a message from my 18-yr-old-self

I used to submit anonymously to this Cornell group called The Public Journal (www.thepublicjournal.com/cornell) and I found some pdfs off the main site recently, copies of the really old issues(it was just starting up when I was a freshman). I was surprised to see my name included on the contributor page, since freshman year feels like ancient history and I didn't remember submitting, but sure enough, this was buried near the back of the issue... an embarrassing example of early writing, but I love it because it made me slam back into that exact moment when I wrote it (still in high school, oy).

"2/21/04"

Hello, danger/pleasure thing. There's no escape from this. Like when you're out on the road during a snowstorm; that kind of beautiful snow that glitters in your headlights like a starry vortex. Somehow, the biting cold numbs your thought process, and the reassurance of steel and four-wheel-drive beneath you grant a sense of false security. Under the snow and slush, a slick layer of ice gloats at your naivete... and that logical part of you knows it so well. Caught up in the moment, you kick caution to the abandoned curb, crank up the volume of the melody to drown out conscience, and push the pedal to the floor.

...It's the hollow, still cold that brings us closest. The kind that freezes in your lungs. Cold that seems to sip away at light and color -- not even the icicles forming in lashes cast glinting sparks. Streetlamps become pillars to the sky, stairways to star castles. And all I can think, as ghostly headlights peer past me in the night, is how it would feel to ascend.

If it gets cold enough, does time stop here?


(www.thepublicjournal.com/thepublicjournal2.pdf)

I will always remember driving into Batavia on my way to Main Street Coffee one particularly frigid February night during my senior year of high school, coming over the bridge to face hundreds of light pillars vaulting up into the darkness from every light source--it looked apocalyptic! Later I found out that it's a rare natural phenomenon (http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/pilpic18.htm).