Nobody puts Blake in a corner.

New York City has days that are very, very cold. I remember trudging to 8am class in my sleeping-bag, hunched against the sharp and icy wind. New York has days that the cold steals any thoughts you may have as soon as you step out of the door. You can’t think at all. It’s just a dry.

Today was cold in London. The temperature, however, wasn’t lower than 30. There wasn’t a wind chill of -2. (You know, those days where weather.com says the temp. is 17 but it “feels like” -4.) The cold in London is different. It’s damper and, I think, harsher due to the increased humidity. It creeps into your bones and invades your thoughts, which then become frosted and stagnant. The bad dream that woke you up lingers throughout the morning, until the cold breaks - briefly at least.

Mid-day features a bearable drudgery when facing the weather. You can fight off the creep with an awesome deli sandwich & soup or a scone and cappucino (with real milk and sugar - skim & Splenda is so last semester) or both if you happen to have two breaks in the afternoon.

But at 4:15, the sun sets and there’s no fighting it. This is especially the case when your literature class decides to end with the following Blake poem from Songs of Experience:

I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In ever cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black’ning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls:

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
(Not exactly uplifting material, dude.)

Obviously, such a predicament would leave you depressed for all of eternity. Left alone in a cruel world to pointless banter on the purpose of our existence. You wouldn’t find an answer, therefore, your horizons would forever be bleak and miserable, causing you to achieve nothing in life. Perhaps you even drop out of school and resort to street pharmaceuticals as a means of generating income. Awesome, until you’re arrested and sent to JAIL. (No one looks good in an orange jumpsuit.)

. . . Unless you happen to have the new Ke$ha album on your ghetto iPod, for dinosaurs and animals are a perfect naturalist juxtaposition to harsh urban life. You decide to put your earbuds in and go to the gym to work out. A good, hot sweat obliterates any shackles the mind may be imprisoned by. Sweating was one of the Native Americans methods of purification - it clearly works, sometimes the scenery in the gym isn’t so bad either. :)