Look into that smoldering building's bombed-out fog until it finally lifts

[sovay]

I spent so much of Boxing Day curled on the couch with my books, I failed to notice it was snowing until well after dark when it glittered down through the streetlight in one of those soundstage tinsel veils. One of my goals for this afternoon was to get out into its Arctic wonderland, whose streets were spidered with ice and drift-blue with chemical salt instead of glacial age. I walked further than I had intended and had to come back across the snow of the imaginatively designated Veterans Memorial Park between the iron freeze of the Mystic River and the less elemental red lights of Route 16.



I love the late sun at this time of year. It looks like tinted etchings. It looks as though anything could come out of it.



An older man with ski poles on the other side of the street called across to ask if I was waiting for the train whose headlights I could see brightening down the black-and-white print of the rails. I called back in the affirmative and then the camera promptly shut itself down and had to be restarted at exactly the wrong moment for the shot I was trying to frame, but at least the festive cowcatcher wreath came through.



Well, yes, that is traditionally how it works.



I have no idea if this bridge over the Mystic is named for any local veteran or councillor or police officer, but it makes a wonderful little illusion of a viaduct.



The water had not only frozen to a metallic opacity, it had collected windblown dunes of snow. My fingers had at this stage effectively ceased to work despite gloves and the pockets of my leather jacket.



I don't know a name for this little chunk of bridge, either, but I liked the contrast of its turbid ice and its snow-stark parapet. After that I walked home without photography. I saw a commuter train rattling over the overpass by the U-Haul.

I have been sick for so long, I feel that I have once again come unplugged from any of the places where I live. I don't know that I will be any less sick in the immediately foreseeable future, but I have to try to socket myself back into these streets, this light, the inside of my own head. I remain so tired the latter feels emptier than I would like, but at least I am trying not to punt every idea that crosses it as pointlessly exhausting. In the meantime I am enjoying Eerie East Anglia: Fearful Tales of Field and Fen (ed. Edward Parnell, 2024) and Russell Hoban's The Bat Tattoo (2002).

Comments

[ride_4ever]

Very beautiful imagery and words. I too have been out walking in the "winter wonderland". Alas that you have been and are feeling unwell, but oh what beauties you still see and share.

[sovay]

Very beautiful imagery and words. I too have been out walking in the "winter wonderland". Alas that you have been and are feeling unwell, but oh what beauties you still see and share.

Thank you so much! What is the snow like where you are?

[ride_4ever]

Earlier this month we had snow that piled up nearly knee-deep. Then the temperature went up and we had rain and melting snow. Now we're having the fluffy snowflakes that make the air and the sidewalk sparkle, but not making much depth of snow. I love to walk about outside when there's that kind of "snow sparkle".

[sovay]

I love to walk about outside when there's that kind of "snow sparkle".

Yes! We haven't had that kind of snow-fluff here yet. I'm hoping we will. At this point I am happy for snow that sticks.