Bombax!

Adhuc Latine vocabar "Clara." Sed heri, nomen meus Magistro mutabatur. Iam ego non "Clara," sed "Splendida" nominabor.

Id mihi maxime placet.

In which my roommates are the coolest.

"I don't do Irish step."

Happy Valentine's Turtle

Fact #1: I like going on walks.
Fact #2: I really like going on walks late at night.
Fact #3: I really, really like singing while I'm out walking late at night.

So, Saturday evening, I was walking down to the Appels' for dinner. My heart overflowed with joy, so to speak, and I started a full-volume rendition of "Till There was You," not paying much attention to the road.

There were bells on the hill, but I never heard them ringing,
No, I never heard them at all, till there was you.
There were birds in the sky, but I never saw them winging,
No, I never saw them at all, till there was you...

Right around that line (which happens to be rather high), I glanced up, and observed... some random stranger walking towards me, about five feet away.

So, at this point, do you stop singing and dive under the nearest bush, or do you assert your eccentricity with full volume?

I opted for eccentricity.

And there was music, and there were wonderful roses,
They tell me, in sweet fragrant meadows of dawn and dew
There was love all around, but I never heard it singing,
No, I never heard it at all, till there was you.

The Evolution of Dane

In light of Leta's speech,

I have discovered myself to be a comma.

You Are a Comma


You are open minded and extremely optimistic.
You enjoy almost all facets of life. You can find the good in almost anything.
You keep yourself busy with tons of friends, activities, and interests.
You find it hard to turn down an opportunity, even if you are pressed for time.
Your friends find you fascinating, charming, and easy to talk to.
(But with so many competing interests, you friends do feel like you hardly have time for them.)
You excel in: Inspiring people
You get along best with: The Question Mark
What Punctuation Mark Are You?

February

Февраль. Достать чернил и плакать!
Писать о феврале навзрыд,
Пока грохочащая слякоть
Весною черною горит.

Достать пролетку. За шесть гривен
Чрез благовест, чрез клик колес
Перенестись туда, где ливень
Еще шумней чернил и слез.

Где, как обугленные груши,
С деревьев тысячи грачей
Сорвутся в лужи и обрушат
Сухую грусть на дно очей.

Под ней проталины чернеют,
И ветер криками изрыт,
И чем случайней, тем вернее
Слагаются стихи навзрыд.

Борис Пастернак, 1912

February. Get ink, shed tears.
Write of it, sob your heart out, sing,
While torrential slush that roars
Burns in the blackness of the spring.

Go hire a buggy. For six grivnas,
Race through the noice of bells and wheels
To where the ink and all you grieving
Are muffled when the rainshower falls.

To where, like pears burnt black as charcoal,
A myriad rooks, plucked from the trees,
Fall down into the puddles, hurl
Dry sadness deep into the eyes.

Below, the wet black earth shows through,
With sudden cries the wind is pitted,
The more haphazard, the more true
The poetry that sobs its heart out.

Boris Pasternak, 1912

2.8.09

Mission: Highly Unlikely

OK, I promised this story to someone, so here goes.

One fine day in the fall of 2006, my friend Jules and I and several others were invited to a dinner party (specifically, spaghetti) at her friend Katana's apartment in Vancouver on a Friday night.
Also among the invitees was another of our acquaintance, Josh.

Now, Jules never got the original email invite, but I gave her all the info, and she conferred with Josh, and it was arranged that we should pick up him and his roommate, Peter, and all drive into Vancouver together. Four people, Jules, Josh, Peter, and myself, having spaghetti at Katana's place. What could be more delightful?

Well, Jules and I got to Josh and Peter's dorm room and found it empty. Nothing to do but wait, so wait we did; I was getting a migraine, so I parked on the couch and tried to sleep it off, while she fired up the xbox and worked on some game or other.

After about an hour, Peter emerged from his room, wherein he had been napping. Oh, no, he said, Josh was at a drama rehearsal, and wouldn't be back for at least another half hour. But that was OK, we figured; we could still make it to Katana's on time.

Josh was late. But it was still OK. Right away, he started getting food out of the cupboard. Oh, he said, we were supposed to bring toppings for the pancakes.

Pancakes?

Oh, yes, dinner was going to be pancakes. He and Peter were both extremely excited about it.

Now, as you may recall, Jules never got the invitation; I was the one who had told her the menu was spaghetti. So, me against Josh and Peter, I conceded that I must have been confused. Pancakes it would be. We all piled in the car and set off, Jules driving, Josh giving directions.

Oh, he said, we need to be turning right.
Right? said Jules, but we're going to Vancouver!
Vancouver? said he, but they live in Langley!

This was a problem. We pulled over, and quickly discovered that Josh and Peter had in fact been planning to go to someone's house for a pancake party that same evening, and when Jules asked "if they needed a ride for dinner on Friday" they assumed it was the same party. Evidently, not.

We turned around and restored Josh and Peter to their dorm. Josh had told Katana he couldn't make it out for spaghetti, since he had the pancake event to go to, and Peter didn't even *know* Katana, so they couldn't exactly come along after all. They were sad. We were sad too.

Anyways, Josh printed us off a new map of where we actually wanted to go, and gave us Katana's number in case of emergency. Unfortunately, he wasn't 100% sure of her number, so I actually had *two* numbers, one of which would be her cell phone.

Jules and I set off again, now thoroughly late, but with a renewed sense of determination. My head was, by this point, splitting, and she was suffering from tendonitis in one ankle, so the suffering quotient was unfortunately high. Also, we wound up in the midst of Friday evening traffic. Not so fun. But it would be OK: we would have spaghetti.

We found Katana's building. Two buildings, in fact, side by side, and we weren't sure which one she lived in, and we couldn't find the visitors' parking, so Jules pulled up in the dropoff zone and rested her ankle while I hopped out and ran over to look for Katana's name on the intercom listing.

It wasn't there.

I reported back to Jules; she told her Katana's roommate's name, and I went back and checked for that. Still not there. So I ran over and checked the list on the *other* building. No luck.

At this point, I got out my phone and called Katana for help. It would still be OK.

The first of the two numbers was wrong. I tried the second, and was answered by a very nice gentleman who informed me that oh, this used to be Katana's phone, but she had it for work and she doesn't work here anymore, so it's not her phone now.

Fabulous.

Jules and I both wallowed in misery for a minute, and then decided we had had enough. It was after 8 PM, and we were both starving. We went out for dinner.

Then, we bought some ice cream, took it back to her place, and ate it with the brownies we had been bringing to Katana's place to have with the spaghetti.

Oh, if only.

My life's dream: fulfilled.