Some random musings from the cold front:
I just read that the power is not expected to be back on in Englewood until Tuesday at the earliest. My Princeton apartment is not expected to have power for another seven to ten days, but classes resume on Monday. It looks like I'll be spending more time in the library than usual.
The outside temperature in Englewood today was 55 degrees. The temperature inside my house was 60 degrees. Suddenly, I'm grateful for the fact that, when I was growing up, my father would turn the thermostat down to 60 every night (and never let it rise above 68 during the day).
I also once lived in a dump in Hell's Kitchen that would not infrequently lack heat and hot water, and occasionally even a functioning toilet, on the coldest winter days. But that was more than made up for by the apartment's panoramic vistas of the Port Authority and Lincoln Tunnel.
Given the choice, I would never opt for a cold shower over a hot one, but I'm convinced that I'm getting some sort of endorphin rush from the cold showers that I've been taking.
The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis is not among my favorite books, but in it he does highlight one eternal truth: some people prefer a self-inflicted, self-contained misery to an experience of grace. As an extremely brief synopsis, the main character is taken on an eschatological bus ride, during which he meets many fellow travelers, each of whom carries a perpetual cloud of cantankerousness over themselves. The bus departs from a land of dreary grays and eventually arrives at what is basically the Microsoft Windows wallpaper--rolling hills, green fields, blue skies--rich colors and lush scenery all around. Despite the improvement in their surroundings, his fellow travelers continue to find things to complain about. In fact, their bodies cannot physically adjust to the beauty of their new surroundings. While wandering through the greenery they discover that they are, in fact, ghosts who lack corporeal bodies. They cannot acclimate to the weightiness, the substantiveness of this new rea...
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