lately i'm feeling stagnant. stuck, lilting, fading into the marshes of life that surround me these days. it's hard to know what to do with myself when all the essays and presentations and films have dried up and my camera has taken a three day hiatus from winding properly and i'm not sure what to do other than take it into the shoppe, but that will have to wait because tonight for some reason they're showing my movie and i guess i should go. it's not really my movie in particular, it's everyone in the class's movies, but still i guess it's a big deal.
but other than looking for a job--which i should--what is there to do anymore. as annoying as school can be, at least it's time consuming and that makes me feel good about myself. useful. even if toward no greater purpose. it's an in-the-moment type of usefulness that i gather drives people mad when it eludes them. it's eluding me. maybe i'll go mad too.
when the sky isn't excavating half a foot of snow down on to the city i ride my bike up and down the canal, one side, then the next and listening to a full tank of mp3 mixtures--the strangeness of which never fails to amuse or alarm, depending on my mood.
the other day i rode my bicycle into a gated compound--some sort of reserve, preserving the old grain elevators that mirror the new buildings of the old port on the other side of the canal. For some reason the gate has been open the last two times i've passed by, and of course i've gone inside. the first time, matt and i sat on the edge of a lock and took photos and chatted about very little. it was nice. the second time i rode my bike in alone and sat on the bridge looking out at the emptiness of the world around me--empty of people anyway, full of grass and insects and birds flirting: it is spring after all. i sat for a while and watched the tour boat/bus that is the reason that the gates were open at all pass over the traffic filled bridge above me, not thinking of the consequences. later, when i moved to leave i found the gate padlocked shut--stuck inside the compound alone, surrounded by people on the other side of the fence, the canal, the bridge... eventually i rode out to the end of the lock and followed a bridge there to the boardwalk of the old port. the only thing separating me from the boardwalk was a ten foot fence at end of the bridge two meters below and beside the bridge was the beginnings of another bridge and it was here i deemed it easiest to hoist my steel framed (and heavy) bike over the railing to the lower bridge, myself following shortly after. so many people stared at me, presumably wondering why i'd need or even want to break out. it's true, if i had a house there i'd rarely leave if ever.
but i'm still encased in this stagnant malignancy (more the cranky kind) of post schoolishness and caught between needing money, needing a break before working, and sudden onset boredom.
but as of now, i just don't have much to say. i'm taking it in, reading, accumulating, garnering, gathering, procuring, acquiring... filling up on somebody else for a change.