Snow in March

Sunday I woke up and looked out the window. This time, the world was all white. It was hard to believe--snow in March! It was only the second time we've had snow all winter. The courtyard with its little tracks and traipses looked like an oddly beautiful sort of arabesque.

I stayed in most of the day, working and occasionally admiring the view out my window. It was a peaceful enough day. In the afternoon, I read a whole novel! Confessions of an Ugly Step-sister. It was very good. It made me think more about beauty and what it is, the ways in which it counts. When you get started thinking about something important, everything seems to relate to it.

Toward afternoon, I went out for a walk in the snow. I had been contemplating going to the Summer Palace, but by the time I got out the door it was too late and too cold. Instead, I went to nameless lake and meandered around. For no good reason, I was feeling melancholy. I tried taking pictures of snowscapes, but they didn't seem very meaningful. They needed Pocket of Bolts in them, looking big and cold. I tried taking pictures with me in them, but I kept showing up with a sullen scowl. One of the only ones that came out reasonable:


A snowscape:


By the time I got back to the campus, it was dinnertime and I was very cold. I walked around the cafeteria, which was oddly empty even though it was squarely dinnertime. I contemplated the offerings and nostalgically chose a steaming bowl of pulled noodles. Pulled noodles used to cheer me up a lot in my early days here.

After I ate, I wandered home. That's when I realized that fireworks were going off enormously, all over the city. It was like New Years all over again, except I was in instead of out. I felt a little wistful...

There was such a big wind that the explosions were blown sideways even as they put forth their lights.

Later I found out it was another big holiday, Yuanxiaojie, the Lantern Festival. I'd guessed as much, after seeing all the fireworks, and felt fretful and sad at having had nowhere to go.