Q&A
Day and Night #3 (2012) by Jung Lee
C-type Print, 175 x 140cm, Edition of 5 plus 2 AP
By Carina Cain
The Thursday before I graduated from college, I woke up in a panic because I dreamed I couldn’t remember the quadratic formula. Then, as my eyes unstuck and slivers of late moonlight crept in through the blinds, I realized maybe I couldn’t remember the quadratic formula in awake life, either. -B plus or minus the square root of what? Over what? All this schooling, and for what? Not being able to remember the quadratic formula—one of the most integral formulas in all of learning. I could have cried. In order to calm myself down, I tried to remember the foggy details of the horrible dream that had spurred me awake instead.
An illuminated bus stop and the persistent hum of a single synth note bleating into the night. The soundtrack to my life as a movie, maybe, if it was ever exciting enough to hold an audience. Me in that bus stop, waiting for something to come take me away. I had watched Harry Potter for the first time in about a decade the day before, so maybe it was the drama of the London public transportation system mixed with cinematic unrealism that was to blame for this peculiar situation.
In this dream, my vision pulsed, like the contracting ventricles of an exposed heart. In this dream, I felt exactly like this: uncovered and open to interference. Trying to keep a steady rhythm. One time, freshman year, I took a music theory class and on the midterm, the professor included an extra credit question. Extra credit in college is a mythical creature that only occasionally emerges from the bodies of soon-to-be tenured, often annoyed educators. So this question was to be considered an undeserved delicacy. I unwrapped it, prepared to consume and enjoy the treat. Maybe lick my fingers after, in victory. The question in question was,“How do you spell this definition: the systematic arrangement of musical sounds. Hint: it’s the tattoo on my lower forearm I showed you all last week.” I knew this definition and I knew this tattoo—was mildly perturbed by it for reasons, now looking back, I couldn’t rightly justify. I was an eighteen-year-old hater and maybe it was kind of an ugly tattoo. That’s how I justified it at the time. Anyway, I knew the word and was alarmed to realize that I couldn’t place the correct number of h’s and y’s appropriately. My stomach snarled and told me to get it together. I had skipped breakfast on account of nerves on account of midterms. How many h’s? How many y’s? Unknowing paused me. Deliberation moved time too quickly, to the point where I was jotting down an answer I knew was wrong. Rhythym. Rythm. I couldn’t remember which sequence of letters I ended up going with, but it was one of these two monstrosities. The test had gone well enough until I’d been confronted with this extra credit nightmare. I turned in the final product but felt disgusting while doing it. Too many y’s, not enough h’s. What a disaster.
This same echo of malaise permeated my dream. The synth droned on. I felt like a neon sign, a glowing thing placed out in the open with the hope of attracting attention. Really, I hated attention unless it was on my own terms, as anyone who has ever been catcalled might tell you, so it was even more unsettling to discover that dream-me couldn’t stand up or flee to any cover other than this very chic, very modern bus stop. Maybe I was in Luxembourg, or some other semi-mythical European country, rooted to the metal seat like a giant, liberal-arts-student-shaped magnet. In all my neon glory, I imagined myself both a threat and threatened. Touch me and I’ll break apart and argon all over you. Asphyxiation warning. Touch me and I won’t break, and with the right tools you’ll be able to bend me any way you want. Elemental manipulation. Frightened, I tried to remember the quadratic formula, but could not. I tried to remember the mathematical circumstances for its usage, but could not. Even more frightened, I screamed when a figure materialized on the bench next to me.
Who? Only the human embodiment of every young-almost-graduate’s nightmare dinner guest: The Professor You Had Dirty Thoughts About That One Time. In this dream-case, it was my fall semester junior year Economics 303 professor Dr. Addy Sondheim. A genius so hot and so intimidating in her middle age, you were bound to cry at least one time in class. Whether the tears could be attributed to her extraordinary grasp on the subject matter at hand, the abject failings of American economics, her intimidation tactics, or her hotness, no one could really say. But certainly, no matter the circumstances surrounding a student’s mid-lecture breakdown, her hotness was a major contributing factor.
“Addy,” I said, but very carefully and somewhat tentatively, because what they don’t tell you about liberal arts school is that most professors invite students to call them by their first names in conversation, which is exactly as jarring and unnatural as you might expect calling your parents by their first names in conversation to be. And while this invitation is usually extended kindly, you sometimes get the impression that having tens of self-important-barely-post-teens, some of whom have the audacity to play devil’s advocate when talking about trickle-down economics, calling them, a scholar of their field with friends among the likes of Robert Reich, what their own spouse and other equals call them in intimate settings, causes physical pain.
“What are you doing here?” Dr. Sondheim asked.
“No, what are you doing here?” I asked. My dream-brain said this was far too inflammatory a question, but what do you know, I went ahead and asked it anyway. Because there is little to no free will in dreams, apparently.
“I’m waiting for the bus,” Dr. Sondheim said.
This made perfect sense. We were, after all, seated at a bus stop. Maybe Dr. Sondheim had all the answers I needed.
“Where does it go, and why can’t I get up?” I asked.
Dr. Sondheim considered me in the way that cats sometimes consider people: disinterested and with an innate superiority that is somehow projected from within their very soul. “You tell me. I’m just waiting for the bus.”
Answers were eluding me. So was Dr. Sondhiem. Her face and body rippled like a flag catching the breeze. Suddenly, I felt desperate to anchor Dr. Sondheim next to me, permanently, or for a few more moments at least. I needed answers. What words could I use to starch and iron her into place?
“I’m graduating next week,” I said.
“Ah,” said Dr. Sondheim, “and was college all you hoped it would be?” Her voice rang out in the way metal does when it hits another piece of metal. A hollow clash.
“I don’t know,” I said. What a pitiful sequence of words, but one that could probably apply to multiple elements of my higher education experience. The quadratic formula didn’t even begin to cover it.
Dr. Sondheim regarded me again, and her expression was fairly gentle, but then she said: “Well, what do you know?”
Crying was not something I did a lot, but was certainly something I put off doing a lot. I put it off again in light of this question, in light of this dream that was slowly unraveling my stoic, sleeping self.
“It doesn’t have to be about economics,” Dr. Sondheim supplied, very helpfully, but in that same unbothered, metallic tone, which definitely made putting off crying even harder.
“Um,” I said, with a sharp, falling feeling, even though I was still stuck to the bench. “I know about alluvial fans. Not a ton, but enough.”
“Alluvial fans,” Dr. Sondheim repeated.
“Yeah, the fan-shaped sedimentary deposits that form at the base of escarpments.” The definition was supplementary, but correct.
“And how do you know enough about alluvial fans? You’re not an ENVS major are you?”
“No,” I said, blushing. “I just took a geology class last year.”
“Why’d you do that?” The question was innocent, but the impact was astounding. My dream brain struggled to crank open the can of Why I Did The Things I Did, And The Subsequent Effects of Doing Them.
Why did I take a geology class? So I could walk around outside in the rain and look at the ground? No, that was an Effect. I reached out with my feelings.
“At the end of the semester, our lab group took a bus from Tacoma to Mount Saint Helens, and the forecast had been pretty torrential leading up to that Saturday, and we had to wake up before sunrise, so when we all piled on the bus it was in that unprocessed waking stage where you feel like getting out of bed that morning was probably the hardest thing you ever had to do in your whole life. But then someone checked their phone and discovered that the weather had inexplicably cleared up for the entire day. So we’re all on this bus, and this guy Steve is driving, and he keeps telling us how incredible Mount Saint Helens is, and everyone started to get a little giddy, because it was really hard not to believe Steve, he was so enthusiastic, and we were getting off campus, and nobody was thinking about finals, and it was going to be clear and close to sixty degrees. Well, we’re on this bus watching the sun come up, and it’s spring time, so everything is green. So green, it was hard to distinguish any other color through the window. Then we get there and the mountain isn’t even a mountain, it’s a stratovolcano, so it looks like this pile of ice cream that someone’s scooped into. So we get out of the bus, and this guy Patrick who exclusively wore Crocs asks about hiking to the crater, because he was an ENVS major and had lost two toes from hypothermia while climbing somewhere in Patagonia, and our professor goes, ‘Patrick don’t be ridiculous, we’re only hiking around the mountain. Crater equals danger.’ Peter was disappointed, but most of us were relieved because once we got near to the base of Mount Saint Helens, she really was intimidating. There was regrowth, yes, but you could still see the huge path of destruction. So we hiked around the mountain, and everything was blooming, and everyone was getting sunburned, and we all had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. And I don’t know how to explain it, but it was one of those moments that felt like how I expected college to feel all the time. Actively learning just for the sake of learning. Retaining information because all of the information you’re supposed to be absorbing for retention is right there in front of you. Proof.”
I expelled a dream breath and turned to face my professor. She was actually glowing. Her perfect profile was lit up turquoise and magenta. I could see her pulse through her blue neck.
“Well,” Dr. Sondheim said, “that sounds like a pleasant enough experience. Why are you crying?”
I touched my hot, wet face and laughed. “I think I expect things to be much different than they end up being a lot of the time. I’m about to be really in control of my life and I don’t know what to expect. I might disappoint myself.”
Dr. Sondheim turned her full face to me. “Look. Nobody is ever really in control of their life. That’s just how it goes. Your expectations, your decisions—they don’t exist in a void. Life doesn’t exist in a void. No matter what you do, nothing will ever match your expectations. Sometimes reality is worse, sometimes it’s better. Sometimes it’s just different and fine. You’ll definitely disappoint yourself. But then you’ll do something really cool, and that disappointment will have served a purpose. You’ll have an asshole boss, but you’ll still love your job. Or you’ll have the most amazing boss in the world, but undergo an existential crisis every time you have to talk about your job out loud. I’m not speaking on interpersonal relationships because it seems equally relevant to the snot trail you have going on, and I am sorry, but I simply don’t have the bandwidth to therapize you in that capacity right now. I’ll say this. People are like jobs, some are good for you and some aren’t, but they all leave an impact and that’s still important. You’re young and being an adult all of a sudden is weird, but most everything about everything is weird once you think about it enough, so don’t doubt yourself before you’ve even had the opportunity to fall on your face. Assume you’re rational and go from there.”
“A key economic principle,” I said. My face was still hot, but less wet.
“Obviously,” said Dr. Sondheim. She stretched out her neck to look down the road. “This bus isn’t coming. That’s fine, I’ll walk.”
I scrambled to pry myself from the bench as she stood and glowed above me. “Wait,” I said, “what about the quadratic formula?”
Dr. Sondheim didn’t smile fondly, as she might have in the movie version of this indie drama dreamscape. She did roll her eyes. “Not my kind of question. Google it, if you must.”
With that, she glowed out of existence, the synth cut off like a pulled cord, and I was awake. -B plus or minus the square root of what? Over what? I could picture its fuzzy shape in my mind. Numbers and letters and a problem to be solved. My body adjusted to being awake and my brain followed. No way was I about to Google it. Gradually, I willed the dream panic away. Gradually, the shape of the answer came into focus and it looked like this:
Carina Cain is a Bay Area local who graduated from Lewis & Clark College with a B.A. in English. She is admittedly too fond of the hyphen, and wholeheartedly believes that arts education is fundamental to the well-being of society.
