Bogus Day

It's better to have a day when one BIG thing goes wrong (say, an exploding toilet, or the microwave inexplicably bursting into flames) than a day when dozens of little things go wrong and wear you down to a frazzled nub. That's what I've decided. And enough of that, and enough of January.

Happy Lunar New Year. Year of the sheep, I think. I hope it won't be baaaaaad.

OK, I apologize for that.

I have also decided that it is very, very wrong to go outdoors hereabouts at almost midnight on the last day of January and not need to wear even a sweater. I fully expect to wake up tomorrow to a riot of blooming flowers and a full growth of leaves on all the trees. This is just so temporally disorienting! Oh, for a bit of snow! I wouldn't complain about it, honest!

Confused

This odd weather is messing with my mind. When I ought to still be in my winter doldrums, I'm beset with restlessness. Nature has turned giddy. The night is full of owls hooting. I think they are mating. Yesterday afternoon, I passed near small marshy area on the stream that flows through the shallow vale east of my house, and I heard a loud chorus of frogs croaking. I think they are spawning. Even my cats are behaving oddly. They want to go outdoors at night, instead of curling up and napping as is usually their wont this time of year. I'm quite convinced that nothing good can come of any of this. My concentration has been greatly diminished in these unusual circumstances. Every few minutes, I feel compelled to go outside to see if the temperature has begun to drop. As much as I dislike the winter, I want it back. Winter, come home! All is forgiven! Bite my toes with your frosts, if you must. Nip my ears with chill wind. Soak me with sleet and rain. I miss you, you cranky old bastard!

February 12, 1935

AN ELEGY
For the U.S.N. Dirigible, Macon

The noon is beautiful: the perfect wheel
Now glides on perfect surface with a sound
Earth has not heard before; the polished ground
Trembles and whispers under rushing steel.

The polished ground, and prehistoric air!
Metal now plummets upward and there sways,
A loosened pendulum for summer days,
Fixing the eyeball in a limpid stare.

There was one symbol in especial, one
Great form of thoughtless beauty that arose
Above the mountains, to foretell the close
Of this deception, at meridian.

Steel-gray the shadow, than a storm more vast!
Its crowding engines, rapid, disciplined,
Shook the great valley like a rising wind.
This image, now, is conjured from the past.

Wind in the wind! O form more light than cloud!
Storm amid storms! And by the storms dispersed!
The brain-drawn metal rose until accursed
By its extension and the sky was loud!

Who will believe this thing in times to come?
I was a witness. I beheld the age
That seized upon a planet's heritage
Of steel and oil, the mind's viaticum:

Crowded the world with strong ingenious things,
Used the provision it could not replace,
To leave but Cretan myths, a sandy trace
Through the last stone age, for the pastoral kings.

-Yvor Winters

Some background, and a link:
( The More Things Change... )