What's the difference between going deaf from 36-amp concerts or going crazy from the silence? I think winter's settled in; I can usually tell from the twitch in my nose every morning and the way his breath puffs out like a cloud as we're walking to school. Autumn and winter are my two favorite seasons, for different reasons: Autumn is alive but transient, like humans themselves, but winter is silent. The world is still, and everything hints at frozenness.

This is making me nostalgic. Last year, at this time, I had been desperately wishing for snow; now it's the exact same. I've changed so much...and yet nothing has changed. There are new people in my life, and yet the old characters remain. Sometimes I wish for there to be something else to talk about - why does no one wonder about the workings of the human mind any more? Everyone chooses to obsess over secret snipers, impending war (however unjustified), and the new Eminem movie. What is it with people?

Material capitalism manifests itself every day; it's no big secret, it's not in hiding. People simply do not choose to acknowledge it. It makes me positively sick - to see the hypocrisy and utter inanity with which people act. All for a good cause, of course. One *cannot* deny that the benifits of a capitalist system are plenty. However, one cannot also "rage against the machine," so to speak, so ultimately that realism does not factor into the equation. Is there a point to attending an anti-capitalist rally during lunch while dressed in USA-manufactured clothes and Birkenstocks? This, my friends, would be folly - proving the opponents' point instead of your own.

I'm not speaking against anyone in particular, only the Marxists at my school. Things have to be made, people have to be hired. Don't let your cause get the better of you, please. I see this every day, and it's fucking sad.

~AF

P.S. I just realized that I haven't written anything on the actual "Art of Pining" in awhile, so I should probably get back to that next time I write. Things are just so hectic and the world is in such turmoil. It really...[pauses dramatically] hits the heartstrings. ^_^