We have entered the shoulder season, between biking weather and skiing weather. This morning, standing on the kitchen heating vent and cradling a cup of hot coffee in my hand, I watched the wind rattling the few remaining leaves on the cherry tree outside our window. The limbs of the big norway maple looked black and bleak; the sky looked grey and cold. I curled my toes against the warm air issuing from the grate and shivered.
In the afternoon, I walked to the fitness centre in City Hall. The wind had dropped, although a few leaves still skittered along the pavement. I passed other people -- mostly students heading to or from campus -- subdued and huddled down in their coats. It seemed oddly quiet for a saturday afternoon. Even the traffic felt hushed.
Yesterday was the same. About noon, I bundled down to Rideau Centre and the market, spent an hour reading in Chapters, and then sat at a window table at the Shafali Bazaar in the Market Mall eating chicken curry (very good) and watching passers-by. In retrospect, I suppose the quiet lay mostly within me. Sometimes I would catch myself staring unfocused into the distance, with no cohesive thought in my mind -- and no desire for cohesive thought.
Except... and it was a strange time and place for the realization... that I really love this world. In the quiet of the moment, stripped down to their essence by the flat light of a monochromatic day, the streets and the people on them felt especially dear to me. I felt a connection and a kinship to the anonymous figures hurrying along outside, and to my few, solitary companions lingering at the nearby tables. They seemed inexpressibly noble.
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