After an amazing show at the Fox, Angelica and I befriended the awkward but incredibly intelligent Erlend Oye at IHOP around one-thirty. We are now going to take him thrift shopping.

This morning, I'm off to retrieve David from the bowels of DIA. Then I'm heading to the Fox Theatre to see Kings of Convenience with Angelica, Mallory, and possibly Sam. Any events involving Sam are precluded, at least mentally, with a 'possibly'.

I care about everyone, but most of the time it doesn't matter. To me, that is. Right now nobody really matters because I'm tired.

Yesterday evening, I saw a substantial number of people at the Trident with whom I had awkward dealings...Devin and, surprisingly, Collin were there, female Sam with a pretty tattoo, the infamous Shannon (and another mousy friend-of-shannon) apparated as soon as I took my headphones off...
At the arrival of these people, I waved awkwardly and thought about pretending that I hadn't just finished my book, so as to avoid being accosted. But it was too late. I then planned on Angelica swooping in on some type of magical Asian ninja flying machine to save me, but she apparently knew Shannon and Shannon v.2 from high school and immediately launched into typical mind-numbing conversation with them. Samuel came to save me, but he too was momentarily sucked into the vortex of filthy thrift skirts and insane cackles. Then fish-headed Brian appeared and I coaxed Samuel out of the door.
It was a night straight out of Greeley.

Sestinas are generally known for functioning only as poetic exercises, because the form is so strictly particular. This sestina not only follows the repetition of endwords, but the beginning words were repeated in the following rubric:

Beginning Words:
1 2 3 4 5 6
4 5 1 3 6 2
3 6 4 1 2 5
2 4 6 5 3 1
5 3 2 6 4 1
6 1 5 2 4 3
2+5;4+3;6+1

End Words: (traditional sestina form)
1 2 3 4 5 6
6 1 5 2 4 3
3 6 4 1 2 5
5 3 2 6 1 4
4 5 1 3 6 2
2 4 6 5 3 1
2+5;4+3;6+1

This doubled word-pattern became problematic in the concluding three-line stanza, in which the two mandatory words per line became four.

For my end-word choice, I selected three pairs of rhyming words, which create varied rhyming schemes (or lack thereof) for each stanza.

Also, the poem is composed in iambic tetrameter, although occasionally a non-accent will fall on the last syllable of the preceding line.

Developing this form as I was composing the poem, I ran into several problems:


1. The word 'sky' became increasingly overused.

2. Double 'and's in the first stanza became annoyingly repetitive. This also caused severe run-on sentences, due to first lines of following stanzas being 'and'. 'To' would have been a much better word to double.

3. General repetition of inner words is somewhat mind-numbing.

4. Unaccented syllables are occasionally missing, due to poor first-word choice.

5. Meter was completely thrown away in the last three-line stanza.


I also accidentally did one clever thing, which was using the words 'to' and 'for' at the beginning of lines two and four. I am proud of my subconscious intellect, although this coincidence is hardly enough to forgive the dull and dragging sestina.

exercise in assisted thought

in daily life, one simply ought
to stainless-steel-stare at the sky
and judge the streets on more than looks
for covered wagons slowly taught
silver skateboards sailing by
and coffee-sippers wearing books

for one can read so many books,
silver-searching, but one ought,
in life, to let thought pass us by
and stainless-steel-stare at the sky
and eruditely we were taught
to skate-sail past on lovely looks

and judge the masses with a look
and judge the cover of a book
for slowly, surely, we were taught
in pantomines that people ought
to paint in creases of the sky
silver cloud-childs waltzing by.

To search the pleasant passers-by
for brains and brawns and loves and looks
and pluck like feathers from the sky
silver seeping verbose books
and, in a dream, to know one ought
in love to do as one was taught.

Silver wisps of dream we taught
and trained to travel quickly by:
to do exactly as one ought
and smile serenely as one looks
in paper cuts and soft-soled books
for fatal friendship and silk sky

and visions between us and sky
in silver screens, each one is taught:
silver scars are born in books
to slice and scrape and then sail by
for we are mindful of our looks
and do what people say we ought.

To silver sky and long good-byes...
And for teaching calculated looks...
And...one ought avoid the truth in books...

I wrote something long and depressing, but it was pathetic and I deleted it immediately.

I found someone I knew from a while ago weblogging pathetically and wistfully after me today. Hah.

Stroke my shrinking non-music-related ego.

In the evening
as far as the eye can see
herds of black pianos
up to their knees in the mire
they listen to the frogs
they gurgle in water
with chords of rapture
they are entranced
by froggish, moonish spontaneity
after the vacation
they cause scandals in a concert hall
during the artistic milking
suddenly they lie down like cows
looking with indifference
at the white flowers of the audience
at the gesticulating of the ushers
black pianos.

-Jerzy Harasymowicz
(translated by Czeslaw Milosz)

Thursday...tomorrow I'm going home...home to nothing...fun...

I've started a collection of dead skin using an old black binder and scotch tape.

FaceBook keeps asking me to identify my friends. People continue to list me as their friend, and then I am prompted to reciprocate the hand of friendship.

FaceBook says "Is ______ your friend?"

Well, let's be honest FaceBook. No, they're not really my friend - I had IB World History with them, and we shared some good times, but we kind of lost touch after high school and I probably wouldn't take a bullet for them or anything...

I don't like friends. FaceBook tells me that I have one hundred friends. This is a fat lie.

I had my first harp lesson today. The harp is an easy instrument to play - although most instruments are easy to be at least intermediately skilled in, if one has piano background. Music is kind of boring me these days. This is too bad.

I ordered many things online last week, back when I had money. They all came this week, just as I ran out of money. So I am now the proud owner of the 'Three Colors' Trilogy on DVD, as well as 'Tropic of Capricorn', 'Plexus', 'Ready Okay' by Adam Cadres, and 'Brave New World', which I devoured last night. I then went to Panico's, a new fast-food Italian place downtown. They have delicious subs and waiters who bring pitchers of draft beer to underage girls. I appreciate these types of people.

All of my classes on Friday are cancelled. I fear that the upcoming week in Boulder will be exceedingly dull, and filled with arguing with my sister over the true ownership of my car as well as commuting to Greeley a few times for the religious science folks.

However, the Kings of Convenience will be making a cameo appearance in my Spring Break week. Hurrah!

Ben says people in Dublin don't sit in coffee shoppes wearing books. This is a shame...neither do people in Greeley, for that matter...probably because none of them can read, or don't believe in spending money on books. Why, for the price of two new books at Barnes and Noble, one could purchase an entire pony keg of Keystone Lite!

Tonight I will see Christopher O'Riley. He is an amazing, amazing man.

Michael bought me dinner last night and Crawford bought me breakfast this morning.
'Nice' is the nicest thing that I can say about either of them. Unfortunate.
Something may be wrong with me.

Everyone is wandering around the music building like zombies. My forms teacher actually cancelled class halfway through, exclaiming "You kids all look dead today...why don't you go take naps" and waving us out of the room.

Its worse than it was the day after Bush got re-elected.