a cold day

[asakiyume]

I had to walk back to the house along the highway this morning, after dropping the car (the remaining car...) off for scheduled maintenance.

It was so cold, penetratingly cold, killingly cold, and windy--but it was morning, and the sun was out.



This afternoon, walking that same route back to the mechanic's, it was a race between me and darkness. The clouds were rosy when I set out, and there was incandescent golden-orange brilliance behind the supermarket. But the light was dying and the wind was fierce, and I felt *very fragile* walking against the stream of homeward-bound cars. Almost no one walks that bit of road. Where there was briefly a sidewalk, I passed a woman walking her dog. Otherwise, I had my footprints from the morning for company. Somehow, my journey felt supernatural. When I was walking, step after step, through the crusty snow, pushing aside briars and the skeletons of mugwort or goldenrod on the safe side of a crash barrier, I felt that I wasn't in the same world as the people driving in cars. I was in some huge, howling, dark world, a world of coldness that would be happy to extinguish every living thing. When I made it to the mechanic's and opened the door into that warmth, I felt staggeringly relieved.

And then I drove home. And I myself was in that nice, ordinary world that I'd been on the outside of, walking on the roadside. But I could remember it.

Comments

[marycatelli]

You should write a story with that.

[asakiyume]

My imagination always fails me when it comes to figuring out the plots that these intense perceptions/experiences fit into! I almost feel that if I were able to put into words what this enormous, threatening, cold, supernatural thing was, that it would be too much reduced. In someone else's hands, no: they could do it. But me, not yet.

[sovay]

It was so cold, penetratingly cold, killingly cold, and windy--but it was morning, and the sun was out.

That is a beautiful photograph and you can feel the cold of it.

[asakiyume]

Thank you; yeah, it looks the way it felt.

[minoanmiss]

So much word.

[amaebi]

Bbbbbbrrrrrrrrr!

I'm glad you're home safe.

[asakiyume]

Me too. I wanted to go curl up in a corner with a thousand blankets!

It's not that I was physically too cold; it was more that I felt psychically cold.

[zyzyly]

Your walk back to the mechanics sounds like the beginning of a story. You have a compelling narrative voice.

[asakiyume]

Thank you very much!

[shewhomust]

That's a very chilly picture!

[asakiyume]

It is an *accurate* picture, then!

[cmcmck]

It's been what I call raw cold here with what my gran used to call a 'lazy wind' even though a thaw has set in.

[asakiyume]

A lazy wind sounds somehow friendlier.

[teenybuffalo]

I felt that I wasn't in the same world as the people driving in cars. I was in some huge, howling, dark world, a world of coldness that would be happy to extinguish every living thing.

Can relate. These days I feel like that after dark, if I'm walking to a bus stop in Lechmere or some other part of East Cambridge that has no Red Line and lots of highway overpasses.

[asakiyume]

YES--that area by Lechmere, I can just imagine it being similar.

[http://lotuslandfineart.com/velvetrope/]

Weather like this makes me wonder how people who are homeless survive, especially when (from what I have been told) it can be safer to sleep outdoors than in a city-run shelter.

[asakiyume]

Seriously, me too. It's terrifying and troubling.

[khiemtran]

And then I drove home. And I myself was in that nice, ordinary world that I'd been on the outside of, walking on the roadside. But I could remember it.

Thought provoking. It makes me think of all the places I've only experienced driving through in the safe, warm bubble of my car, and makes me wonder if I really know those places at all.

As I drive to work on the highway, I sometimes see deer or kangaroo right up close against the railings, a reminder that just a foot or so away from the road, it really is wild, at least to them.

[asakiyume]

Yes--and somehow at night (or whenever we can see less clearly, since that gives them cover and protection) the world becomes more theirs.

One time we drove home and there were deer walking beside our driveway--it was wonderful and strange and unexpected. Kangaroos though! Wow!