Red-Letter Day

This is my kind of day. And somehow I knew it would be. A great many of the things I love just somehow stacked up in place: overcast sky with light but persistent rain; colorful street theater in spite of the rain (the Polytechnic students are having their Juvenalia which seems to involve, besides drinking, parading around downtown in a glorious array of bizarre costumes: if you've seen Antonioni's Blow-Up, think of the zany mimes at the beginning and end of the film, except that the mimes, being mimes, were raucous but not loud [the students sing and shout loudly, with contagious good cheer]; there are joker caps, a red flag, people dressed as priests, doctors, madmen, mothers, etc., extravagantly stuffed brassieres, people on stilts, the whole nine yards); unexplained but blissfully uninterrupted absence of the boss at work; my friend Bogdan worked the door and security, not the slightly sketchy young man, Tadek's replacement, who was scheduled; I had a nice round of productive and enjoyable classes, beginning at the civilized hour of 9:40 AM and all over by 2 PM; and to top it off I'm close to finishing a book by my favorite author, Patricia Highsmith, but still have enough pages to go that I don't yet have that sense of grieving and desperation that comes just before the end. So far, a nearly perfect day. Now I'm off to eat a quick lunch at Frykas (Fricassee), a modest milk bar on my favorite street, Wieczorka Street, and then tutor a nice lady in exchange for free internet.

One of those days where you just gotta savour the mystery and splendour of it all.