Right now, it’s 4:58 p.m. and the first sun I’ve seen in days is blasting through the picture window in my back room, making my office furniture cast long shadows and lighting my neighborhood’s icy trees up like glass skeletons.
It’s the kind of natural beauty I like to take pictures of, and I’ve done so a few times (It’s kinda a bitch that I think frozen trees in light are so beautiful but I don’t like snow and ice). Specifically I remember a day several years ago when the sun and ice put on exactly this light show. I was driving from Clarksville to Memphis on I-40 on the day after Christmas and I was happy, having freshly given and received, eaten and drank, hugged and loved. I smiled a lot during that drive, even when I was hopelessly flailing with my first-ever point-and-shoot digital camera, waving it around out of my open window with one hand and steering with the other. Don’t worry, I was safe; I’m left-handed and I drive an automatic. I still have those photos.
I’d be outside flailing around right now, too, if I hadn’t just come in. Yesterday I refused to do a snow photo for the blog, but today I gave in. The sun wasn’t out when I went outside. I took these photos. My backyard was cold and gray and desolate-feeling even in the middle of urban Midtown Memphis. I felt alone and stranded, like I was on an alien planet. These buggers didn’t help.
Alien bird head? Mucus-encased alien pod? ARE THINGS GOING TO START COMING OUT OF THOSE HOLES?!?
Something living and not of this earth is forcing its poisonous antennae out of a mucus pod and trying to kill me, I swear to God.
I took a photo of my reflection so when the authorities find my broken camera later, they’d know what I was wearing.
But then? Then the sun came out. And things started to look like this instead…
…and everything was OK again. There was no ice alien invasion. I went inside to warm up and watch the rest of the sunset in the comfort and safety of my decidedly un-icy house.
A bunch of us got really drunk and downright hammered over at Ansley’s on Friday afternoon. People asked where you were, and Diana and I were like, “Uh, ice is shooting from the sky right now. Kerry is not leaving her house.” I hope that was the correct answer because I totally did not call you BECAUSE I ASSUMED you would not want to leave your home. I was right, right?? RIGHT?!? (Don’t be mad!)
Not mad. And you were probably right. I doubt I woulda wanted to go anywhere that night. Sounds like you had fun though!