dear wanda

In winter all I could think was how cold I was, but it is in spring, Abram reminds us, that the villagers emerge from their frozen stupor and remember that they are hungry. Or, alternatively, they briefly bake in front of the bread-toasting station and think of how miserably hot summer will be. I dreamed I was the mistress of a silver-haired man with smile lines like etchings in raw clay. In fact he was a cross between Bernie Madoff, Tony Danza, and my friend's dad, Duncan. His wife caught him in bed with two men, and as I attempted to console her I asked if she would have felt better had it been a woman. She said she knew he had a mistress, too, and would find her. During this conversation a messenger arrived for me with a 20 euro bill. I offered a 20 dollar bill in return, then felt silly; I have no idea what the exchange rate is.

Some days ago, I had a layover in LA, and my parents came to meet me at the airport. My mom brought me the spring's first strawberries. My dad gave me cab fare.

grammattical questions

March fucking fifteenth and il pleut toujours...but the Ides turn tax into food. Meanwhile I'm paring and comparing, as I have to decide about grad school by Tax Day; Berkeley has nice farmers markets (peanut sprouts, in turns out, taste like peas, except slightly nutty), but everyone seems to be on Xanax, and they're not sharing. The pizza establishment Fat Slice advertises a Fat Salad, which strikes me as honest. Is there an apostrophe in "farmers markets"? If so, where does it go? I feel apostrophic, but who am I addressing? I don't care about grammar anymore, just rhetoric. I feel a not-quite calm, a punctuated equilibrium that yet might at any moment be punctured. The girl next to me in the computer lab has just been kicked out of the program because, she claims, of issues related to sexual harassment, which makes it feel like a real school, with all the problèmes avec. Also she sounds really annoying and keeps saying how "ree-dick-you-loos" her situation is, and now she won't be here anymore.

snowmatt

I miss work. The bread man, Ramon, is always saying, inexplicably, "Big one, big one!" and seems to know no one's name but his own ("Hola sexy Ramon!"). As far as I can tell the bread is all the same size.

Everything in Aspen tastes like milk. Lactic acid? If I ski properly, my legs don't hurt. What's the point?