the smallest things can set off the hugest proportions. wanted to wash out the natty fusion of homemade dreading most recently taking its course on my locks. my mother asked me if i thought men would find my new do attractive. i told her i didn't care. she was disappointed that i would repress the sheen from my flaming red hair now more rusty red like menstural blood or old brick chimneys. maybe i don't want to be pretty. then again my friend iver says that dread locked girls are to him like bearded men are to me (damn sexy that is). and yet today i saw the magazines and they were glossy. i saw the replacement girlfriend and she was gorgeous. i saw my reflection and it was changing, creeping around the corner as if to rob me of my old self. the self that could fit into normal. but i could never fit into normal cause the world is so fucked up and i'm living it. i hear we're going to war. looking for reasons to bomb people. how about looking for reasons not to? that seems simpler. i am part of the we that is represented by the he that has his head up his ass and i want to live in peace. i am locked up in this fucking babylon and i can't pretend any longer.

today i awoke to an unusual ice fog, unusual because the temperature was only zero degrees and ice fogs prefer colder. the atmosphere was thick and white like walking in refrigerated soy milk, but not creamy. no, the air was crispy, the inhale and exhale of frozen fumes. i drank green tea with triple echinacea in hopes of defeating the chest cold that followed me here from vermont. vermont is damp. it is dry here so the cold does not seep into skins. my friend wrote me, and i quote: "i love thinking of you nipple deep in poetry and snow." we're close friends. today, i could look into the sun that peaks only a few feet over the arctic horizon thanks to the subtle hazing of unusual ice fogs.