crazy shade of winter

well it is here, if you must know. yes we're going through the motions of dry-cleaning coats, pulling out the woollen hats and getting used to the blasted heat inside the buildings. oh what excitement.

in stories that haven't been told so far:
the vanasson had her marxist beau over from sweden. he wore a corduroy coat, spoke a british syntax trimmed with swedish accent, ate middle-eastern food, called giddens names, made bland salmon dinner, romanced loudly, laughed like that cackly-shrieky ex-girlfriend of chandler's, didn't have eyes like mats wilander, or smile, and was sad that the subaltern studies guys had moved on from marxism.
so.
i survived without losing my temper. vanasson of course might have lost her heart.
oh and M.Yuri and i found his t-shirt in the kitchen while rummaging for food one friday afternoon. she giggled and behaved. i giggled and told the story. many times over.

speaking of the SS club, DC-Babu (the preferred title, i hear) assigned the other of the obnoxious Cambridge scholars for reading. i didn't recover from the readings in time for the class so what i presented was limp and vapid to say the least and it showed. mostly on everyone's faces.
it took a looooooooong bus-ride of cajoling myself into believing that i don't do their business and so should reclaim and maintain my rightful place as persona nongrata. if i drive myself to hard about this course i will soon be...excuse the pun...history.

my hanif is not well. the world looks faded, when not told through her lenses.....ouch that was unintended...and i can't wait for her to be back in the boomsian groove again.

THE THOUGHT-FOX
I imagine this midnight moment’s forest: Something else is alive Beside the clock’s loneliness And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star: Something more near
Though deeper within darkness Is entering the loneliness: Cold, delicately as the dark snow, A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf; Two eyes serve a movement, that nowAnd again now, and now, and now Sets neat prints into the snow Between trees, and warily a lame Shadow lags by stump and in hollow Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness, Brilliantly, concentratedly, Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
Ted Hughes


Crow and the Sea
He tried ignoring the sea But it was bigger than death, just as it was bigger than life.
He tried talking to the sea But his brain shuttered and his eyes winced from it as from open flame.
He tried sympathy for the sea But it shouldered him off - as a dead thing shoulders you off.
He tried hating the sea But instantly felt like a scrutty dry rabbit-dropping on the windy cliff.
He tried just being in the same world as the sea But his lungs were not deep enough
And his cheery blood banged off it Like a water-drop off a hot stove.
Finally
He turned his back and he marched away from the sea
As a crucified man cannot move.
Ted Hughes

Preludes
I
The winter evening settles downWith smell of steaks in passageways.Six o'clock.The burnt-out ends of smoky days.And now a gusty shower wrapsThe grimy scrapsOf withered leaves about your feetAnd newspapers from vacant lots;The showers beatOn broken blinds and chimney-pots,And at the corner of the streetA lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.And then the lighting of the lamps.
II
The morning comes to consciousnessOf faint stale smells of beerFrom the sawdust-trampled streetWith all its muddy feet that pressTo early coffee-stands.
With the other masqueradesThat time resumes,One thinks of all the handsThat are raising dingy shadesIn a thousand furnished rooms.
III
You tossed a blanket from the bed,You lay upon your back, and waited;You dozed, and watched the night revealingThe thousand sordid imagesOf which your soul was constituted;They flickered against the ceiling.And when all the world came backAnd the light crept up between the shutters,And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,You had such a vision of the streetAs the street hardly understands;Sitting along the bed's edge, whereYou curled the papers from your hair,Or clasped the yellow soles of feetIn the palms of both soiled hands.
IV
His soul stretched tight across the skiesThat fade behind a city block,Or trampled by insistent feetAt four and five and six o'clock;And short square fingers stuffing pipes,And evening newspapers, and eyesAssured of certain certainties,The conscience of a blackened streetImpatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curledAround these images, and cling:The notion of some infinitely gentleInfinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;The worlds revolve like ancient womenGathering fuel in vacant lots. T.S.Eliot

yes wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh

wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh

and don't read dead white poets in the middle of the afternoon of a day that's already been sucky.

so there!

here's taking coal to Newcastle...with a twist ;) !!

forget the debate...

My joey did it!! At 10.58pm LA time on the 8th she birthed a cwyyyyyyyyying scweeeechy little bumble.
The Yking was a huge grin on the phone and the joey as usual, non-chalant, smug- two hours after delivering for god's sake! Tell me it was the drugs!

So here she is, wundehful baybie livin' on leeerv...

hmmm.

ta-daaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!

I want to go to my house. Now. I am missing everything much this evening. There is nobody to talk to. I want to go to my house now. I'm very weary of this make-shift version just now.

What to do?

i must be a very bad person. i can think of at least 3 mails i sent off today the subjects of which were "sorry". one or two of them had exclamation marks to boot.
yuck i'm digusting.