Ice on the Umbrella

Ever since m'mum's car rolled over and died she has been in possession of my car for escapes into Charlotte for work. As such, when I haven't had to be at work at 5 (a grand total of two days, including today) I've walked to school. The walk is quite nice, averaging about 35 minutes -- up a hill, down a hill, passing through 2 stop lights and over rail road tracks. I consider it an ironic thing for me to be walking to college in the final year of attendning the institution. Ironic, for I spent the early years of grade school walking from my house in Fort Mill to the place of ill repute. So I end school as I began it. This is sweet and lovely, as long as the hope that I continue with school is utterly and completely ignored. I have faith I can accomplish this most readily.

Though the lower half of my pants and my socks are utterly soaked, I still thoroughly enjoyed the walk to school. The cause of my shivering limbs and bitterly cold finger tips also gives rise to the extreme enjoyment I found in the walk. Perhaps no more than any other day, the most miserable day to be walking anywhere for any length of time was the same day I was glad and thankful to be walking out in such misery. Temperature: roughtly 20*C. Rain: heavy. Admittedly not the most conducive elements to an enjoyable saunter to school.

And yet, how fun it was. How brilliant the mixture the remaining black of night, ice adorning every surface, and my body. So thrillling this experience that I was completely taken from the body of a dog long dead, which has captured my mind with every step as I pass it. Death in the midst of life, though "miserable life" many would call it. While my mind is always taken with death, I'm thankful that life always trumps the decay of lifelessness.

As I walked, icicles actually formed on my umbrella. It surprised the hell out of me. I don't know why, there's nothing particularly fascinating about ice. Ice is rather a simple substance. But perhaps the lack of it in my childhood substantiates the aura of mystery around it. Deprived of snow and snow days in my youth, I relish any chance to embrace the days of cold, slippery stuff that falls from the sky. Simplicity is the birth of all childish delights. Thankfully I've not grown out of those delights just yet. So while ice is surely ordinary, to even see the sparkling wonder of frozen, barely moving particles of water is fascinating, to say the least of getting to crunch on the stuff with booted feet!

I came to the lab and shook off the ice from my umbrella. I entered the warmth of the building and was sumpremely glad for the hum of electricity attempting to resuscitate my cold columns of flesh. Yet I cannot soon forget the cold and the black of night, black as black even at the time 7:25 AM. Nor would I wish to forget that experience. I was safe and warm in my clothes, jacket and Welsh scarf. [Stuff that Erin, I have leaks on my scarf!] Safe and warm enough to experience and enjoy the cold, the wet, the expanse or extreme of another life. There is something singularly beautiful about casting a haze of mist as you exhale. I love watching the mist form, as I love why it forms. I am so not a fan of the cold. But what that cold creates is a beautiful, magical thing. And I can only say for myself that one facet of that creation is the allowance for me to dance on frozen grass -- smiling to hear the crunch of the blades and ice, embraced in a world so suddenly changed overnight.