Spiritus Mundi

It’s been an odd week or so at school: things seem to be proceeding just fine in the classroom, but around campus, all sorts of odd little confrontations and conflagrations keep sprouting up. For instance, I had to break up an almost-fight between a couple of students last Friday, or for another, more than one of my fellow faculty members have received sort of veiled threats from students, or at the very least have been the implied target of implied aggression, whether or not those threats or aggression really have any authentic intent behind them.

On the one hand, I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for this—it’s the start of the school year, folks are adjusting to new schedules and demands; the economy sucks and that makes people more stressed-out and brittle than usual; as faculty union president, I tend to hear more about this stuff these days even if similar things have gone on in the past—but the hippie in me wants to make sense of the situation by ascribing it to something more: the movement of the Sun in Scorpio, maybe, or perhaps some emerging zeitgeist struggling to be born—but whatever the case, it sure seems to be coming in waves, and the more it piles up, the more it piles up, those waves crashing harder and harder against the shore we cling to in what increasingly seems like a vain attempt to persevere.

I’m usually not such a downer, but it’s hard to feel otherwise when the gyre seems to keep widening and the worst remain so full of passionate intensity. Unlike Yeats, I don’t imagine any Second Coming—I’m not even convinced there was ever a first—but I do think the spirit of the world is hurting right now.

I’ve been planning on going as a Hooters girl (or perhaps ghoul) for Halloween night; maybe instead, I’ll dress up as a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.