MEASURING WINTER /e

 

  1. Today’s topic is entropy; the rotting side of the garage exterior wall that will cost $950 to rip out and install new cedar shingles, according to the contractor whom you fear ripped you off on the work done on the House the summer before last. [And the friend who painted the other side of the house you had to unfriend in the physical and cyber world.] No invoice; no straightening of the slats at the apex, small attic, as promised. When you remember to call him about the slats, you’ll get the answering machine, and it will take weeks for him to get back to you for a job for which you already paid.

 

  1. The temperature has dropped, freezing rain throughout the night—and the driveway, a sheet of ice without enough salt to melt it.

 

  1. A wise decision to call out from the half-day at the day job vs. risking your safety, and aging on the treacherous drive there and back. Just you and the dog and cat in the living room with the Christmas tree adorned with the extra sets of lights and more ornaments than you thought you’d have the energy to hang on the hooks that always get tangled somehow while in storage in the cellar.

 

  1. With the cold, your hands are not cooperating, so you’ve turned the heat up now that the oil has been delivered; the worker traipsing through the snow with rubber boots up to his knees. You watched him surreptitiously through the gauze curtain, thinking he has on his ice fishing gear.

 

  1. Sickness has settled in again, and there doesn’t seem to be enough ginger ale on the closest drug store’s shelves since it’s fortuitously on sale this week. The lemon hard candy helps though.

 

  1. What if I’m dying?, you ask yourself—before the inevitable answer, we’re all dying.

 

  1. The living will presented to you by the kind technician in the too-small, ever-shrinking examination room at the doctor’s four days ago is probably protocol for any adult, no? And then the awkward conversation with your next of kin about the decisions you made and his name and cell phone number on the form.

 

  1. The day seems stuck again in the cogwheels of late afternoon. It’s time for a new distraction since sleep didn’t come as beseeched when you went to lie down with the dog in the still-fresh bedding. Kicking him out of the bedroom every morning to make the bed properly has eliminated the prevalence of his fur.

 

  1. The disgruntled cat does not like any other wet food except Friskees but not any of the patés, which you have to admit looks like shit coagulated in a can. Luckily, you had the foresight to buy her small tins of sardines; their eyes staring up at you from the dead.

 

  1. The Christmas cards are almost ready to travel to the post office, replete with cheerful stickers of silver-glitter snowflakes and absurd dogs in Santa hats and stockings riding in wheelbarrows.

 

  1. There have been more deaths; some unexpected and some, the cause of old age. The manuscripts that need to be finished seem to burn in your hands that ache from wrapping all the small Christmas presents, early this year though you may still add some more ribbons, bows, and other ornamental flares.

 

  1. Not everything is art, but it all should be, you muse—even entropy.

 

 

 

 

 

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2 Responses to MEASURING WINTER /e

  1. Yoshioka Owens says:

    ‘The day seems stuck again in the cogwheels of late afternoon. ‘

    Familiar words, familiar feeling – new image, new way of seeing the old. Much of this is just that – new ways of seeing the everyday and the old. Familiar scenes and feelings seen and described and combined with an almost eerie deftness. Like in life, the mundane stands right next to the beautiful, and so it is I’m left with the absolute flavour of reality.

    • Krysia Jopek says:

      Thank you so much Yoshioka, for your adept reading of my creative work and for your lovely, astute comment. Some days it feels as if there is no one reading the words that fall from my mouth, through my pen, from the magical keyboard. I thank thee profusely!

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