close up of teapot by David Miller/dreamtime

Up until mid-week, it was all coffee and paper, comparison and contrast, puzzling over a sentence.  Then off went the electronic draft, followed by a solid hefty manuscript in the mail.  I made this delectable pancake for a breakfast celebration, substituting some main ingredients with what I had on hand, but it was nevertheless a royal treat.  I had gone to Mysore practice before as well–funny how things always taste better after yoga.  Later, with the oven still hot, feeling industrious,I baked an acorn squash, and then decided I needed a nap.

Today, I had the very odd underwater sensation of now, what?  What comes next?  I skipped yoga, never a wise move. I put in a load of laundry.  I began to read Tender by Nigel Slater in which he recounts the beginnings of his fruitful,splendid patch of land, and I tried to imagine what a garden, my garden, my garden of least effort, might look like.  A garden of least effort would require lots of leafing through catalogs, drinking many cups of tea, plotting in a notebook.  It would be a garden of winter leisure dreaming. I still don’t have an armchair.  Doesn’t every garden dreamer’s winter need one?  Overstuffed, taking too much room, piles of books and cups underneath?  Maybe I’ll just throw a coverlet over my slender couch and pretend it’s an armchair.  I’m already pretending I’ll have a garden.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/bw1yTMJ0e-g

First snow on the tip of the Cape.  Tiny stars of flakes that have grown larger in the half hour I’ve been watching them, drifting in a dance of their own. No wonder Tchaikovsky composed the Nutcracker, because the snow today is a child-like ballet, full of quiet wonder that captivates as it builds to scene after scene.  The snow remains delicate, twirling–a most extraordinary snow or am I watching drift?

No, having stepped out, like an explorer on her suburban terrace, I confirm the weather: snow, as verb, active.

It is grainy, not the texture I remember from Boulder where the flakes were enormous, and signaled storm more than scatter.  Here, I think of ice, but that is because I think of car, and the roads here that seem like San Francisco’s (sort of, because as a friend from Cali once said, oh, people on the East Coast always refer to hills as mountains.) I think of ice only in anticipation of tomorrow, but not being in Colorado, but seaside, I should probably not anticipate.  In general, anticipatory worry is good to put aside.

Dance. Snow. Small flakes.  Season of lights, sugar plums, winter naps.

Still snowing.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/fNasQfLWPHo

Having returned from reading Bhanu Kapil’s brilliant Was Jack Kerouac a Punjabi blog, I realized how far I’ve come from the planning of my days to a semester’s schedule.  At this time last year, or even this year, if I were teaching in Illinois, I would be handing in my final grades, asking a friend to water plants, and heading home for the holidays with a copy of my Spring syllabus and some books to read.   I will still be heading home to New Jersey where there might be a tree or two, starry skies, and maybe snow. There has been no snow on the Cape so far, and this December has felt like October–bracing, if not balmy at times.  Isn’t another definition of balmy Global Warming?

It’s quiet, though, unlike October; the leaves have fallen, and the crowds have become weekenders. It’s still; time slows down, even if it’s Sunday. It feels like I am caught in a moment of hover.

It’s only three o’clock.

I think of Fanny Howe’s book, “O’Clock” which is a perfect holiday gift to give everyone.

I think of Murakami’s 1Q84 which I will read in January.

I think of the new Kate Atkinson I will take to NJ with me.

I hope this time I’ve got my niece the shell she wanted.

View at the Winter River Shore Against Sun/photosky/Dreamtime.com

Winter Distances by Fanny Howe