And the living is easy
Feb. 15th, 2005 04:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhI've been under a lot of stress for the past week or two; there's just been too many things due at once. But now I'm past all of it, and I finally had a day to myself. Well. Past all it is a relative term- I have a paper due tomorrow, a presentation and new draft of a paper due on Thursday, and another paper due on Friday, but I have enough breathing space to put all of those off for a few hours.
It's lovely today. That's true here, and I keep seeing people mention it on my flist from all over, so I am just going to conclude that the whole world is having nice weather right now. It's a pretty thought, at least.
Where I am, it's over sixty degrees and the sky is a blue so vivid it hurts to stare at it. The half-moon hangs just above the rooftops, pale as smoke but so clear that every crater and mountain is distinguished. I rode the bus downtown, and the sun glittered off all the windows of the office buildings and fell in glowing slices across shadowed back lots. The wind blew hard enough to shake the bus and toss the streetlights on their wires. The last leaves from fall made their tiny tornadoes in the canyons of the skyscrapers. People walked the sidewalks without jackets or coats, and the wind hid their faces behind whipping hair and tugged on their shirts and pants and skirts, outlining their bodies against the cloth.
I went to the North Market, which sits right on the border of the Short North (the coffee-shops-and-art-galleries part of the city) and downtown. It's a restored warehouse. On the inside, it's all one big room- exposed brick walls and support beams stretched overhead- but everything's been painted white and there are sky lights and huge windows, and it's bright and lovely. There are little stalls that serve every food you could imagine- Indian and Mexican and Japanese and gourmet chocolate; the guy with the free-range rabbit and bison and ostrich meat is next to the vegan bakery, which is next to the place that makes orange juice so fresh and pure you can squeeze the juice from the fruit yourself. And the food! There's buckwheat honey and cornstalk tea and red bean mochi and still warm bread and a million cheeses with names I don't even know how to pronounce. But the best is the produce: it's all organic and local and it's looks so good that it's hard not to touch it. Tomatoes still on the stalk and blood oranges and ten kinds of mushrooms and baby bananas and onions bigger than my hands and eggplants purple as a bruise and oh, I wanted it all.
Such food porn.
I ended up eating at a new Vietnamese place; the owner joked with me and gave me free spring rolls and extra jalapenos and got to me try something called Soursop Juice, which tasted surprisingly good, like a mixture of milk and apple and chrysanthemum. I went to the ice cream stand afterwards, which sells the best ice cream I have ever had. They have flavors like Thai Chili and Cayenne Chocolate and Wild Blueberries with Lavender; I got Jasmine Green Tea and took it outside to eat. And oh. Oh. I'd almost forgotten what it feels like to sit in warm sunlight. It's the weirdest sensation if you pay attention: the air stays cool, but the heat collects on your skin and gathers there, until it feels like there's a sheath of warmth defining the edge of you and not-you.
There's a forecast for snow tomorrow, and I don't even mind. Today was too perfect.
It's lovely today. That's true here, and I keep seeing people mention it on my flist from all over, so I am just going to conclude that the whole world is having nice weather right now. It's a pretty thought, at least.
Where I am, it's over sixty degrees and the sky is a blue so vivid it hurts to stare at it. The half-moon hangs just above the rooftops, pale as smoke but so clear that every crater and mountain is distinguished. I rode the bus downtown, and the sun glittered off all the windows of the office buildings and fell in glowing slices across shadowed back lots. The wind blew hard enough to shake the bus and toss the streetlights on their wires. The last leaves from fall made their tiny tornadoes in the canyons of the skyscrapers. People walked the sidewalks without jackets or coats, and the wind hid their faces behind whipping hair and tugged on their shirts and pants and skirts, outlining their bodies against the cloth.
I went to the North Market, which sits right on the border of the Short North (the coffee-shops-and-art-galleries part of the city) and downtown. It's a restored warehouse. On the inside, it's all one big room- exposed brick walls and support beams stretched overhead- but everything's been painted white and there are sky lights and huge windows, and it's bright and lovely. There are little stalls that serve every food you could imagine- Indian and Mexican and Japanese and gourmet chocolate; the guy with the free-range rabbit and bison and ostrich meat is next to the vegan bakery, which is next to the place that makes orange juice so fresh and pure you can squeeze the juice from the fruit yourself. And the food! There's buckwheat honey and cornstalk tea and red bean mochi and still warm bread and a million cheeses with names I don't even know how to pronounce. But the best is the produce: it's all organic and local and it's looks so good that it's hard not to touch it. Tomatoes still on the stalk and blood oranges and ten kinds of mushrooms and baby bananas and onions bigger than my hands and eggplants purple as a bruise and oh, I wanted it all.
Such food porn.
I ended up eating at a new Vietnamese place; the owner joked with me and gave me free spring rolls and extra jalapenos and got to me try something called Soursop Juice, which tasted surprisingly good, like a mixture of milk and apple and chrysanthemum. I went to the ice cream stand afterwards, which sells the best ice cream I have ever had. They have flavors like Thai Chili and Cayenne Chocolate and Wild Blueberries with Lavender; I got Jasmine Green Tea and took it outside to eat. And oh. Oh. I'd almost forgotten what it feels like to sit in warm sunlight. It's the weirdest sensation if you pay attention: the air stays cool, but the heat collects on your skin and gathers there, until it feels like there's a sheath of warmth defining the edge of you and not-you.
There's a forecast for snow tomorrow, and I don't even mind. Today was too perfect.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-15 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-15 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-16 03:35 am (UTC)This is so true. The weather is so nice right now, and I keep forgetting that it'll get cold again before it gets warmer. But it's not too much longer to spring, now.
if there is snow tomorrow
Date: 2005-02-15 11:26 pm (UTC)Re: if there is snow tomorrow
Date: 2005-02-16 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-15 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-16 04:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-16 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-16 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-16 02:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-16 04:25 am (UTC)