Armchair Travel

Armchair Travel

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Time for a mental vacation, which for me means remembering a physical one. A drive through the European countryside. That’s canola, I think, a bit blurred on the bottom, shot from a moving vehicle.

A few miles down the road, the fields gave way to a village.

And then, a city.

Like any foreign travel, it was a revelation. I strolled on ancient streets, laid my eyes on sights I’d always longed to see. There was time to write and to blog and even to get lost.

When I came home I was not quite the same person I was when I left. Travel is like that. Even armchair travel. 

Backyard Moguls

Backyard Moguls

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It has been noted elsewhere that throughout most of these Winter Games, the temperature in Sochi, Russia, has been higher than in many parts of the United States. And the major weather delay there so far has been due not to blizzard but to fog.

Still, to the viewer back home, the snow-peaked Causcasus, the high-tech ski suits and the sound of cowbells can only mean one thing: It’s cold!

So, I pretend.

Olympic viewing has also skewed my sense of place. When I look at the lumpy snow in my backyard I don’t see wind-blown drifts. Instead I see moguls.

This is a temporary phenomenon. I don’t expect it to last.

Sidelined

Sidelined

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I know. I tend to rhapsodize about the snow. I like how it gilds the everyday, how it covers imperfections, changes patterns, shakes up routines.

But one thing I don’t like is what it does to walking trails and paths. Here in the suburbs, walkers are always at the mercy of the automobile, but never more than when snow and ice take our paths away. Suddenly, all walking is street walking, which is fine when there are shoulders and gravel berms, not so good when those are buried under mountains of plowed snow.

Thursday, after a foot fell, I stayed inside, but by Friday I was itching to be out again. Streets were full of slush; my shoes oozed.  On Saturday, more snow, but it wasn’t sticking, so I ran gingerly through flurries. Yesterday, finally, a still cold with dry pavement, a boon to the ice-phobic.

Our paths are still covered, but I’m not sidelined. At least until the next flakes fall. We’re expecting more snow tonight.

Still Life with Snow

Still Life with Snow

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Out and about yesterday, noticing with each turn how snow transforms the landscape.

First, it softens. That which was sharp is rounded; that which is sparse is full. It is landscape’s pancake makeup, its concealer, hiding blemishes, wrinkles and lines.

Next, it obscures. Mounds of white stuff pad corners so I can’t see around them. Parking lot mountains loom where I least expect them. Shortcuts disappear; only the straightaways remain.

And of course, it beautifies. It does so with utmost nonchalance, but it does so just the same. The little triangle park in Lexington, a bench and a lamppost, of no particular note, becomes a still life. The snow drapes itself like an expensive fabric; it sees more in us than we see in ourselves.

After Love

After Love

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In memory of the poet Maxine Kumin, who died eight days ago, and of St. Valentine’s Day:

After Love

Afterward, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries.
 
These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.
 
Spoons of our fingers, lips
admit their ownership.
 
The bedding yawns, a door
blows aimlessly ajar
 
and overhead, a plane
singsongs coming down.
 
Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when
 
the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self
 
lay lightly down, and slept.

Maxine Kumin, “After Love” from Selected Poems, 1960-1990. Copyright © 1970 by Maxine Kumin.

The Pause

The Pause

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Four years and a week after Snowmageddon we finally achieved the right mix of temperature and liquidity, of moisture from the Atlantic and cold from Canada. The models were right on — and we have a humdinger of a Nor’easter.

It began last night as I drove home from work, the first flakes dancing in the air, hardly visible in the looming dark. “Be where you need to be by 7 p.m.,” the meteorologists said, and I barely made it, arriving home with only minutes to spare.

The coating I went to sleep with has, uh, filled out nicely during the night, and outside is 10 inches or more of the white stuff. The last time we had this much snow I started a blog. This time I’m just aiming to get the laundry done.

But house work, creative work — none of it matters.  What matters is the pause, the break, the caesura.

No one is going anywhere. And that’s fine with me.

Day Job

Day Job

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Eight years ago today I began working at my current job. This is a fact I’ll ponder today — but it’s one I notice every day, given the framed snapshot of the girls on my desk. It’s 2006, our summer trip to California, and they are 11, 14 and 17.

What I’m thinking about now, though, is not just the improbability of their current ages — 19, 22 and 25! — but the fact that for half the years I’ve been working this day job, I’ve been writing this blog. I like the heft of this ratio, and will like it even more when it grows from 1/2 to 3/5 or 3/4.

This is not to disparage the day job but only to say that for me, and for many others, the creative work that happens before and after the eight hours is what matters most. It’s a funny, bifurcated way to live, straddling worlds, but there are compensations.

I savor them however I can.

Mottled Sky

Mottled Sky

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Most color has drained from the earth. Now that our white snow cover is gone (though not for long perhaps?), we are left with brown leaves, gray trees — a monochromatic world. On walks these days my eyes are drawn toward the sky, source of light, source of color.

Here, from yesterday, a swirl of blue and white, which brings the word mottled to mind. Splotched, blotched, swirled, streaked.

I like the word mottled, mostly because it reminds me of soft skies like these. But also because I like how the word sounds. Like marbled, which reminds me of sleek granite or fine paper. And rhyming with coddled, as in egg, or child.

But mostly the word, like the sky, stands on its own.

A View in Mind

A View in Mind

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Cold and snow have hemmed in my walks and runs, have kept me close to home. But yesterday I broke free. Not that it was much warmer than it has been, but it wasn’t snowing or sleeting (yet) so I left the neighborhood for a familiar route.

I darted across the busy street to the trail on the other side, the one with cut-out hedges, the one that always makes me feel like I’m in a maze or a tunnel of English hedgerows. When that trail ended I was at the crest of a rise, where I can see for miles on a clear day.

It wasn’t clear yesterday, but no matter. I have that view in my head. I could see the Dulles control tower, the blue hills beyond it. I could escape the immediate and enter the faraway.

Winter Morning

Winter Morning

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Gray, leaden skies today and snow in the forecast. I’m remembering a warmer morning, with open skies and a spectacular sunrise. One I almost missed until I spotted a streak of orange out the front windows and walked out on the deck.

It was the big show that morning, skies streaked orange and gold, clouds purpled at the horizon. Birds were at the feeder, grackles and chickadees, and in the distance the sounds of other birds, crows cawing, the cackle of a pileated woodpecker.

Everything was alive and singing — the birds, the wind stirring the winter brambles, even the sky, changing by the minute, the sun impatient to start the day.