Black bodied snow

During this time of year, if you are in the north, you will notice that it is dark by 5. And in the morning it will stay dark until 8. As you go north, and as December comes, it will be dark even longer, dark for most of the clock.

You will go to work in the morning in the dark. You will come home at night in the dark. You will never see the sun.

The days and nights will be cold and dark, almost indistinguishable from one another. Day does not destroy the night up here, not now. Instead they come together as one.

The sun, it bothers my eyes and gives me headaches. The heat, it makes me ill. But that is frivolous and its not about that. Its about the beauty of the dark. The dark and the cold, and how everything just disappears, swallowed up by steamy sewers, cloaked by the glow of orange streetlights.


Nothing matters on such a cold night. Not how you look, or what you wear, or what you say. Too cold to possibly want, what appears is nothing but a possibility, with nothing defined and nothing ruined.

Silhouettes of naked trees highlighted by the moon. A foreboding picket fence covered in snow across the way. The eery light from a foggy upstairs window that seems to always be on. Black figures in long cloaks and toques, yes toques, whom you can never quite make out at such an early hour, but who instantly remind you to check to see if the back door is bolted.

Its all so beautiful.

And then there are the ghosts. You can never feel the ghosts in the light. The ghosts take leave in summer. They know they don't belong in bright meadows or grassy fields. But when its dark and when its cold and that's just why its called the dead of winter, you know that the icy November wind is not just air whistling past. And you know you're not alone, that nothing can be seen in either direction, and so here you and they are on equal footing.


- posted by Sigurd11/12/2004 11:59:00 PM