The Depth of Winter

This is my unhappiest time of year.  Almost always.  Regardless of the social or professional circumstances of my life, late January feels uniformly bleak.  Like this image, taken from a google image search of "bleak."

It's cold.  It's dark.  It's gray.  It's been this way for a few months, and after all my non-California years wondering why January is always such a depressing time, I've learned that I crave light and warmth.

The one lovely thing about seasons is that they change--always.  Even if some freak thing happens where we have a cold spring and summer (unlikely, in these increasingly warm years), the days will get longer.  Sunlight will return.  One day, I'll drive to work and it won't be dark.  I'll get home in time for a twilight run.  If only the outcomes of the rest of life's vicissitudes were so sure as the return of light and longer days--how comforting it would be to know that a professional funk would give way to more hopeful prospects, that a dull social calendar would grow brighter, that poor health would gradually improve.  But for now, it's late January, so the most positive thing I can muster is that I hope--I hope--that the darkness in my heart lifts soon as well.

Simple Things

I realize my last post was devoted entirely to one food (or, for you purists, a sort of foodish) item. Here's another fluffy post to follow: to the other (non-Nutella) simple things that make me happy.

1.  No work today! Sleeping in!
2.  Brunch with friends at the Del Ray Cafe.
3.  Living close to restaurants, shops, and the metro.
4.  Dance parties in the kitchen (shout out to Robin, best dance partner of all time).
5.  Lying on a comfy couch with sunlight streaming through the window, reading.
6.  Hot chocolate on a winter day.
7. New pillows!  After waaaaay too long since replacing the last ones, my bed is feeling pretty amazing right now.

Why I Love Nutella

I LOVE Nutella, so much so that I have to avoid buying it because I know that my lack of self-control means that I'll eat it in mass quantities until I realize with simultaneous relief and dismay that it's completely gone.  Here is why I love it so:

• It is one of the rare things in life that is better than I think it will be: the texture and flavor are more delicious than I expect.  It never disappoints.  How many things in life are like that?
• I don't eat it very often.  The fact that it comes in a large-ish jar, which I know from experience that I can consume in a couple of days, means that I never buy it.  I get it from time to time as a gift, or I order it on crepes.  This rarity makes it an extra-special treat.  
• When I'm eating it, it is such a sensuous delight that all unpleasant feeling disappear.  I feel no pain, no sorrow, no unhappiness--only pure pleasure.  As a chronic worrier, this respite is welcome indeed.  It's my drug of choice.  

And in closing, read this description of the origin of Nutella.  Sometimes, a shortage can be a beautiful thing.  

Airhead

My current roommate has this notion that I'm an airhead.  She tries to soften it by explaining that I'm like the absent-minded professor, but the truth is that I'm no professor--so if it's true, I'm just a flake.  In any case, I find myself heartily protesting.  It seems inimical to my identify as a solid, reliable brunette--not a spacey blonde like my older sister was in high school (sorry, Jen--you've since become the world's most pragmatic human, so no hard feelings).

I admit I certainly have my moments.  I was remembering today how I went to a friend's house a couple of years ago and we took off our shoes at the front door.  The next day, I noticed a strange pair of flip flops under the coffee table in the living room but didn't think much of it.  They were still there a few days later, and I remember feeling vaguely annoyed that my roommate hadn't moved them yet.  Anyway, a couple of weeks later, another friend contacted me to ask if I had her shoes--her nice, Reef flip flops--since they had disappeared at the door when she had gone to leave.  All that had been left had been a cheap pair of flip flops a size and a half too small for her.  Sure enough, I had worn her Reefs home and left them under the coffee table without noticing that they were too big and much nicer than mine--and then I had proceeded to forget that I had left them there.  Genius.

If you prefer watching videos to reading the links I embedded below . . .

Seriously.  Listen just for a few minutes.  It's hilarious and just, well, perfect.  I've run out of adjectives.

My Obsession

I have a thing for David Foster Wallace.  To my mind, he is the greatest writer of his generation (although of course I've not read anything close to all the writers of his generation).  His writing is uncanny, hilarious, transformative, illuminating: his review of a usage dictionary more persuasively defends prescriptive grammar than any linguist's work I've seen has been able to support either side (and, unexpectedly, he presents the most morally coherent viewpoint on abortion I've ever encountered--such parenthetical asides are an integral part of his style, and part of what makes him such a delight), his description of the Maine Lobster Festival is ruminative and ethically challenging, and his chronicle of the McCain 2000 campaign distills all the angst and disillusionment I've felt over the cynicism endemic to politics into one brilliant piece.  The measures of great writing are wide and deep, but no one one quite rivals him for creating that effect where, when you finish, you say to yourself "Yes, exactly!  Exactly that!"  But he does more than articulates your thoughts and, in fact, reveals the essence of something that has always lurked in your subconscious as ineffable for its strangeness or inscrutability-and then he leaves you thinking, thinking still--not by any means satiated, but now with a sharper understanding that only piques your curiosity further, and life with all its mystery becomes more profound, and therefore worthwhile--joyful in its complexity and even its sometime ugliness. That last sentence describes, in large measure, why I read, and this is why David Foster Wallace is my favorite.

Well, I'm back.  (Last words of The Lord of the Rings trilogy).  I stopped blogging because I didn't really see the point.  It seemed silly and self-aggrandizing to post about my life and meditations.  But the truth is that I've missed the occasion to publish my reflections and to refine my understanding by following an argument through in a somewhat organized fashion, as writing tends to require.  In some ways, readership, or lack of readership, is beside the point, but of course I wouldn't be publishing this unless it mattered to me in some way.  I think the medium of a blog appeals to me because it's available to anyone who is interested enough to find it and read it, but does not pester anyone who is totally uninterested.  Read on if you're intrigued--stop now if you're not.

Over my vacation, I jotted down ideas for posts.  More to follow.