i was of three [or four] minds

xiii
it was evening all afternoon.
it was snowing
and it was going to snow.
the blackbird sat
in the cedar-limbs.

[wallace stevens: 13 ways of looking at a blackbird]

1: winter means being cold

sometimes when i’m outside, i try to think “cold is just a state of mind,” because maybe, if i think about it [or don’t think about it so much] the cold won’t get me.

i like how it feels when you first go outside, suffocated by your too many layers, and then this wind cuts at your face and blows through you. and i like that cold weather means that i can stay inside with a hoodie and my comforter.
but after a while of winter, the cold outside seems intrusive and the cozy feeling inside starts to be sickly, like when there’s too much sugar.

2: and getting sick
i have vertigo. i knew i was sick and not just bitching about having a cold because i kept falling up stairs and feeling like i was sinking into chairs. after waiting in student health services for 4 months, a doctor played the “follow my finger” game with me [which i lost at] and told me that vertigo can last from two hours to two months. my reaction: at least it’s got a good name. my mum’s reaction: “DO NOT RIDE YOUR BIKE. YOU WILL DIE. AND IF YOU DON’T DIE, I WILL KILL YOU.”

also: rabies. i don’t have it, obviously, but i

listened to a “this american life” around halloween about rabies and since then, i’ve been a walking psa. rabies is FUCKED UP. do you know what it does? it makes animals senselessly violent, takes away all their inhibitions, makes them immune to pain, heightens their sense of focus, and makes adrenaline practically ooze out of their eyeballs; basically, it makes them into real life, tiny, furry versions of superman, but evil. i know what you’re thinking: superman can fly and raccoons can’t. BUT guess what the number one carrier of rabies is? bats. and bats fly. if you wake up and a bat is in your house, you should get tested for rabies STAT. if you don’t get a vaccine within 72 hours, you die. new york and the surrounding area has experienced a ridiculous increase in rabies outbreaks, with over 300 reported attacks last year. and since it’s not bad enough that i live by new york during the school year, there is a new rabies epidemic spreading towards southwest ohio, i.e. cincinnati. i am going to be attacked by an animal and i am going to die.

3: it turns out that all your friends, they were just mean, dressed up
i can’t figure out how someone can spend so much time hating me; planning and whispering and manipulating and then pretending like they don’t care. but then, i’ve only recently started to understand what a waste it is. when i’ve figured something out, i expect that it’s something that everyone already knows. i have this skewed view where i’m just catching up with the rest of the world, when really i’m learning along with everyone else.

so sometimes i get sad for people i don’t even like. i wonder who has left them and how big that shadow is. i’ve decided that writing someone off as crazy overlooks too much and is too easy. it’s like denying them humanity, to say that they have no other motivation.

4: waffles

i’m trying to make a budget and track my spending and all those nice grown-up things that i really wish i would be better at, but i haven't been very successful yet. if i were going to estimate where i spend my money, though, i am guessing that it would look like this:

what this graph illustrates, besides that i spend too much on waffles, is that i should probably weigh a lot more than i do right now and that i should start saving my money so i can by a graphics tablet and actually draw pictures on my computer.

if you ever come to philadelphia, i will take you to eat at bonte before getting you a cheesesteak. meat and cheesewhiz just sound gross together, but that’s not the point, the point is: bonte’s waffles are bangin’.