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10 January 99
Sunday

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  The Snow Man
By Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

 

In the kitchen, writing at the table, I can feel the bitter cold seeping into the house through the closed back door. But, surprisingly, the January sun is bright enough for summer. I am thinking of going for a long walk...

I came across the poem in an X-Files story titled Chains written by Kipler. She is an excellent writer-- her plots are intelligent, the characters behave as they should-- and she's a New Englander. She tells an engaging tale, and has the gift of capturing the very essence of New England settings. Reading her stories is a good way to pass a cold winter evening.

The wind is blowing. I must remember to prop a chair against the back door before I go out so it won't blow open. One must have a mind of winter... I do. And I have been cold a very long time.

I've been away from this journal for a while now. I'm not sure why. It isn't that I don't write, but... I don't know. What is worth writing down?

Later:

Like Billy Pilgrim, The X-Files seems to have broken loose of the time stream. Last week (Terms of Endearment with Bruce Campbell) it was fall again, and this week (The Rain King with Victoria Jackson) six months past Valentine's Day. I admit the episodes were entertaining, but there's no integration with the series timeline which would allow me to place the episodes in some sort of context. That bugs me.


 

  Addenda:

Reviews by Autumn Tysko:

[Terms of Endearment]   [The Rain King]

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