Peace

Here is a pic of what has become my favorite place on campus. It is the Atrium Lounge in the UIS Public Affairs Center (PAC). I like sitting here between classes or just to study. It’s no one element that makes this place so relaxing. It’s not quite but it’s not loud. You can’t see from the picture but the atrium is on the third floor and is open to the 2nd floor, you can hear the students pass the halls around you, you can hear the lectures from the various rooms surrounding you. At night after the sun sets and large skylight overhead is dark the only lights are the can lights shining down the stone wall and the lights under the railing, it’s not bright but it’s not dark. Temperature is always cool and slightly breezy. The art on the wall is called distant thunder which is a lot like the atrium itself, I always feel distant from everything around me, I am aware of it all but I’m removed from it somehow. It’s a very nice place to study, or just to observe those around you, like the cute guy who keeps looking at the girl a few couches down from me and smiling, or the guy who obviously didn’t do his reading and is trying to cram before class, then there is me silently blogging on this little microverse on campus sipping my tea and munching on my bagel. here is to all of those place we all find ourselves at peace.

And one more picture, from the university itself, kind of old (Back before UIS was University of Illinois Springfield, but when it was Sangamon State University), but still looks very much the same, just not as red as the picture implies (most of the carpet is blue now in the atrium itself so the atrium takes on a blueish tint now while the halls still glow red with the under rail lighting reflecting off the old red carpet,