graffiti caption...

ChloRides

 Melting snow led a salty migration and freed the corrosives from the asphalt.

The setting sun made it all come to light during the afternoon commute.

artifices...

Cupid, in a nutshell...

Rigor Frostis

Friday night, almost a week ago someone rolled a few snowballs together in the park, and conjured him up...three frosty spheres sprinkled with round pine seeds and skewered with two frail limbs triumphantly ushering the first blizzard of a doubleheader.

Six days after the snowman appeared, he died. This is what was left of him today, as I walked through the three feet of snow in the park.

He didn't melt, but seems to have keeled over. His body mass, those powdery lumps created an outline of a corpse. I didn't think much of the snowman the day I met him. He was only a few hours old, and seemed a natural part of the landscape. But today...somehow the gruesome lumps, their unnatural arrangement--a mass of snow prostrate, limbs torn from his torso, conjured a disorienting sense of pity.

I wondered why, in death, the snowman seemed to have been so full of life.

blizzard way station...

This morning we took the dog for a walk, and made it to the pedestrian bridge over I-66.  Gabriela was exhausted. After slowly carving a path through two to three foot snow drifts, the bridge was a welcoming foot of shallow snow.

Simba couldn't get enough of the snow.  He ran back and forth and watched the few crazies driving along the highway.  Then I suggested, that we keep going and Gabriela creatively expressed her disapproval in full tween drama.

I laughed.  She laughed (well...more of a hyena cackle-grunt), and we turned around and headed back home.

icecubicles

We are still digging out from the recent snowstorm. The schools are still closed, and the federal government offices in the DC area were closed again today. More snow is on the way tonight...as much as eighteen inches according to some forecasts.

Our neighborhood has been shrouded in white for more than four days. In order to combat cabin fever and the snow glare delirium, we take walks and search for odd patterns created by the cycles of melting and freezing.

This cargo net suspended from a chain link backstop has been cradling a mass of flakes, but upon closer inspection the impromptu hammock is acting more like a sieve, patiently extruding long cubes of frozen snow...nature's own play dough wonderland.

 

  

 

(tw)ice

 

flaky behaviors...

Along with the almost thirty inches of snow, the recent blizzard left a trail of erratic and offbeat communal outbursts.  Neighbors gathered to help each other shovel their way out of yet-to-be-plowed dead ends and cul-de-sacs.  After making quick work of a keg earlier today, ten men with shovels quickly choreographed an escape route from their street.  I looked up from my driveway to catch a glimpse and it looked like a silly TV commercial, but it made me smile. The storm and its aftermath brought out the best in many.  In some rather isolated cases, the goodwill that gathered momentum had to contend with petty jealousies and the impish tantrums of other neighbors. These extreme forms of behavior summoned an ethereal dissonance that was laughable (...poetry in pantomime.)

. . .

Some of the most peaceful and enjoyable moments of the past few days were those spent in silence, walking with the dog (off-lead) and watching him play in the snow.

 

  

  

His antics restored a sense of balance to a neighborhood full of silliness. Tomorrow, we will return to the park and wade in waist-deep snow drifts.  The snow won't melt for a while, but perhaps some frustrations will as I watch him dive for smells and bury his head in the snow.

 

snow daze...

Last weekend, it snowed inches of light dry powder.  Today, we woke up to more snow, some four inches of heavy wet flakes.  The early morning radio newscast mentioned the coming weekend's impending snowstorm.

I'm sick of snow, but the dog had to go out.  So I rolled out of bed, and left the house with camera in one hand and the leashed puppy in the other.

 

The neighborhood was quiet, and the sun peered from behind a veil of fog. The contrasts and patterns were everywhere.  The snow almost seduced me with its devilish charm as I eyed more patterns ahead.

Heading back home, the landscape then lost much of its appeal as I thought about the day ahead, and the confinement of the office.

As we passed by the park on the return leg, I made the usual deposit, a blue bag of dog poop at a trash can in the park.

The distinct and familiar pulse invited a glance, and I spotted the military helicopter circling above, a fitting punctuation to the dissolution of the morning's atmospheric glare.

 

Life in the DC Metro area...an immersion in serial contrasts