more snow in prospect

Yesterday it seemed like marshmellow fluff. Today, globs of it caught in tree limbs, it seemed a lot like shaving lather, thick and in many places throughout the park unmarred. I don't think I'd have gotten far if it weren't for a network of ski trails that were tamped down solidly. I wanted to go see the waterfalls because of the smerfy feeling the snow's been giving me, what with every circular object wearing a gnome's hat. It wasn't so smerfy there at the falls, more straight up 18th Century gloom.

There was a moment I wish I'd captured, it was when the dark wood beyond the lake was shot through with the white marks made by a large flock of seagulls, flurrying their graceful white shapes, rephrasing the falling snow in avian form. Once on the frosty lake they were no longer white, not when set off by the white of the lake's snow-covered thin ice.

Lot Goose

I was wondering what creatures had become casualties of this extreme weather. Last night on an errand on 7th Ave the kids and I were pelted with sleet that pinched like tiny needles as it fell at an unknown velocity from the laden clouds to our lips and eyes. And then it got stranger, waking up to some of the stickiest snow I've ever seen luxuriously redressing every exposed surface. Some kind soul with a snow blower took it upon himself to clear the sidewalk around the house on the corner so the woman who lived there only had to shovel her stairs when she came out. I don't admire those that own corner lots on days like this.

When I took the dog down to Prospect I saw that even the vinyl Key Food awning had a good amount of snow stuck to it, a parking lot barren of all cars, blanketed with the same dense carpet as everywhere else. Something had parked right in the middle of it, a lone Canada Goose marooned smack in the center. I later discovered the goose had been injured and saw a bloody gash behind its right leg. It must have felt good to lie there with the thick soft snow numbing its wound, the world snowed in and away. It had been there since about 4 a.m. according to the woman on the corner. I went home and brought her some cornmeal which she nibbled when I was a safe distance away. I doubted she was able to leave but was proved wrong when a golden retriever approached. She was in the air a split second later, heading West.

Globigerine Ooze

Well I suppose that's not what will become of the snow that's falling today, coating several strata of now filthy micro glaciers underneath it that may or may not see a thaw anytime soon. In drier weather I recently came up on a cast-out book, The Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Animal Kingdom by V.J. Stanek. It was good and dry thank goodness because the Pictorials are really amazing, tight cuts of the most striking animal glamour. Above, glamour and luxe too small for the naked human eye. No one really knows exactly how oil came to be, perhaps it's fossilized reptiles, perhaps algae, vintage globigerine ooze.

marigold seeds

new coat

threshold

We gota 4 month old puppy from the North Shore Animal League, the largest no-kill shelter in the world. They collect dogs from kill shelters all over the South, and brought up our puppy from somewhere in Virginia just a few days before we adopted her. It must feel amazing to save all those lives. She's warmed up to the snow a lot since last week, but trying to housebreak a pooch on a day like yesterday was kind of pointless.

sugar and salt

I was kind of wishing for rain to wash the salt on the sidewalks away, those knobby lumps that get stuck between the dog's toes and make her limp. Sorry if I got what I asked for. As for sugar, its hexagonal, and I wash it down with my coffee. Sometimes it gets stuck in a gourd, and then you have to roll it on the ground.

Bridge

It's MLK day today and I'm thinking about the sound of his voice. All my life I've heard it and it was always more than words, more than vision, something like milk for the soul, a time-release launch that keeps blooming into expanses of courage, nourishing atrophied and distracted hearts satiated by lies and starved of the ultrasound of compassion that trembles in his voice. It is a sound to fall asleep to and wake up in a promised land.

H & TV

Wonder what show blew the set out?

snow on the rose bush

From the NYT science section. Sometimes you can't eat just one.

mammography and hagiography

I went to Borough Park this week for a mammogram at the junction of Fort Hamilton Parkway and 65th St., across from 3 Brooklyn Guys grocery store. The scenery was not pretty, not with the snow heaped up in filthy mounds and nowhere to park but the hagiographies of Buddhist sages that I read while in the waiting room melted my heart and made all my hair stand on end.

Life is really really strange. That morning I had been watching a video over and over again of Johnny Horton singing The Battle of New Orleans, for pretty obvious reasons that include costuming, charisma and a voice I couldn't get enough of. It was kind of strange that one of the sonographers at the lab looked a lot like Horton, Brooklyn style, and kind of strange that the day before I had been watching videos of Dylan and the exterminator that showed up to treat the apartment upstairs was a ringer for Dylan (with Adam Sandler's brown eyes.) I've looked for explanations of synchronicity but don't think I'll find one that can answer for the profound strangeness of things. How does anyone explain how Horton foresaw his death at the hands of a drunk driver and had to live in the suspense of waiting for that to happen for months, behaving a little like a paranoid schizophrenic? Poor man. He was so resplendent, he reminds me of the winning team in a Aztec ballgame.

the mystery of the cabbage

It's impossible that this tastes as good as it does, sauteed with ginger, sesame oil, garlic and shitake mushrooms. It is impossible.

ice in the hoof prints

1.1.11

I was surprised that many I know headed into the water on New Years day, here in BK at Coney or where ever they could. Two weeks ago I would have never thought that I might be included among those testing their personal antifreeze, but as of that morning it became clear I'd be joining in. As if the thought had been thought for me.

Happy New Years!

Portland Harbor