went through a bit of a depressive stage yesterday for reasons entirely unrelated to what one would think if aware of the events of last night and just hours ago tonight. i don't think it could have gone any other way.

you know, if you just let yourself look around this place for a somber second, you'd be amazed how much fear and doubt fills it up. a lot of sad people with a lot of uncertainty behind their eyes, wondering if this is all there is.

so today was supposed to be the day i locked myself away to combat the quickly rising workload of nearing december and its accompanying finals, but it didn't quite happen that way. if i were trying to rate months by craziness after what happened in october, today could be almost a full-circle valediction as the dying year lapses into its final gasp-- perhaps with a bang, as there will be thunderstorms tomorrow.

i got caught up talking and debating abortion and there was pizza and time's trans-shifting (we were reading herrick in english lit today) and stepping into the warm, breezy night and allowing myself to enjoy this pleasant weather even though it won't last. in short, it was what i needed. at one point becky called me and we talked about the moon and dark clouds shaped like africa and i felt supremely geographic, like i could see the northeast from high, high above and we were these two blinking lights at our respective places, both looking up at the moon-- i could see it and she couldn't, and the clouds were wispy and fast-moving, and it was wonderful. then driving along the waterfront to nahant, looking at the boston skyline, seeming like it was the middle of the night but it wasn't even quite six. do you know how long all of that makes a day feel?

life is full of possibilities. again.

i was at home for a few days and it served as little more than a bleak preview of another bleak winter break, this time far less welcome. winter break last year was a necessary isolation period, the likes of which i'd gone into during the previous year as well. it was a process of trying to shake the year, especially the last few months of the year, out of my system in preparation for that half-imagined new beginning that dawns in january. but in college the break is longer and those extra days drag on in what is either exquisite agony (end! now!) or glorious languor before "spring" classes start up and there's more cold and snow and my birthday before i know it.

the weight of the past bears down on me during my time at home, and original thoughts become impossible. i've written about this before. i have to get out of there when it gets like that. i should go somewhere or do something but it never seems to work out. first the year ends with me watching insomnia (the year i got it on dvd i stayed up all night on christmas day and watched it because i "felt like being ironic") and listening to the moon and antarctica and.......

actually, it's going to be fucking warm this week, no? i'll get back to this when it feels like november again.

this thanksgiving:

my life may only be a thin illusion of stability most of the time but that doesn't make the most stable moments any less meaningful-- the almost metaphorical vision and reality of a house standing in a storm, those swirly-howly winds that you almost picture as something out of starry night, that room bathed in darkness that i'd only known before in dusky half-light: streetlight shimmer on always filling puddles outside and an advancing cold settling in quiet hallways within. all of this in the loveliest sort of way.

great find: alasdair roberts (with appendix out) singing a cover of the early magnetic fields song "josephine."

so, laura and i are pretty sure we saw elia driving behind us yesterday.

windy evening, storm coming in, thinkin' of blue thunder. sometimes part of a song you've listened to over and over suddenly takes on new meaning, or you discover an alternate interpretation for it.

so i found myself in the library going over elia notes with jessie when the conversation (as it invariably does) turned to religion and the nature of faith. next thing i know i'm writing out the first chorus of "this is a fire door never leave open" for her to read and asking if she thinks as i do (as of a few hours ago) that it may be a meditation on the nature of faith itself.

the muddled message yearning to breathe free:

wanting to see if there's something greater, that spiritual yearning, something to pull you along through the darkness that we all inhabit and the darkness is uncertainty and in uncertainty we are all together but feel alone. god, or whatever the "answer" could be...god is peace of mind. the good thing you've never known alone in the darkness. or perhaps you knew when you were young and it was all so simple, having been raised to believe in a certain way and never having cause to question that which your parents instilled in you. it's hard to remember a world that uncomplicated. but your answer or answers suddenly breaks down the divisions in the world you once saw, and everything becomes unified and whole. but you can't be sure. darkness falls through the nights of life. you pray in silence and wonder if anyone is listening. if it is all tied together, why? and however you could voice a conclusion on this point, it would be by way of inexact comparison because the truth is ethereal-- and you're right back where you started.

on nights like this i get this feeling like i should be staying up late working on some massive project so my life isn't wasting away. then, sometimes, i actually stay up and nothing gets done, the evening into the night into the wee hours turning into a long series of sweet laziness and "oh no, i should really get some sleep or i'll regret this tomorrow" laments. other times i go to bed around the normal time or maybe even a bit early in order to contradict my instincts even more, and i sleep lightly between intense dreams and passionate thoughts of those i care about most. ironically, those visions and emotions are exactly the fuel i need for one of those writing projects, but the lure of sleep keeps everything murky, like these overcast days coming up or the night itself, and whatever inspiration that had occasion to come upon me slips away.

which is to say i can think a really amazing book, but that doesn't help me at all.

today was an uneventful day, much unlike the last week, and i used it to catch up on coursework i'd been neglecting. i read some marlowe and remembered this passage from haven kimmel, which amazon's "search inside" feature allows me to reproduce despite the absence of my copy of the book:

Then they read Marlowe's Faustus, and there was something from the beginning so perfectly...what was it? When they finished the play, the professor asked the class, “What was Faustus's real sin? Where did he really fall?” And there had been the standard answers: He was greedy. He desired power, knowledge. He was lustful and blasphemous. Dr. Hempel agreed that Faustus had been all those things, but that Marlowe had very carefully planted a clue in the first scene of the play; he had revealed the trap from the beginning.

In the text, Faustus is reading the vulgate of Saint Jerome, and comes to Romans 6:23: “The wages of sin is death,” he quotes, and stops right there, despairing, without turning the page. Dr. Hempel looked out at the class. "You're all good Christians, right? What's the rest of the verse? What would Faustus have seen if he'd turned the page?” There had been no answer. “‘For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.' Don't you understand? Faustus was eternally damned because he was a bad reader."

-- Haven Kimmel, The Solace of Leaving Early

which, as kimmel has amos comment after this in the book (not exactly in these words), is pretty fucking clever. especially since the lesson is so multi-layered-- the reader has to know what the rest of the verse is to understand, which requires research if not piety. you have to do what he didn't and follow through. lesson learned.

alexandra's room looks like on avery island sounds.

thanksgiving is coming on faster than i ever could have expected. and winter. i've been preparing subconsciously in my ways, getting a new sarah waters book i'm expecting to read right around finals next month and bringing my copy of dubliners back to school with me so i can look at the vintage international cover and think of the holidays. the associations i make. i want an evening to come in mid-december where i step outside into the chilly evening air with a contented warmth inside. live through my favourite actionslacks song. decembers...so much has happened during them in the past, but never that.

that whole time of year, soon to be this whole time of year, always gets me, in that i always end up enjoying myself even though all of the elements that should be contrary to my enjoyment are in place. this is especially true on christmas eve. there's always a family gathering at my house, and i talk to jenn about politics and quietly attempt to incite a theological argument with uncle mike. last year patty was showing me around as the "hey, he's in college" prize child, talking up that short story i wrote for kessler's class even though she hadn't read it. still hasn't. i was still recovering then, doing a lot of soul-searching in the break that ensued. the break i needed. that night as it passes through the years is full of little traditions, annoying ones, but a net enjoyment is always found. melissa/michelle, the lapsed catholicism of a french-canadian gathering, kelly's continuing foibles (worse every year), a christmas story.

then the traditions i try to get started: how i ran the music the first year i got a cd player, my little station set up with all the meticulous planning of a kid with too much time and too much ambition. then that true holdiay classic and fixture for the last few years, die hard-- but i usually end up watching it alone or not watching it at all. then i tell people i did because it makes for a good story. i've seen it enough times. this year? phil spector christmas album. we'll see.

this thought, not yet completed, for this situation, not yet resolved:

they say memories associated with certain smells are the strongest of all, easily brought back and vividly visceral as the recollection commences. a week or two ago, i picked up the scent of whatever perfume jessie wears and suddenly felt like the conditions outside were immaterial-- it was last spring again. claire seems to have been keeping track of me and a week ago she told me i was much happier back then. i suppose that's true. everything was less complicated. the list i ended up making in rambling paragraph form as my spring memories spilled out is almost uniformly positive and beautiful. i didn't know as many people and my world was smaller. well, smaller than it is now, but bigger than it had ever been at the time.

i flew right back mentally to avi's class and ethics right afterward in the morning, having a huge surplus of dining dollars and always stopping for green tea before class. i walked through mornings of increasingly good weather as those few months passed by, reading books with aesthetically pleasing covers and philosophically interesting content. i passed notes in philosophy class, drew circles on a board to make a point about violent video games, argued about literature (and the structure of the atmosphere), and gave a speech on the motif of harmful sensation. read beautiful losers right as spring break started. if the mornings were getting nicer the blooming day of later morning seemed more and more brimming with possibility. the new world. zen shorts. the rains and flowers right near the end...so much more. i have it all written down. i've been going back and adding more when i think of it.

so how influenced was i by all of this scheduled simplicity and taken-for-granted beauty of a season? or by anything else. not that i know how, or that i was even consciously forming that thought in those words, but this is what happened yesterday:

becky called me in the midst of a crisis. she wanted to know if i believe everything happens for a reason. we circled the question in little arcs of darwinism, nature vs. nurture, faith, existentialism, and the realisation of what we can never know. that's actually where we ended: with the idea of fate and free will, whether either exists and how there's no way to know. the best solution would be to just pick whatever way of looking at it gives you the greatest peace of mind and worry about something with more direct influence on your life. if thinking there's no such thing as free will makes you feel artificial and puppet-like, your "choices" actually predetermined by all that has come before (and it had to happen that way), then don't. lie to yourself if it's not really what you believe, and that's all it is-- a belief. i'm not overly concerned with that, but i'd really like to know what brought me to where i am now.

so whatever conception of what i really wanted in life that i had up to this point is only what it is because of what has already happened. that means something (or someone) new could shake it, and maybe it really has been shaken this time. i should be happier than i am right now, and anything could be responsible. the spring. or the summer. or a night last week. a chance encounter. a single conversation or a series of events that, when put together, form a complete picture. a combination of all these things and more. a life up to this point. now, the present, is all that really exists, and i don't know what to do with it.

nikki was showing me this (short version: "that movie endorses peace! fuck that, we're christians!") and i was reminded of something from the "chronicles of teenage inside jokes" site i had back in high school:

allison's list of things that are wrong with disney's pocahontas:

suicidal tendencies (jumping off a cliff)
making fun of indians
gay raccoons
devil worshipping/voodoo
unsafe use of shovels/sword
greed
shaken senior citizen syndrome
hard labor with no breaks
climbing mountains with no harness
digging up land without a permit
unsafe use of explosives
attempted murder
stalking
hallucenagenics
people hunting
assault with a deadly weapon
littering
reckless use of firearms
murder
disorderly conduct
discrimination
endangering the life of a raccoon
endangering the life of a hummingbird
destruction of property
stealing
breaking and entering
dog not on a leash