Let The Cold Wind Blow

Excuse me, but this is California! It is April! Why is the weather not stunningly balmy and gorgeous? If I wanted fifty mph winds, I could have stayed home in New Mexico, thank you. No, but seriously, it was so awful today. Not just absurdly windy, but also really fucking cold - I was NOT PLEASED, especially since I when I looked out my window as I was going to class this morning, it looked nice, so I left my jacket in my room. At least I always have emergency hair ties and sticks and pins in my bookbag now, so I didn't have to deal with three feet of hair blowing in my face, but still, SO NOT ON. I was almost tempted to skip my first lit section - I would have if a) I didn't know the TA would be taking attendence, and b) I didn't know we would be talking about the paper that is due tomorrow. When I was walking through the quad, it looked like a minor tornado had passed through, there were so many palm branches and giant shards of bark lying on the ground. Exciting!

Working on my lit paper (which is only 2 pages, so not a big deal) is boring, so I'm watching - well, re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's a bit strange; even the episodes I've never seen before, of which there are many, just have this very nostalgic feel to them. I tend to associate some quite strong sense-memories to my media. For me, as much as I love and adore Rurouni Kenshin and Yu Yu Hakusho, they will always make me think of sitting on the floor in the back room, tv propped on the fireplace, listening to my parents argue in the kitchen. Trigun is early mornings, when I would know by the commercial breaks when I needed to get up for school. ER is days home sick, or just skipping school for the hell of it. So is Star Trek: TNG. I watched Stargate: SG1 with my aunt's girlfriend Lisa, FMA with hanjuuluver , and Iron Chef with my father in his motor home, the dog sprawled across my legs (yes, I think about this too much). I hear the Buffy and Angel theme songs, and I am immediately 15 years home, just home from the bus stop, turning on the TV in the empty house and crashing on the sofa to watch people beat up vampires.

On the other hand, I watch shows very differently now than I did back then! For example, I ship Xander/Anya LIKE BURNING - they are one of my big huge OMGI LOVE IT het OTPs, way more than any other characters on the show (I started watching it in when it was already in reruns, so I came in about season 5 or so, and thus am very unmoved by either Buffy/Angel or Willow/Oz). And yet...and yet...Xander pings my fictional character gaydar so much. I've only read about five fics, but I think I've been converted to Xander/Spike already (actually, that was way fewer fics than it took me to get into, say, McShep, but common, that's practically canon). I mean, Xander fits pretty well into my 'hapless but sweet dorky guy' archetype, so I was going to love him no matter what, but...I want slash. Slash that either writes a plausible Anya-breakup or happens after her death, but still slash. ARGH MY BRAIN.

ETA: still watching Buffy, and man, 90s plots about internet culture are hysterically funny. Those wacky kids with their new-fangled "email" and "usernames" and "floppy disks", that's looking for trouble, that is! And of course the only people who know how to turn a computer on are hostile geeks who spend all their time hiding in the lab. It's amazing how much ten years can change things on the internet, yeah? (also, how weird is it to see a show about teenagers where no one has a cell phone? SO WEIRD.)

Just Like His Old Man

Digging by Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.