02.11.2002 - 5:25 p.m.

One of the things I do as I go through life is write in my head:

Little snippets of random experience:

He�s so cute; he calls me �Yes, ma�am.�

Or descriptive metaphors:

His friendship is like the water that forms a pillar when the faucet is just barely running; smooth and unmoving, it is as solid and splendid as glass, or crystal, or some transparent stone, until I breathe in its direction. He is there for me always, provided that I remember never to ask.

I never (bar this entry) write these things down. I don�t tell people what I write about them, either. Well, I did once. It was a poem, which I�m not entirely sure I�m quoting correctly:

An old Jeep Cherokee
sits in the grass across the street.
Steel blue but vivid
in the dark full shades
of autumn after rain,
pensive on the sloping lawn,
it leans towards the road and the possible, yearns to
just Go�
somewhere.

I remember sitting on blue vinyl and not looking
at the man behind the wheel,
not asking or giving or reaching
out of respect (or fear) for what could not happen�
too rooted in grass and mud
and my shielded view of the road
to ever know if his eyes, even once,
leaned towards me.

It was a bad idea. I suppose it was a bit of a special case�most of my writings don�t reveal long-hidden crushes�but I don�t do show and tell anymore. I just observe, absorb, compose, and forget that my life is not a story told by some nebulous outside narrator. I�m there too.

The pond was scummed with slushy ice from last night�s storm, which had not quite finished misting down in cold slivers. The damp brick walkway was littered with chunky bits of cobalt glass from the shattered emergency light; the campus drunks had been at it again. She picked her way through the bits of startling blue surrounded by deep rusty red that seemed warm in some impossible way. Some unreal way. It was turning into her favorite kind of day.

I think it�s the weather that does it to me. Quiet misty days and blustery nights, spells of bitter cold, all that hard, nearly painful beauty, I think it�s the winter that makes me want things. And the wanting that makes me need to describe it, arrange it, to own it somehow, if only in my head. Winter is my season for planning road trips. Spring, summer, fall�these are my seasons for not going.

-stonebridge

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