On the loveliness of brown-eyed blondes

Being a barely-disguised "trivia" post.

Aren't they just, though? And that from a lifelong admirer of brunettes and redheads. There was something in the air today that made everyone look about 37% more beautiful than on an average day, or perhaps it just warped my judgement.

Today was wonderfully springlike, with bright sun and blue skies and sparkly-clean air in the city; it felt like Spring already even though the temperature had taken a sharp drop to just-above-freezing. I walked downtown marvelling at how many beautiful women were on the streets and in the parks and squares and gardens, then went to the new office to do some system-manager stuff.

Because finally, after (checks back in the blog, all the way to September for gods' sake) twenty-two weeks' delay—yes, 22 weeks—and gods know how many bitter and twisted and furious and raging and tearful and ultimately resigned letters and phone calls; finally, I say, the office has a connection to the Internets. I can recommend German readers to have nothing to do with either T-Online or Strato, the one is as incompetent and mendacious as the other. Bah and humbug.

The Münstermeister was in town on Wednesday evening, on his way to the airport after a series of meetings in the vicinity, so we met at the airport bar to discuss the state of the world over a beer, and I stayed on for another after his flight.

I do like airports at night, once the crowds have thinned out; there is something very pleasing to me in the atmosphere of places built for bustling crowds when there's nobody around. Hospitals and train stations and grand hotels late at night have something of the same spirit, a sense that a great deal of haste and hustle and activity has withdrawn like the tide, leaving us stragglers the run—nay: the stroll—of a suddenly larger and calmer space. There is a strange feeling of peace and community at such times, I find; an serendipitous incursion of dolce far niente into places dedicated to busy-ness.

My love of riding the Greyhound bus through small towns in the dead of night is related to this somehow, to the feeling of being in the eye of a hurricane, a bubble of calm and peace, looking out at a few little lights marking the spots where someone else is still awake. As a student in London, I would often fly last-minute or standby to New York at Christmas-time, arriving in the afternoon and spending the day in Mannahatta, and then taking the midnight 'Hound to Toronto. There were two routes that the bus might follow, either north through Albany or west through Scranton, and I could never figure out why one was taken instead of the other. I preferred the Scranton route because it went through Ithaca NY, surely one of the world's nicest small towns. We would get to the bus station there at around 3 a.m., where two or three cars would be waiting in the snow with their lights on and their motors running, and two or three passengers would get out to be hugged and kissed and thumped on the back. I would be one of the few passengers still awake at that time, delighting in the crisp, cold air that came in through the open door as we waited, watching the reunions and imaging their relationships and conversations. The cars would drive away, the bus driver would climb back on board and close the door, and we would roll on towards the morning.

I shall write about this again, methinks.

Shabbat shalom, my dears. I hope you enjoy the weekend.