the bottom line: if you weren't outside last night/this morning, you missed out.

the weather was/is amazing. it's like 60, low clouds, fierce wind. amazing. there's certainly not many days in the North-Western PA mid-November that you can bear to walk around outside barefoot and shirtless, much less enjoy doing so... and even less common than Indian summer days in November are nights such as this, where droplets of warm rain fall through the strangely dry and Santa Anna-esque winds.

i've been out: the weather turned awesome around 2am -- the crazy winds whistling through our cracked windows, billowing the curtains out and flooding the dark room with shards of yellow'd light, in turn causing my roommate to roll over and mumble decisively into his pillow.

I sit back, feeling bad that I'm still up working. It seems he never sleeps soundly while I'm up, no matter how quiet I try to be. I think about it for a moment, then, deciding that the whole 'talking-in-your-sleep' thing weirds me out way too much, I peek through the curtains.

the clouds are low, reflecting the light of streetlamps, and the few car headlights, late night gas stations, electric fast-food signs, billboard lights, so on and etcetera. I am suprised by the touch of the window sill. Usually the cold night air slinks into the dark corners of the room, but tonight--no river of cold is snaking past my fingers which are laid upon the cool slate sill.

This does suprise me, only ... not immediately. (It is one of those suprises like slowly figuring the punch line to a complicated joke, or the smell of blueberry flapjacks making its way forward through a recently awakened and foggy mind) ...or maybe it is the warmth from the outside air slowly finding its way into my chest and head. At any rate, something leaves me pleasant and feeling alive.

and immediately thereafter (and this time in a more typically suprising fashion!) I realize: "I must be out."

so out I go.

really, up until this point, it all remains crystal clear. but after ...well. it's all a motion blur -- visiting the poor paper-writers and test-crammers, walking through every unlocked building, taking a 3am run, dancing through the brunt of the winds, staring straight up at flagpoles, sitting atop walls and rocks and buildings and ledges...thinking of the world and reconciliing significance and future and weather patterns... it all seems as if a frame taken with a slow shutter.

then before I knew it, the sky began to turn. from a deep dark Prussian blue* to a husky greyish Cornflower, the light of morning signalled the transformation from night.

...and i just sort of haven't decided to go to sleep yet. and now, considering how i can only possibly get a couple of hours in before my first class, and I am thinking: How could I not have been out? it would have been a crime not to...

*In 1958 "Prussian blue" was renamed in response to educators' requests. Teachers felt that children were no longer familiar enough with Prussian history to recognize that this crayon color referred to the famous deep-blue uniforms of Prussian soldiers. It is now called "midnight blue," with lends itself even futher to a description of the hue of the midnight sky... But still, I enjoy using the old color name of Prussian Blue because it shares its name with a young female duet spewing White-power propaganda... lol. (back)