Vivaldi

Fall makes me depressed, because it's when I go back to school, and the nippiness reminds me of oncoming winter. Winter makes me depressed because of the lack of daylight; oftentimes by the time I get out of class it's dark already. And walking anywhere at night the world seems lonely and deserted and quiet and bone-chillingly cold, while walking around in the summer or in springtime, it's never really quite dark because the sky is fully of clouds and never quite black, like purple or red, and it seems like the world is alive. The only time I like winter is during the muffled silence right before a snow.

I like spring and summer, though I prefer windy days where I can see the wind bending the trees and grass and hearing the rustling of the trees and of cicadas, and where there are high wispy clouds or no clouds at all, so the sky looks like a deep dome where the center is a blue deeper than the light blue around the horizon, and if you lay on the windy grass on your back and stare straight up it seems like you could fall forever up into the sky.

I had a happy dream over Break involving Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, and lots of hot chocolate.

They were clothed though. In really poofy winterwear.

No school! RAWWWK!

The trees are very pretty with their coating of ice. My dad said they looked like they were blossoming again.

Went sledding with Alex today, or yesterday at Wood, if you will, since it's after 12 midnight now. It was a rather ungratifying experience, since it's neither as thrilling as a roller coaster or as joyously gleeful as a swing or a seesaw, and plus, I kept getting snow down my boots and it was a pain to drag Alex's toboggan uphill all the time. I suppose as people get older they're amused by different things, but I don't think I'm losing my childhood. I never really went sledding as a child; perhaps sledding is merely overhyped as a 'gleeful childhood activity.'

We walked to my house over unshoveled sidewalks (which made me feel guilty for not shovelling my sidewalk) and watched the Lord of the Rings extended and new scenes, which was gleefully joyous.

God, it's cold.

Lake Needwood was very pleasant and filled with the Thanksgiving/Chrismas smell of a crisp winter forest. I hadn't gone to Rock Creek Park in a bit, and was surprised to notice that the trees were bare. I went into Rock Creek to gather the temperature vs. depth data with the temperature probe on the yardstick. I was wearing Milla's boots because I was the only one with feet small enough, except maybe Milla. We were trying to find a place with a depth of 60 centimeters, so I had waded into the center of the creek disregarding the water gushing into the boots and soaking my socks. I hadn't realized it would be so cold, or that the current could apply such insistent and constant pressure. I'd always thought the water would flow around me. I came back up and took off my socks and wrung them out and hung them out to dry on a tree branch and let other people do the rest of the data points. It would not prevent Ed and Milla from cuddling on the leafy bank later while I watched the water pour across a line of rocks in little rapids. Something I noticed was, the water never stops moving. (Well duh.) The ripples and the foam, the light and the shadow, is all caused by water rushing away from me, replaced by the same amount of water coming towards me, and yet from a distance, or to someone not paying attention, it looks as still and as clear as glass and as constant as if the water were a solid and unmoving sheet.

Afterwards, we had a lot of free time to just play around. We found that Rob and Dena balanced each other out on the seesaw, me and Alex balanced out Rob and Dena, and me and Alex balanced out each other. I picked up a nice walking stick David had hurled into the field as a javelin. I played on the swings to the creaking of chains. We took a walk around the lake, gleaming under the ashen sky and bare trees like unpolished metal.

My Descartes roleplay was quite ghetto. Just the paper towel frill collar was ghetto. Alex and Lianna understood that it wasn't supposed to be a bib, but I don't think anyone else did. And no, I didn't kick Aristotle's ass. What a sucky-ass week. I did cruddy on my calculus test too, and I haven't fetched my PSATs. It isn't on the list of 'worst mornings of my life', but it was still pretty cruddy. I shouldn't really complain about ghetto costumes. *cough tychobrahe cough*.

But I'm happy now. Because I took a long walk around the block (rhyming!), and Christmas is prettiness. I think the pagans just invented a holiday so that they'd have a reason to be happy during the winter. I'm gonna do my shopping afterschool tomorrow. The world sort of looks all nasty and gray at first, which is why I didn't take a walk until I really needed one, but really, it's pretty in an austere Zen garden way, with bare rocks and bare trees rising straight, and the grass turning yellow but some still green and the pastel houses really cheerful with their Christmas lights and poinsettas and ribbons and tacky American flags. It's not as OBVIOUSLY pretty as the plant reproductive organ craziness of spring, or the fertility of summer, or the artistic death motif of fall, but it's pretty in a subtle way.

I think the sun makes me happy- I haven't gotten a lot of sunshine this week. It must be my.. whatever was on the psych test. Circadian cycle. Because I always get happier after taking walks when I'm depressed. The sun was sort of silvery, not gold like I like, but whatever, I'll take what I can get. And sunset was splendoriffic too, because the sky gets less steel grey as the sun sets (around four, unfortunately), and turns into a deep blue, like the type you only see in the summer. And then the edges of the clouds turn pale gold, and part of the sky turns pink. A winter sunset. I'll have to see more of those, even though I like the bright pink/orange of summer or the deep purple sunsets more.

Mother Nature: Everyone's a critic.

Me: Shut your face. (Can you believe it? I'm fucking reviewing Mother Nature, just like a movie or something)

Maybe it's not the sun. Maybe I just like walking, and looking into the distance, and seeing a destination in front of me as I walk. I like.. motion parallax (*everyone in psych groans*). Seriously. I like seeing how the colors revolve around a single point in the distance and stuff. It has to be a place; I can't just walk on a treadmill. In any case, I'm glad to know that it's nearing the winter solstace. It's reassuring to know that the days get longer after that, and that I only have to bear with this darkening world of mine for a little while more.