radiant fracture

Poetry group today was partly discussion and partly writing. I found the discussion tiring -- different expectations in the group for the time spent on analysis vs. writing -- but I did get a sonnet out of it. (We all wrote sonnets entitled Winter).

Winter

Last gold, red, gold leaf-lenses blinking
Flashing the small signals of the rain
The storm-weight drops around the house, sinking
Dead leaves into the muddy concrete drain.

Cooler than this is that me and Belfast made a spoken word track tonight -- something he's wanted to do for a while but I was too nervous to try. He sent me a couple of atmospheric musical passages he wrote, just modulations (or um whatever I don't know what music things are called) -- and I set spoken word overtop -- some overheard dialogue I'd copied out and adjusted and put through a filter. We both really liked the result, even with my crappy staticky recording. So that's a thing we do now, maybe.

Oh, Belfast. Yes, Belfast. I didn't explain about him. No. I did not. Well.

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Some cold white bird died last night. The sky is all scattered with feathers and bones, and the ground is covered with a heavy down of ice.

Heat yourself at your coffee. I met the best guy over coffee yesterday. I remembered that the Market has Saltspring coffee for a dollar in its vending machine. A real live small pleasure. There's one guy ahead of me, 35ish, baseball cap and vaguely workish clothes.

"Oh, sweet brown giver of life." he says. I grin. He stirs. "My girlfriend calls it my cup of personality."
"I like to think of it as my liquid brain." I say.
"I was visiting my brother," he tells me, "And on my last day we decided to get one more round of golf in. So we're up at five o'clock. His wife's one of those people who can actually function in the morning. She comes downstairs and sees us standing in the kitchen, just kind of slumped against the counter, staring at each other's shoes. 'You haven't said one word to each other, have you?' She says. 'Shh,' says my brother, 'Coffee's brewing.'"

Kilshaw's auction house had a gin jar in the window today. I've never seen one before. It's not unlike a coffee urn.

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The Hurt Penguin sale at the UVic Bookstore left me unimpressed. It was a series of smallish heaps of contemporary remainders, average price about $6.99, their main injury being the black marker strike that indicated their status as remainders. The advertisement suggested books "From $1" but all the ones I saw were several times removed from that ideal unity.

I realize one ought not to be surprised by this sort of wan intellectual betrayal, but when you advertise with clever variations of the Penguin logo in various states of injury -- water and smoke damage, fading, etc. -- I expect to see said logos upon said books. There weren't above three Classics in the lot. I was hoping for, you know, obscure Jacobean dramatists. Secondary gothics. Modern near-classic oddities. Not fourteen copies of a low-carb cookbook and one Catherine Parr Traill.

The Shakespeare class discussion today was about The Question of Authorship, which made an interesting 10-minute presentation but a tedious discussion, since none of us have the scholarly background to say anything useful or even identify the chief arguments.

My knee kept going out as I tried to walk to class. And I burnt my mouth on my coffee. I hate everything.

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I hit the dark today. Walked to work in that low light in which everything is still perfectly visible. It gets lighter as you go, of course, moment by moment, and that means you can't quite fix on the apeparance of anything -- you just decide what it looks like, and then you realize it has brightened another grade, shed another layer of shadow.

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[earlier]

I am drinking the last of my Blackberry Port, and am all warm and foolish in the face. It's been around a little too long, so it isn't the dumbfounding nectar it is when you first open it, but there was nothing objectively wrong with the two small glasses that remained, and quite a lot of subjective pleasure lingering in the bottle.

Caro, the next time we're both on the island, we must drink some of this. It will go pretty well after our Noodle Box, I think, with some very dark chocolate. It's one of those things that will make you glad you came back.

[later]

It is now past the hour when I can reasonably expect to get something useful done. I'm the opposite of a vampire. The lack of light destroys me. This is very bad news for my kitchen, since when it's light out, I don't want to waste time cleaning it, and when it's dark I can't muster the energy.

I have to be careful. If I lie down after work, I stay down. Actually, whatever position I put myself in is the one I tend to remain in for the rest of the evening. It's like my personal gravity increases fourfold. I've been sitting in front of the computer now for three and a half hours. In this time I have made two LJ icons and read a lot of things I don't remember.

There are very few things I'm capable of doing in this state. In order of likelihood from least to most:

1. clean up (I assume I can. I haven't tried lately.)
2. take baths (but turning on the water is too much effort. and then you're damp, and dampness has very little attraction these days)
3. read books and take notes for Projects (try to trick brain into thinking it's doing something meaningless)
4. read books and not take notes (especially books read before)
5. watch tv in bed
6. pass out

I'm going to shuffle into the kitchen now and stare at it all, then shuffle out again and attempt #6, since it's the only one that will give me a sure sense of accomplishment.

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