Now that it has been almost a full year since I have even read this weblog myself, let alone posted on it, I find it is time not to look to the future, but once again to the past, in order to comment on the words of someone I knew then, who has in turn become a part of that past. It is perhaps ironic, considering the nature of those words, that I delve into the past in order to recognize and dwell on them, but at the same time it raises the very same question of hypocrisy I wish to address.

Emotions can do incredible things to the mind and its various levels of consciousness and cognizance; for the good and the bad. I typically prefer to explore the depths of my mind exactly there: in my mind. Thoughts and feelings are much more free to flow in and out of existance there and are, in most cases, rather temporary. I don't like the idea of dwelling in the past on things that have occured and are passed by. I like to think that I take what i will from an experience as it happens; I let it do what it will to my being, and then let it pass away.

I do not think this person ever comes to this site any more; in fact it is quite likely that they will never see this post. Nevertheless I speak to that person now, asking why, all that time ago, did certain experiences not pass away, but rather take root and spread their rot through all that could have followed? Why were they not allowed to die their natural death, but instead resurrected again and again by an increasingly large circle of people unrelated to the original events, this time distorted, exaggerated, mutated into weapons? Maybe now they have indeed passed away in the mind, as they should have then, but one thing is certain: they should never have traveled by way of the tongue on their way to the grave.

Just curious.

I finished my last final for the semester an hour ago, and am currently in that rather ephemeral phase of elation where half the brain insists you go and do something to celebrate and the other half insists on total, mass shutdown of all neural activity. The simultaneous urges to do jumping jacks and take a nap are hard to reconcile. It's rather like being high. Or having just been hit over the head with a heavy blunt object.

It must be a combination of standard senioritis and simple end-of-semester burnout that has contributed to my total not-caring about most of my exams. My total study time for all five of them added up to about as many hours, and most of that was simply catching up on material for one class in particular whose last six meetings I missed due to job trips. P.S. Instant recipe for missing vast amounts of class, first-hand study of odd effects of rapid time zone vaulting, and strange random urges to visit that other state that's right over the river where you've never been before is to go on multiple job trips in the middle of the three busiest weeks of the semester. New York I've seen before, but going to Oregon was a new experience. I flew in on a Wednesday, arriving about 9:30pm in Portland, where an earnest rental car agent cautioned me about the possible 1-2 inches of snow accumulation that could occur overnight and asked if I wanted something with four-wheel-drive. I said I thought I'd manage.

I was put up in a rather decadent hotel adjacent to the jobsite, which I unfortunately couldn't take full advantage of since I had to immediately go to bed and then immediately check out in the morning. However, once the interview was over and I found myself with eight hours to kill before my redeye at 11:30, what else was there to do but investigate the area? A little shopping and a dark chocolate peppermint waffle cone (!) from Cold Stone Creamery later, I went back into Portland and began driving randomly around the city. It's my conclusion that Portlanders are java addicts. Not only were there multiple Starbucks on every street, but the gaps were filled in with small local companies and "shoppes," some rather arty-looking, all glass and gleaming stainless steel, others more down-to-earth with dim light and poofy-looking chairs. The city itself is quite appealing, especially all done up in its winter finery with tasteful white lights and tree-lined streets. I use the term winter loosely. There's a massive hill that rears up somewhat to the north and west of the city proper, which I decided to investigate simply because it was there and it was steep and dark and looming. Signs on the way up warned me to carry tire chains. I then proceeded to wind along the Skyline Drive and ended up somewhere about thirty miles from the city, which was fine since I still had three more hours to kill. So then I decided to go to Washington, since I'd never been there before. Drove across the river, through downtown Vancouver, then crossed back over and re-entered downtown Portland, where I finally went to ground in a Starbucks full of escapist collegers. Home Alone was playing on a large-screen television in the corner, and they were giving away free drinks from their holiday menu. Who was I to refuse a free peppermint mocha?

I stayed there until the college students had left and Macauley Culkin triumphed over evil, at which point it was finally time to head leisurely to the airport, after having my gas tank filled by a companiable Mexican attendant, who made some sort of comment along the lines of my being awfully young to be driving a Kia Sedona around. Hey, I didn't pick it.

At this point I think my cross-country adventuring is over though. Actual offers rather than second-interview invitations are coming in, and it's about time to buckle down and pick one. Now that I don't have to impress anyone any more, it's tempting to do something drastic like dye my hair blue and take up batiking. But for now I'm stuck here until the enormous snow/sleet/ice storm that is currently threatening the Northeast blows over, while all those fortunate enough to live less than a day's drive away abandon ship like rats. Correction: I actually have three options. One: stay here until Saturday, while the campus empties itself and I end up cleaning everything in site out of sheer boredom, two: to creep home tomorrow at twenty miles an hour and hope I don't end up in a ditch, and three: to creep homewards tomorrow at twenty miles an hour and hope I don't end up in a ditch until I can stop and spend the night at a buddy's place in New Hampshire. All of these options SUCK.

How to make a Hope

Ingredients: 5 parts intelligence 1 part brilliance 1 part ego

Method: Blend at a low speed for 30 seconds. Add a little fitness if desired!

Username:

Personality cocktail
From Go-Quiz.com


Interesting.

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.

bruised

As soon as I got hit I knew that this one would be a good one. The puck came flying out of nowhere, Adam on one of his semi-coordinated wanna-be NHL odd man rushes during that five-minute window before true practice starts, taking a slapshot that whistled in just over my right knee and ricocheted off into the corner. I don't really know where it went precisely, because I was too busy squinching my eyes shut in silent pain. You'd think goalie pads might do their job once in a while, but I guess not.

I checked it while changing afterwards. It had that reddish blanched look that denotes impact, and I fancied I could almost see the ridges on the side of the puck embedded in my thigh. It took two full days for it to really color up, but it was gorgeous when it did. Just in time to show off this weekend during the sketchiest tournament we've ever had.

It was in Syracuse, and we were wrongfooted almost from the start. We'd calculated to get down there about two hours early, which turned out to be a lucky thing since our first game had been rescheduled (unbeknownst to us) to two hours earlier than we thought, as well as being at a totally different rink. Half our team wasn't even there yet though, so as the other half of us were frantically ripping off clothing and throwing on gear in the middle of the rink's public area (there were no locker rooms), our coaches managed to get things reorganized so the teams were shuffled up. Even then we kept hearing conflicting messages - get dressed, we're on right now, get half dressed, we're on next game, don't get dressed, no, get dressed, we're up - eventually it was established that we would be going on at about the same time as we had originally been scheduled for, and so we sat around in our equipment for two hours. The whole no-locker room thing was interesting, as there was some sort of high school football thing going on in the building across the parking lot and random people kept wandering into the rink to see what was going on. What they found was three or four teams' worth of hockey players wandering around in varying stages of undress.

After three games, two of them back-to-back, my knee was throbbing like a drum even though it hadn't sustained another direct hit. Somewhere along the line natural circulation had begun to spread the color as well, so the original puck-sized rectangle had grown four or five times larger and was migrating around my thigh almost to the back of my knee. When we finally got home at 10 last night, I made a beeline for the shower, where I noticed that it had changed color as well, from a spotty green-purple to big blotches of deep red and plum. What's weird is that it isn't just the color that spread either; it hurts all the way around. The red badge of whatever type of courage it is that makes you stand in front of a net to have hard bits of vulcanized rubber impelled at high velocity towards you.