Oh, yes, I was also going to say I think that Death Mystery is the best Sun headline I have seen since Fun Guy Killed

Today I fell in love with Lost, ate a bunch of really awesome chocolate, and lifted until my arms could not lift anymore. This was good.

Also, in midrun the television said "police are advising drivers to pay more attention to motorcycles on the road. They are also advising motorcycle drivers to drive like no one can see them." I look forward to the widespread adoption of this advice.

Also, a lot of things, but I'm tired, and it's late, and I hope it will be fine, and there's nothing more to say, so I'm jumpin off and we'll see when we see, I suppose.

I've finally found the courage to restart Portrait in Sepia, which Ellison gave me a long time ago, and which I was going to read last summer and then at Christmas and then on reading week.

I'm not sure why I find Allende difficult. She's not difficult to read, the narrators are always 'straightforward' in their presentation, the stories are simple - families, births, fortunes made and loss. The details are slim, since the scale is so epic. They're expansive but rough sketches of lives.

But that might be the problem. She hurts to read, a little, or my timing is always bad with her, or something. I read House of Spirits in the grade twelve and recall just aching on every page. There is something chasmically beautiful about her books - they are stunning, but the bottom has been pulled out. They are stories, simply, of life, suspended in nothing - just lives. There is no greater meaning, no larger statement, which isn't to say interpretation isn't possible or there's just what she wrote or something stupid of that sort, but just that the sole, tremendous content of her writing is life.

Her romance, also, is difficult to read. I suppose because it is 'true', by which I suppose I mean, in her work, love or romance means nothing, in particular. And that seems true, though I can't explain it any better. It means many things (there is, in this book, the story of Nivea and Severo del Valle which is enough to make you want to cry, though you couldn't say why), it surfaces in all sorts of places, shapes, it's a name that encompasses many things, things which flush your cheeks, things that endure and survive, things that fade, things that burn in a flash, things which are quiet, soft, fervent, dangerous, mistakes, delusions...

There is something about her stories that makes things seem at once absurd and incredible. Determination, for her characters, means nothing, but that does not mean that things which are pursued are not attained - wonderful, rich things happen, whether we like them or not, whether we know them or not, whether we want them or not. Ultimately it's not up to us, or anything, but it still is

. They are difficult books, a dull pain at the back of your throat for 300 pages though if you were asked, you would never be able to really explain it. They are just alive, and they love, and they lose, and want and they die. But the pages are so full of it, you find yourself moved.

(I am still angry, but now I am mostly, tired, disappointed and resigned. There is a line from Angels in America I will misquote, Laura will remind me. "Life is disappointing, and then after a while you get used to the disappointment, and that itself is a disappointment of its own.")

And...Um...
In a magazine too expensive to buy I read about
How, with scientific devices of great complexity,
U.S. scientists have discovered that if a rat
Is placed in a cage in which it has previously
Been given an electrical shock, it starts crying.

I told my grandmother about that and she said,
"We probably already knew that would be true."
-Jimmy Durham, "The Teachings of My Grandmother"

In the real wintertime, nothing could stop me. I got up and trudged to the gym in rain or shine, giant snowdrifts or fatal cold snaps. Despite work and classes, turmoil and uncertainty.

I have one, shortish, boringish, easyish paper left to write, and all the time in the world to run, but I just want a nap like no one's business. I think I'm officially done with the treadmill this season. I absolutely cannot justify spending another minute on one, for at least 6 months. My brain has had it with running inside, and, sadly, this means my legs have as well, mostly because the more they lie dormant, the less running they can do in the first place. I was promised summer, and I can't seem to go back.

So, I think maybe I'm going to write this shortish, boringish, easyish paper, and then I'm going to have some warm, lemony neo-citron to deal with this perpetual nasal drip and sinus headache, and go to sleep at about 6:30.

Maybe, when I get up tomorrow, the world will be the sort of place I feel like spending the day. I'll pack my shoes and smelly gym clothes when I go to work, and I'll try again. One of these days things will probably turn out alright, and I'll hopefully feel like staying awake and around on that day. Also it would be good to be able to walk to the bus stop without having sharp chunks of frozen ice blow into my eyes. That would make me feel like sticking around in the awake-time too. I'm not really that demanding.

I don't take it too lightly
but it don't weigh down too low...
How deep in the valley
must you go
to find what your footsteps
already know?
The way on is the way out,
there are signs to follow.
There is deep in the valley,
and I'm bound to go.