Kill Shot

A university whose classes take place in an office building portends sterility.

The barren rooms where the clinical psychology courses take place here are as exciting as a Skinner maze. There is a quiet relentlessness in these rooms. A relentlessness of theory, guided meditations, and open circle jerks of self-awareness and reflection.

I walk the fine line between what is learning and what is bullshit in rooms sticky with faux compassion. In rooms filled with women with sawdust hearts who boast about their guilt relative to their white privilege. In rooms filled with slight men blue-balled by their intellect after having become towers of strength via the groveling acceptance of their own deficiencies.

I’ve got 2 and a half quarters to go. Ten weeks to a quarter. This mindfulness class is in its fifth week

It is funny to see the face of the mindfulness teacher fill with rage, his pupils dilating, and red rivers of blood crackling across the whites of his eyes.

“What have you got to say. You haven’t asked a question all class?” Professor Mindfulness pointedly fumes.

His Buddhist demeanor has cracked. The frigid fortress of his lineages drop away. A diplomacy of nothingness gives way to the rage of something.