It gets dark so early here. And, while I'm not insensitive to the rapturous luring of fading twilight, I can't say I like it. I think the problem is that two of my strongest instincts, namely my aversion for morning and my inclination (to put it lightly) towards intoxication after dark, combine to squeeze my weekends down to about 4 hours of uninebriated, potentially productive time. Which isn't quite enough.
Although last night was very beautiful. There was a party, and upon leaving this party in a heady but essentially lucid mood (i.e. just a lil' tipsy) we discovered a hazy fog had descended down upon our little college hill, spilling a milky gaze over every distant light and silhouette. Now, being from a high, dry and windy mountain plain, this mystifying haze had an effect on me I just can't quite describe. To try anyways, I felt I had warped into some alternate, timeless dimension full of quaint sensibility and supernal delight, my mind envisaging unfettered adventures and encounters with all sorts of strange nocturnal denizens (who all inexplicably had British accents). I guess it brought out a visage of the old Victorian elegence and prudence, which is harder to see nowadays in the surrounding townhouses then one might assume. When I thought about it today, I realized that what really embodied this feeling, and perhaps what had brought it to mind, was a poem by a certain writer favored by both myself and this city (as he had favored this city), which I had read in passing many times before, it being inscribed on a memorial to him outside the John Hay Library. So, I went back to this memorial and wrote the poem down for all you:
I never can be tied to raw, new things,
For I first saw the light in an old town,
Where from my window huddled roofs sloped down
To a quaint harbour rich with visionings.
Streets with carved doorways where the sunset beams
Flooded old fanlights and small window-panes,
And Georgian steeples topped with gilded vanes
These were the sights that shaped my childhood dreams.
Meanwhile (back in the fog), my friend, who's from the Boston area, commented that "I hate how you can't fucking see in this shit!" I told him that while this was true, there may be things in the dark you're better off not seeing, to which he responded by calling me a pussy. I tried to explain my feeling that we had been wrenched from our everyday existence and placed in a bubble of cultural ethos bounded by laws and principles utterly foreign to us, where our values and rationale and perhaps even time itself had no meaning, but I didn't do a very good job and I don't think he was paying attention anyways.
At any rate, it really was beautiful, what with it's mystifyingness and all, and it revealed an aspect of this city which it is known for but which I'd never really connected with before.
I would cite the poem proper but I don't know where it's from.
Oh, and the new Flux set... breathtakingly killer.
Although last night was very beautiful. There was a party, and upon leaving this party in a heady but essentially lucid mood (i.e. just a lil' tipsy) we discovered a hazy fog had descended down upon our little college hill, spilling a milky gaze over every distant light and silhouette. Now, being from a high, dry and windy mountain plain, this mystifying haze had an effect on me I just can't quite describe. To try anyways, I felt I had warped into some alternate, timeless dimension full of quaint sensibility and supernal delight, my mind envisaging unfettered adventures and encounters with all sorts of strange nocturnal denizens (who all inexplicably had British accents). I guess it brought out a visage of the old Victorian elegence and prudence, which is harder to see nowadays in the surrounding townhouses then one might assume. When I thought about it today, I realized that what really embodied this feeling, and perhaps what had brought it to mind, was a poem by a certain writer favored by both myself and this city (as he had favored this city), which I had read in passing many times before, it being inscribed on a memorial to him outside the John Hay Library. So, I went back to this memorial and wrote the poem down for all you:
I never can be tied to raw, new things,
For I first saw the light in an old town,
Where from my window huddled roofs sloped down
To a quaint harbour rich with visionings.
Streets with carved doorways where the sunset beams
Flooded old fanlights and small window-panes,
And Georgian steeples topped with gilded vanes
These were the sights that shaped my childhood dreams.
Meanwhile (back in the fog), my friend, who's from the Boston area, commented that "I hate how you can't fucking see in this shit!" I told him that while this was true, there may be things in the dark you're better off not seeing, to which he responded by calling me a pussy. I tried to explain my feeling that we had been wrenched from our everyday existence and placed in a bubble of cultural ethos bounded by laws and principles utterly foreign to us, where our values and rationale and perhaps even time itself had no meaning, but I didn't do a very good job and I don't think he was paying attention anyways.
At any rate, it really was beautiful, what with it's mystifyingness and all, and it revealed an aspect of this city which it is known for but which I'd never really connected with before.
I would cite the poem proper but I don't know where it's from.
Oh, and the new Flux set... breathtakingly killer.