Today's a Perfect Day for a Bananafish

I go back to work on Monday, and School starts Wednesday: the winter reading list is looking pretty shabby, I'm looking pretty shabby--to say nothing of how I feel, but it's a crisp 39 degrees outside right now, with the sun bright as bloody hell. I think I'll go for a bike ride that has a midpoint stop at a coffee shop. It's cold enough to where, when you're working hard, your breathing gets little sharp lacerations down your windpipe when you suck in air. Really dry feeling. I kind of like that feeling. It reminds me of what one of the teachers here at writing school said to another student the other day. He said: I like seeing you cold like that. You know, for me, that's really deep. I've been writing it over and over in my journals and on scraps of paper that miracle themselves into my periphery. Also, it's just cold enough to where you start working up a pretty nice sweat, but as soon as you stop riding--by the time the bike's locked up twice over, proper-style--you've stopped sweating. At least I stop, those sweaters out there, you know, the ones you hope never get a job in the kitchen of your favorite place to eat because they'll be concentrating on making your grilled cheese just so, then, just as it's plated, they feel the huge bead of sweat on their forehead that they've been wanting to wipe but couldn't because they were touching your food, they feel its gravity abandon the world of their head, plunging toward the pull of the earth. That would normally be fine, but it just so happens that between the earth and the sweat is your perfectly plated grilled cheese, and bam: that shit's going in your mouth, whether you will ever taste it or not. Yeah, those guys probably don't stop sweating as quickly.

I like seeing you cold like that.