Winter Nights

Until it set, the gibbous moon illuminated thin clouds which drifted like the smoke of some flameless invisible fire vast enough to consume the world. Now that the storm has passed, the night is almost an aural desert. Now and then a twig will snap, or a vagrant breeze will raise a hushed murmur from a stand of pines, but most often silence prevails. Wind is yet rushing the dark forms of the clouds northward, but no sound of it reaches the dank earth. Vision, too, is obscured, with only one star or another briefly unveiled by gaps in the clouds to provide some focus for the eye. Deprived of sound and sight, I am inundated by the scent of land and forest, of decaying vegetation and saturated wood. It is the smell of things breaking down, returning to elemental soil, or of things that thrive on the cold and damp, sucking up the nutrients of that decay. Winter nights smell of struggles, and of the passage of time.

Ouch!

Yesterday, I thought my left shoulder had gotten a bit out of joint, because it was very sore, and it didn't want to move into certain positions. Now I'm beginning to suspect the onset of arthritis. I've been keeping the heater vent closed, in order to keep Sluggo as cool as possible, and I think that the cold is beginning to have an effect on me. This evening, I opened the vent for a while and the shoulder felt better. Sluggo, of course, has been displeased and has shown me his blue screen a couple of times. So, it seems that I can either have a happy (or at least less cranky) computer, or I can have functional joints. Not a happy choice. But it's another reason to get Sluggo replaced as soon as possible.

There was more snow today, followed by more rain which melted it away, followed in the evening by a rare January thunderstorm with splendid showers of hail lasting long enough to turn the land white again. But I dare not go out and walk on the slippery pavements. The sore shoulder is bad enough. I don't need to throw my back out, too.

Hot shower, now, with special attention to the sore shoulder.