Do you remember when we stood on the rocks as a thousand tons of water crashed over the edge mere inches from our feet, but we had eyes only for each other? Do you remember those days spent in the breathless heat of summer, when things were new and silences weren’t awkward, and the flowers of the garden and of the heart were in full bloom? Or the gray light of the early winter morning limning your window, as the snowflakes danced down outside and we idled the hours away in talking? Do you remember when I traced the lines of your face and would have chosen no other artist’s masterpiece to look upon? Do you remember how I fit into your embrace, and how when you held out your arms I could simply fall into them, how warm and close and right that felt, how easy it was not to have to think about what it might mean? Do you remember when life was still uncomplicated?

My journal is full – I have no words left to write. In their stead memories press in like migraines, each vying for some expression that I lack the skill to bestow. Their clamor consumes me, overwhelms what my mouth might say, and in the end it all trickles into silence as I stand helplessly by. All that’s left is the chill of the winter wind blowing through this slow-healing wound.

And now it’s all in vain, for I call you by a different name, and the flowers have withered, the grass is frozen with the chill of November, and the waterfall has been marked with a death.

Do you miss it as much as I do?

I'm breaking one of my own self-imposed rules - that of repeated material. I cited a few lines from this poem several months ago after finding it via riley dog, using the ones that caught my one-lining eye most. Tonight however I feel moved to revisit it in its entirety, which adds a certain power to those words.

Quantification

What we do in doorways and in kitchens
might be explained with the laws of physics.

Walking home, tripping over another’s tongue,
let’s call that fusion, hands clasped tight enough
to turn coal to diamonds, air to stone.

Break-ups in parking lots or on porches,
name that old song fission, the mechanism
of separation and dissolution.

Newton’s Third Law: all actions have
their equal and opposite reactions.
You cannot touch without being touched.
Press against skin and skin presses against you.

The metaphor becomes strained. It snaps.
You can harm without being hurt.
You can love without being loved.

Physics’ linear progressions explain
nothing. There are no systematic laws
for the heart, save one: it beats.

~Jake Swearingen, from GHOTI FISH

As I passed the dumpster at the edge of the parking lot on my way to class this morning, there was a god-awful clatter and a tiny gray squirrel came ricocheting over the edge. What was odd wasn't that it was small, in an area where the squirrels are about the size of cats, but that it was carrying a peanut butter jar about the same size as itself in its mouth, rather like an immensely smug and slightly bug-eyed terrier. At first I thought it might be stuck, but it scurried to the base of the nearest maple and began digging madly in the softer loam near the roots. Somewhere in its winter-addled little brain I think it actually believed it could bury the thing. All I could think was good luck, little buddy.

A clear, crisp night with a scattering of stars and an almost-full moon in the south - a huge ring appeared around 10pm and hovered, halo-like, in the sky. Folk legend would have you believe a moon ring is the precursor of bad weather, and so it is. The ring comes from solar light reflecting off hexagonal ice crystals in the upper atmosphere - shreds of thin cirrus clouds that precede warm fronts by a couple of days. These fronts are quickly followed in turn by low pressure systems, aka storms. Winter is upon us.
The last time I saw a moon ring, I couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve. It was a teeth-achingly cold winter night, but clear as a bell, and on our windy hilltop every star stood out sharp as a pinprick. The moon was full and still faintly orange, just over the spiky horizon of the pines. The ring formed a perfectly circular shadow around it, within which the sky seemed darker, more concentrated, than in the surrounding area. The inner edge was sharp, delineated, then faded towards the outside like the feathery touches of a painter's brush. At that moment I felt a great swell of pity for those who never free themselves from the tyranny of streetlights and city noise and simply look upwards. A moon ring calls up Alaskan imagery of northern lights and wild tundra - the smell of spruce and frost in the air, and no place for tarmac and neon.

Dear Mrs. Trotsky,

If you by chance happened to find yourself at home this weekend, I would highly recommend taking a wander by SIR some time around 2 on Saturday, where you may or may not be able to witness us getting our asses handed to us. Garnished.

fall
Drawing breath after a whirlwind of interviews, tests, projects, and the usual homeworks over the past couple of weeks. It's not that any of them are going away, but at least the spacing should be more bearable in the coming weeks up until vacation. I did take a temporary break and performed my semi-annual service to the school by taking a group of trustees' wives around the Nature's Course trail project out back - got lucky with one of the three non-rainy days we've had in the last twenty-five, and the trees were in beautiful color. I actually rather enjoyed myself, until the President and his wife both thanked me personally, and then I just felt like a brown-noser. But life goes on. It gave me a good excuse to do what I normally do, only with university sanctioning.

In other news, it's that time of year when I live and breathe hockey for six months straight. I actually have a pseudo-official goalie coach now, so my learning curve has navigated eighty degrees to steep. It's working though. The best part is when S. and I take over the varsity weight room after practice, and turn the music and the ridiculousness up high. On Mondays we have to share with a few baseball players, but our sotto-voce commentary is more than amusing. Holy triceps, Batman. I want to pinch.