Bitter

Hello world.

I'm going a little crazy. Summer was here, but now it's in hiding. Boo. It's not that I don't absolutely love the overcast sky, or the soft drizzly rain - - on the contrary. But I am a cold-blooded thing, and have a very difficult time functioning when it's 60 degrees in my apartment.

However, despite the freezing temperatures that refuse to depart, I still manage to get things done. Like hikes to the hot springs and vegetarian lunches.

A recent preoccupation with The Shins (oh, James Mercer) has stirred an acute desire to comprehend time and fate. So I meander around in the mountains, hoping to stumble over an answer to a question I don't think I could even verbalize.

Dinner on Tuesday made me realize how much I absolutely adore my family. Other people, though, that's a different story.

As for media, this week I'm wrapping myself up in Indie-folk and Isaac Russell. The Men Who Stare At Goats was fantastic, if a little rushed towards the end. And to top it all off, I've begun to wade through Joyce's Ulysses. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to find a copy of Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians.

People people people. Does the key to self lie in the other, or vice versa?

A

First final down; Take that my postmodern kittens.

In other news:

MUDBiSON tonight. Hells yeah.

Sun

I am done. Done with my Winter classes. Now it's just a few finals and then I am home free. I'm not even that worried about them.

All I'm concerned with at this moment is how wonderful the sun looks streaming through my bedroom window, and how summery my new black dress feels against my skin, and how much I love daffodil people.

And how Iron & Wine sings like a sticky summer twilight on a Pennsylvania porch - low and mellow with empty thunder and cicadas.

One more week. Then, world, you're mine.

Genius

Awesome person of the week:

Christian Bök

Kim Johnson gave a Brown Bag Lecture last Thursday entitled "The Anatomy of Language." It was really great. I love it when people are passionate about language. I am inspired to go buy a gigantic dictionary, and to look up every word I use, and to try and fit "chartreuse" into more of my conversations.

She read to us from Christian Bök's book, Eunoia, and it was one of the coolest things I've ever heard. He wrote five chapters, each dedicated to one vowel, and in each he used nothing but univocal words. It's nothing short of amazing. Kim pointed out that each of the vowels seem to have a corresponding feel to them; the A chapter is very social, the E chapter very elegant, usw.

An excerpt from the A chapter:

Awkward grammar appals a craftsman. A Dada bard as daft as Tzara damns stagnant art and scrawls an alpha (a slapdash arc and a backward zag) that mars all stanzas and jams all ballads (what a scandal).

Brilliant people make me so happy.

Now conference!