a landslide brought me down

[tsubame]

I went to talk to my favorite professor about my paper. While I was there we ended up talking about his dog, and he received a call from his wife about dinner that evening, about picking up his son at school. He smiled at me as I left, and I just looked at him for a moment, thinking: how wonderful it must be, to have a job and a family and a house. How wonderful to have an office full of books, to have a son to pick up from school and a dog that barks at snow plows and the moon. How wonderful to have dinner with your family, to pay bills and taxes, to hang pictures on your newly-painted wall. How wonderful to have colleagues and a briefcase, how wonderful to wear a tie to work. How wonderful to have lines around your eyes from smiling, and students who are perhaps a little bit crazy, like your dog that barks at snow plows and the moon, who sit in your office and carry doubts as heavy as their books.