Snow is falling outside that looks like television storm static, a confetti illusion drawn across the world in monochrome pointillism, as if the sky’s receiver needs a bunny ear adjustment. Nick is playing some nasty war game with excessive amounts of shooting and I’m curled up on my couch, warm with upcoming plans. (So far, there are only people I love in my in-box today.) There’s dinner with Gavin and his lovely, meeting up with that Mike at the airport for midnight, and somewhere in there, I’m going to go ice-skating with Michael’s skates again before I give them back. (I haven’t fallen yet, obviously I need to try harder). The day feels full of light, as if it were suddenly okay to walk barefoot, as if the cold couldn’t touch me through my tenuous contentment.
Floria Sigusmondi’s updated her site.
Yesterday Nicholas and I went to the Zoo, (which is large and interesting enough that I recognized it from the plane). We began with exploring the Canadian Wilds section where the elk, owls, sheep, and fairy-tale wolves lived. There was an ocelot as well, continually pacing it’s cage back and forth, back and forth, dreaming of freedom and the delicious flesh of screaming toddlers, and the smallest adult moose I’ve ever seen. The place felt abandoned, as if we were on an adventure in a ruined city, looking at the map and checking to make sure we weren’t going to run out of sunlight before we found shelter. We only managed to see about half of the rest of the park. The African section had the most flinchingly cute animal in the entire zoo, a tiny, solitary meercat perched atop a rock, giving us all the eye. Across the room from it was a giraffe and the first hippos I’ve ever seen. I was struck most not by their bulk, but by how artificial they looked, as if they were rubber-skinned animatronics, poorly designed.