slime

whenever the sun emerges I bolt to the widow throw it open and lift my shirt to stick my belly out in the light. With such small sunlit stints, it’s important to maximize absorption surface
if I keep doing this, by summer I expect to develop a brown belly and very rapid heliocentric reflexes.

I am trying (in a gallant effort of procrastination) to learn about slugs. I don’t like slugs. At all. But I’m trying at least to appreciate them. Them and their hermaphroditic mating habits. Ugh. Slugs. Not Ugh to the hermaphroditisism—power to em for that— just Ugh to the slime.

So far, I’ve learned the word hygroscopic. It means the ability to attract water molecules from the environment. I would like to be more hygroscopic. Hygroscopic: like both forms of slug mucus.

Slugs are just weird. Sometimes (wikipedia tells me) during mating their penises get tangled around eachother. If they cant separate them again, one of the slugs just chews his penis (or the other slugs penis) off. Eeeeee. Apophallation it’s called. Ten points if you can slip it into a conversation today.

weather today: cancelled due to unruly season-gods

I squint puzzled at the sunshine glaring through a flurry of snowflakes. They are falling every which way past my window but down. I don’t understand. Just an hour ago it was clear skies. I watch the snow proceed into gray rain, then sunny hail, then a precipitation free but slightly cloudy cover over this wide building sea.
Clearly the fight for spring has begun. It’s…..Winter! Summer! Spring?... no Winter again! then a hefty left blow by persistant Summer! Who is….ohhhh, now down for the count.
While the deities wrestle it out for control of the weather I am still wrestling with flat searching.
Do I live here or there, do I pay this or that, do I like those folks or not, do they like me?
In the end, I guess, it’s just a room. I’ll probably have it for about a year, whether I like it or not. And someday I’ll remember it with more fondness than it probably deserves.

twentyten

Oh yes away into the decade we certainly are.

New Years was pretty amazing here, I spent it in the tower so I could see over all of Berlin. Things go crazy here! It was like listening to a war or something: this almost constant irrythmic rhythm of explosions in the distance ( and nearness). It was going for hours and hours. People start lighting things off before dark and it just keeps building. At eleven it got even more intense and then shortly before twelve just frantic,
frenetic,
explosions
of sound
and light
and color
until
there was so much smoke you could barely see the fireworks in the next couple streets but could still hear their ricocheting way out in all directions.
Madness.
We drank champagne and went up to the balcony and met a crazy italian couple and some more germans who offered up more champagne and various drinks.

You really have to watch yourself though. I have at least one friend who only walks out with earplugs on the 31st because you just don't know when some kids are gonna throw a cracker on/at/near you. Boom. Those sounds are the worst for your ears. Much worse than nightclubs.

An otherwise Berlin has been looking beautiful, plenty of soft fresh snow (falling gently on plently of aging slippery hard ice). The train route to university is given a lovely touch of fantasy. I couldnt be happier about the whispy white fairyland of streets. (To me I assume it is the normal state of Berlin winter but people say this is quite the exception to the standard months of brown slush.)