Winter's Maddening Monotony

The following essay was written in early spring 2009.

Winters Maddening Monotony

Finally, at long last, winter’s grip on New England has released. Its icy fingers touch only the most northern regions, where in Fort Kent, snow fell just last week. If we ignore Fort Kent however, spring has made its presence clear and not an 80-degree-day too soon.

Temperatures dropped as expected. Here in New Hampshire, sometime around October, T-shirts reluctantly surrendered to sweaters, which in short turn, gave in to winter jackets.

Eager to ready the earth for snow, autumn waged genocidal war with the leaves and tortured the grasses until they sagged, crippled from her frost. If fall were a construction company it would specialize in foundations, and winter the house to follow. A house I that I suspect would be raised in a day and remain for centuries.

Winter was a brutal one this year. Christmas cheer seemed to disappear with the power. I managed to escape the outage for a short while, seeking refuge on the floor of an undergrad apartment in Cambridge. However after a night with the Harvard students it was time to confer with the minds of MIT. If was there, at a cousins house that we – my friend in the same position back home accompanying me – remained for another night.

This short trip served as a last good-time before winter truly set in. As snow slowly collected, blanketing the earth, so too did my feelings of depression. I can remember agonizingly long nights in which sleep came only in time for me to flip my alarm off. I had become so bored with my routine and the people I was surrounded with that I began replacing regular daily activities with sleep, and my friends with the internet. Compounding my poor mood was a cold that seemed to only get stronger. I can remember on night in particular, during which I pleaded for either sleep or death, driven mad by my roommate’s relentless snoring and daily inconsideration.

Now that the snow has gone I feel more alive than ever. I was accepted for admission to a college in North Carolina where I can finally major in geology, my one true academic interest.

Tonights Random Text

"Now she's begging for a sandwich"

"It's Probably Puke"

I uttered such a phrase just minutes ago in the bathroom. I think one's reached a crossroads when that phrase comes as no surprise. I have since changed into my slippers.

Sleepless nights

I started working on a poem about my frequent affairs with insomnia. Once an excitable mistress, awaiting opportunity on a rare restless night, insomnia has forced my true love from me, demanding all my attention. My relationship with sleep has never been truly healthy and I hope, wherever she may be, that this reaches her in time.

Sleep

Sleep seldom graces me with her airy presence.
I hear her light, barefoot paces outside the dense wooden portal to my ceaseless mind
bent on childish hypotheticals.

She teases the large iron handle until she is burned by the flames I unwillingly fuel
forbidding her entry.
Enraged and god fearing, she enters, her body trembling
the archway no longer presents an obstacle.

And in her audible release
we embrace.
Her porcelain skin, rippled by the winters cold,
forges with mine.