frost over

I am in love.  No, I am enamored by/with.  Too much.  No, I have it; I have found a strong, immediate interest towards.  His name is Chicago.  Chicago By Night, in fact.  He's bright, funny, sometimes talkative, rather calm...and he has great structure/build.  He's cultural, historical, and musical...and he has pretty good taste.  What else can you ask for?  And he's tall and clean-cut.  Looks fantastic next to a lake and can be found enjoying a hearty pizza and sidewalk jazz.

Oh, and he holds a pretty good convention crowd since that's where I spent the majority of my time.  Like I said, lovely city.  If I had to pick a good-sized city to live in, that might be it.

Perhaps my favourite part was standing on Michigan, on the bridge overlooking the river, and listening to dull city sounds and the saxophonist on the corner.  Childish, I know...

Still reading and writing, which more than occasionally gets overtaken by pure laziness and television.  A sad story indeed.

But I'm quietly excited about getting published.

Currently Listening:  "Chicago"  -- Sufjan Stevens, from which title of my post was taken.

"Going Under"

The sun was not glaring to welcome summer. Instead, it parted the clouds and gave off a hint of heat, long enough to say at the very least that in due time the change would come. Still for her it was bright enough as she tiptoed across the cracked concrete to the sleek metal railing. Peering into the water with unwarranted uncertainty, she ignored her reflection, dressed in the top she'd almost grown into and the bottom that had become a size too big. It was the rippling light at the bottom of the shallow end that had caught her eye -- the transient shadows and the seemingly random patterns that sometimes repeated. She gingerly dipped a toe into the deserted water and reactively shivered, a little more strongly in anticipation of the impending submersion that lay ahead.

She stepped into the pool until she was waist deep, pacing the chill of the water with the slowing of her thoughts. It's like ripping off a band-aid, she always had to tell herself; the faster she did it, the less it would hurt. For the five seconds her whole body is underwater, she feels the cold overtake her, shake her, as if bringing her back to her senses. The shock fades as quickly as it came as she begins to drift to the surface towards the light. Her nostrils fill entirely with the scent of sweet blossoms, and her head is greeted by a delicate warm breeze. She closes her eyes as the trees rustle and sway with the wind as if silently dancing to a famous waltz. The music in her soul that had been quieted as of late by the mundane affairs of everyday life had suddenly reached its crescendo in an underwater symphony.

She feels alive as she plunges headfirst into the cerulean coolness, reaching out into unknown space. The water floods her ears with a calming dullness that she hasn't heard in over a year. For in this moment, there is nothing. There are no familiar voices, no deep contemplations, no deep-seated tugging feelings. There are only routine movements, tightening muscles, and minute, intermittent bubbles that signal a release of some kind. Her outstretched arms trace large circles, and her legs kick steadily in perfect rhythm to the beating of her heart. To an onlooker, it would seem that she had some goal in mind, some drive to propel her forward; yet, she feels no hurry, no pressing objective to fulfill. She is dictated by the lifespan of her breaths alone. It is in this enclosed body of water that she finds her freedom, her strength and her ability to let go. Stroke by stroke, she swims the length of the pool and back again, over and over, channeling all of her energy and effort towards making a fluid and continuous motion so as to embody the medium that surrounds her. Her hair floats gently underwater as though it were caught in a slow-motion wind storm. She watches the leaves that silently crumble against the vinyl floor and those that delicately rise to the surface. Why couldn't real life be this quiet and simple, she wondered. A frozen glacier in the moving waters, she lingered for a moment, deciding which leaf to follow.

Enough time passes, and there are no longer bubbles nor ripples close by. Rays of sunlight slow to a halt and begin to fade as her movements cease save a slow blink of her tired eyes. How easy it would be to give up at an instant and float away peacefully and unknowingly. Only the leaves and the light would know, and they would not give it a second thought. The comfort she takes in these notions is fleeting and suddenly replaced by the increasing negative pressure inside her chest. Her lungs ache for new air, but she waits until the last possible moment to resurface because to be surrounded by water promises a world of safety, leisure, and continuity. As her lips touch the air, her eyes remain closed as tightly as possible, keeping the outside world at bay and clinging desperately to beaded water droplets. Simultaneously, and somewhat to her dismay, her body longs to leave the wet comfort and greedily gasps for oxygen as though she were reborn, taking her very first breath of life.

Of all the things she had felt -- the jolt of cold stepping in, the water wrapping itself around her, the slow graceful nature of the underwater ballet -- this struggle for air was her favourite and defining moment. She held her breath as long as she felt she possibly could and then some. The penultimate joy was in the waiting, the anticipation that something more than content was seconds away. And after some time, she would decide to let go of the comfort and ease of this refreshing ambience of feigned weightlessness and surreal beauty. It would seem like a choice between life and death, and in a way the unaware onlooker would be right.

She emerges from cold waters, alone and unnoticed. Her triumph of exhilaration is solitary; coming up for air is like the powerful, private rush of the first kiss. As she gazes up to the brighter blue hue of the sky, the coy sun ducks behind a cloud as if to say it is not quite that easy. Her heartbeat returns to normal, and she floats on her back for one last lap. Tears are streaming down her face, she thinks, but she cannot be sure for perhaps it is only the pool water.

Currently Listening:  "Mushaboom" -- Feist.  Lyricism:  "I got a man to stick it out and make a home from a rented house.  And we'll collect the moments, one by one.  I guess that's how the future's done.  How many acres?  How much light?  Tucked in the woods and out of sight.  Talk to the neighbours and tip my cap on a little road barely on the map..."

Home.  That now has two different meanings.  Home for the summer.  First variation on May 2006, I guess.

First year of medical school done, and I like having nothing to do, nothing to study or think about, academically speaking.  For now.

Reading, writing, and piano are on the schedule in significantly greater time allotments than during the previous school year.  Hopefully running around to avoid the weight gain and general sloth.  Also, decorating and organizing at the other home.  And taking crash courses on somewhat obscure Chinese dialects.

Currently Reading:  Dry:  A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs.  Candid, full of insight...or hindsight, rather.  Great descriptive text, with one of my favorite lines as "highly evolved sense of denial."  Sounds familiar.  Except for the whole recovering alcoholic part.  I'd like to read more of his work.  And soon.

Quote:  "What I really want is to sit next to someone under an L.L. Bean blanket on the beach in the fall and drink coffee from the same mug.  I don't want some rusty '73 Ford Pinto with a factory-defective gas tank that causes it to explode when it's rear-ended in the parking lot of the supermarket.  So why do I keep looking for Pintos? (205)"

By the way, I'm taking book suggestions if you have them readily available.

In the meantime, I'll be trying to jumpstart my creative self into gear so I'll have something new to post here.  I feel that I've been quite neglectful...