the last time i saw catherine the day resolved itself into the two of us standing behind a wall near the water watching the birds of a polluted beach searching for their food and discussing whether the red-beaked ones were the avian equivalent of bolshevik plotters, but earlier in the day when i was waiting for her downtown it looked like rain even though there wouldn't be any. maybe that's my favourite weather sometimes: overcast, windy, in constant expectation of rain-- maybe that's how we live our lives after the awareness of sorrow visits us: in constant expectation of rain.

haven't been able to think this week: getting used to work and there's the heat and missing laura. i've been trying to write a letter for days and failing every time. a couple of hours ago i woke up from an afternoon nap with a phrase on my lips as i do at times, the kind of thing you want to write down right away-- it didn't make sense when i read it back to myself.

it's almost july, so that's something.

just that typical junejuly stagnation as midsummer comes upon us once again.

sometimes i really want to dress like that. see also: this little post.

started re-reading mrs. dalloway this afternoon and there is something about it, isn't there, an afternoon in june. something about the year coming together in its center, gentle breezes and greenery. i'm thinking about summer and how it's a preview of what life after school is over will be like in many ways, how i've lost friends and will lose the easiest way i know of making new ones, how the long gaps in communication and my anxiety collectively convince me at times that few would ever want to see me.

but there's awareness and people know these things, how old friends can pick up after a long time, how everyone's busy and absence makes the heart grow fonder and the people we've left or who have left or who will leave us will find happiness somewhere else or at some other time.

mary called me last night before laura left and i flashed back to our late-night conversations in the past, sorting out each other's lives from our respective kitchens. i want to see her in person, alone, because it's been forever since we've done that and there's so much to say. i'll see catherine later this week, and kayleigh; i miss christine and becky and select portions of last summer and there are only so many people i can really talk to. everyone else outside of the few are a procession of names and the occasional inside joke, the certain nights i'll remember when we seemed like closer friends and hearts were opened and things were said. lately, even though everything is slow and savoury in the moment, time has been speeding up: faster because i'm content with being content, in love with life and laura and where i now reside. the world shrinks, though. there isn't time to view events as monumental, through a cinematic lens. there's only so much i can keep track of and some things are bound to be lost, perhaps as the cost of a good life, the peeling away of distractions for the sake of focus. you have to know who your real friends are.

everybody in this house got laid last night.

summer's supposed to be more like this, tracking thunderstorms across the state and watching the sky get dark early and ominously. this is my first weekend without laura since i moved in and it seems to be taking forever: friday afternoon was a couple of saturdays and this saturday evening feels like monday's prelude: i am removed from the correct measure of time. consolations: for now i have june and i have anya seton's avalon and i have the new björk album and i have online weather aesthetics. and occasional flashes lighting up darkened rooms. enough? no.

funny, via geoffrey chaucer hath a blog:

the other ones are pretty funny too, for all you middle english enthusiasts out there.