The Darkest Season

December, December, how is it December?

The flowing current that is life has sucked me in and not returned me to dry land. I lose hours under fluorescents in the library, trying to will myself to complete what I’ve started, by any means possible. I long for nothing more than sleep. I wake up unmotivated to leave my bed, and often, because I have nowhere else to be, I succumb to the soft warmth.

Aside from sleep, I long for the wind on my face. I forget to go outside, and I miss the day. Daylight leaves early. Rain doesn’t abate. Snow has yet to appear. I miss moving quickly. I miss doing everything.

It's the same time of year that I crave my desert winter city, the warmth of my love, the depth of snow and time to lose myself in.

From the Depths of the Night, Alone

Dreams of tornadoes and lightning and old friends and water everywhere

the air is filled with moisture, as it has been for days, and sticks to my skin

everything I touch in this house is damp, everything under my fingers or toes

I don't think about you until I can't stop myself anymore.

You know we all want to let go. You know I wish I'd been that for you, that fearless, part of you there, part of you somewhere, a place where you'll never let me go.

I want these pieces of myself to disintegrate and cease

I want me to be less, to feel less, more bones and less skin.

Dreams of it never being me, always everyone else. I am just a bystander.

Dreams of me sinking.

fall came early

Apparently summer has just disappeared in a haze of nights and afternoons. Three completed summer classes (!!!!!), beach days, wandering around Peterborough, one flight to Calgary, one change of house, two new roommates, one new boyfriend, lots and lots of nights out.. It's been fantasmical. Crazy, busy, filled with friends and summerness. Lots of bike riding and late night runs. In fact, it might even be the perfect summer. I have one month of freedom before my final year of university begins, and less than that before I turn twenty-three. I think I'm becoming a real life person.

Calgary is chilly and rainy, and it feels like it would in Peterborough in late October. Part of me is glad, because I love fall, and when I return to Peterborough it will still be full-swing summer. I won't be able to wear jeans and new flannel shirts for a few more months, and if you're anything like me, you love wearing flannels, jeans, jackets, sweaters, and feeling cozy inside with a cup of coffee. Sigh.

I dream in mountains and cold, damp mornings. I dream whole.

My Sleeping Skin

It's begun again- my summer skin, the summer breeze, lying out in the sun and biking like hell to school. The lilacs are almost out again. I'm hoping for some things, other things, certain things, wonderful things. I think I'm optimistic. I want to be optimistic. I want more nights on balconies, with guitars and drums. I want more dewy grass and streetlights. I want more cool beer and good conversations and possibilities. More house parties. I just.. can't wait.

The Trouble With Wilderness

"No pain here, no dull empty hours, no fear of the past, no fear of the future. These blessed mountains are so compactly filled with God's beauty, no petty personal hope or experience has room to be. Drinking this champagne water is pure pleasure, so is breathing the living air, and every movement of limbs is pleasure, while the body seems to feel beauty when exposed to it as it feels the campfire or sunshine, entering not by the eyes alone, but equally through all one's flesh like radiant heat, making a passionate ecstatic pleasure glow not explainable." - John Muir

In this death trap that is exam time, with an overdue essay, white stuff on the ground and coming from the sky, experiencing hours that are not explainable. It's nice to think of an escape, although sometimes one's own hell has its own nostalgic beauty. It would be nice to think of good things, but it's always easier to dwell and wallow. The pathetic weather is a direct mirror of my inner state, this me who can be the only me to dig myself out of this hole. I dwell in hours lost, I dwell in so many nights gone, I dwell in the wishes that they will happen again, only better. I yearn to stop caring about insignificant things that are impossible to change. Dwell, yearn, wish. These are all symptoms of inaction.

Afternoons in the park, with a blue sky and the sun warming the brown grass. The murmur of my friends' voices, the smell of the Quaker factory, the rush of the river. These are stuck in my mind, a place I like to go back to as often as I can. It's all changing, it will be different for better or worse, and I'm preparing myself. A year ending, a season of change, and perhaps this time I'll have to learn again how to be alone.

Tick.. Tock.

It is always my philosophy to do the things I love, even while I'm doing things I hate, so that the things I hate can be more bearable. In this afternoon's case, I'm writing an essay while searching for new music. Or searching for new music while writing an essay, on a day that might rain, in an afternoon that is all mine. In the midst of planning a new trip, while trying to finish the year, while trying to live, and breathe and eat and sleep- these months slip by. The weather is finally changing. There seems to be so much to do, always, and never enough hours. There is so much to distract. Dreaming of Spain and points unknown is easy, finding new music to get lost in is easy, committing oneself to sitting and writing is quite another story.

Listening to Ultre.