bodily

Salutations chaps,

He slugs his way into the classroom, but not like a boxer. Like a gastropod, and fittingly, he's always late. If I've been careful, there are no empty spaces beside me. He falls into the nearest seat like a ziplocTM filled with liquid, and a slight belch escapes as the seal breaks. Once settled, he removes his coat. But this is not a coat of cloth or leather, this is a coat of mucus that lines his throat. He sounds like a distant vacuum stuck on a curtain and carries the same sickly pitch until finally devouring the curtain with a hollow thud. Removing his glasses, he rubs the bridge of his nose. Then he squints. Hard. The force of the action pushes his head forward slowly. His tensed muscles shake his tocsin head while his mouth gapes under the ferocity of his squint. He spends the remainder of the lecture plugging various holes with his fingers, desperate to keep his insides in, breathing laboriously from the effort. Periodically, he will notice other curtains and start his hungry vacuum again. His pitiful neighbors become progressively sallow, and lean at uncomfortable angles. I have spared you some details.
Nothing else in my experience has so vividly evoked the primal liquidity of the human being. Not 90-year-old ladies with transparent rice-paper skin. Not science class discussions. Not televised surgeries. This poor, leaky sack of oozing meat who can hardly drag himself from his seat. I want to believe that if you pricked him he would rupture and vanish in a mist of humors, not bleed. But, there's no escape. So brush your teeth, kiddies, trim your nails, keep an equilibrium.

Valedictions,
walter

c

Hello,
For the past few days, not before, I have seen a fire burning across the water, miles away. Its strength waxes and wanes, but as it burns it does not move. The flame is precisely confined. A closed system, it has no fuel. It burns itself.
As they drift, the night's clouds taunt the fire with their motion. In return, the orange intensity rends them from their innominate darkness, leaves them bare under its gaze.
Despite its fervor, I have come to realize that the fire no longer burns. I can still see its image there, confined to the same prison, raging. The clouds still suffer from its harsh dominion. Even in daylight, the image leaves ghostly green ashes when I close my eyes.
Yet, it is inconceivable that a fire continues to burn. I am looking at the past. It has starved in its cell, but the tardy light that trickles in my window has slowed; like it gives to stars, it has given a prolonged life to that fire, only hesitantly widening its silent, spherical elegy.

just sayin,
walter

brief interlude

Hello friends,
I advise you to spend a little time balancing a pen on a tube of chapstick. On a plain background, from the correct angle, it is a very calming construct to behold. Here I have reproduced the effect as best I could, foreshortened to appear three-dimensional: T

Tread lightly,
walter

Aussie Aussie Aussie

Quite early,
Another hike today, to Arthur's Seat this time. I can smell the mud and grass on my shoes like when I played soccer. I don't bend over to sniff them, because that would be stupid. The smell leaves the shoes and floats through the air to my nose. I do not bring this up for the olfactory sensation alone.
Here is my story about rugby:
Three of us went to Murrayfield stadium on Saturday night to see a rugby game. The game began with fanfare and three tenors. My Australian flatmate sang with them. Waltzing Matilda, because the gold and green Wallabies were playing. Good on ya. There was a flyover by a jet, but because it was night and therefore dark in the air that the jet needed to support its weight, it was louder than it was impressive.
At halftime, the announcer's Scottish accent told me and the others in the stadium that because it was Guy Fawkes day, we would be treated to a fireworks show set to the music of Kill Bill. He said Kill Bill very enthusiastically, but not enough that I couldn't tell he was faking.
Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the British Parliament a long time ago but they caught him. Then, they hanged him. Then, they drew and quartered him. Then, they burned him. Now, they celebrate his death by getting drunk and making things explode. There's also a big straw man built somewhere that they burn. Every year. The man is supposed to be him, Guy Fawkes. When I die, I want to be buried on the moon.
The second half was more interesting, because Scotland actually scored. Scotland is just about the worst rugby playing nation in some official group of rugby playing nations. They lost.
We decided to walk home because we were feeling intrepid. We decided to walk the same the direction as the buses that said From City because we were feeling intrepid. We didn't make it home and after about a half hour, we took the bus.

oy oy oy,
walter

ransacked

Breaking news,
My internet keeps breaking. An excerpt from an email sent to the ResNet help desk:

Internet Kidnapped!

EDINBURGH (Reuters) -- Late last week, trouble arose at the International Summit of Being Able to Do Homework. The keynote speaker, Internet, ascended to the podium and began its speech.
"I love everyone," spake Internet, on behalf of everything righteous and true. But the speech was violently cut short, as a small force of covert operatives from a group calling themselves ResNet sprung from their seats donning gasmasks and lobbing teargas into the auditorium. Amid shouts of, "Hail ResNet!" and "Die, Internet, die!" the guerrillas suckerpunched Internet in the kidneys and vanished, taking the stunned Internet with them and leaving an even more stunned and crying crowd.
Since the kidnapping, no members of Edinburgh University's residential system have been able to talk to Internet except during what ResNet labels its "operational hours", after which the rogue group must stuff a beaten and weary Internet back into its cold pen. Even now, this humble journalist writes under constant fear of disconnection.
The rogue vision of ResNet as yet remains cloudy. Inside sources claim they purport to being a service to students, but all attempts to contact ResNet directly have reached an uninformative recorded message.
No word of what has befallen Internet has reached the public, leaving everyone with the thought, "Why does the internet break all the time, guys? At least let people know what the problem is. Server issues? Maintenance?"
No one knows when or if this crisis will be resolved. The only recourse at this point is hope.

Signing off (hopefully not permanently),
walter

indefatigable

Evening comes earlier now,

I thought I'd relate to you a story about my room. I have two windows. One of these faces north, over Princes Street Gardens and New Town towards the Firth of Forth. The other faces west, towards the castle. My first few weeks here, a scarcely-audible buzzing noise would leak from the west window, and I summarily ignored it for quite some time due perhaps, and this is just a guess, to my overwhelming indifference to the subject.
The persistence finally got the best of me so I did some detecting, the end result of which being that I found a fly buzzing around the window. I had opened the north window periodically during the time I'd heard the buzzing, so I didn't feel a desperate urge to usher the little guy onward, and I left him to his business. Actually, I figured he (forgive me for personifying the fly as a he, but I, being a male myself, find it easier to relate to a male fly) would croak at some point. But no, somehow he has endured, and I've grown accustomed to his futile consitutionals. The buzz-thump rhythm while I type. I even named him.
Then, this very morning, as I was saying hello, he hit the window with a thud and fell to the sill. He had landed on his back and twitched momentarily trying to right himself. After that, it was all silence. I didn't know what to do. I stood there. For about thirty seconds. Nothing happened. I solemnly considered how best to pay my respects.
As I stood there in my distress, the little trooper hurled himself, suddenly and viciously, off the window sill, which sits slightly below chest-level and from which any falling object would plummet behind my desk. There was nothing for him there but ignominious and anonymous decay in the slight depression where the carpet meets the wall. That's just not right, I thought.
And apparently, he agreed. After falling about a foot, he twisted and caught the air with his wings and resumed his station on the sill, this time on his feet.
How could anyone be unmoved by such a display of courage, gentlefriends? I went directly to the kitchen, retrieved a mug, scooped him into it, and set it on the ledge outside the window. Outside. With the window cracked, so he could make a choice. I left him this way in private to give him time to consider. When I returned, he was gone. I'm glad he didn't take the mug with him, it's the only one I have.

In quiet reflection,
walter