> jumping into life.

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2.13.2008 

I've forgotten what I was looking for. The pile of plow-pushed snow goes over my head, and then some. The sky is white against the white hills; I've lost the horizon. I cannot go back out there. I cannot lift again that shovel, or rev the whirring ugly ravenous snowblower which I hate. The snow changes to ice, to sleet, to rain, to ice.

We leave the house before breakfast to plow and shovel and salt and we come in and eat at noon and then go back out. At three we salt again and wait for the ice to soften.

It is lucky we have nowhere to go, these days.

The sky is descending into night, now, at almost five. He's gone back out again to scrape the driveway. The world is pen and ink, all color gone. Some sepia seeps in the edges, maybe, where the redwood railings rise just above the lip of the snowbank. Where my hands have torn from ice and salt and gasoline.

It is a beautiful world, stripped down to its silhouettes and skeletons.

I cannot go back out there.

Argh, I just went to post a sympathetic comment and the power went out.

It came back on in a minute, and hopefully will remain so.

But yeah, me and my shoveling-back hear you.

Soon, spring will come.

I keep telling myself to relish the beauty of this (then going back inside).

In New England solidarity -

There was a lady with tulips at the post office yesterday and, I swear it, I swooned.

Tulips! They were pink!

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