On the Wall

Today's weather is blissful. The softedge of autumn has made a subtle appearance. The sun is hot, but the air that breezes through campus conteracts the late summer rays of dear Mister Sol.

I ate my lunch this afternoon outside. I prefer to do that, it gets me out and about, I can take a short walk and I can see what's happening on campus. While I was working on my masters, I was only on campus on Fridays and when I was on campus to work on an assignment it was often in the evening. So, I wasn't able to really see what happens on campus during the week. The answer: not much. IUPUI is a commuter school. Of the 25,000 or so that are enrolled probably 99 percent are commuters.

After I ate my lunch I went back to the library to deposit my plastic Kroger back on my desk and grabbed the book I'm currently trying to get into. Its not going well. I took myself and said book outside again and sat upon one of the low walls. I leaned against a lightpost and tried to read. My after-lunch-slow-down mental capablities had a hard time keeping up with David Foster Wallace (yes, I'm a ghoul. He hanged himself over the weekend and I decided to check his bookout of the library). The sun was shinging in my eyes, too.

Classes must of let out while I was sitting upon my wall. Suddenly the walkways were awash with pedestrians jocking for position, most with backpack shells strapped to their backs. I feared for anyone who decided to become an eddy in the bipedal stream, disaster might have struck.

Eventually, my attention was caught by a orange flowers in the flowerbed adjacent to my wall. I think they were daisies, but I don't know if daisies come in orange. Yellow, yes, orange, I'm not sure. I noticed in the flowers (daisies) a microcosm of life. In this case: butterflies and honey bees. They worked in tandem. The butterfly would flit from one flower to another and the honey bee would buzz along side. I found it to be almost refreshing to watch this small ecosystem at my feet work itself. The butterfly would alight upon a flower flaps its paperthin wings two or three times and the move to the next.

In some weird way, it struck me as beautiful.