varying degrees of light

It seems I'm back in Sioux Center. The wind howls and throws sheets of snow at me. I shout at it, my teeth and bare fists shaking, but it drives me inside. The wind laughs at me.
My head is spinning at the reality of the new semester and all that it will drag with it. I stop to find my pulse quickening. My neck aches.
I will not attempt to define, or defend, my impatience for smiling people - it is no fault of theirs that they believe their (feigned) joy can alter the world or erect a plausible guise in which to escape. My disposition is to truth: blatant and unabashed and grumpy. A beauty with a smile is fine, but I'd rather a cold-blooded darling. You see, of the two it is the latter that calmly says here I am, here I am, here I am.
But it's fun to dance. I'm inclined to dancing, to smiling instead of speaking. Sometimes. Because it's fun.
Maybe what we're supposed to do, in a sense, is to follow our selfish desires and make our lives a pursuit of that... altered, of course, in such manners so as to bring in financial stability and sustainability. Or maybe we're not the men they think we are at home. Oh no no no - we're rocket men. We're rocket men burning out a fuse out here alone.
Take a close look at a Dolce & Gabbana ad. Gauge, on a scale of one to ten, how much of the concept was based on shock value. I'm looking at one now and I'm going to say about eight.
Gray hairs. I've noticed a few heads of friends and colleagues succumbing to that nonsense. I found my first one a few weeks ago.