Alive, And Very Much So...

I was walking to the University when my eyes landed on that swathe of brightly lit mall. The thermometer read 10 degrees Celsius and after a week of sub zero cold and biting winds, it was a surreal sight. It is sunny in Minneapolis! Without any conscious thought my feet led me to the gigantic stairs of the porticoed entrance to Northrop Hall. I sat at the base of a fluted ionic column, my back resting against one of its cold concavity, the head titled back slightly and the warm wind rustling through my hair. Thus positioned, I could look the sun in its eye, I could dare it to work its magic before it disappeared beyond those tall buildings at the other end of the Mall. I drifted far away, and marveled at how I was caught up in all the irrelevant minutiae of life, at how the constant worries and pressures of day to day existence trap you into an enclosed artificiality. When you close your eyes and look at the sun, you can see the blood in your eyelids, you can see the meandering dead cells in all their splendor, you almost catch a glimpse of eternity in that blood soaked veil. Life, in all its vividness, it all its magnificence, invites you to experience the rich sensuous joy of being. I caught myself repeating over and over, muttering under my breath Leo Tolstoy's entry in his diary dated November 19, 1889, "...ALIVE, AND VERY MUCH SO..."