oh god, oh god, where did this melancholy descend from? it can't just have come from the grey.
it is relentlessly grey outside & i hate all the trees for clinging to their colorful leaves, which only makes the grey seem heavier still. somehow it is possible for it to seem heavier still.
as i walked out of the clinic i thought about the first grey ohio day i ever saw, when i was sixteen & visiting kenyon for the first time (i was motivated, okay) in the middle of march. i remember very clearly heading down the path toward bolton & ernst, looking down at the shelled-out fields below me, all the dried-out everything, the trees sticking up stark & black against the grey sky. i had never seen anything so darkly, dismally romantic. at sixteen i needed a grey sky with trees that looked like creepy drawings of trees. we walked down the path & my dad leaned over & asked, "don't you think it's a little too bleak? wouldn't you be sad all the time?" & i beamed back no no no i loved it, i loved it all, i wanted it all the time.
(my parents hated me when i was looking at colleges. i refused to apply to vanderbilt because during the weekend i was there, scoping the place out, i never once saw someone step off the sidewalk & head across the grass. i also disapproved of how the university had labelled each tree on campus.)
i have made my grey bleak bed & now i must lie in it.
i am going to go sit in the warm glam living room. the air in the room is cold but all the red is comfortable. the stereo is there, i will put on some hot records.
