Too Many Topics to Talk About

Window

Classic cross window
wood tables slick with beer
music hides sound from even those
not deaf
a level playing field

panes of glass
one sight removed
from reality
a fine mist fogs slick surfaces
the cold at bay,
the humidity
of personhood omnipresent

looking out from
warm wetness
at stiff steel structures
waiting to collapse
with ground's thaw.

Poem:
It's been a while since I tried a style variation, and since I didn't have an author I really wanted to imitate, I just tried writing in the way my teacher keeps telling me to. Basically, she just thinks the fewer words the better, that sentences have little place in poetry, and that pure images can convey enough for the reader to take something away. I disagree on all counts, but I figured I'd give it a shot. I might even turn this in and see what she says.

Observation:
I saw this and thought more people should too:



(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgk654mV-9g)

In case you don't want to spend ten minutes watching, it's basically a video of a "psychic" using common sense to beat grandmasters at chess. What I liked most was that I had no clue what was going on, but the revelation was a complete "duh" moment. Of course, he still had to have a pretty good memory.
And because that wasn't an observation so much as a "look what I found," here's another bit of something I found interesting: my professor told us to use wikipedia to research background information for philosophy stuff. I've been told since high school not to use the site, but am fully aware that most people use it anyway. But I can't decide whether this is an indication that the site has become popular enough that professors are fine with it, or whether the site itself is improving. It might be that it really wasn't a good source during the times I was being told not to use it. Or it might be that the professors then were just wrong. Either way, it was just amusing to hear that it was credible enough to rely upon during at least this college class.


Excercise:
"Dry Skin"
Take this as your opening line:
He had the driest skin they had ever seen.

He had the driest skin they had ever seen. The hairdressers conferred amongst each other briefly, though it was mostly just to marvel at the sheer amount of dandruff flaking from his scalp with each run-through of the comb. It was almost inconceivable how this situation could have resulted.
"You'd have to try to get your hair that dry!"
"Do you think he knows?"
"How could he not? He'd have to look in the mirror sometime."
"I wonder what color his hair is. Any ideas on how to fix it?"
"We could shave it and try a skin cream. But it might just be easier to convince people he's a localized weather event. You know, a snow storm or something."
They all burst into a tittering laughter, covering their mouths as though it would prevent anyone from noticing, but when they looked up, the man was gone, a cloud of floating skin left in his wake, drifting down in a loose cluster of pale particles.

Me:
Yesterday I was sitting in class and I dropped my drivers license under this little cart thing that holds the projector. Rather than bend down and reach around under there to pick it up, I attempted to gradually move the cart thing with my foot until the license was exposed enough that I felt less awkward trying to surreptitiously retrieve it. All this while I was thinking about how silly it was that I cared about looking weird bending over and rooting around under the cart. And none of that matters, really, except that I keep telling myself I'm maturing and don't really care about stuff like that. But it seems that's not quite true.
I was really planning on updating last night, but I decided I'd spent far too long ignoring other obligations that have been put by the wayside by blogging fairly consistently. In this case, it was editing the blog I wrote a few summers ago. I told my dad I was giving him a printed copy for Christmas just as soon as it was edited, but then I started this at the new year. So I spent last night removing extra letters from words, switching commas for periods, and feeling nostalgic about that awesome trip. (We biked across the country, in case you don't know. It can be found by googling "split trans-am.") I noticed I had so many things to write about each day, which made me wonder just how my life would be if I spent more of my days doing something. When you bike for ten hours a day, things are guaranteed to happen to you. Not so much the case when I'm in my apartment. Or even during my little thirty mile rides around here.