Lokys.net

And so passes another year.

2006 was, for me, the Year of the... well, nothing in particular. Year of the Any-Old Kind of Day. Year of Indifference. The Year That Was, I Guess, and that's essentially all that can be said about it. I spent New Year's Eve huddled miserably sick in a chair in a darkened room, while my parents went off to a party at the home of one of our old neighbours.

No resolutions this year. No grand announcements of sweeping life changes. To be perfectly honest, I don't have many vices to give up; I don't smoke, I don't drink, and most of my other assorted sins have fallen by the wayside from disuse. Those that remain - such as, for instance, procrastination - are aspects of my character that have outlasted failure and success, censure and praise. The passing of a single calendar year could not possibly be significant enough to purge them.

Last semester, that specific flaw was put to the test. I quite simply stopped giving a shit about school. I was taking three English courses: 20th Century Poetry, the 18th Century Novel, Canadian Literature. Essays out the ass. Presentations on novels. Short paper responses. Fucking wank, all of it. I did well, of course - to do otherwise is not an *option*, don't you know - but I didn't care about any of it. I didn't put anything into any of it. In the 18th Century Novel, I actually did not do one of the assignments. It was worth 5% of the total mark in the class. Participation was worth another 15%. I did not participate at all; never put my hand up, never volunteered anything. Yet I got 87% in the course, even though logically my mark should have started at 80% and gone down from there.

So, I go into the new year feeling disheartened. Not because I'm doing poorly, but because I'm doing well and I don't feel like I'm earning it. And that bothers me.

The obvious solution, of course, is to try to earn it. Pay attention during class, take notes again. But the relentlessly practical part of my spirit rebels against the thought: if I can get an 86.6% average (good enough for the Dean's List and a $2000 scholarship for next year) by doing just a tiny bit more than nothing, why should I bust my ass for a few percentage points more? The only higher power I've ever had much faith in is the Point of Diminishing Returns, that magical place where effort and result perform the most efficient of dances. And it would be a violation of the principles of that point to slave dog-like over something that nobody cares about anyway.

What to do, then?

Damned if I know. That's why I'm here again at old Lokys, hallooing my angst to the reverberate void. Talking to myself, mostly, because I have always been comforted by the familiar pattern of words: they clarify situations, they encapsulate emotion. They reduce life to the mean.

I still don't know what I'm going to do after university, either. I don't even think about it much. Maybe I'll do a masters degree. Maybe I'll turn my English degree into a boring job as an editor somewhere. Maybe I'll go deeper into statistics, do something like what my sister does. (But preferably without the drama). Maybe I'll just fuck right off and disappear for another couple of years.

For now, though, I'm in 20th Century Poetry. And I suppose I ought to listen.

I'm paying for it, after all.

And at $50 per lecture, it's pretty fucking pricey entertainment.

So.

Here we are.

I will not waste my time or yours with excuses. Instead, I'll jump right into two snapshots of my life in recent weeks, followed by the usual Lokysian brand of rumination.

_____

I ran out of gas the other night.

I had never done that before, actually. I've always been a good, careful driver; I know the limits of my car, and I operate just within them. But I was driving my mother's old minivan, and I was in somewhat of a hurry, trying to get down to the city before a certain store closed, and also wanting to make sure I got to the airport in time to pick up my father. And I was looking at the digital display, not the actual gas tank, and the display insisted that the tank had a good 125km left in it when I rolled out of the driveway.

I got down to the Petrocan on the 400 southbound, looked up at the display again: 90km left. The next gas station was 40km down the road, so I figured I'd be fine. Rolled on by.

About 100m later, the engine started coughing nervously. Apologetically, I thought. The lights dimmed, then brightened, then faded again. I'm sorry, the van said meekly. I thought I could do it, but I just can't.

I pulled over to the side of the highway, shut it down. Tried to start it up again, and got nothing but a weak little growl.

Well. It seemed I was out of gas. I pulled out my mother's bulky circa 1999 cell phone, started to dial CAA, then realized "hey, I can't be more than a kilometer or two past the Petrocan, why don't I just hike there and buy some fuel?"

So, I put on the van's four-way flashers, locked it, and set off along the side of the highway. Jogged at first, because I was in a bit of rush; after stepping blind into a 6" hole in the ground and just about landing on my face, I slowed my pace to a brisk walk. It was a nice night, surprisingly. Snow on the ground, slush on the road, but the air was warm, and there was mist rising off the fields beside me. If I hadn't been so stressed and hurried, I would have enjoyed it. (Well, and if I hadn't been taking my little stroll along a six-lane highway).

Got to the gas station, and asked the nice old man at the gas station if he sold jerry cans. He did; handed me one from behind the counter, and told me to go out and fill it and then bring it back. (Trusting fellow, he was, though I suppose that if anyone was going to steal something from a 24 hour roadside gas station, they'd steal a lot more than a 5L can of gas).

Filled up, went back inside, paid. The nice old man asked me if I needed a ride back down to my car, and I assured him twice that I would be fine. Chivalry, it seems, is not entirely dead; it's just misdirected more often than not.

Back along the edge of the road, then, switching the gas can from one hand to the other as I went. As I walked along, it occurred to me that the side of that highway was probably the best spot in the world for me to sing a capella without being overheard: the cars whipping by at 120kph wouldn't hear me even if they had their windows down, and the fields stretched boundless and bare without a farmhouse in sight. So, I sang. My old favourites: Barrett's Privateers, four or five verses at the top of my lungs, then 16 Tons.

That image, I think, sums up my character as well as anything: a tall girl in jeans and a curly-haired ponytail striding along the side of a highway, swinging a gas can, singing Nova Scotian folk songs into a misty November night just because nobody's around to hear them, dumb enough to run out of gas but resourceful enough to deal with it.

(I managed, after some effort, to figure out how to transfer the gas from the jerry can into the fuel tank of the car. Limped down to the next gas station, filled the tank right up, sped down to Toronto, got to the store five minutes before I thought they closed. It was dark, of course. I had misread the time on the website when I left the house; it was only open until 6pm on Mondays, not 9pm. So, I ended up spending the evening sitting at a greasy spoon diner on Airport Road, eating eggs and hash browns and a carrot muffin, reading The Nine Billion Names of God, which Ilya and I both agree is quite simply the greatest collection of science fiction ever compiled. With the right book, no evening is a total waste).

_____

Another car-related tale, now. My poor little Focus doesn't handle winter well, and the nearly-bald tires I've been sporting for the past year didn't help much. So, my parents offered to buy me a new set of all-seasons, their treat, as thanks for my various driving duties to and from airports and about town. My father got a recommendation of a good set from Costco, and told me to drive over last Tuesday to get them put on. Costco's tire center doesn't take appointments, so I showed up at 12:30pm, brought a book, and expected to be home by 2pm or so. The clerk told me the wait would indeed be about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, so I went inside, bought a hot dog and a pop from the little cafeteria, then curled up on the floor underneath a promotional display desk near the exit.

I love doing that, co-opting spaces to use for purposes other than their intented ones; the cafeteria was full, the floor was comfortable, I had enough light to read by, why not? Most of the people who pushed their carts past on their way to the exit didn't even notice me. (Nobody ever looks up, but they don't look down much either). A few smiled indulgently, a couple commented on how comfortable I looked. I overheard one mother saying sharply to her child "No, you can't, the floor is dirty!" (To which I might very well - but didn't - say: Hey, ma'am, I hope your kid enjoys a lifetime of allergies and asthma!).

When I was finished my book, I went back to the tire center. It was almost 2pm. I asked about my car, and was told "Uh... yeah, she'll be another couple of hours, I'd say."

Well, it still wasn't worth calling my mother and asking for a ride home - it takes fifteen or twenty minutes to get from Midhurst to the south end of Barrie, and it wasn't worth an hour of her time to save me from some boredom. Besides, I'm Kate of motherfucking Lokys, I'm far too clever to be bored.

So, I wandered Costco.

Up and down each aisle, strolling slowly, taking the time to really *look* at things. Wondering what use anyone could possibly have for a 4' singing Santa Claus, then thinking of my mother and shuddering. Smirking at the "Oil Paintings - Assorted 2-packs - $29.99." Contemplating the rice cooker, because those things are actually really damned useful. But passing by, in the end.

Looking at the people, too. It's amazing how *frantic* they all look most of the time. Screaming children, angry parents, querulous old women arguing over the quality of stitching on the 20 pack of men's socks. I didn't see a single person who looked happy to be there.

Except, of course, for myself. Strolling. Smiling. Wandering around with my usual public expression of faint bemusement. There are a lot of things about the world that I don't understand, and places like Costco are one of them. Me, I don't own or want a lot of *things*. I have my books, I have my computer, I have a couple of little sculptures I like to look at or touch. I don't need two aisles worth of Christmas decorations. I don't need a karaoke machine. I don't even need a foosball table. Why do other people? Who buys these things?

After a couple of hours of mostly-contented anthropological survey of the foreign culture of commerce, I made my way back to the tire center.

"Yeah, they're working on 'er now. Be about 20 minutes, half an hour."

Back into Costco, which, by this point, was starting to lose its appeal just a tad. I made my way to the book section, though, and found an open copy of the massive three-volume Calvin and Hobbes anthology. I read it for about 45 minutes, strolled back to the tire center.

"Still working. They're having a heckuva time getting those wheels off!"

At that point, I pretty much gave up. Sat down on the bench right outside the tire center, spent about 30 minutes literally doing nothing. Then went inside, stood by the door, and did much the same for another half hour. Didn't end up getting out of there until after 6pm. (It is a mildly terrifying thing to go into a store at noon under bright sunlight, and to emerge blinking into pitch darkness six hours later and $740 poorer with no clear recollection of the last two hours of that time).

On the plus side, the tires are excellent.

But I'd be just as happy if I didn't see the inside of a Costco again for the next few months. Four hours of wandering through the perpetual fluorescent sunlight of a commercial warehouse the size of a football field? Bring it on, I can take it. Five hours? Tough, but doable. Six? Sweet Jesus, take me home.

_____

I came downstairs this morning to find my sister sitting in front of my computer.

(Never a good thing to wake up to; there's that short eternity of "ohshi- what did I leave open in the browser last night? Please god don't let it be 4chan").

She wasn't looking at the browser, thankfully; she was looking through my photos, then as I came in, she looked up at me.

"I want all of these burned to CD."

Uh. OK. What?

"You take fantastic pictures. Could you burn them all for me? How big is your photo directory?"

I sat down, checked it. 3.77GB. That's a damned lot of photos.

Having other people praise my photography is always a bit weird. I feel like something of a fraud if I accept their compliments, because... well, I just *click* the thing. I know precisely jack about the technical components of a good shot - white balance, ISO, f-stops, no clue. I just shoot in full auto mode and sometimes get lucky.

It's kind of funny, really: when I was young, I used to think that everybody in the world was just naturally good at *something*, and that the trick to life was finding out what that something was, and making a career out of it. Some people can sing, some people can dance, some people can hit a baseball out of the park.

Apparently, I can take pictures tolerably well.

Yet here I am in the third year of a double English-sociology major, despite the fact that I essentially loathe both subjects right now. (Seriously. The former is fucking litwank, the latter is nothing but dust-dry theorists who reference each other in an unending intellectual circlejerk).

Maybe I'll take a digital photography course at the college this semester. Non-credit, of course, just for general interest. It would be frankly hilarious, I think, if, after spending the first 24 years of my life trying to force myself to like things, I discovered something I actually loved after I stopped looking.

So, for my sociology class, we've been watching Just for Laughs Gags, a sort of Candid Camera skit show in which a few people deliberately flaunt some social convention, and the shocked reactions of passers-by are recorded. It's amusing stuff, and as part of our mark for the class, we've been ordered to analyse it sociologically. One of my classmates posted the following quote. My response - posted on Blackboard - is copied below.

Maybe, "Just for Laughs-Gags" is simply comic relief from all the issues of the world. Does it give people an opportunity to just laugh and release tensions that are surrounding us? We have focused on many of the negative aspects of the show, is there any positive things we should discuss?

Why do people go to see comedians? Comedians often slur others in order to create their jokes. If we were to disect comedy, would there be anything positive about it. I know that I would like to think so.

Well, when you look at comedy from a sociological perspective... basically all humour is derived from someone else's pain.

Remember America's Funniest Home Videos? A man gets hit in the groin with a baseball hit by his son; the audience roars with laughter. The man rolls on the ground in agony; the audience laughs harder. It's funny, right? Look at him clutching his balls!

Think about most of the short jokes you hear. "So, Jesus Christ walks into a hotel, hands the bartender three nails, and says 'Hey, could you put me up for the night?'" The pure physical agony of crucifixion is handled as nothing more than a pun, to say nothing of the offensiveness of the joke to people who follow the Christian faith.

Sitcoms wring laughter from embarassing personal situations. Oh, look, Ross is being hit on by an ugly girl! Ha, those ugly people sure are stupid, she doesn't even notice that he's insulting her. And she was funny, because she had a really annoying voice, which makes it totally OK for him to be as rude as possible.

Comedy is pain. Newfie jokes, slapstick, standup comedians talking about their bitchy wives or the idiot stewardess on their last flight or how hard it is to get a cab when you're black... all of it is nothing more than the exploitation of pain, either individual or collective. All comedy comes at the expense of someone else. And it's been that way ever since one monkey saw another monkey fall out of a tree and land right on his bony monkey ass, and found relief and amusement in the thought "hey, better him than me, and doesn't he look silly all sprawled out on the ground bleeding?"

Even with something seemingly innocent like Just for Laughs, what we're really laughing at is the pain of other people. Not physical pain, usually - the show is usually pretty careful to avoid causing damage (although that one gag in which they served free samples of "ice cream" that was actually just margarine scooped onto a cone did toe the line a bit). No, what we're laughing at is their shock, their confusion, the inconvenience they're put through.

Sure, it's release for us. Laughter feels good, it's a unifying force; people bond more easily over a shared joke than they do over the usual "so, how you doin'?" Someone who can make people laugh is appreciated.

There's a deeper sociological meaning to comedy, too. Many cultures revere their trickster-gods, the mischievous Lokis and Anansis and Ravens, the figures who twist the rules and make the other gods look like idiots. Bart Simpson stares up at the glowering Principal Skinner, makes his decision, and says "Eat my shorts." Comedy can be a way of undermining power: it's hard to respect an institution or an individual when you're laughing at them. It can be used to highlight social issues, as in The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, with their satirical commentaries on real-life events.

But at its deepest, most fundamental level, comedy is pain. When you get right down to it, when you break down the funny into its constituent components, we're all still just monkeys sitting in a damned tree pointing and hooting at the idiot bleeding on the ground, giving in to the catharsis of laughter because the world's a miserable place, but at least this time, some other poor sap is the one who fell.

(What, me cynical?)

I was sick last week. The first cold of the season, first non-allergy illness in I don't even know how long. My father brought the virus home from the Adirondacks, and passed it on to my mother and I. (We, in turn, passed it on to my unsuspecting sister when she came home that weekend).

I was miserable for a few days - stayed home from school on Friday last, spent some time feeling intensely sorry for myself, then I shook it off as I always do. My mother stayed sick for a few more days, but I felt fine.

Then a couple of days ago, while I was pouring my cereal in the morning, my mother looked up from her coffee to ask "Did you sleep OK last night?"

"Uh... yeah, slept like a baby, as always."

"You were coughing for a long time."

It hadn't woken me up, of course. Nothing does. But despite two closed doors and 20 feet of curving hallway between my room and hers, my mother woke up in the middle of the night because her youngest daughter was coughing.

It's a bit humbling, to be shown such a clear example of what it means to be a parent. I've heard the members of my mother's generation say, with a smile and a shake of the head, that the worrying never stops. But I always assumed the worrying just changed, that the immediate concern over health and safety shifted to a more distant desire for the offspring to marry well, get good jobs, move on.

Not so, apparently. I'm 24 years old, and my mother's maternal instincts are still so strong that a change in my breathing is enough to stir her from sleep.

I don't know if that's purely instinct, or something she developed over time, or what. But someday, I hope to be that sort of mother to my own children.

And now, to bed. And I'll hope - for her sake, not mine - that I don't cough in my sleep tonight.

I walked out the front door this morning, stopped to pull on my shoes - a battered pair of Nikes, three or four years old now, worn without socks - then noticed something: it was fucking *cold* out.

I could just barely see my breath sublimating in the air, and my feet felt as though I had slid them into blocks of ice rather than running shoes.

Ah, autumn. I had almost forgotten what cold was like.

Apparently, so had the animals of Chez Morris. We all curled up to watch TV this evening, my parents and I and our cadre of animals. Taybear curled up in his usual spot, lying on the couch along my left leg. After a few minutes, I decided that I wanted the blanket he was lying on, so rather than disturb him, I carefully pulled at it from the other side, and was able to free a nice big section to cover myself with from neck to knees. Of course, since the blanket was taken from the far side of Teddy, it necessarily covered him as well. He didn't seem to mind, though. (I even checked after a minute to make sure he was still breathing under there; no worries).

After another ten minutes, Maggiecat jumped up on my lap. She curled up comfortably, purred, and went to sleep.

Teddy eventually got overheated under the blanket, so I cleared it away from him. Then - wonderfully - Maggie shifted on my lap, sprawling across it sideways. Her extended front paws, in fact, rested on Teddy, one on his neck, the other touching the top of his head. It was just heart-meltingly adorable: dark grey cat and cream-white dog sharing a blanket and a human on a cold October night.

Now, if I can just talk the cat into coming up to bed with me...

I wrote my first assignment of the semester last week.

Not much, really... a two page paper for 18th Century Novel, the standard analysis/commentary bit on one of the more minor aspects of the novel in question (which, for the record, was Joseph Andrews). It had been a while since I last wrote a paper - hell, I haven't even been updating Lokys this summer - so I ended up staying awake until about 3am the day it was due, then waking up at 8am or so to finish it off.

The prof had helpfully posted an example short paper on Blackboard, which I skimmed over while working on mine. It was, to be quite honest, a fairly mediocre example. Not bad, but nothing special.

So, when I handed my paper in last week, I thought to myself "You know, self, I bet she'll ask you if she can use your paper as an example once she reads it over."

(Modesty is not one of my strong suits, in any sense of the term).

Today, she handed the papers back. I read over her comments and proofreading marks, disagreeing with most of them. For example, I wrote "he echoes Pope's classic warning that 'a little learning is a dangerous thing,'" which she edited by pencilling in the first name Alexander before the surname - sorry, chica, but if it's necessary for me to specify which particular Pope came up with that particular turn of phrase for the reader to get the reference, well, let's just say the reference isn't for them. (Or, more accurately, it *is* for them, in that they embody its meaning).

The rest of the edits were cosmetic, but similarly inaccurate. She had a tendency to stroke out the final comma in each sentence, which was, well, *wrong*. (The easiest test, of course, of punctuation placement comes from reading the material in question out loud, and anyone who has attempted to do that with my prose can attest to the necessity of frequent pauses. Indeed, had I been born a hundred years earlier with a taste for poetry, I would undoubtedly have been credited with the discovery of sprung rhythm, and would in fact have taken great delight in piling words one on top of the other until the reader all but expired from lack of oxygen).

And then, after all that, at the end of the paper were a few scant lines of written comments. Excellent paper, clear thesis, etc, then at the bottom: "please email this to me, I would like to use it as an example."

There are times when I find even my own arrogance to be overbearing. Yeah, OK, I'm smart, but I'm not *that* smart in the grand scheme of things.

Then I get a paper like this one back, and all I can do is shake my head in mingled victory and despair. When a paper I wrote at 3am is considered to be good enough to use as an example, damnit, it's *tough* holding that ego in check. I get a paper like this one back, and I start wondering what my writing would be like if I ever actually tried.

... nah. Why bother working my ass off with the cow when I can get the milk for free?

I woke up at about 4am last night to a thunderstorm.

That was unusual for me: I've slept through shouting drunken college kids, fire alarms, and an ice storm bad enough to require the mobilization of the Canadian armed force. (Sorry, forces, I think we hired a second one about ten years back).

But there I was in the dark today, awake in a warm bed, listening to the roll of rain and wind and thunder right outside my window. The lightning was so bright I could see it with my eyes closed.

And if there's a better way in the world to wake up, well, I don't want to hear it. I don't think I stayed awake for more than about five minutes - just long enough to wake up, see what was going on, then roll over and burrow down into the covers again with a sigh of utter contentment.

Fall is here.

Fall: grey skies, storms, wind and cold and the promise of winter.

If you asked me what my favourite season was, I'd say spring. Real spring, with snowdrops and birdsong and myths of rebirth. But we don't get spring here in Ontario... the snow melts in April, leaving behind piles of dirty ice and sand, and by the time the new growth pokes through the dun it's already June and burning hot out. Spring is my favourite season the way New Zealand is my favourite country: I love it with an abstract, idealized passion, but the thing I love isn't quite real.

So, although spring is my favourite season, I have to admit that I save some love for fall as well. It's a rough miserable beast at times, and given my recently rediscovered love of photography, I've done my share of grumbling about the clouds. (They block my light). But if those clouds are the price demanded for waking up to an early-morning thunderstorm and the cool scent of rain through my window, I'll pay it gladly.

I've been thinking about children lately.

It's creeping slowly on towards that time of life; the ticking of that tell-tale clock gets subtly louder with each passing month. I find myself wondering about names for my distant unborn offspring, and what they'll look like, and how old they'll be when they first start reading Rosemary Sutcliff books by themselves. I think about how to teach them my own peculiar morals, what balance to strike between idealism and pragmatism. Do I want to raise virtuous young paladins, knowing that they will live in a world that cares little for honour and chivalry? Or would I rather play Mother Chains to my own little Locke Lamoras, teaching them how to run their own versions of the rat race for fun and profit?

I want children, at some point. And I think, for the most part, that I would do well by them.

But I was recently reminded that I'm not quite ready for that responsibility yet.

I was walking back to my car yesterday with my arms full of groceries, having just done a quick shopping at Zehrs. On the way, I saw a young mother carefully carrying a baby in an elaborage padded carrier. The baby was very small, and very pink, with tiny, perfectly-formed fingers and petulant blue eyes, crinkled against the sun.

And my first thought, on seeing that child, wasn't "Oh, how adorable!" or even "Yes, I want one of those someday." No, I looked into the face of that helpless little creature, and thought "Man, it must be a pain lugging that around, why didn't the mother just leave it in the car?"

(This, then, is why I don't have children yet. I'm determined to perpetuate my particular branch of the species eventually, sure, but at the moment... babies, well, they're just not *for* me).

A week or two ago, I had a dream.

I was in a city. I knew it wasn't Toronto; it felt a bit like Montreal, perhaps, though I didn't recognize anything in particular. I was crossing an intersection, surrounded by people and noise and the smell of cars and concrete. There was a red and white billboard on the side of the building on the other side of the intersection, with text in a language I didn't know.

And somehow, I loved it. I felt good to be there, felt right; there was comfort to be taken from the sense of connection, order within the chaos of noise.

Granted, it was only a dream. In the waking world, I have a bone-deep... well, not so much a *hatred* of cities as a profound discomfort in their presence. Cities are too much. Too noisy, too confusing, too many people talking and moving. Too much of everything, and not enough quiet.

But after almost two years of living in Midhurst, watching my horizons narrow slowly to a 50' circle of trees, well, the thought of a city doesn't bother me quite as much as it used to.

I found myself, the other night, nostalgically reminiscing to a certain someone about my old newspaper route. About my whole old neighbourhood, actually: White Pine Place, and all around it. And just talking about it and remembering it brought an intense, unexpected sense of homesickness to me, not just for the location, but for the time.

Growing up, of course, I thought I hated it. A dead-end street in a residential neighbourhood, the purest stereotype of small town life. And back then, before I knew any better, I thought Barrie *was* a small town, and I despaired at its provincialism. (I know better now, of course, having lived in Midhurst).

But when it came right down to it, I had things pretty good. I walked to school every day, about 2-3km each way, and although I always grumbled about the walk at the time, I loved it. I remember for the first couple of years of high school, Julianne walked there with me: she had moved to a small white house on Blake Street a few blocks east and one block south of White Pine, and every morning I would go down to the corner of Blake and Rodney, meet up with her, and the two of us would wander our way to school talking about everything and nothing for the 30 minutes it took to get there. (I remember, on at least one occasion, waking up to find her standing beside my bed shaking me out of sleep, telling me that we would be late for class).

Even when our class schedules diverged and I walked along as often as not, I loved that walk. Twice per day, five days per week, September to June from grade 7 through to grade 13, but I made it my personal challenge to see something *different* on the walk every day. Sometimes it was a new store downtown, or construction on the road, or a For Sale sign in front of a house. Sometimes, it was just me looking everywhere but the sidewalk right in front of me, turning my head to catch a glimpse of a backyard or an angle of a roof or a view through a window that I had never noticed before. And when I tired of looking at the world, I had my daydreams, elaborate week-long cycles of conception and description and eventual resolution, at which point the dream was carefully re-packaged in my mind to be pulled out again at a later date. (To this day, I cannot daydream effectively unless I am walking a route I know very well).

That certain someone asked me the other night why I didn't just go back to the old neighbourhood. But it's not only the place that I miss: it's being 14 years old with $10 in my pocket and not a care in the world.

You can never go back, of course. But sitting here in the dark at 1am, looking at the black windows and knowing there's nothing beyond them but trees and a road and then miles of farmland... well, at this point, I'd settle for going forwards. Or sideways.

Or anywhere else but here.

Even to a city.

It has been a long week.

School has started again, to my mingled delight and consternation. Delight, because school has broken the endless summer (a season which has shown me quite clearly that eternal bliss is just not *for* me); consternation because I have been shoved with painful abruptness from one extreme to the other.

A month ago, I was lazing in the hammock in the backyard.

Today, I woke up at 6:30am, worked from 8:30am until almost 1pm transcribing medical dictation, then sat through three hours of lecture. Tomorrow, I will do the same, except the proportions will be different: work will be for a mere hours or two, class will be six hours long.

I had not known that typing could be work. Hell, typing for me has always been easier than speaking: the thoughts pass lightly and easily from my brain to my fingers and then onto the screen, no hesitation. There's the occasional stumble, of course, the odd slip, and Mavis Beacon would shed bitter tears of purest despair at the sight of my typing style, but I do OK.

I used to think that, at least. After two days of working in my father's office typing up chart notes, I'm convinced my typing ability is about on par with that of a man who has been convicted and punished for theft by having both hands severed at the wrist.

It's work. And it's tiring. And I am sorry, Ilyusha, that I have not been online for you of late: other matters have distracted me. After this week, however, I will be finished the typing and left only with school to occupy my time, and you will most assuredly see more me after that. We will talk, and you will gleefully shout my ear off about the wonders of Moscow, and I will be quietly *terrified* at everything you say.

(Much to your delight, of course, and to my consternation).