Must Distract Myself

At one point, the world arranged moon and clouds and pines to form a perfect backdrop for some splendid event which never took place, as far as I know. Maybe it took place somewhere nearby while I was unaware. Maybe I was supposed to supply the splendid event myself and failed to do so. Maybe the backdrop itself was the splendid event. All I know is that the screen of branches and needles softened the moonlight so that I could look straight at it without squinting, and the clouds refracted the light to produce shades of color for which I could find no names. A flock of birds were flying, their calls faint, high where the air was even colder than here amid the slow, soft croaks of earthbound frogs. For a moment, the scene appeared to be about to mean something. If it did come to mean something, I never figured out what it was.


A bunch of linked things:


I stumbled upon something called the American Buddha Online Library which, despite (or because of?) being devoted to an eccentric species of that particular religion, is in fact a rather eclectic site filled with bits and pieces of literature, music, movies, philosophy and Goat knows what else (I haven't had time to explore the whole thing_from all over. Much of it is stuff I wouldn't have the time to download, being on dialup (I noticed, among other things, excerpts form Terry Gilliam's movie "Brazil"), but there's other stuff as well. Pictures, in particular, which I always find pleasing (screen caps of scenes from "Black Orpheus!") There are indications that the site is a project of cyberlawyer Charles Carreon. How does he find the time?


I also stumbled upon a picture of a green woodpecker posted (at the site StumbleUpon, oddly enough) by a guy from Leiden, Netherlands. I've never before seen a green woodpecker.


Then there's Bruce Eisner's computer deal of the day! I wish I'd found that last year.


Too much stuff on teh Internets!

Strange

Three o'clock of the gray afternoon, I saw bright specks falling. Thinking the sky had released fine mist, I went out to discover that the specks were in fact the smallest beads of popcorn snow I've ever seen. I let some fall on my jacket sleeve, and they sat there, like white pupae from which the tiniest of insects might emerge. Those airy beads which fell on my hand were dissolved almost immediately, the warmth of my skin melting them to invisibility in little more than a heartbeat. I thought how, were my vision sufficiently acute, I might see reflected in the brief water drops they formed (quickly evaporated or absorbed) the image of the mottled clouds from which they had fallen, the bare branches of the mulberry tree, and a small version of my own face vanishing like something on a frame of stopped film melted in a projector.

Half an hour later, there was real snow which clung to branches and pine needles, grass blades and early flowers, rooftops and bare earth, but which quickly melted from the pavement, making the asphalt as glassy as black marble. Nothing was entirely white, but all the color showing through the frosted landscape was muted. There was thunder, too, though I saw no flashes of lightning. It was incredibly cold. The snow lasted little more than an hour, and evening brought a faint hint of pink to a few patches of clouds, and a bit of powdery blue sky briefly appeared before darkness fell. I don't know if it will clear at all tonight, but if it does then the cold will be bone chilling. To my surprise, the frogs continue to croak. What a very strange day it was.


Other than that:

Sandra Day O'Connor goes for Tom DeLay's throat. But only in the most ladylike way, of course, not mentioning him by name (because that would be so rude.)

I didn't link to it in my morning post because I wanted to see if it gave me nightmares. It didn't, so I'll link to it now with the warning that, nightmares or not, it still creeps me out. It's a recent picture of (merely) 51 year old Eddie Van Halen posted at Flickr by scottobear. Just OMG!