Just like they took away the Polaroid picture, they're gonna take away anything that means something.

Winter weather is always colder when you're not in town.

I've closed my eyes and tried to think about sunshine,

but, child, this wind and rain can certainly bring me down!

Come out of the woods, and say you'll always be mine.

Five Months Left

He read it in her fingers,

the way she clutched at him and smiled in her sleep.

She felt it in the tangle of their arms and legs;

sleep could not tear them from each other.

He saw it in her eyes,

shining with morning’s surprise and dimming with evening’s sleepy contentment.

She tasted it in his kisses,

the wild, consuming ones and the soft, loving ones.

He heard it in her voice,

in her untamed, happy laughter and her whispers of eternal love.

They saw it in each other’s souls,

the promises of life, love, and order being completely within their grasp.

And they grasped it tightly, and never let it go.

Digital Barbarism, Mark Helprin

August 2028, California

...You instruct the secretary to allow your wife's apparition to override all others. She is at a beach in Alaska (it is a bit warmer now), where you will shortly join her. Recently, you and she have quarreled. In virtual sex, in which you both wear corneal lenses that create a perfect illusion of whomever you might want, she discovered that you were entertaining not a commercial prostitutional apparition, but an old girlfriend. Hence her early departure for the Aleutians...

August 1908, Lake Como, Italy

...Your shoes are entirely of leather, your clothes cotton, silk, linen, and wool. You and your wife hired a rowboat and went to a distant out-cropping of granite and pine. No one could be seen, so you stripped down to the cotton and swam in the cold fresh water. Her frock clung to her in a way that awoke in you extremely strong sexual desire (for someone your age), and though you made no mention of it on the bright rock ledge above the lake, later that night your memory of her rising from sparkling water into sparkling sunlight made you lively in a way that was much appreciated...

Ring of Time

I stalked them, driving slowly behind his rusty Ford pick-up.

They were unaware, half-asleep, and weary with the prospect of another day.

He moved as though to put his arm around her, then paused, and ran his fingers through his hair.

She turned her head, and glanced at me, and I looked away.

Only when I passed their car did I see the plastic handle marking the presence of a third.

They pulled into the driveway of his workplace--a building full of gray cubicles--where he hopefully kissed her goodbye before resigning himself to another day, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

I hope they're happy.

It's getting late, but I don't mind...

He was there, standing outside of the Starbucks where I'd told him to meet me. His eyes searched the parking lot.

Parking haphazardly, I ran towards him, catching him in an embrace that nearly propelled him backwards.

We entered the coffee shop to buy a large cup of brew, holding hands and giggling like we'd just discovered love for the first time. "Marry me," he whispered, his breath tickling my ear, and I laughed and agreed for the millionth time.

I love him, and I always always will.

...the dead clacks of a typewriter are like the poems of e.e. cummings...

If I can move out of this house in five months and a couple of weeks,

I will willingly work six days a week for long and tedious hours.

I feel like I'm dying.

I feel like I'm being born.

The morning hours are the most difficult to bear.

It's good to go to work, and face distraction, friendly or foe-worthy.

I'm realizing I can't possibly write with Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside in the background.

I can't wait to have a place to live with Matthew. A place to come home to. To fall onto the couch, or onto the bed, or onto the floor. Also, I look forward to being able to find the things I own. I look forward to sharing such a large bed (queen-sized!) with him. It's an exciting thought to think that we shall have no one to answer to except for each other. It's a free world, at least right now.

It's easy to be your own worst master. So many people feel locked into the lifestyle they created for themselves. You choose your job, you choose your spouse, you choose your routines. There ought to be a lot less complaining.

It is as possible for a man to know something without having been at school, as it is to have been at school and to know nothing.

I owe the title of tonight's post to Henry Fielding's heroic Tom Jones.

I've got to make a living to-do list, and so I figured, where better to make note of it than here?

As of tonight, I've got six months until my wedding.

In that time, there are a number of things which need to happen.

The first and foremost is wedding invitations. I was rather worried about these, but I think I've found a cheap solution. Powerpoint templates! More about that later.

Matthew has got to call Joe, and we've got to find a couple ties for the groomsmen.

I need to call the Wedding Coordinator at Saint Francis Church.

I'm also in the market for a pair of shoes. I'm thinking blue flats.

I can't wait to get my dress back and see how it looks.

We'll have to purchase a marriage license eventually.

Also, there's the apartment to find and the packing-and-moving fiasco.

Time's going to fly.

It's not rape if you yell, "Surprise!"

My sister learns many things at school. The heading of this post was one of the unfortunate high school mottoes she eagerly whispered into my ear, giggling while she repeated the nonsense of some high school boy. She's excited about school. Having never been excited about school myself, I obviously conclude that she isn't actually enrolled in a school. By accident, she must have been enrolled in some kind of simulated daycare facility, where friends can get together and spend afternoons sympathizing with each other about "that place called home" and the hell they're living. In high school, I sympathized with Dicken's "Smike" and Hugo's "Cosette". We had solidarity in suffering. Or so I thought.

However, sleeping in a cold room on a hard bed isn't as glamorous as it once seemed. Neither is working for a cruel and stubborn man. I'm missing aspects of the high school days, where the hardest part of the day was waking up in the morning. I rarely appreciate things until they're gone. It's human nature, so I'm told.

The most difficult part of preparing a blog post is allowing it to remain. It's such a temptation to delete these Frankenstein essays. However, I've decided to keep these blogposts. For another six months, at least. To see what happens. I want to develop.

Today, I read something interesting: a clip from a book called "Heartbreak". Apparently, it was given horrible reviews and was made up of literary brilliance applied to disgusting subjects. One line, which infuriated many people, went as follows:

"Here she is at her kitchen table, fingering a jigsaw of thalidomide ginger,

thinking about the arthritis in her hands."

"Thalidomide ginger?" they gasped in horror. "The stumpy limbs of deformed children? A root of ginger is perceived in this dark and ghastly way? Who writes these things?"

But I thought it was a clever conceit, as rhetoricians say.

It snowed today. I don't like snow, because it is wet, it is cold, and my parents greatly restrict my driving privileges. However, if it keeps me from driving Joseph out to Banks tomorrow, I'll thank each and every snowflake.

Joan and I filmed a video for her class tonight. It's about John Steinbeck. I'm afraid I took the script and re-interpreted it quite a bit. It's all pretty tame until the introduction of Steinbeck's third wife. The Dresden Dolls and German impressionism come together to form this love-child, this wife.

I'm standing in the living room, cheeks painted brightly and lips tinted bright red. My mouth is puckered into an 'O' and my hair sticks out on both sides of my head. Behind me stands my sister, who plays Steinbeck's step-daughter, Waverly. You can't see her from the vantage point of the camera. The scene begins, and the narrator introduces us. I raise my arms and she does the same, at alternating angles, so we look like a Hindu goddess without a trunk. I bow to the left, and she to the right, emitting a high-pitched, "Oh!" simultaneously. The scene is...fantastic in its ridiculousness.

For another scene, Joan's written a script for the narrator. He says, "In the 1960's, Steinbeck admitted to his wife that he was ready to bow out and give up." In this scene, Joan, dressed as Steinbeck, and I, as his wife, are seated on a chest. Steinbeck looks at Elaine and says, "I am ready to bow out and give up." I face the camera, and say, "Oh!"

Brilliance.