Day Off

It has been quite the relaxing day. Nothing to do, and so I did just that. I spent the whole day reading a book Sandra let me borrow called Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Marisha Pessl.) It's quite the amazing book and I must suggest it to everyone who knows me and my reading habits well. It's worth it. Though be warned, it's about a girl whose father is a scholar, and so the main character (who I REALLY relate to) often quotes things (not in my beloved Chicago footnote style though) and so the book can get a bit dense, if not tedious to the reader who tends to prefer Dan Brown to Thoreau.

And that's been about it. I did notice two guys on the rooftops outside waving red flags as if communicating with each other. Still haven't unraveled that mystery. What else is there to say?

Sunset here isn't the color I had expected. In my dreams of Egypt (always at sunset) the sun fell from the sky in a vivid burst of orange that set the Nile on fire. In the skies of Cairo, the sun fades away into a muted glow long before it reaches the horizon, and by the time it sets, the Nile and the city are wrapped in a dusky purple. There must be a better word to describe this color. Decidedly purple with a hint of pink at the edges, to remind you that the sun never leaves this place. Dusty and old, but not sad or forgotten. Mauve? Perse? Heliotrope? Amaranthine? Cairo-at-Sunset?

So I watched the world turn Cairo-at-Sunset and combed my hair and imagined that somewhere in the squat little jumble of buildings there was an Arabian prince (the type who likes to dress himself up like a beggar and chat with the creatures that pop now and then out of oil lamps) was watching me and planning to carry me off to his grand palace in some lush oasis somewhere (I was thinking on something more like a 747 than a camel or a flying carpet, by the way) so I could be fed grapes and honey and lounge on pillows in the desert air.

And then, to pass the time until he shows up, I finished my homework.