A hazy shade of winter

There are few times of the year when everything around slows down, everything else briefly gets all silent and  you feel all the more closer to the place you live in. Its seems that the place belongs to you alone and you do not have to share it with all the passersby on the roads or the stream of cars making you wait at intersections. You feel a particular kinship with the solitary beauty of the place, standing aloof and vacant. Its weird because the same scene might very well be the sorry tale of a lonely soul left all alone in a deserted city.

Since I am again all by myself for the Thanksgiving break in Champaign, I try to tread carefully given the dichotomous situation I find myself in. Now the reason why I ended up all by myself for the break could range from- being lazy, not listening to friends, saving up a little to buy some gifts for friends and family.. etc..the list can get very long. So in everyone'e best interest lets just skip this part.

I sit by myself doing things that I like most, starting with going back to swimming after months.(Thankfully my body didn't hurt so much the next day!)
Reading a stolen newspaper for straight three hours..ahh what a feeling. I might have to do some explaining for the stolen piece. But in my defense the newspapers lie dumped on the ground near the mailbox and I have never seen anyone religiously picking up their copies. And secondly with all the proliferation of smart phones and internet, who in US wants to sit down and read some over 100 printed pages of weekend Wall Street Journal. And thirdly my public apology to whoever sorely missed their weekend newspaper because someone else picked it up and actually read it when they were out of campus for a glorious Thanksgiving break.
Honestly I sat down with a newspaper on a Sunday morning after almost one and a half years. Somehow in the course of settling to the new ways of life in US, the television and newsprint paper have totally gone out of my life(substituted by assignments of-course! ).
The television got a revival since August this year when one of my friends moved into an apartment with a Television set and my room mate started her weekly trips to Chicago to her husband's place. (Those two chance coincidences have spawned a lot of things, the television viewing being one of them.)
But the lowly old newspaper was missing from my life until today. It was a reunion so dear, i remembered all the lazy Sunday afternoons spent with a newspaper and my diary! Imagine my joy at finding an article on Oscar Wilde( her wife actually) but I wouldn't complain because it had a generous sprinkling of Wilde's pithy, witty, rye-humored quotes.
I smiled inwardly reading this quote:

"The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life"

And you bet it went to my diary, though slightly modified, since I am not so aware of the married life as much  as the Facebook life of people. I wonder "when people will begin to get suspicious of anything that looks like a happy Facebook life!" I bet it will be the marketers who will get the wind first because they have the highest stakes in this marriage!