I was surprised by three things today:
1. A woman skiing while on my walk home from class this morning through the winter fear-scape that my campus had become. Not for pleasure, though there was certainly much to be had, but as a mode of transportation. It was out of place; almost charming, but more a terrifying reminder of how the skies punish us, and that we, in a show of desperate ingenuity, manufacture alien appendages.
2. A couple of bros, later on during that same walk, playing in the snow...on the campus pond...that was not fully frozen. I stared for a full minute and grew anxious. If one of them fell, I knew what obligations would drive me and to which ends.
"Dude! It's totally frozen, I swear! We're drawing a big dick in the snow!"
I dragged hard on a cigarette and marched on, gaze and rage averted.
3. A sign posted outside the only afternoon class that had not been canceled.
It read:
"Our class is canceled.
-Your Awful Professor"
No emails, no warning. Certainly rude, probably unforgivable. At least I hadn't slugged ten minutes in two feet of, uh, I don't even know. I mean, I did do that. I was trying to be smug, you know? But then I couldn't even begin to describe the mess on the streets outside.
Man, I just sort of give up.
---
It was like a dead whale's rotting flesh mixed with all the bowels of everything, ever.
Also, ice cold and slowly melting.
Goodnight.