I have a writing icon -- it's the one labeled, unimaginatively, "writing". This is my secret writing icon (except the part where I've just said so).

It's a flickr photo I found because octette wondered aloud if there was a loa riding her. I said there was; I included the link. I saved the file, too, but I didn't save the photographer's name (if you find it, tell me). In any case -- eventually, I made it into an icon.

It serves a lot of purposes. Sometimes I use it when I'm commenting to octette. Mostly it's just fun. But in my head, at the moment, it's all about writing. Forget that it's a chihuahua (but you probably can't, now that I've said it). The shadows, the eyes. Maybe it's my loa, right now. The rider, the weight on the shoulder that leans forward and breathes against the neck.

That sort of breath can get very... persistent. Irritating. Maddening. Especially if it doesn't resolve into some sort of ecstasy.




Essentially: I am terribly, terribly annoyed.

Several times over the last few days, I've had what I've been calling "Fanny moments," when I was expecting something to go one way, and instead it turned out to be go so radically differently that the only response is to pick up my dropped jaw and try not to giggle hysterically. The important parts are 1) the surprise, and 2) the juxtaposition between the expectation and the reality.

I call them "Fanny moments" because I've been listening to all of Jane Austen through librivox.org, and as such have reached Mansfield Park. In the course of the final chapters, Fanny receives a letter from the sister of the man courting her, which she assumes will be something mundane like "o wai are you not traveling with us 2 Mansfield mai bff?? I <3 u!", and instead it reads:

A most scandalous, ill-natured rumour has just reached me, and I write, dear Fanny, to warn you against giving the least credit to it, should it spread into the country. Depend upon it, there is some mistake, and that a day or two will clear it up; at any rate, that Henry is blameless, and in spite of a moment's etourderie, thinks of nobody but you. Say not a word of it; hear nothing, surmise nothing, whisper nothing till I write again. I am sure it will be all hushed up, and nothing proved but Rushworth's folly. If they are gone, I would lay my life they are only gone to Mansfield Park, and Julia with them. But why would not you let us come for you? I wish you may not repent it.Yours, etc.

To which Fanny's response is, appropriately: "Fanny stood aghast. As no scandalous, ill-natured rumour had reached her, it was impossible for her to understand much of this strange letter."

I grew my hair out by accident nearly two years ago. I started by telling myself I wouldn't cut it until I got a job, and then I got a job, and life was entirely too busy to have my hair cut (also, I wanted to deflect the potential evils of a Bad Haircut during my First Job, which I had convinced myself would lead to Catastophe). So my hair grew.

By the time I was getting seriously annoyed by it, Beth and I had started doing wedding things, and I realized that if I actually wanted to do anything with my bridal head other than wear a small pillbox hat or pull a St. Lucia, I needed hair to do it. Since it literally takes me years to manage ten inches, that meant scissors were out of my life for a while.

One of my mental countdowns has to do with the wedding (six days) -- the other has to do with my impending haircut (seven).

I love having short hair. I love it when it's four inches long and flips up at the bangs -- I love it when it's an inch and a half off my skull and I can finger-comb it dry out of the shower. I love it when friends ruffle my hair. I love the ticklish sensitivity of having normally hidden skin so close to air. I love the comforting feel of a tugged curl while I'm thinking -- I love the feel of wind (or breaths) stirring my hair. I love the sound it makes when I shake my head. I love how dyke I feel when I walk down the street.

The long hair for the wedding is for vanity, and I freely admit it. The short hair afterward... that's for me.

At some point I'm going to write an essay about

1) how working in managing editorial/production could lead a person to believe, despite life-long evidence to the contrary, that editors are thoughtless and authors are blithering morons

2) how much I hate, on an even deeper level than I previously thought humanly possible, the idea being taught to our delicate under-grads that an author's True Meaning and Greatest Glory can be found within the "untouched" texts that they produced in their heads. Also, the idea that writing is an independent craft.

---

In other news, Matthew is not fawn, but rather a newer variant called amber -- that picture is exactly what he looks like. Friedrich (AKA Little Bear) is definitely a Berkshire, possibly either a chocolate or a cocoa color. George (which is still a temporary name, though it may become permanent), is a mis-marked hooded (in that his marking stops halfway down his back) in possibly a lilac color.

I have a hell of a time filling notebooks. I want to be one of those people who own shelves full of decorative blank books that have become strategically un-blank.

I can't for the life of me do it. I get stuck in going forward, or of thinking of Wise Things to write, or even just finishing the damned things. There's a diary I've kept since I was eleven that I still haven't filled. It's a small diary.

Because I don't wish to give up my mad dreams, I have reached the following compromises:

-I can fill little flip-top notebooks if I use them for to-do lists and random scribblings. Approximately twice per notebook will be something worth keeping in the realm of creative writing, but I still keep every single one of these notebooks because, by God, I've filled them. There are some dozen of these now, probably, going back to 1998 (though, sadly, I have no idea where the very first, and much beloved, one is).

-In theory, I have figured out how to fill marble composition books. I discovered fairly early on that I hate writing on the left-hand page; I end up getting caught in the gutter and can't write in my lap as I am wont to do. The solution to this is to write on the right-hand page, and then turn the book upside-down, thus creating an infinite universe (or 200, whatever) of right sides. This is a wildly successful ploy, provided that I'm either plotting stories or writing down quotes so that I can accurately cite things later. Also, I'm still tetchy about starting these books. The two I have I started before I figured out this method, and therefore they are haphazard and incredibly ugly for the first fifteen pages or so. The remainder of these texts, however, are BEAUTIFUL. Heh. Provided you don't actually read what I've written, at which point you get things like, "On the topic of Draco: Well, he's a shiftless ass, isn't he?"

-In theory, I can fill a particular brand of small notebook with quotations and good character names and so forth. As with the previous, this is only a theory because I haven't actually managed to fill the one I have yet. However, things seem to be going well, and I'm quite pleased with it, so I anticipate (some years from now) actually filling every page. And then, then! I'll start another.


... And that's it.

In between these little cheats, I can sneak those personal/brilliant things that I imagine everyone else's notebooks must contain, but that's only rarely. Really, I imagine perpetrating a great scam in which everyone thinks I am one of the Blank Book Writers when, in fact, I am a Blank Book Hack who draws incomplete flip-books in the corners, practices calligraphy alphabets because the ink is pretty, writes down lists of ingredients for, if my notes are accurate, All-Bran, and currently has, on the last page so far written, the phrase "--WOW THIS SUCKS BLAME PART FIVE"


P.S. This, stumbledhere, is why I have not sent that composition book back to you. Also because, on the same page I was practicing your name in calligraphy letters to see if I could come up with a pretty way to write it on the wedding invitations, I also wrote the word "sex" a bunch of times because the letters just flowed so nicely out of the pen. Then I went and looked at what I had done, and I said, "Whoops."

On the other hand, I made your name totally pretty. It's the best one out of everybody's name.

I've taken a disgusting number of copyediting tests by this point ("disgusting" equalling four in the past couple of months, one in progress, one in queue, though take-homes are weird). While there is very little to recommend them for the World's Most Fun Activity award, I do get a certain perverse joy out of finding a golden error, an error that you can just tell was inserted because it's one of those things that separate the men from the interns. These golden errors might require carefully checking the page numbers to make sure there isn't one missing in the sequence, or compulsively checking the titles of books to be sure the citations are all correct.

I'm not quite sure how one can tell that a golden error has just been caught -- for all I know, I'm missing all sorts of them, either by not catching them or by simply correcting and moving on. But if I find one that feels just insane enough, right enough, and compulsive enough... then I know I've found a good friend of the person who created the test. And correcting one makes me feel like I've solved the NYT Sunday crossword puzzle in half a minute while battling a herd of vicious goldfish: incredibly jazzed about my brains, but still plagued by small, unusual annoyances.


Edit: And then there are the times when you're staring at a sentence and you know something is wrong with it and you can't for the life of you tell what it is. For every golden error, there is inevitably a lead balloon.

Today has been weird.

Leaving aside prezzie catastrophes of the "My God, why hasn't it arrived, who hates me this much?" variety, either today or tomorrow I'm supposed to hear about the Extremely Excellent Job Prospect (EEJP, or "Dyslexic Car Name" for short). Naturally, we're all on tenterhooks: jumping at loud noises, compulsively checking the voicemail, watching little dots dance on the wall.

We go on a birthday dinner, requiring that we leave home before the magical 5 PM witching hour. I bring my cell phone. We get to dinner, just at five, and I say to myself, "Self, it'd be crazy to check the voicemail right now. Just plain crazy. Get yourself a batch of cheezy fries and chill."

We leave dinner at around six or so, and I say to myself, "Self, why don't we check the voicemail?" Beth says, "Stop calling me 'self' and call the damn voicemail."*

Here follows several minutes worth of trying to figure out the voicemail, finally culminating with Beth taking the phone and pressing numerous buttons. She enters the voicemail system. Her eyes widen. She looks at me. She says, "You got it."** I take the phone back, and start repeating the message out loud. I say, "I got it."*** But wait, I say a few moments later, dread filling my heart. The message is undated. And we received a message from this HR person before, which may or may not have been saved for later. And Beth may have pressed the wrong button. And the message seems to ask if I'm interested in [garblegarble meeting with? garblegarble] the hiring manager. And to call back.

There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth. We decide that 1) we'll call tomorrow in any case, just to check, and 2) it may be an old message, but if there's a weird beeping noise on the phone at home, that'll tell us that the message is new, and that, perhaps, this is Actual Cool News.

The car trip is long and adrenaline-ly nauseating.

We get home. I rush to the computer. Beth's mother rushes to the phone. Beep-beep cries the phone! A message, a message! But wait. It appears that our trusty and valiant friends skadi and darkbishonen wished Beth a happy birthday. Blast!**** The following then occurs, near simultaneously:

-Beth's mother, Trixie, says, "I don't think this is the same message I heard before. [states various reasons] So maybe..."

-I check my email, and discover that the greeting card company I submitted card ideas to has sent me a contract -- they're going to publish the Christmas card I came up with.


The highs! The lows! Everything's exciting in Cass-land. To sum up: I'm feeling nervous as hell about the EEJP, but either things are good, or they're status quo -- I haven't actually heard bad news. So yay. And then there's the glory of having my words on pieces of card stock floating around the world to be auctioned on eBay fifty years from now as a cheery bit of turn-of-the-century ephemera. I will of course put up a link when the card becomes available.***** I've been told by Beth that it will also be our Christmas card this year, should the timing work out right. So again, yay.

In conclusion: We're going to bed in about ten minutes because this evening has just been a wee bit too intense. One way or another, I'll be glad when this week's over.



* This is not a direct quote, but it would've been pretty funny if it had been.

** I'd like to not reveal the ending of the story, but just a hint: Don't start cheering.

*** Okay, so really, no happy dances.

**** Not to be construed as Harper/Darkling-hating. 'Cause our love is Oh So Pure for our hot Dyke Squad monkeys.

***** And coerce you all into buying several boxes worth.

I would buy you a monkey. Except while you may have always wanted a monkey, you would probably feel obliged to point out that we should not physically own one.

I would go to England and absolutely ravage their boot sales and antique shows.

I would go to England. You know. Because.

I would purchase an entire set of the 1950s American editions of the Sir Peter Whimsey novels.

I would purchase the entire Stith Thomson Motif-Index.

I would traipse onto eBay and go insane.

I would go to Disneyworld.

I would donate wads of cash to Strange Horizons.

I would buy drinks for all the myriad number of people I said I would buy drinks for over the years.

I would purchase American Girl dolls and accessories to my heart's content.

I would put together the most glorious sewing room that has ever been and ever will be.

I would purchase all the necessary items it would take to relearn how to tat lace.

I would move to New York. And presumably find a job, but I'd start with the moving bit.

I would invest like a madwoman. (One of the many boring answer. There are several of these, most of which I choose not to mention here. They are identifiable by their closeness to the actual reality of what I would do if I happened to suddenly possess a million dollars.)

I would do a Grand Tour.

I would attempt a life in Wales.

I would swim with dolphins.

I would own an African Grey Parrot. Consequently, I would also own a Green Conure, because the injustice of having one and not the other would weigh heavy upon my soul.

I would meet Koko. Failing that, I would meet Jane Goodall, who would subsequently introduce me to Koko.

I would buy a permanent LJ account, or the nearest thing to.

I would learn how to produce zines, and then how to distribute them to the unwary.

I would attempt to garden.

September 11th was a national tragedy. The results of that tragedy -- the various wars we have since found ourselves in -- are horrendous. The personal trials of those who went through it were terrible to hear. It was Stephen King's style come to life: we were sinners in the hands of an angry God, and we did not know the sin we had committed.

I have never felt such patriotic love as I did during the 9/11 experience.

We have sinned again, apparently, but it wasn't unexpected. We had warning. Katrina came, and she left again, leaving damage and death behind her. As an act of God, she was a hellish one.

And yet it was not Katrina that gave me a man crying out in terror and despair; it was not Katrina that showed me newsmen clawing at the system to try and tell the truth; it was not Katrina that killed would-be heroes, called Americans enemies, bought ratings with lives.

I have never been more ashamed of my country. I have never been more ashamed of being a member of this society. I want to stop watching these things, reading these things. I can't.

It is my duty as a human being to take in all I can, and remember. Christ help us if any of us forget.

Travelling is always a tiring experience for me. I'm good for the trip there (wherever There is), and I'm good while I'm There, and maybe I'm even okay for the trip back to Here. But afterwards I'm stuck in a sort of weird fog of fatigue and uneasiness, often for days at a time. How did I get from There to Here? Is this where I belong? Have all my loved ones been replaced by pod people? Are these pod people who can't act?

After this latest bit of travelling, I've been watching our very rural roads -- populated by weeds, shale rock faces, and Amish -- get the image of busy city streets superimposed on them. In my mind, the weeds are walking people, and happy for it, and the shale is quite chuffed by its new brownstone duds. The Amish, on the other hand, are displeased by their horse buggies' sudden transformations into the MTA buses.

Travel and me work slodgeways, if at all.

Daylight savings is truly a wonderous thing. Also mysterious, also inconvenient. But I can deal.

--

It's fairly difficult to come out and say "I've communicated with God. Twice," without sounding like a complete fruitcake. Generally, such people are. But in honor of the Pope (I'm a recovering Catholic*, so I'm kind of torn up about John Paul II), I'm going to tell a story.

When I was a just a bit of a thing, sixteen or so, the meaning of life was revealed to me. I was crossing a street to get back home after school; there was a great deal of sunshine laying an orange glaze on the road; I was thinking of nothing in particular when suddenly, a great pouring of information came into my mind, an intricate and purposeful plan that had one great outcome for all of mankind. It was all there. For a fleeting moment, I had it, and I laughed like anything.

It was the funniest damn joke I'd ever heard.

And then it was gone again. I have some of it left -- there was a bit about the lowering sperm count, I do remember that -- but the whole shebang... nada.

A few years later, when I was maybe eighteen, I had a dream. Many things happened in this dream, but the big one was that I was told how to travel to Hell. It being a dream, and a good idea at the time, I of course went there, and discovered that it looked just like Earth with some glaring exceptions; for instance, things looked like darker versions of themselves unless I shined my flashlight on them -- at which point, they became normal. Everyone in Hell looked old, and most of them didn't know where they were. There was a bazaar there, among other things, and a very fine tailor of comfortable looking drape-y clothes.

I still remember how to get to Hell, and while fascinating, I don't count this as one of the God-communication things. (And if I did, what does that say about what I should be doing with my life? Nuh-uh, G-man. I flat refuse to be Keanu Reeves, no matter how good he looks in a suit.)

A few weeks ago, I had a dream, and in this dream I fell asleep and dreamed another dream. I walked to a place the earlier dream had featured, all pollution and industry and mutated child slaves (you know, like you have in most industries) and I showed God the mess it was. And God asked me why we had done it.

I gave him the usual spiel -- to become greater than we were, and for His name and glory -- and there was a pause, and God said, "You're all idiots."

And I woke up from the one dream, and then I woke up from the second.


I don't really see these experiences as having much meaning beyond being sort of cool, and certainly being useful for future fiction -- but it's experiences like these (and others -- have I ever written up the time I saw Death's car? A grill on front you wouldn't believe) that give me my faith in... well, in something. I like having faith. I certainly don't believe in the Catholic church as it currently stands -- I consider it corrupt and no longer an accurate vision of God's will on Earth -- but I still believe in the religion. Which is why I'm now a happy little Unitarian who really likes the BVM and can still rattle off saints' histories.

Anyway. The Pope... He was trying. I appreciate that. And I imagine he must have had more than a few of the same sorts of experiences I've had, because I can't imagine getting very far in the church without having some sort of call at least once in his life. So I feel... sort of like the one person I was certain hadn't lost the vision of the perfect church** has died, and while another will take his place, dammit, this Pope was my Pope, and I think I may very well miss him.

It's an odd world. I hope he gets to hear that joke I heard, and laugh as hard as I did.



* Being a recovering Catholic is like being a recovering alcoholic -- you never really stop being that; you just work real hard at not falling off the wagon.

** This is not to say that I consider the church's goals at all yay and happy -- I mean, they're not down with teh gay, and I, uh, really embrace that. On the other hand, the Catholic church is supposed to change, allowing for imperfect humans to try and get closer and closer to what God really wants (and what with us not being too clear on that, thanks to the whole ineffable God thing, I'm willing to give a lot of leeway provided their hearts are in the right place), so I can see there being some momentary errors in the process, provided the basic ideas are still on the up and up. It is a different matter, however, when the straight up core of the religion is compromised -- through its actions, I find that the church shows a belief that the justice of man is more important than the justice of God, and allows that belief to be, well, believed*** -- and when that happens, we're talking corruption, heresy, and a crumbling of the church. Frankly, I don't plan on going down on a rotted ship.

*** I worked this out a couple of years ago, and I can always go over the logic again, but mostly this footnote is to show just how much I love footnotes. Footnotefootnotefootnote. Best part of a thesis, too. Yay, footnotes.

So today has been a day of rest after the travelling of the weekend. I tend to get rather evil when I travel -- or rather, afterwards, when I'm trying to readjust to being back where I should be. But lo, here I am, and quite better for having had a bit of quiet-selfness.

Oddly enough, the sex panel I imagined was far more interesting than the one I actually attended. Well, that's not entirely fair -- it was tremendously interesting, being a discussion of how to keep relationships going after one's characters have had wild monkey shenanigans. On the other hand, the position I put myself into -- as the person who didn't so much write full romances with nicely developed relationships as write hot sex madrigals in the middle of my characters' pants -- didn't really go over terribly well. I put in my piece, but basically let the people with more chops do their thing.

The best panel by far was the one I moderated, no doubt due entirely to my excellent and learned co-panelists. It was also a fabulous opportunity to strut my thesis stuff like I actually had something to say on the subject.

The dealers' room was as lovely as usual, though less tempting to me than perhaps in years past. The real delight was the enormous number of stationery stores available in the mall next door, including one where my family bought for me, as a belated birthday gift, a beautiful Waterman fountain pen with which to gloat over. It is my precious, and lovely in mine eye.

Perhaps the best part of the convention was having a nervous young woman come up to me after my first panel and talk to me about her YA novel, and whether query letters were acceptable at certain houses, and giving me a little summary of her work, and it read like fantasy but was really SF, and she hoped that wouldn't cause any problems... It made me feel all special and validated and perhaps even a tiny bit like I belong in this silly profession.

The most entertaining/prosperous part of the convention was ending up in the bar Saturday night, writing huge amounts of notes to myself concerning whether or not I could actually have God become a young homeless female prostitute with the hots for my Michael the Archangel character without getting a peeved message from Himself in the form of plagues of class readings or phone bills -- and writing all this next to someone who I would soon discover was an ex-monk SF fan who did AIDs, autism, and peace research, used to work at Powell's Books back when there were only ten workers there, and had no idea an SF/F con was going on that very minute. We ended up talking for about two hours, avoiding the drunk mundane who kept trying to get my poor fanboy to sing in Italian, and I went back to my room feeling nicely cheered by the entire evening.

Finally, after much travel and so forth on Sunday, I arrived home at around 12:30 AM to discover that the perpetrators of the Samantha doll prank had left me some unknown number of tiny, yellow post-it notes on the majority of my possessions that say "I licked this". So far, I've found the obvious ones on my television, computer, paintings, clocks, light switches, and mirrors, but new ones crop up regularly (including under my mouse, inside my phone, up the lampshade, in my bed, pointing to a picture of Beth, and on items in my underwear drawer. Concerning the last one, my orally fixated compatriots made the delightful error of putting a post-it on the contaminated underwear. Heh). I haven't even checked the sewing room yet -- I hesitate to see what they've done to my 'fridge, let alone my poor Samantha.

I suppose the thing to do now would be to go to bed, but I'm really not feeling that urge. Maybe... maybe I should write more of the thesis... mmm, thesis...

The problem with my schedule this semester is that... it's so empty. I have, theoretically, more work to do this semester than any other semester previously, but it certainly doesn't feel like it. I have a short story to write today, but it's only supposed to be about four pages. I have reading to do, but I've finished most of it. I have my thesis...

Yep, that's where the work part comes in. What's really very troubling is that I can't precisely tell how much thesis work there is. There's the writing portion of it, and there's the research portion of it, and there's the creative writing portion of it... but it all seems very removed. Which is perhaps what's making me feel a wee bit churlish about this semester. I don't feel connected to it.

Hmph. I should go bathe. And then eat lunch, and then go to the library, as I always do, whether I know what I'm doing there or not.

Last night, when I was watching Trick before friends came, I tensed up waiting to see if the men I heard outside the room, reading incredulously the words "Queer Film Series," would open the door, make some remark, make more than remarks. In my mind, I opened the door, I invited them in, and I waited to see what they'd do.

The next film was Before Stonewall, a PBS documentary about the gay and lesbian liberation movement before there was a movement, and all the little things that we have done, will do, needed doing. It filled us up. Pride and anger and love.

This morning I read this post by tinywarrior, and it filled me up again. I feel trite and unreal, but I'm saying it anyway: Next time, I'm going to open that door.

So yesterday morning at breakfast, a familiar song started playing on the stereo reserved for student-picks. It took me a couple of seconds to place it, and a couple more to make sure I'd pegged it, but yep -- the Magnetic Fields' Papa Was a Rodeo. The last time I heard this song (and possibly the first time I heard this song) was a little over a year ago at a piano bar in the city, and baldanders was singing it.

I got a happy little feeling for knowing cool people who sing songs in bars, and then, I got a happy little feeling for going to a school where the students recognize that sort of music as cool. It was a happy-little-feeling sort of morning.

---

Do you know what's really really cool? Arguing that you can completely explain the character motivations of E.M. Forster's Maurice through a generous application of humoral and geohumoral theory. I mean, talking about Durham's constant fevers being a product of too much yellow bile is just... no, really, that's the sort of thing that makes me really happy to be an English major.

---

Speaking of Maurice:

Maurice opened his hand. Luminous petals appeared in it. "You care for me a little bit, I do think," he admitted, "but I can't hang all my life on a little bit. You don't. You hang yours on Anne. You don't worry whether your relation with her is platonic or not, you only know it's big enough to hang a life on. I can't hang mine on to the five minutes you spare me from her and politics. You'll do anything for me except see me. That's been it for this whole year of Hell. You'll make me free of the house, and take endless bother to marry me off, because that puts me off your hands. You do care a little for me, I know" -- for Clive had protested -- "but nothing to speak of, and you don't love me. I was yours once till death if you'd cared to keep me, but I'm someone else's now -- I can't hang about whining for ever -- and he's mine in a way that shocks you, but why don't you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness?"

This is a stupid time to be awake. I should stop this immediately.

---

In other news, Beth and I spent a large portion of this evening discussing what we would do if one of our children turned out to be a saint. This of course stems from the conversation we had a couple years ago where we discussed how we would determine whether one of us was carrying a divine pregnancy.

It's sort of like what all those relationship counselors tell you to do -- you know, figure out what your partner wants out of life, whether they want children now/later/never, whether they have a jealousy issue just waiting to pop up out of nowhere... except Beth and I sort of figured that stuff out within the first couple of months of our being together. We're forward-thinking like that. Both of us have a tendency to try to find out compatibility immediately.

Anyway. So we did that, and we're the almost-three-and-a-half-years couple you see before you. And now we sit around and think of more scenarios that really need immediate discussion. Like the topic of possible divinity. Also what the proper action would be if Beth were taken over by an alien. (That last one, oddly, we decided was much less likely than the Child of God option.)

Perhaps I opened the door for this when, less than a month into our relationship, I very seriously asked Beth what her opinion of gene modification for children was. This was because I read Nancy Kress's Beggars in Spain when I was in middle school, and it's never really left me feeling comfortable with the ethics of non-necessary modification. Beth agreed with me, and that filled me with... well, a whole lot of comfort on the issue.

After tonight's conversation, I've got a lot of comfort on the issue of spontaneous supernatural/superhuman occurences that follow the pattern of divine miracles, and what we would do if little Joey started healing the sick while faintly glowing.

Uh... hi, snow. Yeah, look, I've been meaning to call and stuff, but I was just sort of hoping that we could, you know, not do this...

Yeah, yeah, I know. I just wasn't comfortable with where this was all going. I mean, two foot drifts? 14 mph wind speed? It was taking me to a place I just didn't want to be right now, and I know I should've told you sooner, but when you left on Sunday I thought maybe you'd gotten the hint and--

Okay, "hint" was the wrong word. Bad word choice. I'm sorry.

No, I'm not going to kick you out. I mean, I can't, can I? You're here now, and we have to deal with that together. But... look, I'm going to have to ask you to... well, to stay outside. Like, the window. And maybe leave before tonight. Because I have to move on with my life, snow. I can't keep standing still, waiting for you to figure out what you want to do with yourself. You're blocking my path, and I don't plan on letting mistakes in meteorology like you get me down.

You know that hill outside my window that I seem to lovingly describe about every five minutes. The one that affords me the fabulous view of the labyrinth and the trees and blah-de-flippin-blah?

I came out into the middle room just now and found that whole hill -- and I mean the entire thing -- covered in birds.

I like birds. They cheep. They seem to me to possess a benign good will that overcomes the weirdness of their not having arms.

But... there were a whole lotta birds outside my window just now. And they were getting closer. A moment ago they all flew off in a backwards hail. I thought, wow, that was weird, but it's over now; I should journal that.

And I opened this window, and I typed this first paragraph. The birds came back. They're now sitting on the big tree outside my window. Hundreds of them. Staring at me.

You know that it's already begun when, as we determined few in my and Beth's room do schoolwork, a large dark shape suddenly goes rushing past outside the door with a thunderous round of sound.

When this happened, there was a moment of stunned silence. Rei and I slowly stood and opened the door.

Outside, a girl was wheeling her drunk friend back down the hall. In a giant shopping cart. They were laughing hysterically.

We carefully closed the door. A moment later the shopping cart went shuttling past the door's window again. It looked like the girl in the cart was holding an open umbrella this time.

Wow, I love this school.

Edit, twenty minutes later: Ah, my prophetic soul. They've rushed past again. Also, I believe they've found a different umbrella, which begs the question, from where?

The view from this window -- rather, this set of windows that stretch across the eastern wall -- are currently showing me bare tress with capillary branches, silver-green grass, fantasy-tale mist, Star of David glowing lamps over the hill, and a sky that looks like blue and orange can now somehow make pink.

With my yellow-light lamps and Sting's A Thousand Years playing, it all seems... very close. I want to sit in the middle of the labyrinth and watch the shapes slide around in the fog.