it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

Tonight the girl is living high

as the sky

before she crashes low

and below the surface

she goes

with her periscope,

her records,

her thousand beaux.

Home I go.

I hear the noise of the morning,

the rushing water

the footsteps

the everyday sonnet

the basso of my continuo

playing through my hands.

I touch the papers on my desk

the clear, rounded glass and

the grass on the ground. then,

the wind in this void of a world

that exists as a single breath, just beyond the

the bounds of my heart.

It’s just now in the moment

that I realize it’s all

my head, my hands.

my hands, my heart.

herein lies my hallelujah.

behold, silence

behold, stillness

falling snow?

i hear it spring, summer, and fall;

carry it in my hands.

therein lies my hallelujah.

recall the thought,

the feeling,

the memory in the mirror.

is it a blur?

this spinning blue earth

in the middle of all space

and of all time holding us close

until there is nothing left to say

but hallelujah.

words i’ve said,

stories i’ve heard.

i will take a breath and whisper

the quiet hallelujah.

ahhh a bug!

A couple of hours ago I was in the basement retrieving some sheets from the dryer, and I thought I saw something small and black scurrying across the floor (specifically, a bug).  I think I see a giant bug several times a day, because I am terrified of bugs and subconsciously I am always on the lookout.  I can't stand them, especially after the (alleged) bed bug experience I had in the fall, which everyone continues to insist I made up in my head.  They are probably right, but I digress.

Anyway, I was about to go back to my original task of checking on my sheets, when I noticed that the black thing was still moving and that it wasn't a piece of lint but an actual bug.  I'm not an expert, so I couldn't tell you what kind of bug, but it was gigantic.  I was terrified.  But I stifled a scream, and I stomped on that bug!  I stomped on it good, because I knew that if I didn't get it the first time, it would probably craftily sneak under the dryer.  I shudder to remember the crunch, because there was indeed a crunch.

I understand that basements are built beneath the ground and that this means bugs and moisture will infiltrate from time to time, but it is still somewhat disconcerting.

Anyway . . . I thought it might be therapeutic for me to write about this before trying to sleep.

roundabouts, unicycles, and pedestrians

I watched a great TED talk yesterday (what else is new?) about roundabouts vs. stop signs.  It's good.  HERE is the link if you want to watch it.

I gave a little thought to different areas that I frequent which could benefit from changes.  One of them is North Star Rd, which from Fifth up to Lane has no sidewalk, except for portions on the West side above Waltham Rd (I think?  I'll check again the next time I drive by) where it is more residential.  Either way, they are putting in all of these businesses and really developing the section of Lane Ave which rests perpendicular to North Star, west to about Northwest Blvd.  I'm not saying I would walk up North Star to Lane Ave everyday, but I've wanted to in the past.  And nearly every time I drive up North Star I see people (usually students) walking in the same direction, presumably up to the bike path which heads further toward campus.  The speed limit has recently been reduced to 25 mph, which few people follow, and a pedestrian crossing sign has been added to the entrance of the bike path.  But I still think that a sidewalk would be really great.  There practically is a sidewalk already do to the amount of foot traffic running through the grass.  This means that it is a muddy mess now.

Anyway, I was pondering how nice it would be for people closer to King or Fifth to be able to walk up North Star safely, and found out that the Upper Arlington Engineering Division raised the topic of placing a roundabout at the intersection of North Star, Waltham, and Kinnear.  See THIS article for details.  While I think that having the lighted intersection works just fine there, perhaps the roundabout would inadvertently encourage drivers who intend to end up travelling north on North Star to slow down?  Just a thought.

The last paragraph about the possibility of some changes to Northwest Blvd intrigues me too, for pretty much the same reasons.  There is really no good way to walk/bike up Northwest Blvd, which his silly because the COTA 84 (a fairly popular line in the morning and at night - when it is dark and pedestrians are also less visible!) and the COTA 3 run up and down that road throughout the day.

One last road that would seriously benefit from a sidewalk?  Kinnear Rd.  The whole thing.

Also, potholes are the bane of my existence.

I'm not complaining, I'm just observing the way Gary told us to.

to spell, or spellian, espeller, spellon, spjalla...

Check this out.  And this, too.

I really just wanted to share the weirdness of the spelling variants of the word dwarf.  I had absolutely no idea that Tolkien had affected the spelling like this - the Merriam-Webster allows for the plural dwarves, whereas after the mid-19thC, most people spelled the word with an f, as in dwarfs (an evolutionary change to the spelling).  They now allow for this variation in their record because Tolkien spelled the word with a v (the older spelling) when referring to the race of dwarves in his literature.  Go figure.  If you asked me five minutes ago to spell the plural of dwarf, I would have spelled it with a v.  I wouldn't have said that spelling it with the f is incorrect, but if prompted to spell, I would have written it as dwarves.  That's a powerful thing.

I just wanted to point out that once again, Tolkien proves that even though he may have spent his spare time inventing languages and writing out complex histories of worlds which don't exist, he was so awesome at it that he actually affected the way that we spell the plural of dwarf.  And that's a pretty big deal.

I would also like to make a final note that my browser is attempting to correct my spelling of dwarves, but it can't even offer a suggestion for it.  TB, Google Chrome.