Recovery for a day

We are digging out.

It's bright afternoon, the kind of intense winter sun that reflects from the snow and makes you squint and smile simultaneously.  Sitting here at the NorthStar, watching folks walk by on Congress Street, most sporting sunglasses and windblown smiles against the cold.

Our old friend, the wind, seems more playful than vicious. 

At least, it seems so in the bright daylight.

The air is warmer.  This has several effects, two of them being 1) you want to get out and look around (well, I do, anyway) and 2) the structure of the snowflakes condenses and it gets heavier, harder to shovel and a little more dangerous to walk on.

Stores are using the break as a chance to resupply.  It might well be that they were going to restock anyway.  The snowbanks are wide, constricting all but the busiest streets.  Trucks park as tightly as they can against them and the passing traffic slows.  This encourages pedestrians to slip between the vehicles, which adds a whole new wild element to the mix.

Last night was a chance to head out into the cold, walking Chief the Wonderdog.  His mother was working another double shift and it fell to me to keep him warm, fed, watered, walked - and emptied out.  The weather for all of yesterday was a strange, strange patchwork of warmth, cold, wind, sunlight, grey clouds, a change every fifteen minutes - there was no time to welcome, adjust, enjoy, curse or even understand what was going on.  

The sky was the same way.  A friend I'd run into observed - after a scotch - that it was a "Maxfield Parrish" sort of sky.  And so it was, broad, brief strokes of clouds.  

But by the time we parted the sky had transformed into Van Gogh - clear and starry.  Glittering in beauty - terrible in cold.

Such contrasts match my general mood as Mary Flagg's funeral comes onto the radar screen for tomorrow.  Thankfully the bright sunshine of the moment provides a safe context, like a strong pedal point give you a place to bounce off of as you write dense counterpoint.

Not sure of what the texture will be when this is all finished.  I don't think it will ever be finished, just continuing on until someone else takes up my thread and weaves their own into it - just as we are weaving Mary's - and all our dear departeds - into our current pattern.