there's more to life than books, you know

It look 3 1/2 hours, twice as long as usual, but I got home, the bus crawling along the white expanse of the turnpike 20mph. And the snow whipping in the wind across the roads, the only place to walk a path through the mostly abandoned streets. She spreads Her white and quiets the city. It's soft and quiet even with the winds whipping, wheels spinning stuck in the snow, the way snowfall swallows sound. A little while ago there was even a close flash of lightning, one thick slow roll of thunder.



(title taken from diprima's loba; reading her "ballad of the last hippy xmas" she just sent around)

Dear dark o' the moon, when thin-skinned irritability gives way to wonder at the permeability between worlds underneath a cold black bowl of sky. There's something about that dilation, the aperature widened by the absence of the moon, that makes membranes thin. I'm just grateful when instead of feeling oversensitive and nuts around this time I get moments of receptive sensitivity too, prickly with wonder for a change.

So even though it was like 4 degrees this morning, I can feel spring rising in my bones, it's weird. I guess Brigid is only 2 weeks away and I feel it, I feel it, the way the sky gets light on my walk in the morning, something in the pull of the earth. So okay not spring, but that shift in winter, maybe Dylan's "the pulse within the ice," something about the shards of sunlight and cold frozen ground.

Also, Mingus makes cardio so much better for me.

My boyfriend left to drive down to North Carolina at 6 this morning, and I fell back asleep to a scary dream where a small black bear + another one wandered through my house, my mom and I creeping carefully away into a vacant room while I worried about Nellie and Tinno's safety. It was no Blueberries for Sal. And then I woke up an hour later alone in the big bed to start my day for real.


ETA:
I've been thinking lately that it helps to recognize that we are part of the Earth that's moving into winter, that we're wintering too not just enduring bleak cold New York days that stretch into steely slushy months. The sky right now is piercing cold blue outside the drawn shades facing south towards the Chrysler building. Last night when I took Critter for a walk, the moon was hanging low and fat in the sky, a sailess hull cutting through the sky.

So I got back to Vassar and got ripped off by the cabbie but I'm thinking of it as a holiday tip that he gave himself and I left my hat on the train which makes me the saddest little boy ever and I think I might actually call the train station and desperately/futilely try to get them to scoop it up and send it to me. Huge cup of coffee from the deli is working its magic as evidenced by mounting but almost pleasant anxiety and a complete lack of proper sentence structure. Speaking of, Murray called my Plato paper 'excellent, lucid, and thorough' which was a nice thing to come home to. Speaking of home, I still need to finish packing my room and throw all my shit in the car and drive home.


Also:

Tonight is the solstice. I hope that all of you who observe it have a very good one. Maybe if I take a nap beforehand I will actually stay up all night to tend to the birth. I miss being observant.