Sunday, November 10, 2019

The maw of the semester

I got a letter at work earlier this semester addressed to me at Bryn Maw. I'm finding the word "maw" quite apt at the moment.

I feel as if the semester, or my email, or both are like huge mouths rising up from the deep ready to engulf me. I'm being swallowed whole, like that poor sea lion in Monterey Bay this summer that just happened to be underneath a lunging humpback. There's no animus involved, no hunger being sated. Like the sea lion, I'm just in the way of something with more momentum than I can stop.


But I guess that even if I did get sucked into the mouth of a whale, I'd get spit back out again like this diver.

Technically I couldn't actually end up in the maw of a humpback whale, as maw derives from the German for "stomach" rather than mouth, and I wouldn't fit down a humpback's esophagus. The sea lion apparently escaped, too.


2 comments:

  1. You really ARE overwhelmed by end-of-semester demands! I remember those days . . . Love your humor!

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  2. I like to think that we exceed the diameter of the esophagus of the semester, too. Time will tell!
    #inTheMawWithYou

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