this picture isn't related to anything, beyond the fact that there's roughly eighty three feet of snow on the ground and i really wish my backyard and/or town looked like this instead of the mess which it currently is (way to fail, snow plow men).

so today i was the laziest i've been in ages. no homework, no college applications, no...anything, really. it felt amazing. and since winter break is sixteen days this year, i'm hoping that there'll be a lot more days exactly like this one. why? well, there's a poem which describes what i feel a lot better than i ever could. it's called blues by elizabeth alexander:

I am lazy, the laziest
girl in the world. I sleep during
the day when I want to, 'til
my face is creased and swollen,
'til my lips are dry and hot. I
eat as I please: cookies and milk
after lunch, butter and sour cream
on my baked potato, foods that
slothful people eat, that turn
yellow and opaque beneath the skin.
Sometimes come dinnertime Sunday
I am still in my nightgown, the one
with the lace trim listing because
I have not mended it. Many days
I do not exercise, only
consider it, then rub my curdy
belly and lie down. Even
my poems are lazy. I use
syllabics instead of iambs,
prefer slant to the gong of full rhyme,
write briefly while others go
for pages. And yesterday,
for example, I did not work at all!
I got in my car and I drove
to factory outlet stores, purchased
stockings and panties and socks
with my father's money.

To think, in childhood I missed only
one day of school per year. I went
to ballet class four days a week
at four-forty-five and on
Saturdays, beginning always
with plie, ending with curtsy.
To think, I knew only industry,
the industry of my race
and of immigrants, the radio
tuned always to the station
that said, Line up your summer
job months in advance. Work hard
and do not shame your family,
who worked hard to give you what you have.
There is no sin but sloth. Burn
to a wick and keep moving.

I avoided sleep for years,
up at night replaying
evening news stories about
nearby jailbreaks, fat people
who ate fried chicken and woke up
dead. In sleep I am looking
for poems in the shape of open
V's of birds flying in formation,
or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.

what am i listening to right now? 1 John 4:16 by the mountain goats.

that's all for now. i'm going to sleep, and am hopefully not going to wake up for the next twelve hours.

1 comments:

pretty pretty picture! I totally wish ashburn was like that! and hooray for sleeping 12 hours! I think your comment on mine got cut off...but sbux and cute mugs are a win!