Ice Station Zebra, New York

We awoke to minus 4 degrees F. And a wind chill in the minus double digits. Today's high will be in the teens, and tonight will again be negative. Winter waited in Eastern New York and Western New England until mid-January to arrive. And now it's here. Unfortunately, the bitter cold evoked thoughts of Ice Station Zebra. What a terrible movie.

Why did this come up? Is this Winter now somehow like the isolation of floating around the Arctic on an iceberg? No, not yet. We should inquire about this again in about 60 days, when cabin fever has had a chance to incubate and the isolation has set in in earnest. Is this somehow like Ice Station Zebra, a movie Roger Ebert said was "so flat and conventional that its three moments of interest are an embarrassment"? No. We have to give wintry boredom a chance to fester and grow. Give it time. Get into the stretch of winter after the Stupid Bowl. The stretch of winter that's like a two lane highway across the Arctic. Maybe the thought is just a reason to check out episode 11 of season 3 of Breaking Bad, in which a check from Ice Station Zebra Associates makes a brief cameo. I don't know. I do know that this is clearly Winter thinking. Inconclusive. Speculative. Slow. Untethered.

One thing remains clear. Winter grows introspection. Silence. Wonder. Curiosity. Creativity. There really is time. Every minute seems to have its full compliment of seconds. The weather has truly slowed everything down. Or slowed everything up. We'd like to grow some blubber. We'd like to hibernate. We'd like to get closer to the fire. For all of this I am grateful. And I am thankful for warm, secure shelter.