Eat a Cookie and Time Travel

I like titles that are completely (initially) unrelated to the work. When I go into a library or a book store I'm looking for intriguing titles, something that would spark my imagination and make me long for the story behind the covers. But enough about that, today I have joy.

I walk the same streets every, and at the same time I get lost in a new place every time. Maybe it's because I have the same capacity to hold things in my brain as a sieve does to hold water. But that isn't the point. The point is that when the sky turns grey I get to watch the day through my own hair. The wind was wicked today, so cold it made the part of my head that is behind my ears ache. November is liminal, everything is changing and no one knows if they should accept the misery of winter months yet.

Surprises abound on the single street I take to work from the gym-atop-the-mountain. I look down an alley between two houses and see the grass there scattered with many glittering pieces of glass. It was like someone broke a puddle. A few houses away, I wonder whether that brilliant turquoise door has always been there. I think with all the leaves turning fiery in the autumn, I forget to look at the houses. The townhouses are crammed tightly together; three storeys (or stories, if you're feeling poetic) topped with a slate shingle roof. As if noticing for the first time, I gape at the colours. Each house, even though it is pressed right up to its neighbour, has doors and window frames so gaily painted that they seem to have sprung from the rooms of children. Even on campus, I wonder whether I am going mad when I see the shade of blue which adorns the windows of an old stone building.

It get dark earlier every day, and soon the people will begin to lose their colour as well. The stain of the sun never lasts very long for those who do not retreat south during the holidays. But we can find colour in other places. Even though there has not yet been a permanent snowfall, the buildings are adorned with massive, glittering wreathes. At least scale is maintained. Trees and lampposts alike are bedecked in shimmering lights, and before long, snowflakes will add that last but necessary romance.

If I am to live in a country that is beset with snow for the greater part of the year, then I might as well find ways to enjoy it, right? Before long, the wind that blows tornadoes of leaves around my feet will soon be stirring sharper and colder things.

At the very least, it is not yet cold enough that my smile freezes on my face.