Jacob Heric

This year was especially accomodating for the annual tree gathering adventure due to copious amounts of snow. Even the sign that reminds us where to turn was buried in snow, which caused us to drive an extra 30 miles in the wrong direction (every turn looking more like the last). But, no matter, we eventually got there and bagged a beautiful tree. It helped that it was completely covered in snow so we couldn’t see what it really looked like until we got it home. There, it turned out strangely symmetrical.

Rosa’s imagination (and…um…ours) is put to the chalkboard above the kitchen counter.

Without fail, this is where you will find us eating an everything bagel with chili garlic (Jacob), a plain with Mert’s pimento cheese (Amy) and a plain with house smoked salmon (Rosa).

I was reminded of pine trees (which rarely go out of my mind in winter…how could anything that keeps it’s green in winter be far from thought?) today while listening to pandora radio. Winter has not been kind so far but my rhododendron comforts me in the morning as I pass it to get the bus. There are a lot of long needle pines along the way too. They have not fared as well this and last winter. The snow has been heavy and icy and many have lost a lot of limbs or gone down altogether. They appear to go happily though, hanging around dead, perfect green splinters preserved in dirty and disintegrating snowpack. I know how they feel. Winter makes me relish the shortness of life. While idling solitary at the bus stop, having long since stopped wondering about the bus, the baying wind binds this idea to my brain. It’s a warm idea that subtracts me and negates me. It makes me feel brave in humility. It makes me feel healthy in diminishment. It makes me long to disappear beneath the rearing light. Under the groaning waves of the faltering evergreens, I’ll gladly drown. What is winter for if not for loneliness, pneumonia and for reminding you that you are little more than a desolate meerkat in the desert night nattering to yourself about food and shelter for a few brief days before you’re extinguished, having accidentally nibbled on a scorpion you mistook for a delicious grub. Winter is winter. I was not once and I will not be again. In the meanwhile, I’ll be a pleasant winter herbage, not wilting by nature but not opposing it.