Monday, February 1, 2010

Daily Dose of Beauty: February Edition

February is my least favorite month. By far. How could the shortest month be so dreadful?
-Midterms
-Stress before finding out grad school verdicts in March/April
-Memories of horrible Februaries past (is my February hatred a self-fulfilling prophecy?)
-Cold. Ass. Weather.
-Annoying senior functions
-COLD. ASS. WEATHER.
-Unlike Chicago, it never snows enough in NY to make the WRETCHED COLD bearable
and, of course,
-Valentine's Day

THUS: a poem.

February

by Margaret Atwood

Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

AND: an illustration I love of this Magnetic Fields song from their "69 Love songs" compilation. I've been listening to these three albums for a little while. They're often mediocre but once in a while there's an underrated gem. Like this one.

In other news, will have a telecast on the Spectator website soon, after the Oscar nominations come out! (*crossing fingers for the Coen bros, Wes Anderson, Clooney in anything, Hurt Locker...) Should be available on Thursday. Will link to it as soon as it's available (and, you know, taped)

Lastly (reblogged from Jess):


3 comments:

Tony F. said...

Hey! You have a blog. Also, is that comic one from the link I sent you?

Julia Alekseyeva said...

Yup! I haven't even heard those albums before you sent me that link. Good stuff.

Unknown said...

I never knew that Atwood wrote poems?? I love her mean novels, though. ~olivia from drawing