Concerning That Which Cannot Be Understood

How to Ask for an Extension for an Essay

This is 100% non-fiction. This is exactly what I had emailed to my TA in all of its horrific grammar and errors and crudeness, and is what is happening in my life and what I believe and see, though it is already very brief and roughly summarized. The class is called visionary literature, which essentially covers what I've written about here and studies greats like Dante, Rumi, Blake, Rimbaud, Emily Bronte, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Kafka, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and onwards - people who saw, people who believed, people who transcended and reached for the cosmos. What is in this email will sound like rantings of a madman to some, and to others fictional from an imaginative mind - whatever your interpretation, I am entirely sane while writing this and this is how I perceive and this is what has become of me after the journey of writing Espresso Love.

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Happy New Year and thank you for the mind-rupturing and profound class on Eliot. Our approach was incredibly effective and very accurately captured the essence without losing any intensity. Much appreciation for that. 

I'm one of those unable to hand in the essay today: so I apologize for that. I did email the professor about the possibility of an extension as I've been in Asia for December and when I got back, I had to hit the ground running with marketing and discussions for my old book that had been just freshly published, before my grandmother passed away a few days ago and the dawn of the final deteriorating condition of a friend of mine who had been battling cancer for many years. It has been a draining few months, and has left me quite empty and devoid of organized academic thought. I am quickly typing this after class, so I may not be the most coherent or even able to express in words what I would like to. But we've spoken after class a few times along with the professor, and perhaps if possible, I'd like to confess a little of my thoughts on the class (aside from what's been going on recently) to you here. Of course, you have no obligation to read this monstrosity but I feel that you might understand what I am writing here, despite my lack of eloquence. I don't think I will be able to say this to the professor while I am taking his course as it might appear like an excuse, but I admit I have been quite struggling with the course - though not with the content.

Indeed I had made the wonderful life-changing choice to take this course - I've always wanted to - and it is everything I am about and everything I've wanted to hear. But that is where the issue begins for me. In a sense, in the most straight forward and humble way intended, I confess that I am a writer of the visionary or mystic tradition - though it may sound ridiculous to hear from someone of my age from my time. Every class so far and no doubt onwards from here is like being hit with the same thoughts that I've come to in the past two years, what I already intuitively know, what I can't put into words, over and over again. It may sound like I am full of myself to say that, and I am not at all very well-read or well-studied or well-informed, but the writers we've been studying all have a place in my mind and within my understanding of the visionary and of the world. Our professor himself actually triggered a crossroads moment in my writing and in my philosophies and experience two years ago, to which I am eternally grateful to him for. And so to study each of these literary greats and visionary thinkers, it is like the confirmation of my own thoughts and ideas and my writing - which may seem like a good thing. There are so many things that we've covered in class where each time I realize I've actually written the same things into my work - particularly my most recent novel. It almost feels like it is analyzing my own work, and that is a very strange and awkward feeling. That's not saying I don't like to take apart my work or analyze myself - I often do - but being taught what I've written is a strange feeling here. Essentially, I feel like all that we've been covering is encompassed in my thought and vision of the world - only, of course, I may not have the skill or the method (yet, or ever) to put it into words the way these spirit-guides who have gone before us have. Though that is surely up to the reader's or scholar's judgment, not my own.