I'm coming off of my days of solid work with a false sense of freedom. I do still have plenty to do- papers to write, floor programs to plan- but since none of it is due within the next four hours, the panic mode in which I've been operating simply won't switch on, and without it, my efficiency drops to nil.

Ideally, I'd be spending these April days outside, reading for class or just chatting with my equally winter-pallored classmates. Unfortunately, the weather has been absolutely lousy- in the forties or low fifties, cloudy, and rainy.

The particular sharp smell of cold rain summons memories of New York City. They are ambiguous, having little to do with specific events and more to do with a pervasive sort of feeling. A faint odor of fish, greyscale light reflecting from glass-sheathed buildings and even sidewalks, being alone within a sea of people, the primordial soup of sound that is city.

Part of me wishes that the chilly gloomy weather would carry through summer; I detest the sticky inescapable heat of July in land-locked St. Paul. In the dead of summer, I prefer to go outside only when the oppressive sun sets. A balmy cool summer, the kind where one gets cold when standing in the shade in the breeze, is far more appealing.

I'm growing tired of this overcommercialized, overemotionalized Internet. What originated as a means of transmitting information has become a strange sea of self-pity, self-importance (says she with a web journal), and sheer, repulsive capitalism. I've lost my faith in the ability of the internet to forge community and relationships. It's not real, don't you see? People literally become pixelated renderings of themselves when online, with all of the details of human foibles and complexities lost somewhere in the impersonal binary structure. Really, it's not at all strange that wrenching emotional bravado and commercialism should coexist so happily here: that same awful combination can be found in cheesy feel-good SARK books in Barnes and Noble's across the nation.

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I want something that is tangible: people to debate with rather than digitally printed words, streaky low-toner photocopied manifestos instead of vivid color and sterile design. None of life's messiness and intrinsic chaos can be transmitted through a world created by order-loving scientists.

[...]

I went out walking, to decompress and to buy tofu and chocolate sorbet. I had the impulse just to keep going, to find a small park and sit under a canopy of leaves, invisible in the dark but still felt, somehow.

Instead, I returned to my cinderblock-walled room, thinly disguised with textiles, belongings, music spinning forth from plastic mirrored discs.