powdery flecks of snow dancing in the air at awkward angles and i want to compose a poem, that's how i was thinking after walking against the wind early this morning and ending up looking out a window in meier hall with a few moments to spare before the day would truly begin. i didn't get anywhere with that - do i ever? - but the moment set me up with a need for serious conversation. just to linger for a while with the cold outside and no one else around but one other person and for us to talk about things that weigh on the mind and pass judgements and laugh about the strangeness of it all.

i keep thinking about the semester being nearly over and how different it was last year: the night the honours seminar ended (a late class over at 5, wednesdays) and catherine and i went over to the bookstore with katie and talked about how we were maybe too smart for this place and maybe we'd all be getting out soon, and i'd just written a short story i was moderately proud of and there was the definite sense that a period of my life was ending even though it wasn't quite through yet. i didn't know yet how the next one would be starting either, i just knew that i wanted to slip back into the past and regain a lost youth and eat breakfast in the middle of the night. had it snowed yet then? i know we'd been looking up at the moon, and it had been cold, and the nights in that period had this hue to them, this...

what i look forward to now is the holiday warmth, our second annual festivus dinner at home and christmas eve and that descending feeling of disappointment as christmas day winds to a close. december always passes too quickly and it's over before i can settle into a place where i can sit next to a window with someone i care about, watching the falling snow and discussing the falling year.