Little fluffy clouds

It was as nice as one could hope for late-February, I suppose, blue skies and the black mounds in the gutter bleeding into the streets, the rot of winter brushed out onto the plains with a wind that warmed us with a tease of Spring. The huddling away and faces tucked under collars was gone, replaced with easy conversation, the weather and then other things, heads tilting back to take it all in, bathing in the caress of a sun that has been far too infrequent this season. The mass psychosis that has gripped everyone tired of swinging a snow shovel suddenly slipped to the sidewalk and smiles arose like daffodil petals, stretching out to meet the sunlight.

Little fluffy clouds shuttling across the sky like little sailboats, sails full to edge towards the east. I watched them grow into triremes or frigates in the swirling shipyard above me, built in the wind and the inevitability of whatever weather travelled in their wake, swirling eddys and snowflakes that never ended up on the ground here. Better them than us, I thought, then wished them the best; whatever whisps we've sent them built up in the towers of a cummulus is, I hoped, an announcement of better things. The gift of the crocus, the lilly, and then the inevitible iris and buds on trees, the hazy green glow amongst the cracks against the winter horizon.

Three more weeks and then we're free and clear, I think, except the weather has been weird: Global Warming seems to have to have tossed us all a gutter ball. Armadillos and weird weeds and bugs, oh yeah, get used to the bugs. Glad we're all Americans.

Little by little she had been discovering the uncertainty of her husband's step, his mood changes, the gaps in his memory, his recent habit of sobbing while he slept, but she did not identify as these as the unequivocal signs of final decay but rather as the happy return to childhood. That was why she did not treat him like a difficult old man but as a senile baby, and that deception was providential for the two of them because it put them beyond the reach of pity*.

Which entirely explains Condaleeza Rice.

All I know is that pitchers and catchers have been called up, the rest report in two weeks and opening day is April Fool's Day. Better days ahead, yes, but when you're a foot deep in water where it's not supposed to be, I doubt opening day means much; just ask the folks in New Orleans. A year and a half later and they still haven't seen the springtime, the rot of winter still lingering. Baseball goes on as a city dies.

Deny that a city dies, deny that a planet grows warmer due to human activity, deny that things have not gotten worse in the last seven years and then watch the clouds travel to the east, little fluffy clouds, tornadoes in Alabama but they sure look pretty here.



(cheat)