well well

It's a rainy Friday afternoon.
I wore my new dress for the first time today. Fun fun.
Atmospheres never fail to capture me. It's been a little rainy and a little cloudy and definitely drippy all week. I work in the main library on campus, and it only has one door that "patrons" are allowed to use. There are a couple service entrances, but basically, if you want to enter, you have to go in through the main door. A semi-enclosed patio runs around the entire back part of the building, and the lack of doors means it's pretty deserted most of the time. It's a very austere sort of place, that patio. It has wooden benches and chairs and tables, all nailed down so that crazy college students don't steal them. The library building is 11 stories tall, and very square, with a protruding roof, the last couple stories of which are supported by big, square columns.
On Wednesday, I went outside to this patio to have lunch. It started to drizzle again, so I took refuge, with my back-pack, under the columns. So I sat there.
The clear gray light, the columns, sitting on pebble-tile, feeling the breeze, and listening to the radio... it was beautiful. Reminded me so much of Europe, and sitting in someone's portal. An atmosphere.
I wonder if, as you grow older, events and people get muddled in your head because every new event, or place, or person, reminds you of one that you've encountered before? And then you have... composite images, composite memories, where stuff overlaps so that you can't quite see the original anymore? It strikes me as a sad process. Never to be able to experience anything crystalline-ly new.
Anyway. It's a rainy Friday, and now I'm sitting in my new dress, thinking thoughts that will blow away in the wind as soon as I step out my door.
Apparently not all gloom is truly gloomy.
E.O.