Ice

Yeah.

I’m not from here. I get that. I’m not especially “from” anywhere. That would be an experience I lack… something that sets me apart, ever so trivially, from others. Of course, while trivial, it also leads people to conclude that I’m sociopathic — something which I’m pretty sure is just not true.

It’s not so much the “not being from here” that irks people; it’s the “not being from anywhere.” Or perhaps it’s really my own puzzlement at the whole “being from somewhere” thing. I mean… for me… it’s just not normal, natural, or even especially desirable to “be from somewhere.” I don’t have a hometown and I don’t understand people who do have one… but whatever.

There is ice. Not so much ice. I’d be more comfortable describing the ice in terms of millimeters rather than in fractions of an inch. We’ll call it “two” … not that I’ve measured. Suffice it to say that it’s just not impressive ice. I’d not have expected any local response to the ice. I certainly had no response… other than to photograph it.

When you photograph the ice here about it has the tendency to look the same as every other time you’ve photographed it. I did that, you know. It’s true: root around in the archives and you’ll find a sparkly orange be-dazzlement of light flashing off of ice. Yup. On the very same tree. That ice was substantially thicker than this. This ice… it’s more of a glaze than a coating.

It’s gone now, by the way. I took that photo many hours ago, back when it was still dark. Not that it’s not dark now, because it is. The photo just wasn’t taken during this particular fit of darkness and couldn’t be taken now… not and have any ice in the trees.

You’d think, however, that this transient glazing of ice was mentioned explicitly in some sacred text as a harbinger of the end of the word.

Oh yeah… folks went a trifle nuts.

They’re bread and milk freaks here. I just don’t get that. I toddled off to the local marketeria to get some coffee on account of I was unacceptably low on coffee and (being quite addicted to coffee) this just cannot stand. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the ice. The ice was entirely coincidental (and substantially not in evidence as I traipsed off to the marketeria).

Note that “marketeria” just isn’t a real word. It’s one of my more annoying affectations. You’ll live through it, I trust.

There wasn’t any bread at the marketeria. Lots of empty bread shelves, but no bread. Ditto with the milk cooler: it had been divested of anything resembling contamination by milk or milk products.

Yes, Sweeties: the local freaks bought up the cream as well as the milk.

I have jokingly speculated that there is some sort of secret ritual involving the consumption of mass quantities of french toast. Otherwise, what the fuck are they doing with all that bread and milk? Surely they have bread and milk locked away in their kitchens left over from the recent snow. I mean… it’s totally not like they didn’t descend on all places bready like locusts because they did.

I just don’t get it. I’ve lived here for over twenty years and I just can’t get used to the phenomenon of the vanishing bread and milk. Nor can I get over the locals’ very peculiar relationship to all things frozen.

They carry on here. They do. They carry on as if they were residents of Fiji and all this freakish ice came out of nowhere to… well… end life as they know it.  They carry on as if this sort of thing didn’t happen last year, or the year before, or the year before that.

This sort of thing has, after all, been going on for the full three centuries of this quaint little burg’s existence. It has. I’m not kidding there.

And it’s not like this region has recently experienced some massive influx of immigrants from someplace tropical. Oh no. These people grew up with annual deposits of frozen matter just as their parents and grandparents did.

I asked, I did, of one of the older residents about the milk. I was wondering if the psychotic bread and milk thing happened back before there were cars. Did Grandpa have to hitch up the horse to the old buggy to hoard bread and milk at the first hint of impending snow?

Grandpa did not, as it happens, hitch up the horse. Grandpa walked to get the bread and milk.

Huh.

Anyway… Wee Orchid is unimpressed by the ice. Of course, it’s far more likely that Wee Orchid is unaware of the ice.

The Selaginella is doing nicely, as well. I’m quite surprised by that. My own response to such weather is to closet myself away with orchids and Selaginellas (and towering bananas) and ignore the whole thing. Certainly I have to minimize my interaction with the bread and milk locusts. They can’t drive their automobiles in snow or ice either.