Agreeable Nonsense

It's still February.  For some this may be a simple fact, or it may be something which requires a more complex strategy of coming-to-grips.  So I offer you this, a rhetorical tic that has become my only answer to so much, as daily life begins to resemble nothing so much as the deep and merciless but also inconsequential slush piles which are my constant companion.


Throw yourself into the sea.  Have you considered it?  When life on land can do nothing but disappoint, demand a constant shaking up of expectations, consider the freshness of a new medium of living.  You may die, yes, but you may die if you persist on land.  You may yet live, if you begin with the sea.

Cold Month of Love

February seems to me like a month that doesn't demand a ton of you emotionally.  It is muddy, in a spiritual sense.  However, today is Prešeren Day, the Slovenian Cultural Holiday!  Spiritual mud and all, the imperative to celebrate love is constantly reinforced.  Let's submit.

My college-student status at my bank is expiring, which reminds me that about four years ago at this time I was opening a new bank account that would be relatively easy to access in Slovenia, where I would be visiting Marisa.  Most of the pictures you see below were taken by her steady hand.  It was a fun trip:

Fun.  This hostel was full of impudent French teens.

Slovenia is the kind of place that lurks in the back of your (my) mind--it could exist, and you could think about it, but what is there to think?

The Extremely Wide Ocean, The Summer!

I'm being distracted from these mountains of Greek by thinking about going to Poland, which prompted me to actually print out the forms which will allow me to do so, which is a positive step, so this straying from Greek is not an entirely bad thing, or at least not until I realize that I am wrong in this respect.

So, I'm going to Poland! And I will get on a boat and be afraid of the ocean and the ocean will be consistently terrifying, yet beautiful! At this point in my thought process I get caught up in wondering what I will read during this interminable nautical process. I imagine it wouldn't be a great idea to go with my usual method of making this decision, which is taking everything. I keep imagining the horror of finding out that I've taken a library book aboard, and it gets recalled three days out in the internetless seas, but I don't know this, and then I find myself in Kraków with a book and thousands upon thousands of dollars in fines. Exaggeration is essential here. It's been suggested that I take myself through the entire Odyssey, because it is a sea book, except for the land parts, and a journey book, claro, and a large part of me is drawn to this idea of only having this one book (and the dictionary, its helper book) and slowly coming to know all its corners as I head past Iceland, or something like that, trying not to become fixated on the idea of icebergs. And then I go mad. So among the less stressful plans I am struggling to solidify my conception of the future in order to make, is this one. Suggestions are welcome, either for books to read or how to choose the kind of books that would suit the situation. Because the ocean is extremely wide, and the summer is allegedly approaching.