Three thirty three p.m., with lots of rain, hard rain, cold rain, soaking me inside and out, and a wind too harsh to give me any comfort. I've bought gloves that are 'feminine attractive' - es decir, that women tend to compliment me on and men tend to tell me look like "old lady gloves."

Feeling kind of old and noticing gray hair and an inability to sleep through nights, even next to warm and comforting bodies.

Life and friendship are sometimes unfortunate things. We try so hard to cultivate love, all kinds of love, to surround ourselves with it so that we may wrap ourselves in it on days such as these. It is hard to understand the boundaries of friendship; it is hard to work in established rules on who you can and who you can't be friends with. It is hard to work with your own emotions, your own misgivings.

I am finding solace in work lately, which is a pleasant surprise, as this semester I've been mostly shirking it and it is about time for me to crack down on my work ethic anyway. The methodical nature of my work, the time put in, is very comforting and satisfying. It is distracting. It pulls me away from the window and the garden, and narrows my view to the candle and the page.

I feel overindulged but not full, tired, but not sleepy. Exhausted of living in a system that does not work for me.

Reflective in the rain.

Slept deep and heavy, a full night, with warm blankets and soft bed and warm heat, and I am waking up to a crisp and beautiful fall morning, wrapped in a towel, waiting for the shower to be free, writing and smoking and drinking hot chocolate, and looking at my inorganic purple flowers in a tall rectangular glass vase, and looking at the more organic sand and seashells holding them in place, and loving my blue curtains and the way the light comes seeping through them, and gently, gently, everything glows and I feel alive and perfect and well.

I am thinking about New York and how I want to grab a peacoated and scarved young mediterranean looking man and walk its streets in the crisp, and breathe vapor trails and curl my tongue around my warm full vowels and curve my back up against his hand, and how he is up in Vermont, speaking of me in muted tones to whomever will listen, and I am here whispering to myself about him in my warm bed, and wishing to be in his.

Life is visceral in all the correct ways. I am watching my father die, and watching the world die around him, and watching things slowly crumble and the edges of reality slowly fuzz, to phosphenes as I squint my eyes into deep, deep sleep, the sleep you get after days of traveling, after nights spent burning candles at both ends, a heavy body in a welcoming bed.

And sleep, sleep.

My white walls do not seem cold or barren. I have a gold picture frame to even them out. My jewelry hangs from a window screen. The bind of my book is broken from well-use. My pen is out of ink. I am going to wear my blue dress today, with the lace flowers embroidered on the edge of the skirt. A deep blue, against my snow skin, and boots that don't match but are warm.

And the shower is free, and I get to wash off yesterday and begin today fresh.

If Verlyn Klinkenborg gets to write in the New York Times
Why, oh why, can't I?

I have been living in my headphones for the past few weeks.

I think it is interesting that when I make new friends they always seem to want to impart on me something significant but small in the first few weeks to solidify my interest in them and their tastes. Gifting me new music is usually a convenient way of doing this.

I've been feeling very 1980s lately, exchanging mixed tapes and cds and borrowing iPods and loaning mine out. I've fallen in love with Damien Rice, and more in love with his backup singer, and I like Asian-Irish Gaelic-fusion, and as I walk with ears music-muted to the coffee shop, or as I drive tapping my steering wheel to the park, these things make me think of the people who have brought me to a whole new musical understanding.

Choosing music to share with someone else is an intimate process. You first bare your own soul in divulging your musical forays, be they traditional and conservative or freakishly ecclectic. And anticipating the choices of others - in an attempt to weave their independent musical taste into your own collection - is a risky task. I think deeply about the significance of the songs given to me to test out, to sound against - I think deeply about the thought that this certain person took in selecting the song, selecting the sequence of songs, the genre and type, the style and musical syntax. Like writing, composing and compilating a mixed tape is deviant and dangerous - it reveals perhaps what you do not want others to see; it reveals both conscious and subconscious desires, desires to send messages, to connect emotionally, to stimulate another's mind.