I crawled into bed very early last night, slept through flatmates knocking on my door, sirens outside my open window, and turned over in my navy sheets dreaming of some unpretty situation that I can't remember anymore. When I woke up and groggily checked the time, it was 5:30 AM and there was this marvelous dawn scene seeping through my room. I was numbed by the beauty of the gradation in the sky, a mixture of desaturated pastel colors that reminded me of the safari. To the wonder. 

I stumbled upon this quote today in a book I'm reading for my essay.

Places are fragmentary and inward-turning histories, pasts that others are not allowed to read, accumulated times that can be unfolded but like stories held in reserve, remaining in an enigmatic state, symbolizations encysted in the pain or pleasure of the body.

- from Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life    

Resonance! Just in the morning on my trip to the library, I spotted this cute little ensemble of windows and barren bush. I stopped and took the time to chuckle at its resemblance of a dazzled and dopey smile. And just like that, this arbitrary place on the street became a fragment of my 'accumulated time,' a space that I now will always find endearing and personal.