Cold

Southeast Kansas is in a Winter Storm Warning this weekend so I thought I'd better post before things get interesting. (For those of you who've seen the movie Serenity, not THAT interesting!)

As amazed as I am that it's already March, I'm one of many Americans who are tired of cold weather.

     "I hate the cold," Hawkins said, and then he disappeared into the swirling snow.

That's from Another Shot and it has more than one meaning: in this case, "cold" refers to both the weather and the relationship between two people. Hawkins can't control the first, but he's done what he can to repair the second.

As I was thinking about cold weather this weekend, I happened to reread a Ray Bradbury story that really summed up what it means to be cold and alone:

        "One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound
     of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, 'We need a voice to call
     across the water, to warn ships; I'll make one. I'll make a voice like all of
     time and all of the fog that ever was; I'll make a voice that is like an empty
     bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the
     door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying
     south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard,
     cold shore. I'll make a sound that's so alone that no one can miss it, that
     whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer,
     and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns. I'll
     make me a sound and an apparatus and they'll call it a Fog Horn and
     whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life.'"

That is from "The Fog Horn" (The Golden Apples of the Sun And Other Stories, New York, Harper Perennial, 2001).  If you can, read the whole story sometime. It's an amazing work.

And writing like that is why Ray Bradbury is my inspiration (yes, that's him on my dedication page).

Stay warm.