here at the final push to the sum

If my old life is done, then what have I become? I haven't done any work this quarter. I skipped all my classes today. The snow is painful. I read Hemingway this evening. I stole like 3 pops from the lounge, they had them out free for a screening of that horrible 40-yr-old movie. I got two Cokes and a Barq's and I drank them as I finished In Our Time. I am a bullfighter. I had no socks all day. I am a bullfighter with no socks. "That was an unfortunate decision," a pedestrian walking by said to me, me in my sandals, as it started to rain this afternoon. "Quite, ma'am," I said. Beer would have been nicer on a windy evening like this. I find myself saying, "It would be nice to have a beer right about now," several times every day. I fear this may be a problem. I used to say that about pop, but I'm too poor to buy pop and I just drink it at lunch or dinner when I'm at a dining hall. I'm too poor to buy beer, and soon enough I will forget. I'm only too poor to buy pop now because I ran out of flex. I would say to myself, "It would be nice to have a Lime Coke right about now," and the world was my oyster. Last year, I had some desperate coin-scrounging bouts to operate the vending machines. Nevermore: I'm on beer now, and I'm definitely too poor to buy it. Passion: quenched. My only boundary stronger than any temptation is my poverty. And if I were in a shipwreck and I had a choice of two desert islands, one conveniently inhabited by the pro-life shipmen and the other by the pro-choice shipmen, you can only guess which island I'd swim for. I realized this today when I heard somebody discuss euthanasia as an act of mercy at dinner in response to the "right to die" decision.