More specifically concerning: weather
12.03.01
12 March 2001, around 15.00.
After a night of nausea, day dawned bright and clear, no frost, but chill preceding spring. Spent much of the day in bed, feeling not well enough for anything, though did stumble through more of The Ambassadors. To sleep early, with thanks.
13.03.01
13 March 2001, around 14.58.
Dark smoke-blue sky and evidence of rain, to which was added the sound of car alarm. Naturally. Organizing bibliography, &c., but in no humor for nearly anything.
17.03.01
17 March 2001, around 14.53.
Spent the day in search of books on modern Greece, which, strangely enough, are more difficult to find than books on ancient Greece. I find it somewhat strange that books on Greece tend to be shelved with ‘Western Europe’ while the ‘Balkans’ and the former Yugoslavia are under ‘Eastern Europe.’ Also purchased a cheap copy […]
29.04.01
29 April 2001, around 18.30.
Broken blue sky and translucent clouds after a night of rain. A typical Sunday, doing laundry, reading, preparing for another week. Churchbells call to all good Christians; the response, if any, is hidden from my window.
17.05.01
17 May 2001, around 18.41.
One of those very strange mornings, indecisive rain and sunshine, which last shone in (when it shone at all) an eerie perfect white upon the shadowed wall. Spent the early morning reading Seneca’s De Clementia and scrupulously avoiding any thought of Cicero.
16.10.01 – Tuesday
16 October 2001, around 16.41.
At some point I find myself watching the clouds – the leaves are changing – some trees are already bare – but the clouds, the warm, the cold, the gathering, dispersing. Autumn puts me in mind of wool jackets, wood smoke, the break of apples, dust of books; also: steam rising from coffee; yellow-orange leaves […]
22.11.01 – Thursday
22 November 2001, around 16.00.
Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts – Palestrina, Missa Brevis – the smell of baking apples – seeds of a pomegranate. Cold air – blue sky.
Windmill
21 October 2002, around 16.57.
Walking through the rain, avoiding umbrellas – nodding, sleepy, thwack, thwack, thwack of damp shoes on pavement yet damper. Publius Clodius Pulcher, like the emperor Gaius, is alleged to have been quite close to his sisters. Cicero did not like him – Clodius, that is; he never met Gaius.
Miasma
22 October 2002, around 16.57.
How to explain it. The impermeable, invisible barrier which seeps between people, flowing between them so gradually that they do not notice until its inspissation is undeniable and no community is possible between them. Smoke and steam rolling off the slanting roofs atop the restaurants of Cowley, rolling down into the lamplight.
Perhaps
28 January 2003, around 11.07.
Dusk, rain. I don’t know. Maybe I was expecting something different. It’s possible. Something other than the nights of fog and afternoons of rain, rudely punctuated by dawns and dusks and gloamings serene and unencumbered. Come to think of it, though, no one uses the word ‘gloaming’ anymore; nobody sane, anyway. Certainly not the young […]
accidental augury
11 April 2003, around 11.06.
Two birds, perfectly white, pink-beaked, dark-eyed, pigeons, settled on the ledge outside my window, billing and cooing as birds will in spring. Startled, I stood hunched, half-risen from my seat at the desk, the pages of a book leafing shut; over the point where their shoulders would be my movement caught their eyes, and they […]
apropos of nothing
10 June 2003, around 8.45.
Small rain.
Interstices
24 June 2004, around 15.20.
June 2004
gently
1 June 2006, around 12.24.
about the weather and teaching English as a Foreign (or second) language
mizzling
20 October 2007, around 15.34.
We find under the weather a layer of sun, wrapped tidily around that parcel of time we call today. The year therefore rounded itself as a receptacle of retarded knowledge – a cup brimming over with the sense that now at least she was learning. —Henry James, What Maisie Knew, ch. IX
A view (28)
13 December 2009, around 3.39.
More winter is on the way.
A view (29)
15 May 2010, around 23.23.
graves in old Goris.
springtime
22 May 2010, around 8.09.
View from Tatev Village
stupid snow
13 April 2011, around 13.08.
woke up to rain, which turned to snow, which I had to walk through to get to work
levity
8 January 2012, around 15.47.
We are at last reduced to talking about the weather. I suppose it must happen eventually, when you are learning a language – talking about the weather. It is more than collection of vocabulary and predictions, though; we haven’t anything else to talk about. Daily routines, general likes and dislikes, grammatical particularities, and the answers […]
seasonal
1 November 2012, around 9.36.
It’s too cold to ride.
stagnation
28 December 2013, around 16.41.
The path thither. There has been a stagnant air warning for the area during the past couple of days – extending through the middle of the next week (and into the new year, I suppose). Smoke from the local stoves collects in any open space, and probably mingles with the exhaust from day-trippers going up […]
A view (41)
8 February 2014, around 10.53.
still snowing.
aide-memoire
27 February 2024, around 11.50.
It is cold again today, and going out for my run felt burdensome, although I managed it, mostly by distracting myself by trying to sort out different genres of memoir. Some people say there are seven, others say there are thirteen, but none of their lists fully encompass the sub-generic specificities that I have drawn […]