Irony ... creatively

Tomorrow Columbia will administer a test to me that will help them decide if I'm worthy of giving them thousands of dollars. For this, I have set myself an academic diet of regular almanac and world map digestion. This has been difficult to do. Not because of my attention span; I love reading the almanac. No, my lack of focus comes from inspiration. 

When I start to try to study, I get suddenly inspired. I want to write down all my news ideas and e-mail my writer to do a story on the thing I'm reading about, I want to blog about it, I want to write a poem, etc.

Such happened today in my public management course. My teacher was giving me the quick and dirty on American politics. This information would probably have helped me tomorrow ... had I been at all able to pay attention to the poor woman. I wasn't. Again, inspiration hit. Her appearance alone caused my pen to erupt on the left, usually blank, side of my notebook.

*

Her cheeks sag around her cleft lip which seems to deepen the fissures that define her chin, carved from the rest of her face; like a canyon -- not water: age.

Her gold-framed glasses reflect the fluorescent light, protecting the boil under her right eye from scrutiny. A bubble of skin bumping into her bright, blue pupil.

She was exactly whom I would want to teach Public Management. She looked like every lady in Orono's town office. Her short, orange-blonde ruffled mane looked like it was trying to escape her forehead. This was most likely a side effect of wearing a green cap of a winter hat that clashed against the pair of bright red gloves laying underneath the olive rumple beside her podium.

Her rings, nail polish, necklace and large, solid, circular earrings carefully chosen -- probably the night before. Her cardigan sweater the exact color of her sea-wash eyes. A yellow turtleneck beneath.

Her name is Marie. Marie probably did not have a doctorate. She used not-words including "irregardless." This one in particular made my itch all over. She wrote her name on the board with chalk -- in cursive -- something that is no longer taught in grade schools. Next to her perfectly curved name, she listed her home phone number. This said something. First, she was old. She did not have a cell phone. 

*

It is not finished, it was just a blurb my pen spouted in class as she lectured about the Articles of Confederation. I couldn't help it.

Which makes me wonder: Columbia, what would you want? Someone who pays attention to American politics, world affairs and geography; or someone so inspired by the mundane that she can not keep the words in her hand anymore, they must pour onto the page or risk being pent up with the unborn ideas, projects, dreams? 

I'm a writer. It's what I need, and the only thin I can do to be fulfilled, and if this is not enough for a school, thats OK because it always will be for me.