Tortured snowman.

Yesterday and today were more hospitable temperatures here at Des Moines/Iowa compared to the week gone by. 

Took a chance of helping the kids to make their first snowman. The kids had better plans, they wanted to use the colors they had got as Xmas gifts at a local church to paint the snowman. It seemed a very interesting idea. So with the limited gear we created what was at best an amateur's snowman. Also, since we had limited snow in the balcony, and were were not very kicked about going out, we created a sitting version of the snowman.

Janu mused that it was a snowdad, considering the snowman had a big belly, they found it to be an replacement of me in snow. For them the good thing was that they could take their ire with colors.

Well, what became of the snowdad was what I call the tortured snowman. But like everything else in life, it was time well spent.

Snow today.

It started snowing Sunday, like my angst and resolve and the blizzard just got over tonight. A foot or so of Snow outside and I took off on a long walk in what otherwise would not look like wilderness. Rooftops resembled the ground below, and the punctuation of distance between the two was an eye sore, only just so.

As the biting cold bit through the skin, I quite enjoyed myself as I walked on, one step after another. I hoped to experience numbing, but I felt that too just barely so.

The white landscape with barren trees made for quite a sight. The tombstones were the most beautiful, like the peace descended from the heavens onto the lumbering stones that heaved a sigh of recognition, the one line introductions blurred white as the eerie desolation of the cold actually felt warm. Perhaps because the scents of the ground were no longer indication of where the step would land, and the blurring of distinctions felt almost natural, a sense that it was now good to breath. The mind eased, the body followed and I walked.

An old woman and a dog visited a gravesite, was it morbid attraction or the amazing tenacity of love? For while I was crazy enough to take a walk into the wild, why wouldnt even the age prevent her from doing the same? perhaps it was her love for now what remains a slab of concrete with an angel standing at the top amidst hundred other stones standing all around witnessing her gestures unfold. I quite identified with the dead and was taken by the grace of the aging bones. The dog was suspicious willing to lunge at a hint of threat from me, perhaps, but behaved itself like it had known what it meant to be standing there. Across the measured distance and feet sunken in snow, there was a quaint approval and silence.

The intent is complete. The words and actions seldom are, luckily they only share the faults that I am, and perish with me. And the intent will still look up alive, for all eternity, and to the journey that started before the storm, and proudly proclaim, a mute statement of knowing the expression, shine! and be born today!