Last-Minute Shopper's Day
2004-12-24 @ 10:20 p.m.

The disembarkation was in stark contrast to the scene two nights ago. They herded all of us into the theatre, and then packed us off in groups of five rows. Very efficient in comparison to the chaos at HarbourFront. The taxi ride home gave me a headache. Stupid reckless old driver who kept shouting in dialect! There must be something wrong with me. It's a week from school reopening, and I'm stuck in slacker gear. I should be writing an essay, but I've written a poem instead. I should be reading about the end of the Cold War or the Russian Revolution, but I'm reading Blake instead. Now that I've finished The Time Traveler's Wife, I'm contemplating heading off to Kinokuniya tomorrow to buy Rilke. The Time Traveler's Wife had the same effect on me as The Unbearable Lightness Of Being. It succeeded in engendering the sort of wistfulness that is intensified by the very nature of the holiday season. (For the hopelessly clueless, here's a hint: Mistletoe.) All this merely translates to the theme of Memento, the latest poem, which Claudia will quite likely decry as being sentimental and of somewhat substandard quality. Quite rightly so, given that it's more in the vein of The Gift Of Time than Another Night On The Patio, which Ms Ho once saw fit to be read. Why I'm discussing my own poetry on Christmas Eve I have no idea, but it strikes me as being somewhat sad. Not in the sense of being pathetic, but just plain sad. Does Santa do life exchanges?