Damnatio memoriae

ii. the experiment

I am so tired by the time I reach my apartment, I don't even think of food. The gray haze has enveloped all but the bobbing idea of sketching out cursed lines on my study floor. I shed my bag and shoes by the door, eschewing to turn on lights, and stumble my way to the study, the sheaf of papers clutched in my hands. I orient vaguely to the worn-down couch there and collapse onto it, eyeing the figures scrawled on the papers. Mephistopheles, I mouth, eyes tracing the lines. My eyes are too heavy to stop them from closing.

When I wake, it's to the thunderous roar of the city snowplow passing my building. Sprawled as I am on the couch, I can feel my neck sore from having been fixed in place, and my mouth is parched. I can hear the peaceful click of the heater in the morning air. I struggle upright, reaching up to rub at my face, only to find I'm still holding a paper. Squinting, I rear back enough to allow the shapes to come into focus.

Mephistopheles. I smile at it. A bit of that same, strange, forbidden joy rises in my chest. I have a project for the weekend. I put the paper gently on the worn couch, and stand, listening to my joints crack. I'm absolutely not checking my emails. It's only going to be all 800 students asking for a grade change.

On my way to the kitchen for some water, I prompt my computer out of sleep. May as well check and see the boundaries and limits of this purification and fasting period. I have enough resources bookmarked to bring together a more comprehensive picture of what they expected to be a fasting and purification period. Some of it would be obvious-- no sex, no food, no alcohol-- but then there were always unexpected rules that would have made sense during the time.

I gulp down two glasses of water before I'm slaked and bring a third back to my desk. I'm in a surprisingly light mood, in spite of last night. A small hint of the reason for my depression last night-- Dear Doctor Faust-- rises to my mind, but I bury it in mounds of notes. It is late afternoon by the time I raise my head from my work. My head feels clearer than it has in months. I have another full 24 hours fast, and then I begin to prepare for the ritual. Something small and dark dislodges itself in the back of my brain, scampering around and whispering at me that this is insane, I need to get a grip, get something to eat, check my emails, face reality. I close my eyes against the mental onslaught.

What am I doing?

When I open my eyes, I can see the late afternoon sun slanting in through my study windows, staining the room with an amber light. The frantic inner deluge of recriminations is silenced by the beauty. I find myself hitching a sigh.

Who cares? Who's here to notice? What harm is in a weekend of escapist nonsense?

I reflect ruefully perhaps this isn't as harmless to my mental health as escapist nonsense, but really it affects no one but myself. I know already how all of this will play out. I'll fast for another day, work myself through the orderly spectacle of the arcane, and by the end of it probably feel weirdly refreshed. Just challenging myself to do something radically different, something ordered and meaningful with an ephemeral purpose, should be enough to wrench myself out of the gray haze.

All the same, I feel fatigue dragging me back. It's the same at the end of every semester since grad school, the scurry from November to December, but now as a professor that down time has narrowed to a weekend or two around Christmas. I had thought by this point I would be famished, but really I don't feel anything. Perhaps a shower would be good, though, I reflected.

I thumb through notices on my phone as I scuff through the hallway to the bathroom, reading but not understanding the words. I see news alerts, emails from names I realize are my colleagues and students, one certainly from Carl, but I can't seem to focus on the text. I deposit the phone with a clatter onto the bathroom sink and start the taps in the tub in nearly the same move. I hadn't bothered moving out of this relatively cramped apartment in the years since I've started teaching at the university. Sometimes I reflect that a cramped bathroom wasn't what I had been looking forward to as an ambitious young grad student.