Sort of unintentionally, I went out to get Chinese food today for lunch while celebrations of the Chinese New Year were still going on. Getting Chinese food always makes me feel foreign but it’s usually in kind of an uncomfortable way, like I’m doing something wrong. I’m self-conscious about not being able to fit in [...]
I suppose it’s cowardly, but I’ve spent the last week and a half hiding away, trying not to see anyone. I always do this when New Year’s is folded away in a drawer for next year, and everyone is holding out their resolutions like shiny new 2009 pennies, because I don’t want to be asked [...]
It’s not very usual we get a white Christmas here, so this year we made the most of it, though sometimes making the most of it means staying inside drinking tea and cocoa, wishing we had a fire, walking to visit friends after we exchanged our presents and had our breakfast and throwing snowballs at [...]
I keep wishing that tonight, without warning, will come a snowstorm so bad that Martin and I and everyone in this city is stuck at home; planes are grounded, it is too dangerous to drive, eveything comes to a stop.
If this happened, with nothing else to do, I would make tin-foil stars and hang them [...]
Lucy and I were walking home the other night–just after the first snow hit. It was cold and we were bundled up and as we got closer to a tree she pointed at it and said “look, it’s decorated for Christmas!” I laughed at first–it was not, in fact, decorated, but little beads of ice [...]
When the sun breaks through the clouds this time of year, its light is like lemon juice– pale, sour, but enjoyable. Earlier today, Martin and I were at a diner having lunch, I guess a little celebration of the sun that shone a gold crescent in our window that morning. We had sandwiches, and water [...]
It hasn’t snowed yet but the rain is coming as hard as ever. It was sunny and warm yesterday morning–or warm enough–so I didn’t bother with a heavy jacket and I left my hat at home. I stayed late after work with some of my coworkers, and by the time I was on my way [...]
Of course you can’t be unhappy for a whole month at a time, not without pauses. I felt less dreary this last week, only annoyed at the clouds that have been almost perpetual. But it’s been like Martin and I are both waiting for a change; in the evenings we’ve usually stayed at home; Martin [...]
It’s not necessary to know how to make soup in order to be pure in heart. But if you do know how it means you definitely are–because what are poets for if they can’t pronounce the truth? What’s a poem for if you can’t use it to prove you’re pure in heart, or that you’re [...]
It is getting cold, with that dreary, fatiguing November cold. I am never myself in November, not until the snow comes and shrouds the cold in soft. I was walking home yesterday night and it was raining, and I ducked into Paul’s bookstore with my dripping umbrella and dreary head. The lights were warm and [...]