Sunday, April 15, 2007
(1:56 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Pressing Issues: The Weather
Today the weather is not as ridiculous as it has been, so I decided to renew my tradition of taking a daily walk. It's strange that I've been avoiding it for so long. During the winter, I would still go out in very cold weather, but the cold felt much colder when it was a regression from genuine spring-like weather. The past several weekends, I have been very reluctant even to leave the house, for just this reason: I prefer to remain sheltered from a world that by all appearances has turned against me.The walk was amusing because no one knows how to dress. I wore a light sweatshirt and light jacket, but I saw people in winter coats, people walking around in just sweaters, some people (mainly young children) in t-shirts, and one particularly optimistic woman in one of those low-cut spaghetti-strap things (though not Claire). For the most part, people clearly were ready to be outside, but still distrustful -- better to be too hot than to be overly confident and face yet another traumatic disappointment.
This was my first walk since moving to the other side of Lincoln (a diagonal street), and I was somehow worried about not being able to come up with a suitable route of my desired length (two miles). Then I realized that my mental block was that my route would enclose a smaller area than in the past, a mindset perhaps generated by all those hours spent playing Qix on my Gameboy during the ride to church. I assume that Alleyway, which I played even more, has had a similar impact, but perhaps it has shaped my selfhood too deeply for its influence to be detectable as such at this late date.
