Les fromages, ah, ils sont merveilleux !
Le brie,
Il est ma vie;
Ni trou,
Ni fondu;
Je ne discrimine pas contre eux.
I’ve been thinking about cheese all day. This was inevitable.
This, ladies and gentlefolk, is the very definition of 2 AM poetry.
Tag: 2 AM
Granted
I sat alone
With the humming of vents
Buzzing in my ears
Familiar chain of events
Everybody’s gone and
I’m the only one left
With a head up so high
And a mind bereft
Of any new thought
Running on rewind
Shutting out the time
I left behind
I wish I may
I wish I might
Just for a few hours
Stop time tonight
And I sat gazing
In endless gloom
Five AM
My predicted doom
Just a day that I might
Be spared the sleigh of time
And she smiled a twisted smile
That wish shall be mine
She came and sat beside me
And smiled like the sun
And my watch stopped working
At a quarter to one.
Just so you know, this is a true story, except no one comes and smiles at you at 1 in the morning. That’s the sort of nightmare I don’t need in my life.
Also, are my circumstances kidding me?! I have two back to back midterms coming up next week, and I do not have the time to replace a battery now!
Just my luck.
—This post was presented to you at 12:45 AM 1:31 AM
Old Yarn
I’ve been away from this space for a while, and this time, it’s totally my fault. I’ve done nothing since my finals ended last week apart from pack my bags and run away from university for a record second time in two months.
I’m away for three weeks this time, and I have laundry to do when I get back. It’s a waiting disaster. I’ve had a growing laundry pile for the last two weeks (which by some coincidence, happened to correspond very closely with the weeks I’ve had finals, who’d have thought?) that I’ve been dreading getting down to doing.
To prevent myself from having to haul any more than two full bags of laundry half the way across our residence halls, I’ve resorted to bundling up my bedsheets and linen and shoving them into my closet and getting rid of my dustbin (trashcan, trashcan, damn you Americanised English speakers) and half the paper napkins I own. It got to a point where my roommate pointed out it felt like I was leaving for six months, and I was still going to have to wash the sheets when I get back.
In all fairness, she has a point.
The thing about doing your laundry isn’t even the part where you’re doing your laundry. It’s the part where you’re playing Sherlock with everyone else’s laundry.
See, we have one laundry room and its shared by eighty kids.
Now, I’m not trying to build up a horror story here. I can’t know for sure if everyone even does their laundry. Among the ones that do, there are fourteen different days in two weeks for people to do it. (Don’t kid yourselves, you didn’t do the laundry every week either in college.)
I’t just that some people re great at leaving their laundry for absolute hours. No one else can use the washers because their washed laundry has been sitting there in a heap since 2 in the afternoon, and you’ve turned up with two bags of dirty clothes and have just finished dinner.
Walking back with your laundry, down twenty doors, to your room, is a nightmare. Maybe there’s some complex social psychology behind this, but I’ve never seen anybody be super social from under two ginormous bags of sweaty socks.
So our heads came up with a solution. They left us sticky notes and a pencil. If someone’s taking too long, someone else can take their laundry out for them. If you don’t want anyone taking your laundry out, leave them a note with your room number and get them to remind you the your laundry’s done, no excuses.
Yes, really, those clean, floral scented socks really are yours, buddy. I know, how technology has advanced.
It seems like a good move in theory. My brain just happens to kick into 2 AM wanderlust mode a lot earlier than 2 AM these days, so I just see people using it to leave everyone their phone numbers.
Hey there! Yup, that laundry’s mine. If you want me to remove, the room number’s 420. Bring your finished math problem set too. 643-222-1800. Call me, (before 23:59 on Thursday) maybe?
Like I said, that’s probably just me.
In truth, no one ever uses the laundry notes. The waiting game’s begun all over again.
I walked in one afternoon to do my laundry, I was desperately short on clothes by that point and I walk in hauling my laundry. I also them realised I forgot to bring any soap with me and had to follow through with the ordeal all over again.
Not finding a washer is bad, I’ll admit it. You need to take everything back and possibly forget about it and then wake up to have an underwear crisis or something. I can’t relate, I don’t know.
What I do know is that its a million bucks worse to walk in and take out your wet clothes, only to find that none of the dryers are free.
This particular day, I found a dryer that was done. Of course the owner of the heap inside was blissfully unaware. I waited ten minutes and then decided to inaugurate the laundry note paper.
I took out the guy’s clothes and left a note telling them that I had.
Of course I came back an hour later to find the clothes still there, with my note still stuck to their sock.
I’m going to have to do my laundry when I get back in three weeks.
Hmm… I had something kinda funny to say when I began this post, but I’ve forgotten now. I got too caught up in my own socks’ yarns.
There go my chances of being a shred of a comedian.
Melodramatic Fugue In B-Flat Minor
It’s that time of the year again.
Contradictions galore, as everyone sets out for the battle of a lifetime (or at least, lifetime, until the next time).
Conflicted souls unsure of the direction they’re headed in, often found mumbling something along the lines of, “I can’t see, am I moving forward or backwards?” and stumbling in the dark of the 3 AM blackness.
People simultaneously knowing, for the first time, what they need to do (and what they really need to get done) and yet having no idea what they’re doing.
People hitting their creative highs and yet staring up from the depths of despair, hopelessness and unproductivity.
The one time where half the fight is even knowing whether procrastination’s the enemy or a warm arm around a shoulder.
It’s finals season, and heck, I probably personify all I’ve just said, I don’t think I could get worse.
Or, depending on how you look at that, my highest best.
It seems I must run dry in either one department, I can’t have them both.
I’ll just take advantage of that fact every once in a while for what it’s worth, and other times, physics will be my bride.
In the meanwhile, eat oranges and look sharp!
Winter’s coming!
Haze
Staying up late at night to study has its own merits and demirits. I do some work, my mind wanders, poetry happens. Often.
I don’t always want to reach for my phone at 1 in the morning, it really messes up my rhythm.
So this is my new outlet.
I’m doing poetry on paper napkins! I could go all poetic about how fragile they are and everything, but you know the real story behind it; I’m just lazy.
I’m not sure how legible my handwriting is, it also happens to be my 2-AM-attempt-at-being-neat, so while it’s an aesthetic (I guess? That’s my alibi, after all!), I’m still going to transcribe it, for readability.
(Let me know if the Earth has launched out of our solar system and it’s actually readable enough for me to not need to transcribe it!)
So here goes nothing.
Einstein was right
Yes, time is relative
It’s relative, to space and sound
And all the people you’re around
Silence echoes louder than sound
Perhaps it does to some
For me, the white noise of my own thoughts
Begs sound’s intervention
Break through my inertia
Set me free
Take the place of disturbance
At once growling and motherly
For 9 PM and 3 AM
Are now the same to me
Bind me to my looming,
Growing responsibilities
Free me, speak in my mind
How screwed an I if I disagree?
Coerce me, coax me
But get me through the shitstorm
I’m singleminded in the wrong ways
Steely resolve to absurdity
Break down my statue
A memorial to eternity
And then know that you’re free
To haunt my whisking dreams.
(Just a note, that’s my math textbook in the background. I’m truly sorry.)
