Rant and Ramble

well, and of course i'd walked by the knife several dozen times on various occasions, thinking that's dangerous, and we'd even joked about how it would impale the burglar when he broke in and flailed around the kitchen. a couple of times, i'd turned it over, but tam seems to think they dry better point-up, and they're her knives so i let it be.

if it'd been me, i'd've been hollering at the top of my lungs, but all dante did was swear a bit and stomp about harder than usual. the blood ran down and down his arm, splattered on his shirt, the floor, the sink, the walls, soaked through the tourniquet i was afraid to tie too tightly, smeared on his face as his eyelids fluttered and he told me not to worry. tam was terribly calm on the phone with 9-1-1, explaining no, no, it was an accident, and the medics from ambulance with neatly braided hair suggested he bring a coat and a new shirt to change into.

all inside i felt tight and blind, helpless even to this small terror, my limbs too long and my veins itching.

the week passed like little golden beads, soft round moments sliding through me and past me and filling me up. yesterday: the alarm shriek at sixthirty, shuffle out of sleepingbags onto barefoot hardwood floor, into the kitchen to start a double pot of coffee. the sky lies cold and heavy outside, wind whipping the yew trees and the barebranched hardwoods, making up for a week of utterly perfect sunshine breezes. our goodbyes falter a bit; those of us staying to work have to be there at eight, the kitchen needs to be mopped, not everyone packed. the car ride to blue ridge goes quickly, long fields with shaggy cows, singlelane bridges, a development scarring one side of the road. we pass an alpaca farm named rivendell, a stream choked with briars, a dozen winding dirt roads i'd love to stroll down some quiet day.

the rains fell heavily this year, and the spring in the lower pasture had turned it into a bog. we haul down two mattock tillers and a shovel, sinking to our ankles with every step, and make a stream to feed sweet run, which feeds into the potomac. every swing with the mattock makes a superb squelching sound, and the water fills each space as soon as it is made. cristina finds a frog and screams, but the water is so cold i catch it easily. the smooth, soft skin and big eyes somehow remind me of the month-old chicks in the run we built, two tiny heartbeats held so carefully in my palms. as my heat warms him up, the frog begins to kick and jumps out of my hands before i can get him past the brambles and all the way to the stream. he lands on his back in the mud but seems okay, and scoots away into the water before i can catch him again. we use our tools more carefully now, newly mindful that we tread through someone's home.

we leave early, at two, and drive back past the daffodils and thick burbling clouds. hot showers and clean clothes and more coffee to hold off the cold, and then back into the car for a long drive to dulles. from there i wait five hours for my bus to DC, then five hours more for the bus back to philly. i sleep awkwardly with my stuffsack as a pillow, maybe three hours in all. the earlymorning air on eleventh street makes me smile - if not for my pack, i'd walk back home, but the subway is comforting too, in its familiarity, and when i open the door, my house smells just like i knew it would.

i've been wanting alot lately. both much and often. deep cravings for chocolate and salt and thick crusty bread, sex and sunsets and clear water and hot showers and tomatoes, wet ripe tomatoes just warm from the sun and thick with that so-good tomato smell. i want to feel home. i want to stretch. i want waves and a warm bath.

i think the new job and my back may not get along terribly well. i've been trying to convince the powers that be that i'm indispensible even though they hired me as a temp... but at the same time i don't know how long i can keep shelving books before i smash the tips of my fingers to pulp under 450 copies of overpriced biology books.

the system is fucked.
a textbook costs $150 because the publishers take huge cuts, leaving the author with a teensy bit of royalty and the bookstore with an equally teensy profit. students won't buy a book that costs $150, especially for only ten weeks and when the buy-back price will be $15 or $20 because the publisher will put out a new edition in three-to-six months and render that book useless. the bookstore, however, has to buy enough books to supply everyone in the class with a book... and gets fined for sending the unsold books back. so the prices go up.

plus, we're running out of trees.

it goes. i decided that i don't want to go to stanford or reed or even penn, that i'd really only be willing to go to swarthmore next year and otherwise i'm taking a year off, period, can't do this anymore. i've been exploring ways to spend aforementioned year off (give me ideas if you have any), and top of the list is the leapyear program, followed by maybe a stint at an organic farm in italy or god knows what. i want to learn a language, i want to be able to garden, i want to be on my own, and i want to feel like i'm learning more than i would at school. i'd like an ocean and some trees, and i'd like to go somewhere i've never been before.

it isn't because the city is grimy and scary and dirty and loud, or because drexel is a factory as much as an institution of learning.
or rather, these are the symptoms, not the disease.

cities cannot survive. they don't work. rome fell because rome had to fall. look at the ghettos and the winos and the cracked cement church walls. look at the traffic and the conglomerates and the boarded up buildings. we've decided that cities are our way to live, and we had a whole industrial revolution to prove it. but it doesn't work. all the homeless shelters and arterial streets and tax incentives in the world can't fix it, because the system is fundamentally flawed.

and i don't want to perpetuate the myth that a city is a viable way of life. that's why i'm unhappy here; that's why i want to leave.

what can i say? the days are short but getting longer, and i long for spring so deeply i can taste it. i've hidden little tidbits of springtime about my room - garlic growing pungently on the windowsill, a branch budding on my desk, the half-dozen ivy cuttings in their mason jars on nearly every flat surface i can find - but i want the real thing, the warmth, the thick wetness, the smell of newness and of rain. the days are short, short, trapped in this world where we measure time like bricks or burdens, where time is something you can have, something to covet and cloister and glare indignantly when found gone. these days are short but getting longer, and spring will be here soon.