Swoon. I'll catch you. - The English Patient

"The world is hard," he said. For a moment I was uncertain whether he was speaking in proverbs. He looked at me, his face a gleaming mask. "Just say yes, and we can forget everything. That's all. Just say it: Yes."

Storm Windows

by Howard Nemerov

Li Bai

I'm starting with the man in the mirror.
I'm asking him to change his ways.
No message could have been any clearer
If you want to make the world a better place,
Take a look at yourself and make a change!
-Micheal Jackson, "Man in the Mirror"

Ok, I couldn't resist (taken from an e-mail over my house list).

Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize! In other news...

First-Year Grad Student Wins Nobel Prize in Economics!

From the Associated Press (with some light editing):

Pfuffnick's Nobel Economics Prize triumph hailed by many

LONDON — The surprise choice of first-year grad student Quintus Pfuffnick for the Nobel Prize in Economics drew praise from much of the world Friday even as many pointed out the youthful economist has not yet published anything in scholarly journals.

The new PhD candidate was hailed for his willingness to tackle difficult problems, his commitment to improving the economic system, and his goal of bringing efficiency and equality into harmony.

Professor Paul Krugman of Princeton, who won the prize in 2008, said Pfuffnick's award shows great things are expected from him in the coming years.

"In a way, it's an award coming near the beginning of the first year in grad school of a relatively young economist that anticipates an even greater contribution towards making our economy a better place for all," he said. "It is an award that speaks to the promise of Mr Pfuffnick's message of hope."

He said the prize is a "wonderful recognition of Pfuffnick's essay in his grad school application."

From the Journal of the National Cancer Institute:

Million Women Study Shows Even Moderate Alcohol Consumption Associated with Increased Cancer Risk

Low to moderate alcohol consumption among women is associated with a statistically significant increase in cancer risk and may account for nearly 13 percent of the cancers of the breast, liver, rectum, and upper aero-digestive tract combined, according to a report in the February 24 online issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

With the exception of breast cancer, little has been known about the impact of low to moderate alcohol consumption on cancer risk in women.

To determine the impact of alcohol on overall and site-specific cancer risk, Naomi Allen, D.Phil., of the University of Oxford, U.K., and colleagues examined the association of alcohol consumption and cancer incidence in the Million Women Study, which included 1,280,296 middle-aged women in the United Kingdom. Participants were recruited to the study between 1996 and 2001. Researchers identified cancer cases through the National Health Service Central Registries.

Women in the study who drank alcohol consumed, on average, one drink per day, which is typical in most high-income countries such as the U.K. and the U.S. Very few drank three or more drinks per day. With an average follow-up time of more than 7 years, 68,775 women were diagnosed with cancer.

The risk of any type of cancer increased with increasing alcohol consumption, as did the risk of some specific types of cancer, including cancer of the breast, rectum, and liver. Women who also smoked had an increased risk of cancers of the oral cavity and pharynx, esophagus, and larynx. The type of alcohol consumed – wine versus spirits or other types – did not alter the association between alcohol consumption and cancer risk.

Each additional alcoholic drink regularly consumed per day was associated with 11 additional breast cancers per 1000 women up to age 75; one additional cancer of the oral cavity and pharynx; one additional cancer of the rectum; and an increase of 0.7 each for esophageal, laryngeal, and liver cancers. For these cancers combined, there was an excess of about 15 cancers per 1000 women per drink per day. (The background incidence for these cancers was estimated to be 118 per 1000 women in developed countries.)

“Although the magnitude of the excess absolute risk associated with one additional drink per day may appear small for some cancer sites, the high prevalence of moderate alcohol drinking among women in many populations means that the proportion of cancers attributable to alcohol is an important public health issue,” the authors write.

In an accompanying editorial, Michael Lauer M.D., and Paul Sorlie, Ph.D., of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, in Bethesda, M.D., emphasize that these new results derived from such a large study population should give readers pause. Although previous epidemiological studies have suggested that there is a cardiovascular benefit associated with moderate alcohol consumption, the excess cancer risk identified in the current study may outweigh that benefit. “From a standpoint of cancer risk, the message of this report could not be clearer. There is no level of alcohol consumption that can be considered safe,” the editorialists write.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1906578

Oh my childhood... Disney, how could you?

I'm not always like this
It's something I've become.
A terrible weakness in my nature, in my blood.
-Imogen Heap, Glittering Clouds

I was walking from Lamont the other day and saw a guy carrying two clear bags (one in each hand) filled with hardcover books from Widener, the oldest library in the country. There must have been about over fifteen heavy books all together. And I thought, "God, that's sexy!"

Death was but my last husband, who was never so possessive as when we were together.

I tried to help your back -- leave my nipples alone! - Matt C. to Teddy T.

You know, I really want to know how Obama has time to schedule so many photo shoots because he seems to be on almost every magazine cover.

I know you don't care for me.
And don't ever think that you can fool me.
Any day now I will leave you.
-The Perishers, Steady Read Light

I was reading Newsweek last night, and 90% of it had to do with Obama and the shitty economy. And according to Rashid, this has been the case for the past month. It's so easy to forget how sheltered I am here within these red brick walls when the world around me is falling apart.

Man is a make-believe animal -- he is never so truly himself as when acting a part. - William Hazlitt

I love that my roommate has the audacity to invite three strangers over to sleep in our common room without consulting or even telling me. Indeed, I come back from showering in my bathrobe to find a stranger chatting away on the phone on my futon. Then once more arrive, they have the loudest chat ever in her room without closing the door, and start popping popcorn, ignoring my very existence. Oh, and they even let one of them change into pajamas in my room, once again without telling me, so when I open the door and we nearly bump into each other, we scream. And of course my roommates don't apologize. And I love that one of those roommates still has the audacity to tell me to wear headphones to listen to my music now, when I can't open her door and tell them all to shut up.

Oh, yes, and it's the very same roommate who wanted to cheat off me during our final exam. Mind you, she wouldn't give a damn if I failed the class, as long as she doesn't and I help her (not her help me), it's all happy and pink.

Whoopie.

Sit down class, open up your textbooks to page 42.

Porcupine-ology, antler-ology, car-ology, bus-ology, train-ology, plane-ology, mama-ology, papa-ology, you-ology, me-ology, love-ology, kiss-ology, stay-ology, please-ology.

Let's study class, let's study class. Sit down.

Love-ology, love-ology, I'm sorry-ology, forgive me-ology, love-ology, love-ology, I'm sorry-ology, forgive me-ology, love-ology, Love-ology.

Let's study class, let's study class.

-Regina Spektor, Loveology

I wrote you a letter that I have no intention of sending you. I did not finish -- you can blame me all you want, but I could not find it in me. I considered burning it -- the romantic sentiments topped with the destruction and crumbling of what we had and everything I wanted to tell and share with you (bare my heart -- or was it flesh? -- with you and all), but I didn't want to burn it all away. You see, it's evidence. Evidence of what was, what could have been. Right. Maybe I should have burned it and left the ashes as evidence. That's fitting, isn't it?

I do not know where we will go from here. I do not know if we will go anywhere. If we were meant to or not, and all that pretty stuff they write in those songs I can't stop listening to. Maybe, like an ex-lover, you'll rise from the dead and we'll meet over a cup of tea and reminisce of old times. But no. If we live through this, we won't look back.

So I guess what I'm trying to say, what I couldn't write or did not yet write or maybe never will write in that letter is that you weren't what I wanted, I'm not sorry I met you, I'm not sorry it's over, I gave what I gave and took what I could, and I'm not sorry there's nothing left to save.

[Drabble inspired by "Your Ex-Lover is Dead" by Stars -- heh...procrastinating]

Oh womanfolk. - Rashid

I nearly killed Ivan with a goldfish.

I threw it in the air and he tried to catch it in his mouth and it landed right in his throat and his choked for a second (or two). This happened last week, but I thought I should note it.

I spent the longest time in the library two nights ago, from 7:30 PM to midnight. I went with Matt because he needed to study and I felt the need to study and actually sat there, studying. It's lovely how nice and quiet it actually is there. There is no librarian to hush us -- there is absolutely no need for one. Even though there's a good hundred of us or more there constantly, it's so quiet (except for a snore now and again from the misfortune student who has so much work that s/he has fallen asleep).

Tonight I got bored while studying in Matt's room. He was so absorbed in his reading and I was so restless that I prodded his calf with my toe. He look up, shocked, stunned really, so I poked him again. The nerve of me! He then attempted revenge, but I moved away just as he tried to poke me. Now he was definitely shocked by my audacity, and I was having giggling fits. Suddenly he picked up a pencil and threw it at me, but (!!!) despite my laughter, I had at the exact moment picked up my glass case and quite astoundingly punted his pencil violently away. Now we were both laughing, surprised at the abrupt appearance of my fickle dodging skills. Rashid's chiding voice, "Now, now, children," could be heard from the next door, but Matt was determined to test me once more, gripping another lead pencil, dancing it about, teasing me with the probablilty of where he would launch it. Ignoring my laughing, "Don't"s, he tossed it at me, but, once again, my glass case would not be outdone and it slammed the offending pencil away, smacking against his bookcase before falling, quite defeated, onto the ground. Matt and I then came to a giggling truce. I never realized how gifted I was at glasscase-pencil baseball.

Epic. I swear, it's like a horror movie. I love the clip of Ginny too!

The Intention of Things
By David Ferry

The death that lives in the intention of things
To have a meaning of some sort or other,

That means to come to something in the end,
It is the death that lives not finding the meaning

Of this or that object as it moves among them
Uncertainly, moving among the shadows,

The things that are like shadows, shadows of things,
The things the shadows of shadows, all in the effort

To put off the death that we are coming to.
The intention makes its way among its moments,

Choosing this object or that, uncertainly,
Somebody's cock or cunt, or the leaves of a tree

On a summer night in a landscape somewhere else,
Under which something happened that made it different;

It is seeking to find the meaning of what they are.
But it moves uncertainly among them, the shadows,

The things that are like shadows, putting off
The death that is coming, that we are coming to.

It is the death that lives that makes the flower
Be what's it's going to be and makes it die,

And makes the musical phrase complete itself,
Or fail to complete itself, as Goethe said,

Writing a friend whose son had died in the Army:
"So you have had another terrible trial.

It's still, alas, the same old story: to live
Long is to outlive many; and after all,

We don't even know, then, what it was all about.
The answer to part of the riddle is, we each

Have something peculiarly our own, that we
Mean to develop by letting it take its course.

This strange thing cheats us from day to day, and so
We grow old without knowing how it happened or why."

It is the death that lives in the intention of things
To have a meaning of some sort or other;

Implacable, bewildered, it moves among us
Seeking its own completion, still seeking to do so,

But also putting it off, oh putting it off,
The death that is coming, that we are coming to.

What is life for? Isn't it so you can be there to tightly grip the hand of someone close to you at a time like this? -- Takemoto, Honey & Clover

"I love you," she says softly, not bothering to rise from the bed. Her gaze flickers to her bosom, covered by a rumpled, white sheet.

He shakes his head from his propped up stance against the head piece. "It's not that simple."

"Will it ever be?"

He shrugs. "I don't know."

She watches the gray cigarette smoke serpentine against the blue darkness. It's ugly, she hates it, hates the simple sight and smell of it, but it is part of who he is and he won't change. Not for her. She doesn't want to change him, not one bit. Really, she does... She craves to mold him and refurnish him like the wood sculptures she chips at incessantly every day of her life, but he won't let her, so she tells herself she doesn't want to. She can't.

"Is this just a physical thing?" she asks. "You and me?"

"What do you want me to say?" he retorts.

"I don't know," she replies honestly. What is it that she wants to hear? "The truth?"

"Honey," he takes a puff and exhales, "nothing lies more than the truth."

"I don't know." She's not sure she knows anything anymore. All she knows is that he is here, for now. "Then paint a pretty picture. Pretend. Just for a little while," she adds so he won't be angry. She likes to think she knows him. "You'll be gone before the morning anyway."

On His Own Love
I hate and love -- ask why -- I can't explain;
I feel 'tis so, and feel it racking pain.
-George Lamb

I have reached a slump. It's not that I don't have ideas, I just have little will to execute them in writing. Chris says that I must still write though, or I might lose all motivation. So I will probably be writing as many drabbles as I can. Criticism always helps, but these will be very casually written, so don't expect anything too fancy. :)

*~*

She sleeps, draped over the table. The whiskey that lay in the glass grew stale, gazing at her disheveled shape. The scars that traced up her arms dance across her wane skin like ribbons. Red curls shield her face from the growing diaphanous rays of light that crept through the white curtains.

He enters, glances her way, then tosses his secondhand textbook and old notebook on the bed, which is the ratty, molding couch. He pulls up the chair beside her and sighs, gently pushing away a stray scarlet lock. She isn't what he needs now, perhaps ever. How virile he once felt, how proud and masculine when he took her in. Her beauty always lit up the room, and her bright, almost childishly innocent smile almost hid the howls of their bodies when they had nothing to eat. When he took her in, it wasn't supposed to be like this. As platitudinous as it sounded, as naive, he was supposed to save her, protect her from that cruel, acrid world. But how was a poor, struggling college student (hardly a scholar) supposed to support such a bird? The books, filled with beautiful and darling prose could not feed her; the functions of pi could not blanket her at night; the philosophical rambles of the bible could not make her loved. In the end, he had simply took her from a cesspool and transferred her to another.

He takes her soft hand in his. His weary eyes begin to droop, lost in his own dizzying musing. He has been vacillating the past days, when he lost his part time job at the bookshop. His pockets grew lighter and lighter with every sunrise. School was becoming more difficult with his mind constantly ladled with such heavy thoughts. The cries of his muscles drowned out Faulkner's tone and diction choice. How could he care of the integral of "x," if he couldn't stop wondering how much longer he could support her. He presses her warm hand against his cheek with a sigh.

She cannot do much. Like a broken toy, her motions have grown too perfunctory, her mind too damaged. Working is much too hard for her, and it seemed to only resurface miserable memories that crushed her body and mind. He cannot bear to make her work, so she sits in their two room apartment, gazing at the rotting, ripping floral wallpaper. She sits, waiting for him to come home from his studies. Sometimes she sings. Lately, with the dwindling food supply, she has grown weak, and spends most of her day asleep. Sleeping Beauty, he likes to think. At least she can escape from the pain, for a little bit.

He wonders if he should erase her from his life. Release her. Free her.

And yet, he doesn't want to leave her. He doesn't want her to leave. His only comfort and his demise. He loves her. He cannot help it. He thinks, somehow, she has come to love him too. And yet...

They could not be the very thing the other needed.

Happiness is having a large loving family in another city. -- George Burns

I feel like I've wanted to say something for the longest time, but I don't know what it is and I don't know how to say it. Ever feel that way? Like you're on a bright stage looking down at the dark audience, and you've completely forgot all your lines or you never had any lines to begin with?

Somewhere along the line
I stopped taking your hand, and
You stopped offering it.

Today the heavy rain tapped me awake
From my window. I thought
You were there, throwing rocks again, calling
Me out again; I thought
How foolish of me. Those we push aside
Do not return so
Willfully.
They do not return
At all.

July 9, 2008

~~~

I am the queen of enjambments.