He is a F------ *******
For Sure!
with an UNCONVINCING comb over.

“How does it feel, studying for your first exam of the semester?” My sister Annick dug at me, via Facetime.
“Oh, I’m miserable and no one even knows!” I exclaimed excitedly.

I already miss summer’s sense of infinite time and space, and life on the lake, with its big, wet, melancholy summer rains. But most of all, I miss the travel and delicious, swirling, excesses that form the dark side of long holiday freedoms.

I’ve been called excessive, I accept that and I have to check that aspect of my nature, from time to time.
“Don’t you have any brakes?” My roommate Leong once asked me, like I was some runaway train.

I remember last summer, how we almost eased into fall. As summer had faded, things changed and slowed down, as the European students turned back to their serious, ordinary lives. The bars and streets became deserted, carousels stopped spinning, arcade games were turned off, yachts sailed away, the eager summer wait-staff vanished from the elegant hotels. Brightly lit, summer-gaudy Saint Tropez became just another faded seaside town, where the paint everywhere suddenly seemed chipped and cheap.

This year, we sped up, by spending the last couple of weeks in flashy, frantic, fluorescent Manhattan - oh, man.

Then BOOM, we were dropped, as if from a great height, back into university life, back to cafeteria lines, shuttle buses and the scholastic gridiron - which oddly enough, has a lot in common with the teenage world. It was going from a-hundred-mile-an-hour adult freedom, to dealing with all the old teenage issues, like homework, tests, studying, the endless clock-watch scheduling of to and from classes - you know, the physicality of academics.

It sounds rough, I know. We’ve been told that as seniors, we can expect an even more important and frenetic emphasis on social life. Yep, we’ll be stepping things up to a whole new level this year!
Woot!! Maybe I’ll even get to wear some makeup!
.
.
A song for this:
September by Earth Wind & Fire

I have a couple of ‘research for credit’ classes this semester and I’m spending a lot of time with my TAs. Teaching Assistants (grad students) are essentially approachable professors with longer office hours, faster response times and a willingness to spend a little time walking me through options, so I understand the material and don’t charge-off in some crazy direction. I have a flawless record of wasting time on the wrong things at the wrong times, so I never feel silly or dumb asking questions.
AM I having fun yet? Yeah, I am.

A bell dings. Let the fighters enter the ring.
There’s a gathering of things, then we rush for the wings.
Students are bolting from classes, like riders out of rodeo shoots.
Focused faces, off to the races, phones appear from a hundred places.

Outside, a cool, brisk breeze moves paper-mâché clouds, across the blue-dome sky.
Squirrels freeze from their thieving, and watch this sudden, noisy invasion of their world.  
There’s a bee-like buzz of conversations, from ahead, behind and in doppler passing.
“Question six - was that right - what are you wearing to the thing tonight?”

My tummy growls for some lunch time relief - a plea for a snack - or coffee’s appeasement.
I glance at my watch, there’s no time. I leave the path for the grass;
I have an immediate class! Why are people so slow?
I get heinous looks - it’s grass people - kiss my *** people.

I squeeze sideways in the crush to enter the Kline Biology Tower, atop science hill.
In the hallway I find Lisa, we share the next class. “Do you have a granola bar?” I ask.
“I’ve got two,” she brags, fishing one out, as we drop our bookbags.
As I moan with pleasure, she chuckles at the relief on my face.
The TA announces, ”You should have papers, pass ‘em, please.”
.
.
Songs for this:
Home by Luke Chiang
No Other Plans by Sunny Levine

SNOW FALLS

She wakes to a morning
with no reason for living

cries in the mirror
to be forgiven.

Puts on her make-up
takes off her clothes

sits there & bleeds
until she can’t feel

the blood in her veins
...runs cold.

The razorblade
bleeds...bleeds.

The cat cries
to be fed.

The batteries in her Walkman
go dead.

The Rachmaninov stops.

A letter she will never read
drops on the Welcome mat.

A mobile rings & rings &...stops.

A member of a minor political party
looking for her vote

rings the doorbell twice
slips on the ice    &   ruins his coat.

Curses.

A man laughs at another man’s joke.
It’s a big laugh...he’s a big bloke.

Laughter invades the square.

There’s a chill in the air.

A friend calls for her
(to go on a blind date)  

...she doesn’t hear.

Snow...
...snow...
...snow falls.