Horror Story: Visiting the English Department
This is what the walk up to the top floor, where the English department is located, looks like. Abandoned mental institution standard of creepy, if you ask me. You rarely bump into anyone, climbing or descending. Later, when you reach the top floor you find yourself in a maze of narrow hallways that stretch on into several doors you have to walk through while wearing a confused expression. I walked around the entire floor twice in a full circle looking for a professor's office, poking my head into another room to ask someone for directions in a moment of desperation after I twice passed by an old rickety professor wheeling his bike toward his office and it got awkward for both of us, turning a corner to have to walk down the long, quiet hallway toward each other.
...You again.
I would've taken more photographic proof of the ridiculous layout of the place, but it was quite simply impossible. There are walls overlapping walls, and passageways fit for a single body. Interesting word choice, I guess, using "body" instead of something like, "person." I was just thinking about it being a suitable set for a horror film, where people get lost in the English department, and end up dead. Panic attack? Claustrophobia? Psycho professor mad about plagiarizing students?
Can you tell I don't hang out at the English department much? That was my second time there in two years.
That little adventure ended the semester for me. I can now get back to a bunch of exciting things waiting for my full, undivided attention.
Life has moved on, as it does, since the bombings. A city shut down for an entire day as authorities hunted a nineteen year old. It was as insane as it sounds. I have a lot of thoughts on the issue, the brothers, and the city, but it's a real downer to get into. I've refrained from reading news sites for a few days now, because some of the headlines still scream of the whole horrible ordeal. Dzokhar's young face stares back at me through the screen on some of those sites, and I feel a deep sadness rise within me as I wonder many things.
The backlash has returned, or become more pronounced, since it's always been there. Muslims on a universal scale are being held responsible for radical Islamists (this is not news, obviously). Some of the dialogue going on over here right now is both frightening and amusing, to say the least. Suggestions of eradicating all Muslims from America to guarantee safety from terrorism and violence against Americans. But ignorance breeds arrogance. How about the US stop breaking international laws in their continuous bloodlust in foreign lands? Maybe stop massacring people on a whim in their own nations, and perhaps don't torture people, because that sort of thing can break a person.
The other morning I was walking home when a white man paused at his doorstep to glare at me in a way that might intimidate me, before stepping into his house.
It's strange now, to have to wonder why a white person stares at you when you walk down the street, and if the reason is what you think it is. Because the color of your skin represents what they detest, or fear. You are not like them, they want to remind, inform you.
No, I am not.
