"I'm riding the highway of synchronicity" -- John Constantine, our heroic Hellblazer, in a moment of uncharacteristic intelligence.
I'm usually pretty impatient with Hellblazer as a comic. I think Mr. Constantine, whilst most certainly a strong, no-nonsense, heroic fighter-of-weird-and-evil-shit, is a shallow bitter bastard. For somebody as smart as he is, he outta've grown out of the self-pitying stage several dozen issues ago.
But in the original books of magic, he had a moment, three pages at least, where he actually made me think. The shallow poncey git actually taught me something.
A cigarette falls from his fingers , and an entire room of bumpin' uglies and occult nasties go *quiet*. I swear I actually heard the cigarette hit the floor."You know who I am, you know what I can do, the boy leaves with me." he says, or something close enough to that to not warrant me having to go look it up...
And the boy leaves with him. On their way out Zandramas confronts Constantine and says "How did you do that? You have no powers to speak of! Any one of them in there could've taken you."
"I'm riding the highway of synchronicity."
I know that feeling.
At least I knew it. Then this craze of courseload and demoralizing job hit me square in the sternum and I think I was shaken a little...
May have flipped off the edge a little...
But last night, locked up in Johnny's room (he was playing EQ in mine) with my textbook, a pen, and a glass of caffeine, I think I remembered a thing or two about how the rush through my brain is supposed to feel...
See, I'm worried that I'm losing the brilliance I swear was in me when I was a kid. Admittedly, it's hard to be the ultimate thinker in a University of 20,000 as opposed to a class of 85, but I'll settle for penultimate...
Average, however, hurts. It's jarring when the kids around me pick up and run with ideas the way I used to.
On top of that, I haven't been into it the past couple of years. I haven't been interested, even. I'm not the "gotta show up the teacher and get an A just to piss them off" student I was in CEGEP...
It's not that I don't care, it's that I care about, y'know, other stuff. I feel like I'm wearing someone else's mask.
I'm so bleeding tired of school...
But last night, book in hand, I tuned out the world and found the flow and covered a chapter and had an epiphany about non-procedural programming and I might actually be prepared for Friday's midterm for the first time in two years.
This week is one of those weeks that when it's over I'm going to slide it out like the little lead plates in the bottoms of vertical blinds, and stack it with a handful of other "useful but not pretty" moments of my uprising.
I hate this week. I've got nothings but caffeine left in my veins, nothing but "what did I have to do next" in my head, and my body is just the dilapidated old car getting me from Point A to Point W.
This week, I am putting myself in a jar to rest, and next week I will worship you again.
Or maybe it'll take more than a week... But this semester...
Hopefully it's my last. Ever.
And in the meantime, I'm holding on to last night's epiphany. Last night's adrenaline rush, last night's re-entry onto my highway.
And I promise, it's going to be a wild, wild ride, soon as I figure out these here gear-shift thingies.
Anyone want to teach me how to drive?