Focus, Allegories, Subconscious rulings.

I should be working on studying for the English exam—the one exam that you really can’t study for, at all, besides general preparation and looking at terms. And the terms won’t even really help you unless you can apply them. So I really should be studying for History (Spanish isn’t even worth studying for, at this point. I will get a two, and I am resigned to that fact and have moved on with the intent of passing the two classes I actually care about) right now. Especially since I left the house a few hours ago, walked to work, worked for a few hours, and then had dinner with a friend, and now am procrastinating by starting up a blog entry… and I only have two hours of library time left… and the exams are Thursday and Friday, respectively…

But instead, I find myself fascinated by the way in which these exams have completely overrun my consciousness. Seriously! And that got me started thinking about how my consciousness is in general often overrun by some obsession or other, and that I really am driven by my subconscious. These exams right here? I have been revolving around them for the past month. Everything I hear, after the initial processing, is processed in terms of English Literature and Composition, and then related to European History. And it is driving me crazy. We’re playing Peter and the Wolf, and I found myself noticing that the composer’s name is Russian, which made me pause and check the date at the bottom of the page, which was 1937, which made me start thinking about what the Deeper Meaning of the song could be. And I came up with this whole extended metaphor (which there is a term for that I don’t remember, and should) about how it Must Be! That the Wolf is Germany, and the Duck is Austria, and Peter is Russia, and the Hunters are Britain and America and probably France, and I don’t know who the Bird is, but now that I think of it, probably either Italy or the Underground, which means that whichever it is, the Cat would be the other one. (On further contemplation, I decided that the Bird was France, and the Cat was the Underground throughout Europe, or possibly Italy.) The Grandfather is probably the League of Nations, or possibly… the Grandfather is… well, let’s see here. The Bolsheviks had had to make some embarrassing concessions to get out of WWI, and the peace was never easy between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. So possibly the Grandfather is Lenin, and Peter is Russia under Stalin. Or the Grandfather is that original ‘alliance’ between the Soviets and the Nazis.

And everything is like that right now. What is it, I wonder, that makes my mind so easily aligned with a single concept, or a certain set of ideas?

Normally, with a topic such as this, I would take a walk, and articulate it fully in my mind before presenting whatever I’d found to a close friend, and we would joke and discuss by turns, and then I would turn all that over in my head, and take a long walk or something to articulate that, and then write it up here. But instead, I wound up punching in with my friend to unload a bunch of hardware at work, and then we talked about money and power and freedom, and how those three are related, inter-dependent, opposed concepts. And although it was an excellent conversation! I have no long blog post, because alas! My mind is focused on European History and English Composition. And perhaps I could free it to talk of the subconscious mind, for a time, but maybe not, and I need the focus, as detrimental to others’ perception of me as it is.

So anyway, there you have it. With enough stretch, anything becomes a metaphor for anything else. This is what it’s like being in my brain, where I can break literally anything into symbolism, and if this really is a book someone’s writing, they seriously need to let up on the symbolism. Who do you think you are, James Joyce?