Jan 20, 2011

Snow and Studio

Today was very different from yesterday. With the waiver of my HAL class, I am "free" all day thursday. "Free" in the sense that I don't have any scheduled classes, although I'll still be working all day. Sounds like thursday could be my studio production day. Tuesday will be busy working on stuff for my other wednesday classes, it seems like. Anyway, today when I got up, I was treated to a world covered in seven inches of snow. It was still snowing from the night before, and the snow didn't really let up until around four pm, so it was a very wintery day.

Anyway, I'd been wanting to go visit Forest Park, the "central park" of St.Louis, in the wintertime, and I figured under the snow would be the best time to see it. So I set out a bit after nine, with my boots on, the waterproof, insulated boots I picked up at the beginning of last semester. It a slow but surreal tromp to the metro station, the neighborhood transformed by the thick cover of the dry powdery snow. There is something special both in the beauty of the black stark trees against the white snowy field, and also in the delight that I get from appreciating that beauty.

A short metro ride later, I was tromping into the heart of the park, where there is a vast, Versailles-inspired bowl, with a massive art museum at the crest of the bowl, and a series of interconnected picturesque lakes and bridges at the bottom. It is a massive public space used periodically for concerts, but today, it was filled with kids, free on a snow day, tobogganing down the slope. It seems the use of the bowl as a sledding park is supported by the city; a low hay wall had been erected at the bottom of the bowl to prevent sledders from careening into the lake, and several fires were burning in fire rings up at the top for parents and kids to warm up.

For a Phoenix native, there is a real pleasure to wade through calf-deep virgin snow in vast fields and woods. I trekked through the park like this all the way to the westernmost edge of the park, which is the doorstep of my college. Caught a bus back home, picking up more Suki food along the way. Check out Facebook for photos- find me and friend me if you're interested.

For the rest of the afternoon, I lounged a bit, printed out the readings for my AA studies class, realized I had about a hundred pages to read, assimilate, correlate, and analyze by next tuesday, and lounged no further. I shoved the snow out of the driveway and sidewalk, and cautiously moved my snow-covered car to the garage after carefully salting the driveway.

Drove to school again around six to do more reading, and then wandered upstairs for the Moste Ancient and Sacred Drawinge of ye Deskes. Actually, they first started the lottery system last semester. I lucked out- in my studio of 13, I was the first one drawn, and thus got the first pick of desks. I picked a desk with a great big window, and good access to the aisle. As it turned out, Chuck got the desk next to mine, so we'll be seeing rather a lot of each other. Still not sure why we have to wait until 9pm for these shenanigans. There are no noon classes, so why not do this at noon?

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Medium is the message

I moved the blog again. I deleted the Tumblr account and moved everything to Medium.com, a more writing-centric website. medium.com/@wende