honey and sting

Woke early today to take Sundara to the airport -- we watched snow fall from the kitchen window, dusting the ground and the trees. By the time I woke up again, hours later, the snow was gone. Later again, on my way to Trader Joe's to stock up on kosher organic chicken, there was first a very soft hail (which Gryphonrhi informs me is called gropple -- it was exactly the texture of crumbling styrofoam), and then, a few blocks on down the road, real hail and icy rain. I drove sloooooowly.

An old favorite, recalled yesterday in a conversation with a new friend about the way her cat regards snow:


The Snow Man

WALLACE STEVENS

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

I love how many scenes are filmed through windows and glass walls... alternately blurred and clear, obscuring and revealing. All the layers of transparency....