Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

My cold is mostly gone, just a hint of sinus irritation that's having effects on my throat and tickling the athsma enough for me to be aware of it. Now to try to catch up on various things I've been letting slide. And to figure out what is and isn't happening this weekend.

Today's earworm at least makes sense, since I just heard it on the radio...

I can show you
That when it rains or shines
It's just a state of mind
I can show you

I've got URLs sprinkled all over the place to collect into a link-sausage entry when I get around to it. But I keep either having more important-seeming stuff to do or not feeling like I have the attention span for it. Maybe if I get caught up on enough things this afternoon and don't wear myself out in the process. But before I do anything productive, I've got a mug of (decaf) Turkish coffee to enjoy (thanks to fiannaharpar putting the idea in my head). Writing this entry is part of my coffee goofing-off period. It feels very different to be taking a "I'm going to slow down and create a moment specifically for the purpose of enjoying the moment" break instead of an "I feel tired and need to stop" or "my arm hurts too much and I need to stop" or "my attention span just went out the window and I'm going to screw something up if I don't stop" break. It makes me notice how seldom I do this. How seldom I "allow myself" to do this. Maybe because I'm usually already frustrated by the number of breaks I need to take? Or maybe just some classic perversion of the American work ethic? More likely the latter, if I compare this to behaviours friends commented on back in college.

And the ... "flavour of the sunlight" ... is just right for this moment, inviting such an "enjoy the moment and make sure there's an olfactory component" mood, and even suggesting hints of coffee advertisements from television (though those never seem to involve Turkish coffee, just drip, percolator, or instant). Actually, like this coffee, the sunlight-flavour this morning is a medley of different notes. I glance at the window and one moment it looks like much earlier on a bright summer morning someplace south of here -- not quite right for dawn in Florida, but maybe North Carolina -- one of those days that's comfortable with the windows open. Very summer-looking light even though it shows the autumn red colour of the ivy so clearly. A moment later I blink and it's springtime sunlight, properly Maryland but halfway around the year from now, and definitely a weekend. (The summer-ish light could be an "I woke up early so I have time to relax before I go do stuff" morning.) Then something moves -- a cloud perhaps, or just the angle of my head relative to the window? -- and suddenly it really does look like November, but with a faint hint of July overlaid on top of it like a double-exposure designed to be nearly subliminal. It looks like a warmer morning than it is (around the temperatures we're supposed to get mid-afternoon today, actually), which is quite a contrast to how my toes feel at the moment. If I stop to think about it, as I'm doing now, I can consciously shift what I see, so that pre-echoes of hard December/January light show in the way the shadows look, but that's an intentional reperception. Much as the complex mix of flavours is what makes coffee such a sensory treat, this morning's sunlight is a blend of different "notes". (Hmm. Interesting that I'm not thinking of it symphonically instead of olfactorally.)

Most of this is just in ... well, something about the sunlight, and some eof it only works because of the limited view (a wall and some ivy) I can see from my desk. That "July-ish" note probably wouldn't come through if I could see one of the winter-bared trees. You hear photographers and painters (and probably other visual artists) speak of "the colour of the light". It's partly the colour, partly the angle, partly how hard or diffuse, and I dunno, maybe there's some psychological component where I'm unconsciously mixing in expectations based on other cues, in addition to the completely physical aspects of the sunlight. But literal colour is just one part of the effect, and for me, the way I map complex experiences to sensory metaphors, it's more like the "flavour", or sometimes "texture", of the light. I've noticed this for a long time, but starting taking more note of it after picking up the camera. (Now if I could get better at using what I notice about the light when I set up a shot...) I can pick apart what causes the various effects I perceive, and even explain why certain looks go with certain seasons, or I can sit back and go, "Oh, it's that look today", and just react to it emotionally and artistically. (Or both at the same time. As I'm writing this, in the back of my mind I'm also thinking about how humidity probably explains the difference between afternoon on a below-freezing, completely clear winter solstice with no snow on the ground, and a bit later on a muggy but cloudless August afternoon with the sun at the same angle of elevation (though a slightly different direction). The two ways of thinking about the phenomenon don't interfere with each other for me; it's just a matter of which has more of my attention at the moment.)

And golly gee, when I was younger my mother used to tease me because whenever she asked me what colour the sky was, I went and looked. She laughed and said, "Everyone knows it's blue!" But I saw that some days it was Tar Heel blue, and some days what Crayola called "sky blue", and some days pale blue, and sometimes white, light grey, slate grey, blue-grey, steel-grey, black, or at sunset possibly purple or pink. So unless I'd looked recently, I had to check -- even if I was sure it was blue that day, once asked the question I needed to know for myself which blue, even if all I was going to say was "blue". (I don't think I saw the sky green until the first dust storm after I got to college in Texas.)

Anyhow, the point is that the flavour of the light outside my office window is just right for sitting down and properly enjoying -- savoring -- a cup of Turkish coffee, and slowing down for a few minutes. And I can appreciate that.

But now my coffee is done, and it's time to move my car for street-cleaning day, after which I'll look at my to-do list.