The cold has come, and now at night it is so iceclear you can hear the stars twinkle. When the cloud cover goes like two nights ago, the temperature goes down into Arctic conditions. It is wonderful after all these weeks of fuzzling around to have January cold at last. In the park where I walk late in the afternoon, the big pond is frozen again, and there is a big bonfire for the skaters. Everything is orange and black, and what little wind there is glissandos the snow along the ice. Noises crack (why is that? Why is sound different in icy air? Must find out). Every few minutes, I have to put my hands over my cheeks and nostrils just to thaw them out. There are three skaters, and they last about 10 minutes. Two of them give up: but the good one, a man, stays out and does those things only figure skaters can do, that makes everyone else deeply envious and wish they had spent their lives learning to skate. He is fine to watch, cutting geometrical slices out of the cold evening, one side gold, one side black, gold-black, black-gold in the flickering light of bonfire. Above, the stars like frozen fireworks coming out. The moon attends.
I await tonight's total eclipse with hope that it will be as cold and clear in the night sky as it is now. If noise carries as far as it does tonight, we should be able to hear the shadow of the earth falling across the icy reaches of lunar space, spinning its own geometries of gold-black, black-gold.