee table in your room? yes. and lamps? yes.
anything else? yes. it must be very festive, could you describe it?
visualize the moon.


___5.
_but he eventually found a solution.
he'd sit in a tree. a long while.
eventually he'd snap out of his trance and
accidentally go to step out from his perch.


___6.
laid out on the cold kitchen tiles
still.
right hand holding a bottle of soda on his belly,
upright and half full.
___'the refrigerator claims to be the return of 2007'
he says eventually.
still staring at the ceiling. (or behindyond


___7.
do you really wish i was there? what would you say to make me dizzy?
__

___8.
after sunset, they found three shopping carts at the edge of the parking lot,
filled them with incendiaries: books of old, gasoline, remembrances of things lost(found)
__
and laughed until the sun became too embarrassed to compete.

and danced,

_________breathing in fumes and spitting ashes.


___9.
do you really wish i was besides you? what would you say to make me dizzy?


___10.
'this is wrong, the queen of hearts is a duck,
and the heart is green'
___but he kept smoking and didn't look up at her


___11.
where are your glasses?
they must be wherever i left my eyes.


___12.
in this other world, where we're not allergic to cats and kisses aren't about infections,[1]
it snows for breakfast and we waltz on trains and sleep at night.
we fold up papers we don't like, kiss one corner, and attach them back onto trees -
so that our bank debts and breakups go from being lifelessly pale to engorged in nectar and their featureless expressions remember their ridges and folds ; in autumn they dream in red otherwise in green, and when the wind comes they remember to waive.
___in this other world, there is a seat besides me on every bus, reserved for you.


___13.
what would you say to make me dizzy?
___that love is time's child.
___hold my cold hand longer, maybe the lines on its palm point to you.


___14.
what would you say to make me dizzy?
___that i have failed at being a man because i have hidden the feathers of my wings in my socks.


___15.
when her teacher became worried she was speaking nonsense, they called in an expert.
'what do you mean little girl' she asked?
'these are brutal times. the fault-line revolution continues : this week's natural disaster is brought to you by Peru. Haiti. Vesuvius.
the women are beat. the men are poor.
the oil in the water is the blood of lambs and the silent stories even Oprah hasn't heard'.


___16.
in this other world

everybody's got to be somewhere

to make you dizzy i'd kiss your eyelid and exhale a blue breath you could save to remember me by in the blue Jupiter of your blue eye, and in your sleep i'd draw connecting lines between your freckles - in the evening the cosmos of the nightsky would smile at you as though a mirror, and then i'd jump up and down like when i'm excited and you'd hold my shoulders down until i'd demand the jetpacks we were promised and i'd blast off to

Everybody's got to be somewhere.

Save the last chance for me. [2]


*___*___*
[1] Where the Boys Are, John Tranter
[2] Sign Under Test, Charles Bernstein
__

GF Chronicles

The scratchy record by Casals,
inscribed on bakelite,
is still so far the best of Bach.

Play it late, say 3 a.m.,
and like some wild, forgotten child
you'll run all night the empty stairwells

flowering in the dark.

___from The Cello Sonatas of J.S. Bach, Geoff Page




it's sunny, but not enough to make you crazy. i lift her up, ostensibly to throw her into the water, she yelps and kicks. as i hold her i realise the throw-into-water idea may not be the best i've ever had. i put her down instead and say bye and run off. __not really. __i run 5 paces and then stop and turn around, by which time she's caught up. didn't get far she says and i say just far enough to make a statement. she nods and laughs (because she's thought-up her comeback: what's that?, that you're a fatso? (she continues laughing). ey! respect by authoritaa. [which is a southpark allusion, so, if there're any militant feminists out there reading this, you may save your harangue for another time, Ed]


*___*___*

__- what the eff is wrong with you, why do you keep freaking out?
__- ok, mental note for GF: do not lunge at my crotch, do not make any sudden movements, don't...
__- you_have_got_to_be -
__- ________________- do i look like i'm kidding you're freaking me out!
__- ok. so, what's your problem?
__- my, 'problem', lame-face, is you aren't well-trained.
__- trained? ____________[you can probably commence harangue now]
__- yup. all domesticated GF's know better than to make sudden movements towards a man's 'special' place.
__- firstly freakshow, this is the first i'm ever hearing about 'sudden movements', this isn't 'foreplay with miss daisy' ok? man-up or find the Lord and go team Celibate. secondly: your special place is the reserve section of the law library, or the 4 for $4 donuts counter at the 7/11, your penile-onium is not a special place.
__- i understand. i guess i'm going to have to make this simple for you. i'm issuing an ordinance
__- you can't,
__- ______i can and am
__- no, you can't! all ordinances, essential contractual terms or non-essential stipulations had to be made at time of BF-GF negotiations, for discussion and approval at such time. the time's up. you can't alter the agreement.
__- this is a matter of genital-security. genital security is like the defence budget, it knows no electoral promises. if a band of ruffian terrorist limbs, peripheries or enameled teeth make unprovoked attacks on it, special measures are called for.
__- fine. out of curiosity, i will allow you (and partially because i can't wait to embarrass you in front of your friends with this newest episode of buffoonery) to expound your ordinance.
__- oh. thankyou. so, may i proceed your GF-ness?
__- you may.
__- may it please the GF, i present for second reading and debate, the BILL entitled:

______GUIDE FOR APPROACHING MY CROTCH
________(1) give adequate warning/notice
________(2) move slowly
________(3) take an indirect route

__- __...
__- ____...
__- ______...
__- ________well?
__- BahahahHahahahHahahahahahahaha BA hahahHAHAHahahahHAhahah [con ad infinitum]


*___*___*

__- shutup. i'm having a fat day.
__- no. it's my turn to have a fat day i'm having a fat day!
__- too bad.
__- dude. look at me, i'm wearing my fat-day pants. i have to have my fat day today!
__- we can't both have fat days. and i'm having mine today.
__- goddamit, it's like dating Mussolini up in dis muah-fu'er


*___*___*

___GF: he beats me.
Friend: who? Q?
___BF: who, me?
___GF: yes! last night! you freaking battered-wifed me in your sleep.
___BF: excuse me, in my sleep, how much does that not count!
Friend: was he really asleep?
___GF: yes, he was scratching me with his toenails, he was like... shaking or something
___BF: thus we enter the realm of too-much-info
Friend: possibly, but continue,
___GF: so i put my hand on his shoulder because he's mumbling to himself in his dream of whatever
Friend: rright
___GF: and he jumps, when i touch him, i mean jumps up in bed shouting whatwhat! arms waving around smacking me what! what is that? who?
___BF: oh! i did not!
___GF: did you jump up in bed?
___BF: yes.
___GF: did you mumble something you don't remember?
___BF: yes.
___GF: right. and i'm telling you what you said.
___BF: i was having a bad dream! it's different. it's totally not battery.
Friend: what was the dream about?
___GF: so what was it?
___BF: automatism is a defense!
___GF: oh, that's soo much better. you automatically batter me in your sleep.
Friend: seriously, what was the dream about?
___BF: what.
___GF: this is the best part. tell him what the dream was about
___BF: ok, i have to put this in context
Friend: just say it!
___GF: he's allergic to cats
___BF: right. but i love them.
___GF: and he wishes he could have a cat so he could name it Hercules or something ridiculous
___BF: not Hercules! that's too obvious.
___GF: excuse me, Pericles.
___BF: yes. or Euclid. or Archimedes.
Friend: [laughing]
___GF: this is actually an improvement. until a week ago he wanted two dogs named Ratio & Obiter
Friend: what?
___GF: law-joke. don't worry. just imagine the geekiest thing every thought-up by man anywhere
Friend: so you were dreaming about a cat?
___BF: i thought it leapt up to scratch me!
___GF: [whiny voice] poor Q-bear. the little pussy jumped up to scratch him
Friend: [laughing]
___BF: [to Friend] eff you dolphin [to GF] eff you whale ...
___GF: w h a t .
___BF: that came out wrong.really.it did.you're the dolphin.definitely dolphin.yes dolphin [nodding rapidly]
___

text messages & their responses

found function 8 by nikki graziano


Him:
Ok im planning to be at yours around 10am. Gonna make this ish happen.

Me:
Sounds good. Exam results come out tomoorow. I may be unbearably chirpy or inconsolably glum; either way, I'll be off-balance

Him:
what's new?

Conclusion:
eff you dolphin, eff you whale


*___*___*

Me:
is it just me or is 'rock out with your flock out' a great name for a Christian youth rock concert? Omg. I'm onto something

Her:
You = genius. Please let me inappripriately touch you sometime because you are so genius. But 'jam out with your clam out' wins = electro pop group maybe?

Conclusion:
she's right. she wins.


*___*___*

Me:
The Valley = yuuuuuuuhhhm. Sunday sounds fine.

Her:
lined up at Spoon this very moment. Yum is not even the word.

Me:
What about kapow? I feel that any deficiency in yum's ability to express the valley is absent in kapow - making it a fitting description

Conclusion:
Q needs better vocabulary

__

a perfectly ordinary rainbow

There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
____from Song of the Lotos-Eaters, Tennyson








the ones we left behind by iNeedChemicalX


a perfectly ordinary rainbow, __yes, indeed.
__commonplace miracles now, mind your feet, there's one passing any given tuesday

these are clumsy times to fail ; it's a heavy price to pay to be caught-out watching balloons drifting away -
____you there, hey, you, yes youyouyou - we don't pay you to daydream
____what? whatever, that then, we don't pay you to imagine cloud-faces and taste autumn breezes
________(whatever that means)

more important you have medals and awards and certification to show for your brown eyes,
bruises on your hand and well-worn library cards are the work of hobbyists.
________(best call it quits right away if you think there's room for those on this boat)


*___*___*

__'but you know, i can't shake the future-fear'
__'in what sense?'
__'like... that i won't ever get a decent job. make ends. be... ya know, adultish'
__'oh right
__'you get that?'
__'no, not like that, but i get it'
__'you get it?'
__'yah. baby-clock. with women it's always love, marriage, babies, saggy boobs, that's our ticking clock. with men, paychecks and mercedes'
__'at least you get it.'
__'sure. __you'll be fine you know.'
__'sure i know it. __but believing it maybe...


*___*___*

[Q, a self-portrait]

the idea makes sense, but you were never really prepared to pay full-price for it.
sometimes you have to though.
all i'm saying is you're like a religion you only sometimes subscribe to;
__other times shifting uncomfortably in your chair when spoken about, or
__hustle for more pamphlets to prove the validity of.

decent enough, sure;sure, but when no one's looking you grow heavy like a paper-weight,
put down roots and mate with a coffee table so you're three quarters inanimate object,
a minor, man-shaped black hole in a bedroom in a house in a suburbanite night whatever after night
__despite the self-accreditation issues, you still hold out for the big miracle, thinking sooner
__maybe later, Stephen Hawking might come rolling in with a flashlight to mete out
__a string of equations to describe the luminosity of your internal organs sucking in through
__their own heavy gravity the breath they might have emitted.
__you want to solve the riddle of the secrets your lungs keep from you.

man-shaped black silhouette sitting on a couch drinking your tea, disappearing into, absorbed beyond some precipice, a boundary between knowable and human.

someone asks you your name you respond _nocturne. __liebestraum. __de profundis.
what should your tombstone read? 'the abuse of words: what's left (of/in 1 Act)'

when they leave you alone you read in silence. think in silence. dream in silence of what silence must sound like in dreams.

____the mirrors dance at you when you walk past.
____sometimes you notice it,
____other times... not.

last month you drank four energy drinks, several litres of green tea, popped a bunch of little white pills and stood on a vast lawn trying to explain to passer-byers that light was emanating from objects everywhere, escaping from skin and blades of grass and cement roads and traveling to a common goal only light knew why called the sun where they (freed from the constraints of us) ran amok and kissed with blazed tongues and lay on inferno lined couches and told their luminous stories in shaded languages; __awaking later with a migraine and your mother telling you to take the trash out.


sometimes you have to though,
__time's up despite the 30day money back,
__damn video's due back at the store if only you could find the case
____(and the soil chuckles at my ankles, licking its lips to swallow:
______just a lightly haired sack, like the skin of a kiwi, or a peach, filled to the brim with
________organelles and mismanaged possibility,

where've you been?, we haven't seen you in months she says
waits for your response, oh, you know, here and there, here and there
she keeps waiting... here and there, here and there, white rooms here or there.

it seems like a promising proposition.
but when you get the package home, you never had the confidence to take off the tags,
and it sat for 27 years wrapped (though occasionally poked at, sometimes even partially used)
your not being sure if you'd keep it.

____your mother says she loves you
____which you believe, but never quite understood.
____(just like your mother believed she loved you but could never quite understand how
______anybody else might)

all of which you avoid by sucking another frozen-iced-soda, watching repeats of Southpark and giggling yourself to some long-lost utopia of politically subversive wit ;

from a vantage point you watch yourself watch clocks, waiting the calender out.

in a notebook somewhere it's written that you'd like to take a year off, is that true?
yes.
and what would you do?
when?
during your year off.
oh. __collect flower petals, make gifts of them to people i loved. so people who smiled at me on trains, i could sit besides them when they eventually dozed-off and rub a petal across their cheeks and nose, and they would dream of being kissed by angels with satin lips and imagine walking across the moon where snow soft as baby fingers was stroking them; __people i knew better, my friends, i'd bathe them in ivory tubs of petals, for a little while they'd feel as though they were swimming across a lake in Olympus, or had stumbled back into their mother or were a bird's back being tickled mid-flight through the maze of cherry tree branches; __it could be a sort of gyro, a mechanism to translate the morse code of the heart to sensations transmitted through skin.
i see.
hmm. [nodding]

Exam Etiquette, a tragicomedy

untitled, batak


sure it's stressful. it's stressful for all of us. especially the girl who walks in wearing a blanket. throughout you see one pale hand, thin and attached to an elbow by a naked arm that hovers like a streak of halo atop the dark navy blanket-backdrop.

___three rows to her right and four desks in front of her, sits an exchange student. presumably from India; that is, if it is pee_see to presume. it's not. you can't say that someone 'looks' like they're from India. the dark skin, the accent, don' mean a thang. he sits (non-presumably from anywhere) with 14 writing utensils before him. a fluorescent yellow highlighter, one in green, one in pink. a red pen, 4 blue pens (2 bics and 2 gel fancy-pancy expensive $6 a pen thingees), 4 black (as before) and two pencils (one mechanical pacer; one 'pencil'-pencil). when he first sat down the boy besides him had said: yo, Picasso, are you here to write an exam or capture the essence in the room for all posterity in an enduring work of art? the (non-presumably) Indian shook his head in disgust.

___my GF laughs when the girl sitting in seat K-12 walks in; carrying three separate energy drinks and two digital clocks. one's just to count down and the other one i reset before i start each question she explains. my GF nods, then says in passing this exam's 2 hours long. there are 2 questions. so, you're right, keeping track must be difficult digital alarm girl doesn't notice because she's busy setting up her well-caffeinated command center.

___Rudolph shakes his leg neurotically for the first 34 minutes of the exam, until a moderator informs him the sound of the rattling is well past unbearable now. he shakes his head, apologizes genuinely. he continues to nod at a moderate speed for the remaining 86 minutes; the moderators leave him be because at least this compulsion is silent.

___the students sitting in seats L-24 and M-08 walk in with six A4 pages of notes. attached to these six single-sided pages are exactly 120 tabs, protruding from every edge of the six pages in a multitude of colours. so much time and fastidious care has gone into the preparation of these six pages of notes and their diligent annotations and tabulations, that the students sitting in seats L-24 and M-08 couldn't remember the title of the class they were commencing an examination for. Corporations law the students to their (respective) rights inform them. oh. i thought it had a more... specialized name. the students to their (respective) rights say nope, just corps law. you might wanna add a tab to remind you; though the wit is lost on the hapless duo who will spend the majority of the 120 minutes flipping through the six pages in an endless cycle of searching, still unable to find the case names, section numbers or summary of principles because despite the exquisite presentation of their six tabulated, annotated pages, they continue to know absolutely nothing about the material contained on those pages.

___Rachel Black is popular with the student body. she'll spend exactly 15 minutes of her exam staring at what people are wearing. Marcus D. will expend the duration of his perusal period arguing against his being forced to remove a baseball cap from off his head. he will lose the argument, but will reconvene the matter 2 hours and 8 minutes later, after having handed in his paper, gone to the restroom to pee, wash hands and face, and replaced his cap on his head. after a further 17 minutes of arguing with the head moderator and two of his deputies, Marcus declares the trio to be autocratic despots on a pathetic power trip, adding to the two gentlemen of the trio, that viagra may assist with their sexual dysfunction, but not with their predilection for catamites (a matter that will later be reported to the school board, but will not be enthusiastically pursued on account of the school board chair agreeing with Marcus - at least to the extent of 'autocratic despots on a pathetic power trip').

___Michael's S and B, Michelle Rudney, Mich Dartcourt, Micky B. and Mikella R. will all leave their exams early because they know to a certainty they'll fail. At least in the case of Mikella, her father will huff and puff, but when she cries and feigns depression will forgive her and allow her to spend her vacation sunbathing on a beach 4 hours from home to 'settle her djinns'. Mich Dartcourt just met a girl he'll marry three years from today so he couldn't give a' capital eff about the exam (as he put it).

___seat F-27 is empty because the would-be occupant was having her breasts massaged by her (on-again) boyfriend. after an unfortunate mishap erased all her semester's notes from off her computer, she methodically cried on 9 separate occasions over a period of 8 days in 7 separate offices to 6 separate faculty members and signed 5 different declarations of good faith to defer all 4 of her exams. at the time of writing she continues to engage in the on-again portion of a destructive-romance-melodrama that will eventually see her becoming a depressed 3-gins-before-breakfast housewife, regular Gucci patron and in-the-closet poster-girl for upmarket battered-wife syndrome (the consequent black eyes of which will be concealed by various pairs of $350 sunglasses).

___Cornelius masturbates before every exam, so he strides in calmly, takes his seat, writes a decent exam in legible handwriting, and maintains a solid credit average.
___Cordelia is still a virgin, and has the sweetness to prove it; she doesn't have a clue in hell what she's missing, so she strides in just as calmly, takes her seat, writes a more than decent exam in exemplary handwriting, and maintains a solid distinction average. a few hours after the exam Cordelia and Cornelius will meet in the uni tavern, share a few drinks, half a dozen coffee & movie sessions over the period of their semester break, and fall madly deeply and sincerely in love. they will live a largely secure and fulfilling life and most of their friends will be two-faced jealousy-infected brats who will hate them to death (but who smile when they come into a room, and will continue to invite them to occasional BBQs). Cornelius and Cordelia will not really care either way, being happy enough handling their own bizniz.

___i walk into every exam wearing more-or-less whatever i've been wearing since my last shower. usually this means a grandfather cardigan i wear around the house which comforts me and a tshirt. had it not been for an off-putting first-semester encounter with a tiny blonde who sat her mid-afternoon chemistry exam in full-pyjamas (with a cow pattern) i'd likely also come wearing pyjama bottoms. as it stands, i have discontinued that, meaning, i usually do change my pants, replacing my pyjama bottoms with whatever pair of jeans is lying on the floor (and has been lying on the floor since i took them off after antecedent exam(s)) and will continue to lie on the floor after this (present) exam until the next exam. i carry in my hands a water bottle and my glasses case. in my classes case are three pens. two black, 0.5mm micro uniballs (at a price of $6 each) and one blue. i will complete my examination using only one pen. in case of the pen's ink being depleted, spontaneous deconstruction, space-time evacuation or leakage, i will then put the damaged (martyred) (mourn not for those who go in the Lord) pen aside, and continue with one of the replacements. in my right front jean pocket is a small plastic pill case. it usually contains 4-6 small white tablets which i use to offset irrational bouts of paranoia; panic/anxiety attack induced feelings of impending doom, certain abject failure or vomit; reasonable fatigue from having slept an average of 3.7 hours over the preceding 3 weeks (leading logically to: vertigo, tremors, cold sweats and a hazy fuzz of static meaningless white confused mayhem blahblahblah in my head, from which formulation of grammatically functional sentences will be impossible. usually, after having sat down in my seat i will approximate the necessary dosage to off-set aforementioned effects (side, front and behind effects) and effect ingestion. as a consequence of ingestion (of approximated necessary dosage of), by the 23rd minute of my administrative law exam i will be unable to feel my peripheries (including lips). similarly, during my wills & estates exam i completely lose track of all my surroundings and write in lieu of an exam answer, a first-person narrative from the perspective of the chief Master of the Court of Chancery (circa 1600 AD), detailing not only the rationale for various legal precedents, statements of policy within their historical context, and so forth, but also the sadness he felt in putting down his horse Gunsynd, his preference for dark to light rum, and various brief amorous trysts. by the time my Evidence exam comes around i am baffled to be in the midst of a completely unprecedented case of incontinence such that i maintain a trickle of urination for the better part of a (continuous) three hours pre-exam. with an uncomfortable wet patch and inexplicable physiological meltdown, i decide to approximate necessary dosage to the max biatch, and complete my examination in a transcendent amphetamine spiritual nirvana from which i awake some 48 hours later on my couch with a bad-ass headache. i am later told that my (entirely medicine-induced) attempts to express my answer to question 1 part b of the exam paper as a barefoot interpretive dance in the examination hall was not unanimously approved of; and in light of this nonacceptance, i am informed there is some possibility a disparaging letter of notice may accompany my final results.

___Supportive, balanced, centered, yoga-going, part-time-working, socially accepted Suzie will still top every class she is in (and go on to be a good-spirited High Court Justice).

___