February, but we have faith that someday the sun will return.

I looked out my window this afternoon to see the large winter tree blooming in song birds. Little bitty grey-brown personages flitting from branch to branch, hanging upside down and filling the tree with life normally reserved for another season. The tree reaches up high above the neighbors two story house and every part of it is full of these small chirpers. I don't know why they have decided to congregate in this particular tree, but here they are.

She can read, she can read, she's ba-ad

I was sitting in the bathtub yesterday reading the back of the shampoo bottle and my first instinct was to turn it around on the shelf so I wouldn't have to read about my hair type and the amazing nature of my product.
But then I thought, what an amazing thing, the way I can read. The way I absorb the meaning of those combinations of little letters almost instantly. The way I cannot NOT read something in front of me.
Reading....a book, a newspaper, a blog. It might be near to an addiction for me, because I get a better than chocolate or caffeine rush from shutting out the world to a captivating turn of phrase.

I can't really comprehend what it would mean to be illiterate/ preliterate. Would my mind be me with out those symbols attached to every word?

And I wonder if it is analogous to how I never learned to read music. All of the notes are merely dots and bars and I've got the tune in my head but I could not tell you which mark is which sound.
This doesn't stop me from singing in the bathtub, but once the sound bounces off the porcelain it is gone.

I am wondering what I am missing by not knowing how to read.

Art Faliure

(he)Art Failure.

White gallery walls, bare wood floor.

[You] and your projector in the empty space.

Cord plugged into the metal outlet on the floor.

The images flicker, are slow, superimposed with type. Drab colors. Basic font.

Overhead the voice speaks in a measures tone, continues. The reel keeps going.

I left.




Were you trying to convince me to listen to what you had to say?

Sound Symphony In the UW Fountain

I am afraid I haven't written in awhile. I went to Minneapolis for Thanksgiving and have been utterly consumed with work since I have been back. Not the fun kind of work either, the work to pay the bills type work.
I met a friend for lunch today in the U dist and I ended up walking through the UW campus. I don't spend much time there anymore and I forget how beautiful it really is. (on a sunny day of course).

The fountain was frozen over and an industrious student had broken large sheets of ice and collected them along the side. I watched him toss the fragments across the frozen pond where they shattered in bell like tones across the fountain. I really wished I had a recording device to capture the symphony of chimes and tinkles created by the breaking pieces of ice. A loud deep creak as the sheets were separated and then a cascade of lighter sounds. I wonder if he was paying attention to the sound or just exhilarating in the smashing.

This spectacular sequence was punctuated for me by a couple of students at the bus stop discussing the fact that the library computers had been tested and found to contain a strain of fecal bacteria. Being me I didn't want to butt in, but I felt a strong urge to tell them that I am pretty sure there are traces of fecal matter everywhere. It always comes back to feces in the end I guess.