The air will be full of soft enveloping salt and fat. Whole milk will work over hard flakes. Heat will emanate in rough rectangles out of the toaster. Invisible towers of condensation will obscure the window while I stand and wait. Out there, I will see bittersweet branches brought low by precarious piles of snow. Blue jays will bloat against the smoldering cold. Birds yesterday flew wildly against the choke of vines and berries. Birds today big and blue and still. Birds tomorrow torn apart by three black cats. Their transparent temperament tells the temperature. There is a frozen city for no man. Here is the heat of deceivers and the light of self-deception. I peanut butter toast.
Rosa's imagination (and...um...ours) is put to the chalkboard above the kitchen counter.
This year was especially accommodating for the annual tree gathering adventure due to copious amounts of snow. Even the sign that reminds us where to turn was buried in snow, which caused us to drive an extra 30 miles in the wrong direction (every turn looking more like the last). But, no matter, we eventually got there and bagged a beautiful tree. It helped that it was completely covered in snow so we couldn't see what it really looked like until we got it home. There, it turned out strangely symmetrical.
Without fail, this is where you will find us eating an everything bagel with chili garlic (Jacob), a plain with Mert's pimento cheese (Amy) and a plain with house smoked salmon (Rosa).
I was reminded of pine trees (which rarely go out of my mind in winter...how could anything that keeps it's green in winter be far from thought?) today while listening to pandora radio. Winter has not been kind so far but my rhododendron comforts me in the morning as I pass it to get the bus. There are a lot of long needle pines along the way too. They have not fared as well this and last winter. The snow has been heavy and icy and many have lost a lot of limbs or gone down altogether. They appear to go happily though, hanging around dead, perfect green splinters preserved in dirty and disintegrating snowpack. I know how they feel. Winter makes me relish the shortness of life. While idling solitary at the bus stop, having long since stopped wondering about the bus, the baying wind binds this idea to my brain. It's a warm idea that subtracts me and negates me. It makes me feel brave in humility. It makes me feel healthy in diminishment. It makes me long to disappear beneath the rearing light. Under the groaning waves of the faltering evergreens, I'll gladly drown. What is winter for if not for loneliness, pneumonia and for reminding you that you are little more than a desolate meerkat in the desert night nattering to yourself about food and shelter for a few brief days before you're extinguished, having accidentally nibbled on a scorpion you mistook for a delicious grub. Winter is winter. I was not once and I will not be again. In the meanwhile, I'll be a pleasant winter herbage, not wilting by nature but not opposing it.
Though the spirits have been good all around of late (owing to my new job, which makes me less of an asshole), the bodies have not.
We bought our biennial subscription to cable (hello Time Warner, fuck you I hate you) at the Cumberland County Fair. Who doesn't buy their cable at the fair? This year it was $39.95 for a year of digital cable. Not as good as the $29.99 I got for basic cable two years ago, but better nonetheless than the $57.95 that they normally charge for garbage television. It's a racket, we know it, paying anything for commercial television. But it's better than ritualistic suicide or violent hard drinking, both things that come to mind on dark, raw February nights. So, we indulge ourselves as winter comes.
Given their frequency, why shouldn't two of my first five posts be about slugs?
It's been a while since I've posted. I'm not one that can just sit down and bang out a couple paragraphs of thoughts. I have a tendency to dither, edit, delete, rewrite and eventually abandon ship. It doesn't help that I work on a computer all day long (I don't want to talk about it), so cozying up in front of this is the last thing I want to do when I get home.
I was reminded of this by my great friend Jeff, who, similarly employed, said as much while noting that my blog was languishing.
(Thanks for the reminder Jeff and fuck you your blog isn't exactly teeming).
