It’s the end of January, not the month known for going out (coming in?) like a lion. But this year it’s doing just that. Wild wind, rough rain, flash flooding.
King Lear weather.
“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples…”
We are not the first to see weather as sign of a disordered world.
But this time, maybe we’re right.
(Not this steeple! It’s in Annapolis.)
I saw them yesterday as I left work, a flock of sparrows taking in the air, sunning themselves in the hedge at the end of the alley.
They looked so much like a painting that I had to stop, snap a picture — and appreciate the respectful distances they kept from each other, the way they blended in with their surroundings, a study in brown.
It was the sort of day when everyone was outside who could be.
And that included sparrows, of course.
I used to think of trampoline bouncing as a warm weather activity, something best done barefoot in summer. But this year (maybe because it’s been warm, maybe because I have a greater need to move to music), I’ve been doing it all fall and winter, too.
Last week I ventured out in the snow. It was a light dusting, and the stuff was powdery enough to sift right through the pad onto the ground. Yesterday I bounced after the sleet had stopped and the day had cleared.
If I bounce long enough, the backyard starts to look pretty good: the brush no longer needs chipping; the trees no longer need trimming. They are shaggy friends now, these trees, with long, spindly arms that touch the sky.
It’s lighter longer, but the sun still slouches low in the sky these January afternoons. So before it’s too late, I shoot winter shadows.
The posts, lattice work and vines make a delicate tracery on the siding. A monochrome reflection of an already color-stripped world.
Even the errant string of Christmas lights that dangles, unkempt, from the crossbeam looks elegant in reverse.
When the wind blows, the shadows wag in the fading light.
Cold air and snow drive the wild things closer to civilization. A bluejay perches on the rim of a wrought iron chair, pecks at the peeling paint, fluffs his feathers — his broad back to the window, a flick of his beak then he’s gone.
Minutes later, a fox trots across the yard, sleek, rangy, in no hurry as he makes his way to the woods. Searching for food, for small animals driven out of hiding.
And yesterday, on the way to the post office, I saw three vultures tearing at a dead deer beside the road.
We may mulch our gardens, mow our lawns and prune our trees. But the animals know we are just visitors here.
After six months of phone conversations only I received my first real email communication from Suzanne this morning.
“I’m writing to you from the bustling metropolis of Kandi,” she began. And it must seem like a bustling metropolis to her, living in a village without electricity and running water. On the other hand, she intended irony. After all, she’s a child of the suburbs, grew up in the shadow of our nation’s capital, can maneuver a van around the Beltway at rush hour if need be.
Now, she travels on foot, bike, moto or bush taxi.
Seeing her message makes me want to drop everything, hop a jet to Cotonou and bush-taxi myself right up north to Kandi.
I won’t, of course. Not yet, anyway. This is her world now. I write about it only to remark on how the written word brings her new life to us in such a special, immediate way. Words winging their way from one world to another with the stroke of a key.
After several futile forecasts yielding nothing, we woke up this morning to a white world. Not quite an inch yet but it’s still falling and roads are cold enough that every flake is sticking.
Maybe weather-watchers knew this snow was on the way, but I didn’t, so I felt like a kid this morning when I glanced outside, saw the white coating on the deck, the flurries in the air. For just a minute I felt that leap in the heart: No school today! No school!
And then I remembered: I don’t go to school anymore. I go to work. And yes, we are having work today.
(We didn’t receive quite this much! This is an old photo…)
No masks yet; we haven’t come to that. But I flinch from my Metro seatmate, who hacks his way through the long ride in from Vienna. And I touch as little as possible, pressing a glove, or a sleeve or a paper towel into duty.
At church they announced a temporary hiatus of the common cup (a bizarre tradition anyway; other faiths, with their individual thimbles of wine, are more rational about this) and asked us to respect those who choose not to shake hands during the sign of peace.
In my pew no one shook hands. Was everyone sick? Did everyone think I was sick? Or was this the excuse we’ve all been waiting for? A retreat into private prayer.
Cold and flu season makes one thing clear: non-communication is contagious.
We seem to live in a world based more and more on choice — what we read, hear, taste and see is preset to our likes and dislikes. News online instead of from a newspaper. Music from an iPod instead of a radio.
I thought of this on a recent long drive when I had only the radio for company. Suddenly I wasn’t in charge. The airwaves were. Depending upon the angle of my antenna and the pitch of the road I could be listening to a Chopin Nocturne or a local sports call-in show. Sometimes I was listening to both at once!
But the airwaves were kind to me that day. It was morning in the mountains of Kentucky when I heard Brahms’ Second Symphony and afternoon in the mountains of West Virginia when I heard Brahms’ First.
There they were — and not because I had bought and stored them in an mp3 file. (I already have them, in fact.) They were gifts from thin air, music at random — and all the sweeter because of it.
Lately at lunch I’ve taken to walking around the Capitol. It’s only a few minutes from my office and I can stroll around it in 20 minutes or so, perfect if I don’t have much time.
The place has no bad angles. It’s grand and imposing no matter how it is viewed. The dome (finished 150 years ago; its completion of great importance to President Lincoln, a metaphor for uniting the divided country) is at its best against a blue sky. But even on cloudy winter days the building has its charms.
In the last two months I’ve watched as the West Front platform has been built, the fences have gone up and the chairs been arranged. The people’s place? Not exactly.
I’ll be glad when the inauguration is behind us and ordinary citizens can walk around the Capitol again.