winter's a comin'

I like walking home and smelling smoke from fireplaces in the air, and I like being woken up in the middle of the night by vicious sounding cold wind in the trees outside, then curling up in my warm blanket and going back to sleep. I've been following the winter around the globe for the last few months, and missed most of the summer here at home. I didn't really expect to be looking forward to the cold weather in Sydney, but I am looking forward to it.

When I was in New York earlier this year, I took a walk in Central Park on a day when it got down to something like -20C. I had brought a thermos of hot tea along with me, and I drank the tea whilst sitting on a park bench. Pretty little wisps of steam were coming out of my mug, and the tea itself made me feel warm and cozy from the inside out. I must have looked very contented to the people walking past. People were giving me distant but warm smiles. At one stage a middle-aged couple walked past me, and I overheard the man say to his wife, "nice..."
At least, I hope this was because I looked content.

It's not hard to avoid this type of contentment. Basketball training finished at around 11:30pm last night. We ate dinner at Maccas after training. It would've been early in the morning by the time we got there. When we were eating our food in the car, we were quietly asked to leave the McDonald's carpark sooner rather than later by a couple of police officers. They were concerned about a shooting that had taken place there recently, and didn't want people hanging around for too long. I hadn't heard about the shooting, but I wasn't surprised. There were plenty of dodgy looking people around, driving hotted up sports cars.

I tend to get very competitive when playing basketball, and the scrimmages at training last night were more intense than they have been recently. Within the context of the game itself, I guess that's not a bad thing, but it did take me a while to get to sleep when I finally got home. When I did eventually doze off, I had dreams about basketball that were hardly soft and fluffy.

I woke up this morning and heard the wind rustling through the trees. I could hear currawongs singing as well. I knew the air was a bit chilly, but my blanket felt warm. It was nice. But I felt groggy from getting to sleep so late. The night before seemed odd and empty, and I wondered what it was that I was doing.