Thawed Haiku

Blowing snow and wind;
Sudden break surprises me,
Glad to see the sun.

We’re thawing, folks. Ditch your D-pills and go get some sunshine. It won’t last.

Shades of Sunday

Sundays
Traditionally quiet
And quiet in reality
But there’s a buzz
That cannot be heard
Even by the few that pass by
Cogs whirring and plans cementing
Wasn’t the weekend the outlet of the bold?
Not so this damp morning;
Dreams of a Monday
Steadily carving
In the recesses of the mind
And into the rhythms of time

Elevated,
But only in location
Planning out the rest of the week
Kept amused
By a tree stump sticking out
Into a mountain of shovelled snow,
Interesting to no one else
But all I can see as I look out
On this damp, empty day.
Where did the world creep away?
There’s no one else here
Empty, post apocalyptic;
But calming, in some odd way.

It’s funny how your perceptions of Sunday are always changing, depending on who you are. Is Sunday your rest day? Is it the day to catch up on cartoons? Is Sunday morning, as Kurt Cobain said, everyday? Or perhaps as Lou Reed said, a time when the world’s behind you?
To me, it’s the calm before the storm, in every single way.
Universities tend to be quiet on weekends. Every person who walks by is a case to be thoroughly examined, Sunday is when they won’t be lost in the masses. It’s the morning after Saturday’s madness and a chance to catch your breath. For me, it brings the excitement of the next week, the Monday when I do my radio work, and a chance to do my homework and chill out simultaneously, without being guilty.

Ah, the many shades of a Sunday! How’s your Sunday?

The shadowy shades of a different Sunday, as I could see it. 

Stormed In

Pit, pat, whoosh
A tingle on the tip
On the tip of my nose
A signal transmitted
To the one who knows
A sign, if anything,
It’s time to go home

Pit, pat, whoosh
And a tick tock tick;
Joined in harmony
For an experimental collaboration
For an hour or three
Drumming away
Keeping time with me

Pit, pat, whoosh
And an electronic beep!
Keep indoors they say,
As much as you can keep
Now on your telly, or old fashioned cathode-ray:
There’s a storm out and about
And it’s here to stay

Pit, pat, whoosh
And the rustling in the fridge
Make sure you got supplies!
Ice creams are for winters,
Ice creams don’t lie!
But don’t get carried away,
Get work done before the power dies

Pit, pat, whoosh
This is getting a bit repetitive,
A bit scary and boring
The rain just hasn’t stopped!
It’s been pouring and pouring,
The background while I sleep
It’s an indoor morning, and not one for exploring

Pit, pat, whoosh
Bleep bleep bloop!
Cancellations and censored swears,
Barred indoors there’s boredom and panic
Of which I’m quite aware
Looking out the window
With a sigh, a frown and a stare

Pit, pat, whoosh
More like a single long droning sound
And the whirring of cogs,
For I’ve found work to do
Indoor days needn’t be logs
The sound’s quite relaxing honestly
And there are books and books to hog

 

We genuinely do have storms, and their main risks are becoming annoying, and freezing. I have had to cancel stuff indeed, I suppose WordPress must be my sole support for the weekend. And computer science. Lots of readings. It’s surprisingly really, because I’m convinced computer scientists don’t know how to read anymore. My class and I are living breathing proof.

Have a safe weekend!

Winters

Sweaters scare me. I am genuinely afraid I’m gonna take my top off.

When people say winter anxiety is a thing, I promise you it is a thing.

Sea-Change

I can’t see

What lies beneath the surface

Clean, white, pristine

Sands without a colour

But certainly not without personality.

Smooth, flat ground,

Icy slips,

Treacherous dips;

And I can’t see

So I simply place faith

And take a step ahead

Only to fall knee-deep

Into the sky’s puke.

 

It’s started to snow! I’ve already gone and fallen into a thigh-high pit of snow by walking where I thought there was ground, which is a perfect way to begin the winter season. Here’s to four more months!

Of this, just five feet higher, colder, and more miserable and devoid of motivation. Yeah, your welcome for me brightening your morning. 

Falling For The Heat

This is the view from my window. It’s an absolutely lovely day, about fifteen degrees, not too windy, not a cloud in the sky, not a drop of rain.

If I’m being honest, I never imagined I’d ever come to find such a day appealing. I’ve spent eighteen years praying the sun away. Monsoon was not just a day when the rains poured, monsoon was a mood. It was the stop,–drop–and–roll! call, where you’d leave everything aside, pick up all your work, and just lodge your butt over a chair in the balcony. A cloudy day always held a calming presence over me, in fact it still does. But the way you respond to it varies in 30 degrees, and in 9.

We’ve had a drearily soppy week. Picture strong winds laced with rain pellets. Feel the little puddles on uneven ground, and water in your shoes and soaking into the socks. Saturday was a complete turnaround compared to the rest of the week, and Sunday’s looking like a cracker… from the glass of my window.

If it were up to me, I’d go completely Canadian on this weather. I’d go out for a long and pointless walk, just to greedily soak up a little more of the fleeting sunshine. Tomorrow’s scheduled to be cloudy. But of course, it must only look this good outside on a day I’ve really got to buckle down and work for a two-midterm onslaught to follow in the next two days.

Any day that looks like this, you should probably be out.

So I’ll sit here, looking up occasionally from my work under the nefarious tubelight, and eventually the sun will go down and we’ll all sigh a sigh and forget, some of us thinking back on a lovely day well spent, and some others, in typical fashion, grunting and growling and muttering under their breath, will get ready to end a day and awake to the putrid petroleum smell of a fresh midterm season (does midterm season smell like petrol?)

Even as the day dies, the sun’s fighting for a summer simulation that I won’t enter.

Anyway, sorry for dragging you into this rant. I hope you’re enjoying a good sunny day, if you live somewhere cold, or a relaxed, cloudy, calm day, if you live somewhere hot. It’s amazing how the perspectives can shift along just a few latitudes!

Anyway, if you’re mad about five minutes well wasted, here’s some eye-candy for you. Hope the fall satiates you, and have a great Sunday!

 

Off.

It’s that rare sort of day

When the sky’s 67% blue

More than a wisp of light in the sky

And winds raging at 32

We call it good weather these days, folks:

Don’t settle for less!

Lower your expectations,

And today’s been the best!

But I digress; the sun’s out, it’s so quiet

And calm and maybe even a hint warm

And of course, I also have a truckload 

Of studies taking me by storm

A quiet place, headphones, 

Math textbook, lots of light 

And a booster dose of motivation’s all I 

Need in my life

So of course I picked today

To be feeling extra sleep deprived

Of course today I feel obliged 

To run away from all my responsibilities in life

And so with my nose stuck in the air

With lots of work and none a care

I do hereby out loud declare:

Goodbye suckers, I’m off to bed. 

Do Soup.

Winters can be brutal.

You’ve got to keep warm, leave early, brave the winds, activate X-Ray vision to see through the snow, perform the most elaborate rituals to ensure a snowstorm brings down that crucial midterm taking place tomorrow…

It’s definitely an elaborate season. And running around all the time, it’s easy to forget to breathe in, even when you can see your own breath in front of you, and Moreno importantly, to keep warm, in spite of the numerous white reminders tapping on your forehead.

So I decided, in the general spirit of doing good, to make people a little reminder.

I drew it up on a particularly snowy day in my residence dining hall while studying French from a library textbook, and I did, for two whole minutes, seriously consider returning the book with an added token of gratitude slipped inside.

In fact, I’m warming up to the fact again.

(See what I did there?)

So be a nice person today.

Pass this around and remind your friends to keep warm, and above all: snort soup, dress warm and snuggly in your velvet mystic robe, and practice them dark arts of snowing days in!

Schrödinger’s Snowflake

As my assignment deadline grows nearer and nearer, I am officially getting closer to the rabbit hole.

At this hour of the day, I can’t recall the exact details here, but some aspects of physics don’t really work the way you’d expect them to when you get really close to some powerful landmarks.

Let’s just say my upcoming assignment deadline is a landmark.

Does this look the same to you as it does to me?

According to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, you can never know the exact velocity and position of an object. At this point, I’m pretty close to the deadline’s position on my calendar and my momentum is spiralling outwards and out of control.

It suffices to say, things aren’t looking very normal.

Welcome to my city, a place where we simultaneously experience summer and winter. (I refuse to answer any follow up questions about this “summer” I speak of) Sleep deprivation and insomnia. Panic and procrastination. Dead and alive, and Schrödinger and his cat. And my assignment due.

Although fair to say, the whole city doesn’t have an assignment due. But then again, this close to the deadline, I can’t even be sure. What if they do? What if all this mounting ice we’ having is nothing but the entire city crying over their share of my CS assignment? No wonder the snow tastes salty here.

Pass me the maple syrup please!

It’s probably an error, and with the winds it’s probably no more than -7 degrees anyway, and it’s not going to change the fact that we are living in the centre of a giant skating rink that isn’t nearly melting as quick as it piles up, but there we go, this forecast fascinates me. It’s my current state of mind. On repeat for the last five days or so.

Once this is over with, I am so out. Out cold!

Just Don’t Make Me Take The Gloves Off

It’s a fine and sunny morning
As you peer outside your window
Just a scraper of a white blanket
Possibly here from a day ago

The clouds are smiling
And the sheer blank white outside is inviting
And as you dream of the summery days ahead
You hear your phone crying

As you walk across to class
It’s as soft a walk as can be
And then you hear the rumbling and howling
And check your phone; it’s minus eighteen degrees

How can it be
That when you really want to get there
On time the wind seems keen on making sure you
End up on the other side of campus?

And how could it seem
So perfectly calm in the morning
When Environment Canada has issued
A week’s worth of warnings?

I think there’s snow inside my hat
And snow in my eyes
And snow in my ear
And in a little bit of a ice

And no, don’t you dare,
Don’t you even try
To cancel classes today
Would make you a very un-Canadian guy.

Have you ever wanted
To go parasailing?
To find out what it really meant
To float like a butterfly?

Because the wind speed today is 50 kph
And the speed limit is 45
Can someone call the damn cops
To ticket this Zephyr guy?

Till today I’d always thought
I’d see the Clippers in the NBA,
But I’ve seen this Albertan roll in
From the Wild West today.

And as I stand and write this,
We’re fifteen centimetres under the snow
And if you prefer imperial units
Today you and I might agree on how low this’ll go (-40!)

And RIP all those with evening classes,
And the off campus dwellers too
Give the wind a fight;
And my frozen fingers
Are my new excuse not to write.

This used to be a staircase. I’m not that creative, it really was one.