These days when I go to dinner at the cafeteria, I come outside its already turned all dark. I get to walk back home under the trees in the gauzy orange light from the big round street lamps. Sometimes I wear a face mask to keep my allergies at bay, and since it covers both mouth and nose, it gets warmed up from my breath, and has sort of an effect of a scarf, except on your face. Walking home under the trees with all the other students in the dark with only my eyes poking out from behind the mask is just sublime.
Laundry is hang-dried here. I have the big rack outside of my window where I hang all of my wet clothes, and so does everyone else, and you can see all kinds of socks and underwear hanging around. Even people who have dryers prefer to hang their clothes outside in the sun. One of my teachers said that the clothes just don't come out the same when you use the electric dryer. My roommate also said that I should sun my bed comforter too. It gets fluffed up out there, and makes it smell like the sun, she says. Crawling into bed on an autumn evening with a freshly sunned comforter is so crisp and cozy.
No one drinks coffee, only green tea. Hot water pots are as ubiquitous as coffee makers in offices here. Loose leaf green tea in a sort of tall tupperware-like container, or a tall glass jar. Green tea with goji berries and chrysanthemum in your jar will last you from early morning to late at night, you can just keep filling it up with hot water. After a couple rounds of water, the tea turns this cloudy shade of neon green, and the flowers open up and float on the top. I have gone a few days here and there without coffee, and it left with a slight evening headache, maybe the tiniest of fevers, and feeling dreamy.
Subway rides to school are long. Long enough to read a chapter in a book, long enough to listen to a whole album, to write a few emails, read a newspaper. Not doing anything productive on my commute is my little way of protesting going all the way out there for class, and it has been a really great idea. I get to school ready to work and listen, because I had just spent that whole train ride just doing whatever, relaxing, enjoying my book, thinking about Will, missing San Francisco...
I feel calm and relaxed and good and happy and open, and just a little melancholy. Its my own fault for listening to this Do Make Say Think album too much, it's anyone's call. Anyways, love to all my friends and family and classmates and supporters, I'm thinking about you. Thanks for reading,
No comments:
Post a Comment