Literary Morning

I hate waking up when it is still dark outside. Although it's been getting lighter and lighter every day, the sky was overcast this morning and threatening rain. I sighed and fixed myself breakfast, amusing myself by thinking of all the ways I could talk about this kind of weather in French.

Il fait noir... Il fait pas beau!... Il menace...

It made me think about something I said in Spain that made my Spanish friends snort with laughter. I'm not exactly sure why, but I have a theory. On a day with weather like today, we all left a cafe to go back to class. We were all complaining about the weather, and I contributed "Que dia mas feo!" I copied the sytax straight from my host mother, so I knew the construction was correct. Still, my friends laughed and laughed. I figure now that it was because it sounded like something a 70-year-old woman (like my host mother) would say, but I can't be certain.

On my walk to work, I thought about how the weather made the day feel like an autumn evening. The only people outside with me were fellow unfortunates who had to go to early class or work. We nodded to each other in quiet, melancholy complicity.

The weather made me think about the first poem I memorized, "Song" by Christina Rossetti. I felt like I was walking "through that misty twilight/ that doth not rise nor set."

It has been a long long time since I thought about poetry! "Song" made me think about that other Rossetti poem, the one with the line "there is no friend like a sister," and I couldn't think of the title. At the crosswalk I found myself opposite the ODU student theater, and the "Coming Attractions" on the electronic display rolled by:

Musical Theater Presents:

The Apple
(Act I)
and
Goblin Market

How bizarre! I suddenly realized that "Goblin Market" was the title of the Rossetti poem I was thinking about. It was indeed a surreal morning walk to work.