Ice

“Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish one

sensation, fire, from the other, frost.”

― A.S. Byatt, Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice


Richardson Fountain – 2015

Here in North Texas the temperature is above freezing now and everything is slowly returning to normal. The biggest thing now are all the busted pipes – I know more than a few folks that have tremendous water damage. We were without water for a few days – a frozen pipe somewhere – but when the thaw came the pipes held. We were without power for a few stretches – rolling blackouts – but those weren’t a big problem for us. It was sort of nice to be without electricity for a bit – the temperature dropped but it was an excuse to bundle under the blankets.

The saddest thing at our house was we discovered two frozen young rabbits in the yard as the snow melted. I’m sure there was a lot of that.

There is a wire photo going around of the water fountain behind the library here in Richardson – in articles like this one.

Wire Photo of the Richardson Library

When I saw it, I remembered I had discovered it frozen five years ago and wrote a blog entry about it.

It looks like its a little more frozen this time, but it’s the same place. I do know the city leaves the water running to protect the pipes and it gets like this fairly often.

Richardson Fountain – 2015
Richardson Fountain -2015

Here’s the fountain on a warm day along with my cargo/commuting bike:

The fountain in back of the Richardson Library. (click to enlarge)

Short Story (100 words) Of the Day, After a Heartless Winter by Juliana Gray

An animal, I said, when the tiller turned up bones.

—-Juliana Gray, After a Heartless Winter

(click to enlarge)

 

Read it here:

After a Heartless Winter by Juliana Gray

from 100 Word Story

The Smell of an Earlier Time Leaking Out Between the Pages

“When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages – a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

The fountain in back of the Richardson Library and my commuter bike.
(click to enlarge)

Oblique Strategy: Distorting time

Richardson Library Fountain in a different time of year.

I was in a bookstore once, looking around. This was one of the big chain bookstores, two stories high, the kind that have pretty much been driven out of business by Amazon. Few people were buying, but the store was littered with folks sitting around reading stuff from the shelves.

I thought to myself, “I wish they had a place like this, like a bookstore, but instead of selling the books, they would simply let you read them.” In a flash, of course, I realized that these places did exist. I was thinking of a library.

My only problem with the library is the intense impression that there is an overload of knowledge bearing down on me, almost suffocating me. I sit at the little table, maybe with my laptop, with my pitiful little pile of books – trying to decide which to read right then, which to take home. I look around and there are the miles of shelves groaning with tomes. It intimidates me. Somewhere out there is a practically infinite amount of knowledge that I simply can’t survive without. But where is it? Which books do I need, rather than want?

So many books. So little time.

Like Burning Tears

“And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?”
― Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

Fall Colors
University of Texas at Dallas
Richardson, Texas
(click to enlarge)

Oblique Strategy: Revaluation (a warm feeling)

The trees along my drive to work have exploded into flame.
Their conflagration tinted according to their species from a sodium flame yellow, through orange, on to a deep blazing crimson.
Except for the cemetery, monocultured with live oaks, all their usual dark spinach.

I knew someone once, a long, long time ago. She said she liked the fall better than the spring. She liked the sense of foreboding, the knowledge that a cold storm was coming – the excitement of onrushing doom.

It took me decades to understand what she was talking about and how important it was.

Maybe They Never Vanish

“Maybe it’s wrong when we remember breakthroughs to our own being as something that occurs in discrete, extraordinary moments. Maybe falling in love, the piercing knowledge that we ourselves will someday die, and the love of snow are in reality not some sudden events; maybe they were always present. Maybe they never completely vanish, either.”
― Peter Høeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow

One Last Look At Winter

One Last Look At Winter

Her Heart Were A Green Flame

“Doesn’t it seem as though her heart were a green flame? Perhaps it’s the cold green heart of a small green snake, with a minute flaw in it, the kind of small green snake that slithers from branch to branch in the jungle, passing itself off as a vine. What’s more, perhaps when she gave me the ring with such a gentle, loving expression, she wanted me to draw such a meaning from it some day.”
― Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow

Spring Snow, Richardson, Texas

Spring Snow,
Richardson, Texas