One of those nights, my friends. One of those nights. I've been doing well, though, so I won't complain and will sit and read First Amendment common law until the hydroxyzine kicks in.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gavagai is here visiting me, but like sensible people, is asleep at one am. She's been here nearly a week, and it's been quiet and lovely; we've wandered around Ithaca, we've been to Collegetown Bagels and wandered the campus and crossed Fall Creek; we walked around the lake and up gorges swollen with snowmelt and admired the shards of ice like paving slabs; also we went to a formal dance and a bowling alley on the same day, but not together! Bowling was fun and all retro-Americana and I was very bad at it; the law school spring ball was badly-organised but bright with fairy lights and golden wine all the same. We've been watching a lot of Six Feet Under, about which ( I have thoughts )
I have introduced Laura to a whole bunch of my friends, andlivrelibre took us to the Corning Museum of Glass, which was stunning - a mixture, as Laura puts it, between hard science of how glass is made, and gorgeous glass artwork, chess sets, sculpture, fabulously tacky paperweights. Also, a live demonstration of glassblowing by a pair of delightfully nonchalant glassblowers in jeans and T-shirts swinging around globes of molten glass at a mere 1200 degrees Celsius. I'd heard of Corning glass, of course, but had no idea until I moved here that Corning is a small town in upstate New York. It was definitely worth the trip.
(And! The first attempt at the Palomar telescope mirror, a twenty-tonne chunk of scarred glass I remember reading about when I was younger. I was delighted by the information panel, which explained how the mirror got into the building. Answer: it didn't. It was always there, and the building was built around it. What a metaphor for how the world changes around determined people.)
The weather is getting kinder and milder all the time. After last week's epic snowstorms we have bare ground and green grass and a heavy, earthy richness to everything - creeks full of running water, daylight at six, a feeling like the world has promise. In the hubbub as I was settling down for a class, a guy piped up and said, "I don't mean to be poetic and shit, but did you know outside has a smell?" And he's totally right, snow and ice don't smell of much but conifers and wet ground do. There is a lot of mud and rain. I don't care. Equinox next week, spring is coming. Possibly related, my work is going well for the first time in a month or so; I spent some time yesterday reading up on the common law of murder, and losing myself in Coke and Hale and the King's peace and the person in being and malice aforethought and being full of wonder all over again that I get to do what I do, that I get to spend my whole day talking about words mean and what evil is and why people do what we do and what's right and what's wrong and what's a traffic regulation, and it matters.
I'm going to New Orleans next week. Shim is visiting for a week in April. It breaks my heart a little that I have been here eight months and I've had the culture shock and the long hard winter and unlearning of equity and the relearning of the common law, and now the sun is shining and I have friends and an ease borne of familiarity beneath my life... and it's nearly time to go back. I have another life in some parallel universe where I transfer to the JD programme this summer and apply for the Second Circuit clerkship that just landed in my inbox. In this life, the winter's nearly gone.
gavagai is here visiting me, but like sensible people, is asleep at one am. She's been here nearly a week, and it's been quiet and lovely; we've wandered around Ithaca, we've been to Collegetown Bagels and wandered the campus and crossed Fall Creek; we walked around the lake and up gorges swollen with snowmelt and admired the shards of ice like paving slabs; also we went to a formal dance and a bowling alley on the same day, but not together! Bowling was fun and all retro-Americana and I was very bad at it; the law school spring ball was badly-organised but bright with fairy lights and golden wine all the same. We've been watching a lot of Six Feet Under, about which ( I have thoughts )I have introduced Laura to a whole bunch of my friends, and
livrelibre took us to the Corning Museum of Glass, which was stunning - a mixture, as Laura puts it, between hard science of how glass is made, and gorgeous glass artwork, chess sets, sculpture, fabulously tacky paperweights. Also, a live demonstration of glassblowing by a pair of delightfully nonchalant glassblowers in jeans and T-shirts swinging around globes of molten glass at a mere 1200 degrees Celsius. I'd heard of Corning glass, of course, but had no idea until I moved here that Corning is a small town in upstate New York. It was definitely worth the trip.(And! The first attempt at the Palomar telescope mirror, a twenty-tonne chunk of scarred glass I remember reading about when I was younger. I was delighted by the information panel, which explained how the mirror got into the building. Answer: it didn't. It was always there, and the building was built around it. What a metaphor for how the world changes around determined people.)
The weather is getting kinder and milder all the time. After last week's epic snowstorms we have bare ground and green grass and a heavy, earthy richness to everything - creeks full of running water, daylight at six, a feeling like the world has promise. In the hubbub as I was settling down for a class, a guy piped up and said, "I don't mean to be poetic and shit, but did you know outside has a smell?" And he's totally right, snow and ice don't smell of much but conifers and wet ground do. There is a lot of mud and rain. I don't care. Equinox next week, spring is coming. Possibly related, my work is going well for the first time in a month or so; I spent some time yesterday reading up on the common law of murder, and losing myself in Coke and Hale and the King's peace and the person in being and malice aforethought and being full of wonder all over again that I get to do what I do, that I get to spend my whole day talking about words mean and what evil is and why people do what we do and what's right and what's wrong and what's a traffic regulation, and it matters.
I'm going to New Orleans next week. Shim is visiting for a week in April. It breaks my heart a little that I have been here eight months and I've had the culture shock and the long hard winter and unlearning of equity and the relearning of the common law, and now the sun is shining and I have friends and an ease borne of familiarity beneath my life... and it's nearly time to go back. I have another life in some parallel universe where I transfer to the JD programme this summer and apply for the Second Circuit clerkship that just landed in my inbox. In this life, the winter's nearly gone.
