Waking weather

Monday, grey but not wet, and certainly not cold.  According to WeatherBug, the current temperature is 56° and factoring windchill in actually raised it a degree to 57°.  It has been a weekend of odd weather (for us), with high humidity, sunshine, pouring rain (some places in the area received more rain in one day than they should have received all of September), wind (and not wind), and warm. The kind of weather that defies any particular wardrobe and which requires carrying something just in case.  Too warm for layers, too wet (off and on) to go without.  Weather probably best suited to nudists, with a towel. Easy weather to wake to, though, because it calls for no extreme decisions first thing in the morning. Whatever you wear will be fine, and probably wrong, so wear what you want.

By 7:00 AM this morning parking lots on campus were already starting to collect cars; the campus is coming back to life after a few weeks off.  For all the added workload that brings with it, it is still nice to see the campus alive with students and employees.  Campuses were meant to be vibrant and living, and the quiet of quarter breaks fits a campus like a pair of oversize pants: too much sag and bunching to ever look right.  So the campus is waking, like the poem of the same name by Theodore Roethke, a portion of which reads:

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

As befits a Monday morning waking, the iPod was suitably mellow today:

P.T. Walkley: Sunshine

Sam Baker: Broken Fingers

David Lanz: Green into Gold

Sigur Rós: Samskeyti (Live)