Snazkopeliches

That's phonetic. It's a Serbian word meaning "snowmen", and it's exactly what I spent all of Friday building, after hearing a litany on the car ride home.

I'm so not used to five-year-old boys. Very high-maintenance. I'm fuckin tired. Sweet kid, most of the time, but I just... can't talk to him (his English is not so good).

Not much else going on. I feel the beginnings of a bad cold settling into my lungs. Breathing hurts. Thinking hurts. Feeling hurts.

The next few days are slated to be a blitzkreig of seeing old friends. I saw Caitlin on Thursday last, which was an entirely too stressful encounter, for all it felt easy on the surface. Maybe the easiness was itself the stress-causing agent.

Jill and I chilled. She rocks my socks. Must see more of her.

Hung out at Heather's with her brothers, we watched Serenity (YAY!!!) and played euchre, which I was immediately pwned at. Twice.

My mother should not be allowed to buy me Christmas presents. She bought me Ugg boots. Knockoffs, even. Terrible color. I pretty much wanted to die at the thought of having to wear the damned ugly/uncomfortable things.

Charlie is home and manages to make a helluva lot of noise. At least the persistent and loud thumping emanating from his room has ceased, as he's now graduated to clanging pots around in the kitchen. Which sucks because I need to be eating foods there right now.

Heather and I watched the Christmas Invasion. David Tennant is off to a promising start. Quoting "The Circle of Life" in his fiery speech to the invading aliens was definitely a high point. Hah hah, oh Russell Davies. Only the man who created Queer As Folk could possibly be expected to quote an Elton John song in a hit sci-fi series.

Yep. Bella tomorrow (YAY!!!) followed by Tom (YAY!! Someone to blabber about Milton and Spenser with !!) Hopefully Jesse sometime soon. And Lindsey. Jesus I have too many old friends. I love them, though. Wouldn't give 'em up, no ma'am.

I'm becoming suitably engrossed in A Game of Thrones, which I wisely saved for my month-long vacation. 1000 pages and 3 sequels. Yep.

Also, I was broken up with tonight. Served me right, as I've been pretty much an unfeeling bitch and masterful at avoidance. I was going to break up with her, tonight, but she beat me to it. It seems fitting. I feel terrible, but then... I always feel terrible about this sort of thing. Damnit!

Nostalgia

The problem with having had a life full of beautiful, inexplicable moments is that you've got that standard to compare the rest of your shitty life to.

My heart and mind are rebelling. I want everything I miss, and I want it now, just like a petulant child. Mostly I think I want those Sunday afternoons back, when we lazed around with no agenda, no purpose. Or when I went out into the woods and became something more than myself until the color of the sunset and the smell of the earth and the experience of a snowfall so absolutely silent that your ears roar with the sound of each snowflake resting on your frozen hair and bared, vibrating skin blend together into a tangible something that you can't find anywhere else. It's the taste of your own existence, and it has no metaphor, no simile, no name.

I love words, but there are some moments when they can fail you so spectacularly. I am unfaithful to my calling.

All I can say, really, is that I miss it. The city weighs on my heart. Even the lake is fettered by streetlights, safe, contained, and heartbroken.

A Bit of Doctoring

It's crunch time, and therefore I'm fixating on irrelevant, if awesome, geeknesses. This time around it's Doctor Who! I just watched a (spoilers!!) retrospective of this past season, courtesy of the BBC site, in which short clips were set to a song by Snow Patrol (ye gods, but they're hipsters over that side of the pond!). Also, the clip in which something momentous happens to the Doctor, (MORE spoilers!!) basically makes me so sad. Damn you David Tennant!! You failed as Barty Crouch, Jr, and now you've fucked with my fave Doctor since Tom Baker!

Incidentally, Neil Gaiman in a recent blog post likened his blogging software to The Doctor's periodic regenerations, a fact which made me shiver with happiness. Soon his software will become the Tom Baker incarnation, which will basically kick SO MUCH ASS with long scarfwear that no one will possibly believe it. Also, Neil Gaiman pretty much inspires me. It's been a long dream of mine to acquire a scarf like that, although I'd have to pick a season, because apparently he has a different one for each.

My lady came over tonight, which was darling and basically the highlight of my week, awww. Family Guy and coffee. I'm wired!! I have gotten a lot of work done since she left, however, and she rocks my socks. A lots.

It's crunch time. You can tell because I haven't tidied my room in a week or two, and now it really is difficult to see the floor.

I'm looking forward to having some semblance of self-determination again. My mind feels like it's being consumed.

Women's studies readings tonight- got caught up through last week, which is an accomplishment. Sadly, all of the readings were about women being raped, Indian wives whose husbands killed them because their dowries weren't big enough, women on welfare who get shat on all the time... bah. Depressing.

I'm reading Gulliver's Travels for an English class, and in the third book he travels to Laputa, the castle in the sky. Yes, that's a title for the Miyazaki movie, he kind of stole it, and it wouldn't be the first time. I suppose alluding to other texts is cool. Anyhow, according to the glosses in my text, the name "laputa" comes from teh Spanish "La puta". I'll let you whiz kids translate that one for yourselves.

Chilled with Jackie, Louise, and Kristen this morning, that was nice. Card games and chitchat abounded, and my shameful Pern addiction manifested itself. Sigh.

Since then I've pretty much been doing work of one sort or another. Lots of reading, not enough work on papers. Need to get on top of that.

Tuesday morning I'm tabling with Rainbow at the Al Franken event, and from what I've given to understand I'll be having breakfast with the man himself beforehand. I think. Hopefully he won't be a dick.

Tonight I feel like singing in languages I forgot long ago...

I feel charged with that buffer of heat... an impenetrable armor, if you will, against the cold.

I hate mirrors, the ones I use are broken and might well cut me if I touch them. I prefer honesty in a mirror.

I have art strewn over the floor of my room, and a vast brown blankness stretched on my wall. I had hoped to spend my winter break filling it with color, space, letter and line, but if I go home for the holiday and go to Georgia, there'll hardly be time.

Break out the angst, the caffeine is starting to wear thin. Let's roll into the covers, layer ourselves in the pages of a book, inhale the scent of our skin as it brushes the dry forgotten ink. Watch, the frail blonde hairs on your nape shiver as I breathe my story into them.

It's been a late night this entire week and my grasp on the English language is tenuous at best. My fingertips are in danger of forgetting that their purpose lies not in the constant dance of the keyboard, but in the intense, ineffable exploration of the language of feeling. Feel, you must remind them to feel beyond the fading plastic squares.

It's 36 Degrees, Nancy Boy, Where Is My Mind, All the Pretty Things Are Going To Hell, Institutionalized, . It's every bad punk song, every wannabe emo angst song, everything that you ever played at full volume with the windows down in a winter night and screamed the words you'd forgotten you knew. Or just screamed to. It's about the fall of reason, the ascent of a nascent faculty beyond thought, beyond poetry. Bring back the music more palpable than concrete buildings, let it penetrate your defenses like auditory artillery. What are they singing? Who the fuck cares. Break the shell of your language, fight your way into something greater, uglier, more alive. I love the way you smell when you've forgotten how much you love dreaming. I'll shower you with, I'll drown you in, I'll rescue you from your nostalgia. I'll freewrite my way to Hell, dancing the whole way there, content to feel your hand curled inside my glove. C'mon, darlin, let's swim.