I'm afraid I've found a new addiction in the local cafe's Tiger Chai Soy Latte. Don't be deceived by its seeming trivialness: this is an expensive addiction. As a matter of fact I've driven the fifteen miles to Java on the Square for this cursed drink on three occasions this week alone, always with the redeeming proclamation that I will study there.

I'm in the cafe at this moment, my drained cup setting next to me, and I most certainly am not studying.

This has been an absolutely and gloriously lazy holiday. This may be the first break (fall, spring, Christmas or of any kind) in over a year that I've actually taken a break!

Today my parents and I took an excursion to the metropolis of Etowah, Tennessee. Actually the only proof of civilization there is a single street lined with antique shops and other quaint little places, such as the pink, black and white checkered Talk of the Town Ice Cream Parlor and the beautifully old and elaborately decorated Gym Theatre.

My favorite part about this place, however, is the landscape, for Etowah lies within the shadow of Starr Mountain: a ridge that exhales its cool air onto the town and echoes of a time when there was nothing but the mountains and the rocks and the water, when a native would go into the forest without the expectation of any one but the creaking trees and scurrying animals.

The sky was gray today as it drizzled mists of rain, and the fog glided in patches over the hillsides. A mystical and cathartic atmosphere permeates the Smoky Mountains on days like this one, and they are beautiful days to live in Tennessee.

OZU. After reading about him in Muriel Barbury's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I investigated the filmsmith. I'm far from disappointed.

Rather than the "what if" scope of so many films, Ozu enlightens us to the sublimity of human experiences so common that they're almost necessary. I'm talking about a father's disappointment, the security in a mother's guidance, the limits of and fundamental need for a friend's release, the sometimes inevitability and feared banality of a future in the corporate system.

The metaphysical endurance of relationship is realized in his films so that I look at my family and friends, and I realize an ultimate meaningfulness that they bring to life.

There are three types of artists:
those who portray what should be
those who portray what could be

And those who show us the world as it is. This is Ozu.