Friday Ramble - January's Performing Arts

 

A rowdy north wind cavorts across the roof, rollicking through sleeping trees and shrubberies in the garden, making the frozen branches creak like old wooden sailing ships. The icicles suspended from the eaves behind the house are abstract glossy confections, streaked with gold and silver and filled with tiny bubbles. Ebullient gusts of wind shake them loose from their moorings, and the glassy shards plunge clattering into the pillowy snowdrifts wrapping the house.

Advised to remain indoors, I slip outside for a few minutes anyway and snap photos of nearby trees and icicles, chimneys and sky. Wrapped up and looking for all the world like a yeti (or an abominable something anyway), I stand in the pebbled snow in the garden and capture a few images, try to figure out how in the world I can describe everything, the perfect light, the burnished hues of the icicles, the emeralds of the evergreens, the blues and violets of the snow, the buttery siding on my neighbor's kitchen wall, the scarlet of a male cardinal as it flies into the cedar hedge.

The icicles communicate the colors and shapes of this day without any help from me at all. They rattle, chatter and chime, sing Gilbert and Sullivan duets with the wind (mostly bits from Iolanthe), pretend they are tubular bells at times or recite epic stanzas from the Poetic Eddas. The Norse elements of their performance seem fitting - at times it has been cold enough here for Ragnarök, and we wondered if this is the Fimbulwinter, the walloping winter to end them all.

With all the elemental performances being given this morning, few words are actually needed from this old hen. I can just stand here in a snowdrift with the camera, get out of its way (and my own) and let it see the world without trying to impose my questionable taste on its thoughtful and loving journey.

Out of the blue, a thought comes as I turn to go back inside before anyone notices that I am no longer in there, but rather out here. It is the images that are capturing me this morning, and not me capturing them. Methinks it's a Zen thing.