Snow started falling fast around 1:00 PM yesterday in big, wet clumps. Three hours later, after the ground was buried under roughly three inches of pure white, the snowfall diminished considerably. Occasionally, it stopped, then started again—but the new snow was much lighter and the flakes much smaller. I got distracted from the winter entertainment, so did not notice how much snow came down until darkness fell; after that point, I have no idea whether more snow covered the already thick blanket and, if so, how much. I’ll have to wait until the sun rises to know more. I know this, though: after a period of heavy snow, silence envelopes the landscape.
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Snippet
Gregory Boxer felt a heavy emptiness where his legs should have been. No pain, just an oppressive absence. The debris of the car in which he had been an unwilling passenger lay in the ravine below him; a bloody, mangled mass of broken glass, bent steel, and shattered plastic. As Boxer’s eyes drifted toward his captor, Dolin Clark, emerging from the wreckage below, he heard a loud male voice shout, “Freeze! Don’t move!”
At almost the same instant, Boxer heard the deafening report of a gunshot.
“Okay! Okay! I’m not moving! Don’t shoot!”
As Boxer watched the highway patrol officer slowly approach Clark, an officer kneeling behind Boxer spoke. “Hold on, man. I’m gonna get tourniquets around your legs. The medics will be here soon.”
Boxer opened his eyes three days later, in the intensive care unit of a large urban hospital, far away from the site of the crash. But he had no memory of the chase, the car crash, the gunfire, or any of the other circumstances that brought him to the ICU.
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If I had recorded the amount of time I have spent inside my house during the last year, I think I would be stunned. Except for medical appointments, hospitalizations, occasional restaurant lunches, and a very few other “outings,” I have spent the majority of all my waking (and sleeping) moments within the confines of this house. I am not complaining; this is a pretty nice place to spend my time. And I am becoming more and more comfortable as a hermit or recluse or whatever you might prefer to call it. Having visitors, I suppose, negates the validity of calling my present lifestyle one of a hermit or a recluse, which is fine with me. I like having contact with pleasant people who enter my sphere. But solitude, increasingly, agrees with me. I can be myself with myself, though I sometimes find myself more than a little annoying. In the presence of people outside myself, I have to try to be more civil, kinder, and gentler.
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I am thawing a wad of frozen cooked rice, which may take quite some time. Once thawed, I will heat it in the microwave, douse it with soy sauce, and dribble a bit of Sriracha on it. Some people might consider that an odd breakfast, but I do not. I’ve already had a banana, half a carton of Ensure, two shots of espresso, and several slugs of water. I cannot imagine anything more appropriate to follow that preprandial munch-fest. Unless, of course, it would be pancakes. I have had a hankering for pancakes for a while now. With maple syrup. But I have to be careful of what I eat, because lately even the most innocuous stuff seems to create quite a rebellion in my gut and elsewhere.
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The time is 6:30 AM. I am writing drivel. Must stop. Now.
