It is sophomore year and I am in my room at Cutten. It is bitterly cold outside but the sun shines brilliantly through my window, glinting off of the snow. It is near the end of the fall semester and I am working obsessively on both a paper on Egyptian hieroglyphics for Origins of Writing and a chunk of Aristophanes translation. It is too much, but I am having one of those days when I feel like everything in the world is within my reach and I can work for hours and focus and accomplish anything I like.

Sleater-Kinney's new album One Beat is on rotation up at the station and I request "Step Aside" every chance I get, but one can only call the station so many times in any given day. To continually get my S-K fix I have therefore downloaded the three songs they have on their website: "Burn, Don't Freeze", "All Hands on the Bad One", and "Oh!" Sometimes I work in my room at my desk in the brilliant light, and sometimes to escape the lure of internet I hole up with my computer in the dark ethernet-free study room across the hall. But the sun and snow and their energy have somehow imprinted themselves on my eyes and I can feel that they are there, even in that dank windowless room. And I play those mp3s on a loop in whichever room I am working in, and somehow the sun and snow have imprinted themselves on them too.

When I first heard "Oh!" I thought that it sounded like a good driving song for a summer day, but in my head it has always attached itself to that bright snow, and now I always feel that cool brilliance about it even in the heat of summer.

Nobody lingers like your hands on my heart and
Nobody figures like you figure me out and
I would be lying if I didn't say to you
No one comes close, oh, don't worry, you've got it.

(about song posts)