Rolling Heads

A meditation on deadlines by an academic in the throes of scholarly procrastination. I wrote this three years ago and thought I'd share it.

I have a deadline. A deadline. The weight of it is pushing against my body. It’s pushing against my mind. My mind that wanders. My mind is being pushed against and yet still… my mind is wandering. Wandering out the window, and towards the hills. Wandering through the feathers of the birds who have started their mating at least one full moon cycle earlier than… than what I grew up to know. Earlier than what the world evolved to know before Industry laid his hand upon her. My mind wanders further and plays on the winds. The winds that blow the scents of come-too-early spring through my window. And so my mind returns. I look to my computer. I have a deadline.

A deadline.

How am I to get these things done? There is rain now. A gentle rain, not cascading. My washing is on the line – it will remain untended. Because I have a deadline. A deadline. But I’m not here. I’m somewhere. Where am I? 

A fracture appears in me. The fracture disjoints me. I tell myself it’s time to grow up. The larger part of me knows how wrong I am in thinking that ‘growing up’ is a destination worth fighting for. But it is not the larger part of me that has the weight of a deadline behind it. And the weight is heavy. Every day it creeps closer, and I hunch over my computer, pretending to be busy. 

Perhaps it is that the more my mind is pushed against, the more it wanders. Or the further. Across the paddocks and down the river and interweaving with nitrates and algal blooms, down into the mouth where it opens into the ocean where there are beautiful things and mysterious things and dying things. So many dying things. Death, death, so much death.

What am I doing with my life? I just want to help. It’s not even that I want to aspire to something. Not anymore. I just want to make a difference. I chose this. I chose deadlines. But it’s hard to feel where the connection is made between this need and that need – the earth calling us back to her, inviting us to expand our senses and lay our hands to the soil in a loving way, to lay our hands to each other in a loving way, and to feel our hearts again. To feel our hearts again. To re-expand our definitions of time. The invitation gives no deadline, but this feels urgent. The urgency of our need to slow down. To stop. To listen, engage, feel the grief in our bodies.

But wow. This headache. I don’t think my neck is strong enough to uphold academic intellectual rigour. Like my head could just roll off any moment. Roll onto the floor and be done with it. No more processing information, no more sensing, no more thought, no more me being here trying to resolve an internal conflict that perhaps will never truly be resolved but will only ever be a series of makeshift stitches, patch it up as we go and ‘she’ll be right’. Run, crash, burn. Get up, dust off, run, crash, burn. Get up again. Try a gentle ambling this time. A gentle amble, that’s right. Smell the flowers. Take gentle time. Write a gentle rhyme. But there is a shadow following me. A shadow, looming.

I have a deadline.

I’m wearing a neck brace now, maybe that will help. My physiotherapist found something of interest. In my neck, where it attaches to the skull. She has written a letter to my GP – she is requesting X-rays. She will not touch my neck until they are done. Too many red flags, she says. In the letter she tells the GP that she believes I have cervical spine instability. That is to say, the very top vertebra on my neck, where the spine attaches to the skull and through which the brain stem runs, is not fully secure. It is not stable. The ligaments are too stretchy.  It wobbles and slides and it maybe it pushes against my brain stem and maybe it contributes to the dysfunction of my autonomic nervous system, which means it is maybe what causes unsteady heart rhythms and blood pressure fluctuations and unreasonable digestive movement and chronic pain and tremors and limb weakness and muscle spasms and migraines and dizziness and enlarged hard lymph nodes in the back of my head where the fluid gets caught and memory loss and blurry vision and brain fog and sensory overload and nausea and difficulties in focusing and… all of it. I want to say all of it because it gives me some semblance of hope. That there is an answer on the horizon, dancing there like a muse or a mystic sage. Mirage-like and only vaguely tangible. Unreachable and like it could disappear at any moment. Always on the horizon. There is some semblance of hope that the dysregulated nervous function of our planet all but requires a structural shift to gain back some kind of equilibrium. This hope, too, dances on the horizon. 

The horizon, though, is at least a living line. That is what makes it hopeful. It is alive with eternal change. Even when we can’t grasp it, at least it always offers promise of tomorrow. It is not dead on the ground, unmoving, taunting in its rigidity. It is not the place we arrive to solemnly, confused and asking – “but what is it?” while we prod at it with a stick, feeling a profound sense of disappointment at its inability to reflect back to us the fruits of our long and tiresome journey. 

The horizon is not a deadline. 

The top vertebra of the spine is called the Atlas. Named so after the Greek titan condemned to uphold the heavens upon his shoulders. Named for giants. 

Well, I don’t have the structural strength to uphold the heavens. My physiotherapist told me so. 

I am not a giant.

The vertebra below the Atlas is called the Axis. Named so for the way that it rotates the heavens above, as if they were sitting on a spinning central pole that connects the skies to the earth. Everything spinning, always spinning. I don’t have good movement in my Axis. Less than what is normal, quite the opposite of my Atlas. She (the physiotherapist) tells me that this is likely a matter of overcompensation – a thickening of muscles or perhaps ligaments, a stiffening, to ensure that the show does indeed go on. That my head doesn’t roll off my neck like I sometimes feel as though it might. Maybe it’s a good thing that I can’t do so much spinning. I feel like there is enough of that already, inside of me.

I’m a mammal. I adapt because I am the earth. 

It still hurts. 

I am a mammal and I maladapt the best I can.

And I still have a deadline.

Damn girl, just take a pill.

Oh yeah, the pills. They have pills for that. What do they call it again? Oh, Ritalin. It’s a stimulant. It’s meant to… stimulate. Something. I forget what because I don’t think it’s working. It isn’t stimulating my inner Greek titan to raise the heavens any higher.

I am not a giant.

Some people say that our potential is limitless. I disagree.  

I don’t believe in limitless growth. I believe in cycles of growth and decay. Everything else is a crash and burn.

Maybe I’m more of a David, squaring off with Goliath, relying on my trusty, crude weaponry to see to this impossible task. I’m a nothing much, and I think I’m fine with that. I’m done with individualistic, larger-than-life complexes. Let the heavens collapse down upon us, then we’ll see what life on earth is truly worth. Then maybe we’ll remember to recognise the courage inside of us. The courage to stand in the face of the impossible. 

I try a coffee anyway.

That doesn’t work either. Now everything hurts. And there goes my mind, chasing swirling currents on the lake and rising up to tumble across the sky on the backs of thunder beings. This is where I would rather be. 

Just let that head roll.