I just lost five pages of work on my essay

licking your lips
taking in the momentary pain
as a helpful reminder that
you are still alive

biting your tongue
tasting your own blood to make sure that
it is really your own, because
you are still alive

gritting your teeth
resonating through your skeleton
ready to box with your machine
you are still alive

beating yourself
senseless on the keys on your board in
retaliation for its faults
however, it's quite obvious that

it was you who forgot to save your work

Snow

Edit: A haiku in response to yesterday's poem:

don't mind happiness
today is a different kind
i'm so fucking bored


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Given that there's no school tomorrow, and that it's STILL snowing now, I need to think up something to do quick, so I don't end up rotting in front of my computer. I also just tried to tag this post with "snow" fourteen times, but Blogger refused to comply. I'm not sure as to why it would ever do such a thing.

Soul at the Hands of Confinement

Edit: We just dug the postman out of a thick snowbank. Makes me feel alive.

__________

look at yourself;
trapped with your coffee and your biscotti and
your chocolates
sitting by the fireplace you wish you had
look at yourself;
turning the cellophane on an architecture magazine
keys on a board
watching the outside turn from blue to gray to white
look at yourself;
wrapped up in a fleece blanket in
yesterday's old sweater
have you ever been happier being trapped?

__________

I believe I've just had my first sleepover in a long time yesterday. It wasn't going to be, but by midnight last night, the roads became unnavigable and my parents declared that they were staying home. So Yuval and I stayed up until 2AM until she fell asleep on the couch watching Marie Antoinette. At three she woke up and decided that the couch was probably not the best place to spend the night so we went upstairs and woke up at 7. Amounts to...4 hours of sleep?

Upon awakening, it's a white and blustery Valentines Day in Ithaca, New York. Temperature is 20 degrees Fahrenheit, accumulation is close to 24 inches, and the world as we know it has come to a standstill.

Even the television reflects the mood today; there's cooking show after knitting show after cooking show after woodworking show, after cooking show. That's the thing about blustery winter days. Everyone wants to cook. Including me. The heat of the oven, the radiance of the stove, the comfort of biting into fresh blueberry muffins...it's what we all desire. Succumb to your appetite and you will be rewarded. It's nothing but an extension of human survival.

And yes, it is indeed Valentines Day, but I can't help but muse on how many couples are really on their fur rugs under their crystal chandeliers by their fireplaces, getting it on, on a day like this. Call me a pessimist in a loveless world, but I'm pretty sure the number of those couples right now...is coherent.

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentines Day. ♥

A fleeting dash of ego

"Donc, mot...?"

Good evening, everyone.

Homework assigned to us for French V on Tuesday was a French analysis of Guilliame Apollinaire's Le Pont Mirabeau, a simply yet aesthetically beautiful poem about...well, that's up to interpretation. Doing poems is enjoyable, because not only do I love poems, but sometimes, it's a poem I know by heart, like this time. Thus, the work was relatively easy for me.

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Les mains dans les mains restons face à face
Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante
L'amour s'en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l'Espérance est violente

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Passent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passait
Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

"Le Pont Mirabeau"
Apollinaire, Alcools (1912)

French poetry's not everyone's taste. It tries a little too hard to be profound sometimes, but I find that Apollinaire does a good job making sure that the interpretation works literally as well as symbolically.

For an English translation, see Sasha's page. I do believe, however, that poetry was not meant to be altered, changed, or translated in any shape or form. You want to read Mongolian poetry? Learn Mongolian. The concept of poetry was created not for just the meaning (which can also be undesirably altered during translation) but also the aesthetics of the words and phrases themselves.

If you want to hear the song, the one that's NOT by the Pogues, check out Sophie Auster. It's quirky, but it's definitely pretty.

_____________

"If my penis were as big as my ego, I'd be King Kong."

- Dylan JJ

Thanks for the insight, Dylan.

So the uh, Physics midterm started today. First problem and I already skipped over it. Over at Sasha's house I began to calculate my grade if I say...uh, well forgot about the rest of the problems. When you start counting your score before you even finish the test, you know you're going to fail. Fail hard, too.

It seems like such a simple algebra problem, too, that I'm actually beginning to doubt myself. I used to have a pretty big ego when it came to being logical, but I figured that I'm not all that. Besides, that ego was all formulated. It wasn't ever really there; it started to fool the teachers into thinking that I was actually working, but I guess I let the little lie grow a little uhm, big. I'm not actually a member of the smart people crew. Haha. Member. Get it? MEMBER. Tee hee.

Whatever. My ego could use a beating.

____________

It's always fun getting into philosophical debates over trivial matters. That's how I spent my afternoon though, debating over cappuccino and 5-layer chocolate things and sporadic internet at Juna's. Nothing too hardcore today, though, just the usual relative good and bad that makes our world worth living in, and that perhaps human intelligence will outlive its usefulness one day, where one day civilization will stagnate because we have nowhere to turn.

Sasha and I pretty much rock.