Beautiful grey day.
It was a beautiful grey day in Atlanta yesterday, where, for once, I stayed part of the weekend. (Usually, I am in Athens visiting parents and Lisa.) Quite appropriately for the holidays, I opine.
Unfortunately, I do not own a digital camera, so the best I’ve got to offer is shoddy, grainy, low-resolution phone camera pics:
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I have always liked dark, grey, cool weather far more than sunny. I suppose it has to do with what one’s formative experiences of the world are, and I come from Moscow, where it is that way as often as not. It was in northern Indiana — where I spent a lot of my childhood — as well, but in an oddly contradictory way where it would often be humid and hot but grey, or below-zero but sunny.
Aside from snow, which I miss far as a persistent presence for several winter months far more than words can express, it’s also something I find psychologically necessary especially in winter. It is a core fibre of my expectations of what winter “feels like.”
I gather I’m rather strange in this regard. So many northerners who live in the Sun Belt express to me how glad they are to be rid of snow as a lifestyle imposition. Everyone seems to love the pervasive and unabating sunniness of this area. I personally can’t stand it; I find sun acceptable in moderation, but for the most part it irritates and blinds me.
I feel much more alert, awake, alive and productive in crisp, chilly, and cloudy weather — no, not “partly cloudy,” but truly, wholesomely cloudy. I gather it’s the exact sort of thing that makes most other people drowsy and unmotivated.
I’m quite partial to rain (indeed, the good Lord knows we need it), but do not find it to be a necessary ingredient for the enjoyment of a nice grey day. It just has to be very cloudy and cool.
I really wish most days of the year were like this.