Rotate the foodstuffs!

Despite not getting to sleep nearly early enough last night, and then having to get up far earlier than I wanted today, it's been a really good day.  Today, you see, was absolutely gorgeous.  High of 75, if I recall.  So I got dressed and had a nice brisk walk to school, turned in my poems, went to my last class session for Medieval, had a good talk with Dr. Green about ballad/folksong scholarship, and then came home on the bike trail.  Halfway down it, I took off my shirt to feel the sun on my skin, and when I got home I just continued the disrobing, eventually sitting outside reading and notating sources in a pair of gym shorts and a pair of sunglasses.  Most enjoyable.  Then to top it off, Kevin and I made some fantastic seitan tacos tonight, with all the fixins: lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, guac, sour cream, salsa.  Oh, and some Spanish rice, because why not?  We stuffed ourselves to the gills sitting outside on the back patio, then went for a walk that ended up at Denise's for some ice cream.  I'm feeling really wonderful right now.  The weather's finally taken a turn toward spring (even if it is supposed to get a bit chilly this weekend), I'm on track to finish my work for the quarter without any major difficulty, I had delicious homemade food and some ice cream down at the neighborhood shop, I have a boyfriend who makes me ridiculously happy, and all in all life is good.  Awesome.

It is an absolutely gorgeous day today.  The sky is completely clear and blue, the sun shines strong and bright, and the temperature is coming slightly down now from its mid-afternoon high of around 75.  I decided to take my lunch outside (leftover green onion soup, French bread, and fresh-brewed Assam iced tea), and on the basis of that experience decided to completely disregard my plans to get some hard-core work done on the thesis in the early afternoon.  It's a Friday, it's beautiful out, the jasmine is starting to bloom on the trellis, and I checked out Jeffrey Steingarten's It Must Have Been Something I Ate from the library yesterday.

Instead on working on translations, I sat in the sun and read the Steingarten.  Since it was so pleasantly hot, I changed into my lounging shorts (light nylon ones) and took off my shirt to bask.  Yes, like a lizard.  It's really quite strange, I don't think of myself as a sunbather, yet I do it more and more.  As I was doing an extensive clean of the kitchen earlier, I got to thinking about that.  I always thought of sunbathing as a rather vain activity, but I don't think of myself as a vain person; how to draw the distinction and form a rationale that prevents my brain from hemorrhaging?

I came up with a two-pronged attack.  First, I enjoy the sensation of the sun on my bare skin.  I was lucky enough to be born with pretty dark skin for a white guy, so sunburns are only an issue for me in extreme situations (river rafting for multiple days, high altitudes, etc).  Therefore I feel quite free to indulge in a hearty bath of radiation.  Furthermore, it's a question of self-image.  I see myself as a deeply tanned person.  I've actually been relatively pale for the last few years (about 2000 on, intrinsically linked to no longer directly supervising children in swimming pools every day for six to eight weeks in the summer), but when I was growing up I was dark in the summer.  DARK.  People occasionally thought I was Mexican, which is strange, since my facial features don't really reflect that, but I can't account for other people's inability to discern ethnic heritage.  So now, with my current paleness (relatively speaking), I've got a bit of a disjunct between my internal and external appearances, and it gets to me.  It's one of the reasons I cut off my long hair: my mental self-image has short hair.  I feel more comfortable in my skin when I get darker, hence closer to what I think I should look like.

Of course, I'm not going to be so obtuse as to completely deny the social conditioning factors inherent here.  As a culture, we like tanned people.  We constantly celebrate the hue of sundrenched bodies.  We think it gives people a healthy glow (although skin cancer specialists rightly hold a differing opinion).  And frankly, I'm willing to buy into the hype.  Cause you know what?  Even after just today, I feel hot.