December 1998 Archives

10:49 AM, Sunday morning. Oblique.

It’s like that saying:

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Fool me more than that and all I can do is shrug my shoulders and say, "Heck, I’ll eventually get the message."

-- and --

"This time next year I won’t be so dull."

It’s a dish rag day: gray and sodden. The ground is pale and rain-chilled. The air is cold and weepy. And the sky? Well, the sky is the color of leftover milk in a cereal bowl. My initial plan was to sleep in today. Slumber-dive into warmth and languid dreams. But I’ve been up and aimless for some time now, so I may as well write a bit.

Sometimes the mood is served up to you, know what I mean?

This week I’ve been "go boy go". Here, there, everywhere. Time stretches out when you’re busy. Stretches and widens: so that you don’t really feel like you are in the moment so much as skimming along the surface of things. It hasn’t been that bad, though. Sort of fun for the most part. Motion.

But I still have Christmas shopping to finish.

Greg Bear has a great quote from Emily Dickinson at the beginning of his novel, Slant:

"Tell all the truth,
but tell it slant"

How very cool, I thought, when I first read it. I still think it is cool now. Dickinson was a gifted woman. Her words have been on my mind today. Flittering here and there...

My glasses get downright grimy at times -- and everything looks hazy and dull. But, hey, a little spritz and wipe and things are a lot more clear and bright. Even at night. Sometimes it’s not that difficult to get a better view.

It’s evening now, here. Out on the street, the Christmas lights are lit. All that gem-like shine and color. Things are brighter now than they were during the day. Surprise! (Well not really, I guess.)

I’m feeling slant, today. I also feel unavailable and foolish.

Oh bleak.

That’ll pass though.

Live and learn.

--- JWR, 12/20/98

12:13 PM, Inside the snow cave it was crystal quiet. Breathing created a sorcerous mist that swirled and vanished before your eyes, melting the innermost layer of the cave to a blue-white translucency. The cold was...gentle, more a suggestion, a reminder, than an actual chill. Perhaps the Winter Queen’s icy palace was like this.

We’d made the cave by shoveling the driveway and piling the snow up over a garbage can. After much packing and patting with our gloved hands, we carefully pulled the garbage can free -- leaving a mysterious snow-blue cavern, prime for exploration and frosted fantasies.

I remember playing for hours with my brothers and friends in the snow. Playing until ice crusted the cuffs of our gloves and the yarns of our tousle-caps. Playing until our coats and pants were uniformly damp and our noses ran constantly. Snotsicles, don’t you know? I remember the thwack of snowballs, the rush and rattle of sledding, and the bright taste of icicles snapped from the eaves of snowy houses.

The last few Winters in Pittsburgh have been mild, very little snow to speak of. A year ago, I didn’t even have to break out the snow shovel at all. Today is crisp and perfect, under a faultless wide blue sky. You could almost fool yourself into thinking that the tulips and daffodils are starting to poke out of the ground.

But it is the last month of the year and Winter, though it is being quite courtly at the moment, is soon to come. I know that many people have favorites, but I can honestly say that I enjoy all four seasons. And I’ve always appreciated Winter -- whether it be clear, cold and snowless or warmer, mounded in glittering drifts and awash in tumbling flakes. Winter, like the other seasons, carries its own enchantment. Memories and experiences pile up around it.

I guess that, if you stretch things a bit, you could say that every month has its own charms, every day its distinct character, every hour its unique tone. Every moment has its own magic.

Happy December.

--- JWR, 12/1/98