As darkness crept toward morning, he asked me what my favorite band was. I smiled, and told him Smashing Pumpkins, and the sound echoed around the quiet room.
I woke up with the impression of my necklace on my arm and the sunlight pounding through the curtains. I turned around, finding the clock on the windowsill, and realized that I hadn’t been asleep for nearly long enough.
She came to visit me from Indiana. We had lunch, watched movies, and took a nap before running all over the city once again. She left the next morning, I took her down to the Blue line and to the bus station. Once she was safely gone, I crawled home again.
The wind has been bitter here lately. It’s been snowing off and on for a few days now, and it’s getting more and more uncomfortable to leave the building. The grocery store calls, though.
I am still tired.

Steve raised an interesting question today.
Perhaps I will stay at Loyola for a short summer session, lasting until the end of June, and move in with him for the two months that I will be attending extra classes. That way, he’ll have someone to live with for the first part of the summer, and so will I.
I am thinking about doing that, even though it means not spending the entire summer in Denver. I’ll get a jump start of classes, because I’ll have extra credit hours, and I’ll be able to live with him (because I won’t be able to next year).
It has been a good week. I’m getting settled into my classes; still buying books and such, but for the most part, keeping busy. I spent the weekend with my friend Emily and her friends, at an apartment not far from campus. We watched movies and ate, but it was comfortable. It snowed.

Oasis
in the middle of the hustle
I breathe in,
letting air into my lungs.
And hold it,
while I look around.
There are moving people
swarming back and forth,
to the places
they need to go.
Sky gray and cloudy,
I slide my hand into my pocket
and finding comfort and warmth there,
I leave it
as I walk away.
Going anywhere.
As darkness falls,
I find myself
traversing home
alone.
Surrounded by silence
and neon lights
in the city
where quiet is a rare find.
The train slides by me,
and suddenly I am home.
Again.

“The City”

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart-like something dead- lies buried.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursure you.
You’ll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.
Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.

-C.P. Cavafy, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Solitude, at last.
It seems that there is much to be done, yet at the moment I cannot bring myself to do any of it. I hope tomorrow brings some other sort of hope and drive to accomplish.