this is a historical map of belarus

all this you can put on paper.

i don't know much, but i do know that strauss will consistently kick you in the gut. and then come back for to kick you some more. strauss, mussorgsky, and sibelius are the three single reasons that art songs should be around. them and some other people.

strauss is morning music. every time i hear the stuff i want to be back in sophomore year of college sitting on the deck of the apartment with argenta and andrea inside dousing tofu in sweet mustard, dancing to the monsoon wedding soundtrack and watching the sweet hereafter. what's bizarre is that it's an actual ache--an actual longing for a certain smell, a certain texture... silver and gray and white sky with lemon yellow just around the edges, a precursor to blue, and a stray eucalyptus leaf. on the deck. and me with a cigarette, listening to edith wiens sing "die nacht." when i had the room to myself i tried vaguely to decorate it like the lady does the room in a sentimental education. and it's lost, that place. not all of it was good--occasionally, in fact, it was quite bad... freshman year at merrill i used to sit on the window ledge when chloe wasn't there and listen to "jalene" by cake. hence "every time i pull you close, push my face into your hair" is irrevocably linked with the pines and the rain.

man, i can see why people get suckered into nostalgia for their college days. nothing too remarkable while they were happening--just the attempt to get through a series of unreasonabilities with some semblance of self, and the failure of that attempt, along with your printer and two thirds of your sanity--but afterwords it's like, those were the days when something was happening to you, something that went below the skin and hurt... that oily sweetness in and lust for desperation. and you wonder if it'll come again. but really it's happening as you long for it--i have no desire to get my life moving and yet there it goes. which is pain. which i ought to be embracing.

the above is a historical map of belarus (see title).