The slippery shape of a whip in mid-air

I've been thinking about whips today, well, mostly just now, and how they seem to signify something different from a knife or a gun in the hand of the action hero (Indiana Jones) or feline villainess (Catwoman, as opposed to all of the other feline villainesses). It connotes dominance, in more of an old world style, or just plain more badassitude, saying "the person carrying me doesn't need a weapon that would inflict a death wound, since he/she has enough mojo to do what needs to be done." Indiana Jones also used guns, I guess (maybe only on Nazis), but the whip is his signature weapon.

"Whipped," I'm also realizing today, has defined me and the ladiez in years past; I've tended to be either not emotionally engaged in my relationships, or totally ready to hand over whatever of myself can be given, which feels very romantic and also constricting and neatly unconducive to having my own, say, direction in life. I actually have one now, which is wonderful and weird, and it's funny how getting something like that gives you a purposeful stare, which, in turn, lets flower for you all of the stares of attraction that have been pointed at you all along.

Today, Columbia has this milky shimmer of a sky, and that kind of white, the kind connoting approaching snow, brings the white tints out of all the buildings, and makes the snow that fits in drifts into the cracks and corners of town look like pieces of that same sky waiting to be reclaimed by the next, really radiant day. The library computer lab holds the sneezes and keystrokes of students behind their computer table dividers, and for some reason that reminds me of the two squirrels I saw just outside of this building a couple of days ago, each sitting in a patch of dirt-plastered grass that it had dug through the snow, so it looked like a little spring melt radiated from each one, and their little coats the color of something between rust and the Flash's uniform were exuding that heat.

The students here definitely aren't squirrelly. Maybe it's that even the squirrels here carry that radiant bearing of studiousness. Have a radiant, unwhipped day.