Wanderings

Yesterday was our fourth unusually warm day in a row. It was beautiful--blue sky, leaves crunching underfoot, more colorful leaves being blown from the trees like errant butterflies, November sunlight, air with a November texture yet absurdly hot for a November day. It was a splendid day for walking. And I realized as I was walking that every one of my senses has seemed terribly overwhelmed lately. The beauty of the day was almost painful, as everything else has been in recent days. No wonder I'm afraid of the phone again--not only does the ringing jangle my nerves, but I might have to engage in conversation with a person if I pick it up. So overwhelmed already, I'm not really up to social niceties beyond "Hello" and "I'm afraid you have a wrong number." Gah. This is still about 57 varieties of Not Good.

Anyway, I took a good long walk yesterday in a neighborhood I've never walked in before. Some of the streets there didn't follow the same naming scheme as the streets in my usual paths, so I could, in theory, have briefly gotten lost in my wanderings. I didn't, though. Instead, and despite what I said in the first paragraph, I enjoyed seeing new places and making plans to walk there again. Taking one turn, I saw a familiar shopping mall from a new angle.

(Once upon a time, one of my big problems was that I was afraid of new things. Nowadays I'm afraid of familiar ones.)

Was going to walk past the mall without stopping until I realized that there were even this late in the year some people setting up for the farmer's market, so of course I had to buy some fresh apple cider and a fresh-baked pastry to fortify me for further journeyings. Pointing at the baked goods: "What's in the green ones?" "Those aren't green. Well, they are green, but they're blueberry." Heh. They were tasty too.

Even feeling overstimulated, I can't help wanting to fill myself with new sounds, colors, scents, tastes, ideas. Here at home today I'm listening to random music online, pondering new things to try with computer graphics, drinking spiced teas, wondering which book to read next, reading various LJs without knowing what to say, and not feeling at all able to speak with people.

Today's another warm day, but with grey skies rather than blue. The scent of rain is on the air. You might call this weather gloomy compared to what we've had recently. In its own way, today also is beautiful.