In front of all this beauty

That moon!  All the way in this morning the moon lead the way, large, cold-blue, and ever-so-slightly fuzzy from somthing in the dark atmosphere between it and me.  It floated, limned and bright, always slighty to the right of my forward progress, visible through the front windshield or the glass portion of my car's roof.

When I arrived at my office on campus (with, I kid you not, Creedence Clearwater's Bad Mood Rising playing on my car's sound system) I stood in the parking lot, shivering, and drank it in as it glowed as bright as a street light between the denuded trees next to me. The sureal colors created by the sulfur street lamps were mocked by the moon's pristine blue-white reflection.

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
   - Tory Dent, The Moon and the Yew Tree

From Bruce Cockburn's, Understanding Nothing:

High above valley,
Above deep shade coloured with the calls of cuckoos,
The ring of coppersmith's hammer high in the hiss of the wind
Wind filled with spirits and bright with the jangle of horse bells
After a crisp night crammed with stars
It's morning
.....
Weavers' fingers flying on the loom
Patterns shift too fast to be discerned
All these years of thinking
Ended up like this
In front of all this beauty
Understanding nothing

Today's playlist:

• Pure Prairie League: Amy
• America: Sister Golden Hair
• Bob Marley & The Wailers: Is This Love
• The Young Rascals: Good Lovin'
• King Harvest: Dancing in the Moonlight
• Creedence Clearwater Revival: Bad Mood Rising

Energy wins out

Brrrr. A clear dark sky brings temperatures in the high 20's (F, ~-2C) this morning.  The roads are mostly dry, thankfully, but little splashes of ice pop up here and there, so most folks are taking it slow this morning.

Headlamps reflecting off the tail lights and any bright-work
bedecking the back-ends of the cars in front of us;
a slow-moving procession as we wind cautiously down the
icy road on this clear-sky-cold morning. 

The cold asphalt holds the moisture tightly to itself
in a frozen embrace, reflecting streetlamps, headlamps,
the occasional faint star's light from millions of years before.
Or does the frozen water hold the street? 

No, I think it is the clear-eyed sky, darkly backlight
in this early hour, wide open to the warmlessness
of eons of deep space and far-traveled starlight that holds both
road and ice in a bracing grip: winter. 

     - Cold Road, December 2016

The usual cold morning tension: part of me would like to stay home warm and curled up with a good book, the other part of me is coiled energy ready to be up, out, and productive.  Energy wins out.

Today's Playlist:

• NPR News for a bit, then:
• Sigur Rós, Rafmagnið búið
• Sigur Rós, Hrafntinna
• Sigur Rós, Heysátan