“Arm in arm with the friendship of light, at times I am not so lost, nor you. Toggling away from machine responses, as no one says anything that I have to believe, my heart unclenches. The decision whether to wade, waist deep, beyond the pines, with a sled, to get a thing ... is all I’m about. Whether or not the door will be frozen shut, or the thing will be to heavy for me to drag, what clothes will get wet, and for how long. Or, I could move wood. Fill the wheel barrow, roll it ten feet to the door, load my arms, kick the door open, and like Magellan, cross the great expanse of floor to stack it up in a box. There’s love between the mess I’ll create and the broom I’ll use to slowly, thoughtfully, make piles of bark and toss it all in. The sizzle of leftover snow, the crisp combustion made of dust, the heat of receiving what is destined to burn. Every step of ordinary ritual makes a notch on the belt of life. Which builds, and builds, into a spiral of healing that draws in the rightful others, who will surpass you. Almost sensing it, I pull my rubber boots back on, and walk back into the woods, to look for the generator. Another switch, to turn on and give thanks for. A tiny metal device that determines so much fate. You try to read the dipstick, a smear like tea leaves, that will tell your mysterious fortune. Dear god, are you listening? Will she run? Will he love me? Will I ever get out of this place of unbearable cognitive dissonance? Is it possible to fix my mailbox in February? Did you mean for me to get only half the wood under cover? Is there someone else out there struggling with their dipstick? Can you set us up on a date? Can you get me a new sled? A new truck? A new way of coping with the total disintegration of everything I used to call reality? On the other hand, this perpetual snow maker machinery is fully functional, lulling me into complacency as I go to work ten feet from where I sleep. The space ship flakes, the peach colored sunrises, the illuminated drifts, the slumbering silence of verdant fields, the agonizing, hardly noticeable hints of spring. We know it comes back. We count on it. We cry over it. We despair maybe over everything else, but not it, not for the first time and so far, not without us.”
