Conceptualizing Familiarity And Other Odd Tidbits

My mom sent me the link to an article in the New York Times today-- "The Familiar Place." It contains the following insight:

It’s disorienting to grasp that the world itself is neutral and that all the familiarity and unfamiliarity I feel is being carried around in my head.

My mom also sent me this useful information in response to yesterday's post:

I just looked up the number of sunny days per year [in Ithaca]. It is an average of 154. So you will see the sun a little less than half the time. The light box will be very useful.
FYI Philadelphia has 93 sunny days, Sacramento has 188, San Francisco has 160 and Raleigh has 111. So Ithaca is not much different from all these other places.

And best of all, Ithaca is already beginning to feel more familiar. It's not really home yet, and won't be for quite awhile, but it has echoes of my college years in New England that are not unwelcome-- for example, today, hearing the bells of the clock tower, the particular tilt of the afternoon sun, the Eastern trees and the hint of humidity all gave me a moment of rather pleasant deja vu transporting me back to my college days. I felt like I'd stepped into the movie Dead Poets Society (whose plot I can't remember at all, just that the film had a big impact on me at the time and embodied the preparatory school feel of the Northeast).