People confuse power with will because so few of them have the foggiest idea what they want.
Richard Russo, Empire Falls

My door rattles. The partially open window created a vacuum effect with the wind outside that sucked the door back and forth, back and forth, the latch arrhythmic in its over-large socket. I thought that perhaps shooting the dead-bolt might help, but the hole for the bolt is similarly oversized. The logical thing to do would have been to close the window, but then the room would have been too hot, and would have required movement, so instead I lay and listened to the wind and the bang of the door all night. The overhead light flickers too.

The stewardess on the plane to England had that face that suggests that she had taken a big bite of life and found it to be a lemon. I couldn't help but feel a little intimidated by the pinched mouth and perpetually surly expression that it gave her face; I automatically decided that she was either troubled or bad-tempered and in either case should not be pissed off. I wondered if everyone else saw her as such; whether or not from a certain angle perhaps she looked happy. Did everyone make the two-second characterization that I had? Was she indeed mean-tempered, or pleasant and simply cursed with a face that physically belied it? I wondered what she looked like when she smiled.

i used to walk in the rain as a child sheeting rain coming down like bars so thick you could put your hand through them drenching soaked to the skin clothes clinging like every wet t-shirt contest you ever wanted to laugh at drops pelting your skin as the wind picked up handfuls of water and tossed them full-armed throw in your face fat warm drops of rain never got cold never got chilled just laughing and running not trying to outrace the rain because that was the point to get wet in the sheer joy of sweet summer rain smell of wet earth and trees steam rising from sun-baked ground and black clouds at noon five-minute storm then past thunder rolling like god's dice with the universe

O for a voice like thunder, and a tongue

To drown the throat of war! - When the senses

Are shaken, and the soul is driven to madness,

Who can stand? When the souls of the oppressed

Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand?

When the whirlwind of fury comes from the

Throne of God, when the frowns of his countenance

Drive the nations together, who can stand?

When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle,

And sails rejoicing in the flood of death;

When souls are torn to everlasting fire,

And fiends of Hell rejoice upon the slain,

O who can stand? O who hath caused this?

O who can answer at the throne of God?

The kings and nobles of the land have done it!

Hear it not, Heaven, thy ministers have done it!

We did it.

1 pm on Friday and the campus is draining as fast as a blond with a credit card limit.

Only five weeks after we return...when it really comes down to the end this year seemed to fly past, despite stretches when it felt like eternity. Why is it that time seems to increase its speed as we age? Is it because a year becomes an increasingly smaller percentage of the total time we have been in existence, or do we simply get busier and not see how it goes past. I long to be a child again, when a day could seem like years, hours could be devoted to a single thing, and there was no such thing as wasted time.

It began in October. When the leaves on the maple flamed red and the geese flew in honking wedges overhead they opened the ice to all comers, and she indulged. She saw him skating there one day, graceful, like a hawk balancing on a thermal, swooping from blue line to blue line. It was like a dance, she thought, a dance for one, ipse et animus, himself and his soul, in silent communion with the thing he loved. He never smiled but a light suffused his face and the glow made her feel warm inside.

After that day he appeared everywhere. Always a turn ahead or behind walking on the trails, randomly in the parking lot, paying for his food with the same stony face he wore for the world. He would sit in the back, always the back left at a desk separate from the rest, in classes she had never known they had in common. He disappeared as quietly as he came; one glance away and he would vanish. Tam Lin, she named him, so ethereal was his existence. She went to the ice every day in hope, but he never came again.

She sought his face across the chattering expanse of the classroom; he always in his corner seemingly oblivious to the masses around him, aloof, apart, alone. The statue in the corner that was him turned one day and looked full into her eyes; from one hundred feet away it felt like a sledgehammer behind her forehead. After eternity that dark, searching gaze lifted and passed on, blood over the door for the Angel of Death, who knew the faith of those inside.

They never spoke.

For Dan:



Where is the horse and the rider?

Where is the horn that was blown?

They have passed, like rain on the mountains,

Like wind in the meadow.

The days have gone down in the west

Behind the hills, into shadow.

How did it come to this?

I have an 8 am lab tomorrow - today actually - and I am sitting here at 12:01 am playing pinball because there are two IM windows blinking imperiously at me, symbolizing all those people that just won't shut up when you finally do have a chance to go to bed early. Appeals to the gods of health, sanity, and the incompleted honors project have fallen upon deaf ears. The time for tact is past. I shall be blunt. I shall be forceful. And I shall be bitchy. Speaking of which.

I hate politics. Unreservedly, with that sort of cool detached loathing that speaks volumes of malicious intent. Justin, I loved your project. Despite being in a rather misanthropic mood I admit there are politicians who do have sincere interests in bettering the existence of their fellow man; however, in the world of political debate and flexing policy muscles the nice guy does finish last. There is a certain degree of exaggeration and outright deception necessary to survive in such an environment, and it grates on me. I find it morally aggravating. Life was so much easier when the world was a giant Risk board.

With that I am going to play tyrant and grind the rebellious AIMers under my slipper-clad heel. Morning all.

Three hundred lives of men I've walked this earth, and now I have no time.