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Every Toe Accounted For
Jan. 6th, 2014 06:04 pmSomething there is that loves an ending. If you read just half the book you'd never know but once you've closed the back cover and made the book a book again, you know the end, you can be satisfied with that at least. That you know the ending. Allied to that inclination is my desire to see the world end, be destroyed utterly, consumed by the sun, by space, by ice.
Because then I will know.
This isn't the end of course, it's merely miraculous, so I feel compelled in some way to make a note and comment for posterity.
Today we were braced and it was cold, as cold as they said it would be. All expectations were met. To augment the map that the National Weather Service put together I looked up the weather in Alaska today - January 6th - the Blue Monday, and do you know that it's 30 degrees warmer in Anchorage than it is in Cleveland? I thought a lot about To Build A Fire. I don't know if it was just my middle-school that leaned so hard on Jack London or not, but I read so many of his stories and they lingered, To Build A Fire - the man's beard forming icicles of tobacco juice, I thought of that, my beard froze up, you can feel it, when it freezes up, the hairs gone stiff and brittle. It was warm yesterday, warmer. I went out to forage for food and lay in stocks. Heavy laden with groceries - I can carry about $100.00 worth of food home unaided. I have determined that about my bodily strength. And the sun was shining. The sun shone down and I brought home my groceries and cooked and ate steak and fruit. And prepared.
One must build a wall against the intemperate sky, must maintain the knit-mail, the cardigan panoply. I was ready.
The day goes by like all others, there's talk in the office of the temperature, we marvel lightly as it falls bit by bit, quickly. The walks and approaches are crystalline and brittle, everything has a hard crust and within there is a feeling of being the molten core of something immense and fragile.
And what lies outside remains mysterious. Invisible things approach and there is nothing to be seen the winter comes to blind the world. My glasses fog and I have moments of confusion about which key is the right one, fumbling in gloved hands - there's a sudden awareness of all the disabilities somehow attached at once. Fingers made useless by gloves, blindness setting in as ice forms on glasses, your feet are unsteady on ice, you fall, you barely stand, can hardly walk.
Something there is that wants to see the end, to experience it for yourself, but the end is a menacing dangerous thing, it might try to kill you, it might not wait for you to notice. It might cripple you first. Endings.
But then, you have a warm house lit within, a bold, strong statement of perseverance and permanence, your very own bastion against the dooming cold. Cleverer than the wind and stronger than the sky. That's what they'll say about me, someday when this is recovered, for posterity.
Because then I will know.
This isn't the end of course, it's merely miraculous, so I feel compelled in some way to make a note and comment for posterity.
Today we were braced and it was cold, as cold as they said it would be. All expectations were met. To augment the map that the National Weather Service put together I looked up the weather in Alaska today - January 6th - the Blue Monday, and do you know that it's 30 degrees warmer in Anchorage than it is in Cleveland? I thought a lot about To Build A Fire. I don't know if it was just my middle-school that leaned so hard on Jack London or not, but I read so many of his stories and they lingered, To Build A Fire - the man's beard forming icicles of tobacco juice, I thought of that, my beard froze up, you can feel it, when it freezes up, the hairs gone stiff and brittle. It was warm yesterday, warmer. I went out to forage for food and lay in stocks. Heavy laden with groceries - I can carry about $100.00 worth of food home unaided. I have determined that about my bodily strength. And the sun was shining. The sun shone down and I brought home my groceries and cooked and ate steak and fruit. And prepared.
One must build a wall against the intemperate sky, must maintain the knit-mail, the cardigan panoply. I was ready.
The day goes by like all others, there's talk in the office of the temperature, we marvel lightly as it falls bit by bit, quickly. The walks and approaches are crystalline and brittle, everything has a hard crust and within there is a feeling of being the molten core of something immense and fragile.
And what lies outside remains mysterious. Invisible things approach and there is nothing to be seen the winter comes to blind the world. My glasses fog and I have moments of confusion about which key is the right one, fumbling in gloved hands - there's a sudden awareness of all the disabilities somehow attached at once. Fingers made useless by gloves, blindness setting in as ice forms on glasses, your feet are unsteady on ice, you fall, you barely stand, can hardly walk.
Something there is that wants to see the end, to experience it for yourself, but the end is a menacing dangerous thing, it might try to kill you, it might not wait for you to notice. It might cripple you first. Endings.
But then, you have a warm house lit within, a bold, strong statement of perseverance and permanence, your very own bastion against the dooming cold. Cleverer than the wind and stronger than the sky. That's what they'll say about me, someday when this is recovered, for posterity.
