Not everyone dies a lonely death, nor sings a song so badly out of tune that they are left completely alone. My father is a good example on both counts. He died only a few months ago, surrounded by his family in a room lit brightly by a morning sun. He often sang with bravado, and seldom with finessa, enjoying himself completely and somehow provoking more admiration than repulsion at his spectacular failure to hit the high notes, or even many of the low notes, of Broadway show tunes. Uncle Joe, his good friend from the Air Force days, and he both showed up to join the church choir as younger men--and were invited to leave the same day.
I want to shoot from the heart, rather than from the hip, but shoot quickly and with a good amount of spontaneity, in these reflections, written during the northern hemisphere's entrance into winter. Hopefully the blazing fire of my love for people and their products of spirit will warm both myself and any readers fortunate enough to wander into my little world of emotion and memory.
Winter is definitely here, although unofficially, in eastern Nebraska. Yesterday was perfectly blizzardy, high winds and just enough snow to drift into alarming white mountains here and there, leaving the ground alternately bare and dolloped with mounds of snow. I opened the door to the garage with difficulty, owing to a small drift of pure, white snow that tried to discourage me from taking the car out today.
But duty called, and I wiped to one side most of the frozen wave. I did not want to spend much time convincing the millions of flakes to remove themselves from my path. I commited a kind of meteorological genocide, then--snow became my enemy for a few minutes, and I ruthlessly stepped on or drove over uncounted crystalline works of nature, as they, in response, mined my path on foot and by car with numberless potential areas of slipperiness and death. I cared nothing for them.
But I am fickle. I can be reconciled to winter's beauty, once ensconced in a warm room, howling winds touching nothing of my well-being. The window allows me the luxury of observing the grace of swirling snowdust, creating and discarding masterworks of patterns along sidewalks and roads, in the dim, yellow light of the street, soon after a descent of evening darkens the stage of the snowglobed world without.
Snow, so alive, so massive, softly rounding out the sharp corners and edges of humanity's lonely conceitedness.
I want to shoot from the heart, rather than from the hip, but shoot quickly and with a good amount of spontaneity, in these reflections, written during the northern hemisphere's entrance into winter. Hopefully the blazing fire of my love for people and their products of spirit will warm both myself and any readers fortunate enough to wander into my little world of emotion and memory.
Winter is definitely here, although unofficially, in eastern Nebraska. Yesterday was perfectly blizzardy, high winds and just enough snow to drift into alarming white mountains here and there, leaving the ground alternately bare and dolloped with mounds of snow. I opened the door to the garage with difficulty, owing to a small drift of pure, white snow that tried to discourage me from taking the car out today.
But duty called, and I wiped to one side most of the frozen wave. I did not want to spend much time convincing the millions of flakes to remove themselves from my path. I commited a kind of meteorological genocide, then--snow became my enemy for a few minutes, and I ruthlessly stepped on or drove over uncounted crystalline works of nature, as they, in response, mined my path on foot and by car with numberless potential areas of slipperiness and death. I cared nothing for them.
But I am fickle. I can be reconciled to winter's beauty, once ensconced in a warm room, howling winds touching nothing of my well-being. The window allows me the luxury of observing the grace of swirling snowdust, creating and discarding masterworks of patterns along sidewalks and roads, in the dim, yellow light of the street, soon after a descent of evening darkens the stage of the snowglobed world without.
Snow, so alive, so massive, softly rounding out the sharp corners and edges of humanity's lonely conceitedness.
