VIGNETTES

The first

That sound the wind makes past your ears when it is in a most determined hurry – it sounds of the faraway.  It sounds distant, like the ocean you hear inside a seashell – roaring from across the world, always droning on, always singing an unknown song.  It numbs.  When I was smaller, I waded in it, sometimes as high as my knees, and when I couldn’t feel the cold anymore, I still felt the wetness of it, and I could pretend that it was warm and gentle.  It took a long time to regain feeling.  Walking was strange.  Today my ears are worn numb, and I can’t tell if they thaw faster than legs – I’ve been inside ten minutes, and they still tingle.  The warmth brings a cold tingle; the cold is what burns.  I am always wading through the wind hatless, and in that way I am like my younger self, throwing off shoes.

The second

There are certain times and places in which the world is extraordinarily full of marvels.  I am sitting in front of a rather large window through which I can see a rather large clock, and the wind (which is enormous) is joggling the minute hand back and forth so as to give the clock an air of indecisiveness.  And every minute moves me closer to an inevitable minute when I will leave this table, and the bright swaths of sunlight reflected on its surface, and this glorious half-hour of freedom will be over.  That is the way things go in a college schedule.  I expect that I will miss this kind of life, broken up as it is with classes and other various obligations.  In these times, a half-hour can be forever.