phthalombrage | (no subject)

This morning was so beautiful I wanted to stay outside just feeling it.

It felt deceptively like hurricane season, like another month, like a storm was coming. One of those wonderful days where they cancelled school but all you get is a little rain and some exhilarating winds. The snow was melting on the sidewalk, but the ice wasn't so slippery today, even though it had water visibly running under it. I love walking on that kind of ice, listening to it crunch and crack beneath me and to the lively water bubbling up through it. The world was awake, Saturday morning, the brownish exasperated grass relievedly drinking in whatever little edges of sunshine it could get, folding out into the relative warmth and blowing like my hair in the puckish breeze.

Growing up in Florida, you don't appreciate a good warm day, but you expect lightning and thunder every time the raindrops pitter patter down in ghastly sheets and torrents. In Pittsburgh, however, when the dreary grey skies part to fleetingly reveal some sunlight, it feels like a blessing. The rain is quiet and cold, an everyday visitor sometimes, soaking into socks you never had to wear before, when your toes never froze and sandals were perfectly reasonable footwear at any time of year.

(I remember that I only briefly and sporadically venture outdoors anyway. The smoking survey I filled out online yesterday reminds me that the vast majority of my time passes inside the concrete confines of Wean and that even if I had the time and leisure to sit outside, it's been bitterly cold for so long that it wouldn't be as enjoyable as the grand ringing name, "the outdoors", suggests. The trees are too slippery to climb, but the snow does at least obscure their stark nudity. They won't be themselves for another couple of months.)

I think about the people I know here. Not beautiful people, by normal standards, usually - Fortune smiled on them in other ways - but beautiful people if you're not used to seeing any better. You appreciate a good nose, pretty eyes, even if they are obfuscated by thick glasses, interesting hair, an expressive pair of hands. I listen to voices and pick up less-familiar accents I could listen to for hours. I remember which of my professors tuck one hand behind the back while writing on the chalkboard, which dart about in the front of the room, which gesture amusingly. All this is nice, but I am even more grateful that there are so many people here who aren't assholes. People I knew before here sometimes couldn't escape the dire social inheritance a painful upbringing ground in, made poor choices, became arrogant, many things, not all their own fault. They were opportunistic, selfish, but they had to be to survive, sometimes. It's almost okay. I vastly prefer the larger proportion of decent people here, though, people with new stories less fraught with disturbing shadows, people who know fascinating things, people who will ask in the hallway how things are going, people who are honest with you, people who can be a friend for more than a few months.

Social situations are scary, sometimes tedious things, but I have found some I can stand for a respectable amount of time. I still generally keep to myself, and I don't have Calliope to practice hand-balancing with or any similar diversion, but I am far more comfortable in larger groups than I used to be. For that I can thank the KGB, I guess... hooray for geeks, some of whom are also introverts. I talk to people now, and I can talk pretty openly after a while, but I worry that I am being too depressing or snarky. Schoolwork is pretty stressful this semester, perhaps moreso than prior semesters which were also pretty bad. I've been hurt enough to still mistrust just about everyone at least a little, and my life has contained little happiness.

I still have far to go, but I do appreciate nicer weather and a little humanity, instead of the usual holed-up inside alone and feeling stupid routine. But shit, man, work sucks - both kinds of it - so I should get back to bomb lab.