while sitting in a cobb classroom with an academically respectable professor and walking down 55th street in 20-degree weather at 4am are two contrasting scenarios, they are strikingly similar in making you feel like you're in chicago.

sayyyyyyyyyy helloooooo. (sayyyyy helloooo.) sayyyyyyy hellllllooo. (sayyyyyyy helllllooooo.) something about tricky times, lucky times, never stops, knocked me down without bothering to sayyy hellloooo (sayyyy hellloooo.). and speaking of what i thought was snow...something about writing my name in the fresh snow with my shoe at the intersection of 57th and university ave., chicago, illinois.

one of my most favorite things to do is listen in on other people's conversations while in the bus, elevator, restaurants, etc. sometimes i'll have my headphones in with the music off. it's kind of like tricking people, right? they probably don't expect for me to be listening. this is probably really creepy. i assure you it's not. the trick is probably on me because they probably don't even think about the fact that i'm listening to music and thus cannot hear them.

anyway, i was in the elevator where two previously acquainted guys engaged in an awkward conversation and, of course, i listened in; how can you not listen in when you're confined in such a small space. so one guy initiates with "hey, what's going on?" to which to other guy replies, "oh not much, just dealing with the cold weather." thankfully, the elevator reached my floor and didn't have to listen to their important discussion about the weather.

i started thinking why it is that people generally talk about the weather by default. it's one of the most awkward and uncomfortable exchanges and both parties of the conversation know it. is it that the weather is the one thing most people have in common? why not respond, "just thinking about implicit specifications that are inherit with arguably all linguistic expressions which could potentially complicate the initial expression itself" to the question "what's up?" or even respond with an interesting anecdote such as the following: "oh nothing really, i'm just carrying around this piece of cake i bought at lunch that i didn't have time to eat and considered putting in my library locker so that i wouldn't have to carry it around with me for two classes."

unsurprisingly, most people would consider these alternate responses a bit strange. i think this is true because everyone is used to talking about the weather, about their mundane academic lives. i ask several people a day what they're up to and how they're doing. i'm tired of hearing about how many layers you're wearing to keep warm or how stressed you are with schoolwork - it's cold and finals are approaching, i know.

it's alright to be unpredictable.

lately i've become nicely acquainted with the early rays of the sunrise. call me a bad friend, but i'd actually rather not greet the sun every other morning. when most people are starting their day, i'm ending mine; when they're ending theirs, i'm starting it. considering i went to bed roughly twenty-four hours ago and woke up about ten hours later, you can take the preceding statement quite literally. it's a very unhealthy thing to do and as a result my whole life is off schedule. furthermore, because of this schedule i've been eating less, missing class, and becoming socially detached. while none of these are things i directly choose to do, they are none the less happening. on top of all of this, and perhaps most importantly, my hair has become completely unmanageable. i'm promising myself things will change.

expression-
merely dots and lines and foreign words
still raped of meaning
left to rest on achromatic pages.