Inside

I can see you, even with the blinds drawn. Peeking out from the safety of the warm living room. I can see you looking at the snow and heavy gray sky that lies swollen over the day like a thick wet blanket.

I see you. You have pulled down a slat on the window blind to see what you are missing. Maybe you just noticed that icicle. Or maybe you are looking for signs of the thaw. Blue skies, or a squirrel moving along the branches, a glimpse of the earth beneath the obfuscation of snow. Can you hear it? The muffled breath of the day, the softly beating heart of the earth patiently waiting for spring.

I am calling you. Play. Come play. Winter is nothing. Just the pause at the top of the inhalation. More night than death. Open the door. I am calling you.

Suspended

Airborne and westward bound, we chase sunset from above for one long moment out of time. We skim time zones, slipping past mountains and rivers, whisking over clouds and traffic jams and empty desert trails.

Fingers of darkness jockey with shifting streaks of colour for dominance over the late day sky, ever westward, ever earlier. The flamboyant shades of sunset a final defiance of day over the silence of the night.

Last Call

The party was in full swing, but Sheila was still nervous She would be the first one to admit that she wasn't good in a crowd. She just wasn't able to get the words out fast enough or loud enough, she thought. She had a lot to offer, but people didn't seem to notice her carefully crafted witticisms and pertinent political repartee. It always felt like the night was getting away from her. She was always disappointed.

Tonight would be different. She had read a self-help book that offered her a hard-edged strategy for successful party mingling. It involved mantras and deep breathing before arriving, and a scientifically-calculated amount of alcohol consumption, to be paced over the evening. She had programmed a schedule of sips and gulps into her new smart phone which she hung from her neck so she wouldn't make any mistakes.  The phone had a sleek and shiny case and a rhinestone encrusted lanyard, so it didn't look out of place. If anything, it made her look interesting and modern.

The plan was almost foolproof. She had practiced the two days beforehand in the privacy of her own home, and although there was no-one there to watch, she could feel that a new sense of ease and confidence was emerging. She had been looking forward to this party all day.

The first half hour of the program was a huge success, but when the bar was closing for an hour for award speeches and presentations, she had to act fast and make sure she had the right sip applications in hand for the evening. Shortly into the second of three glasses, when she forgot to hit reset on her smart phone party app, there was a little miscalculation. Sheila's confidence was high, but her timing, was wildly off and the night was a bitter disappointment.

Reset

3-2-1 Happy New Year

The television feed from Times Square in New York says "Live," but by all reports, the countdown to midnight in New York had taken place three hours earlier. Here, on the west coast, they had watched a new year roll across the planet. They imagine each time zone bursting into boozy renditions of Auld Lang Syne at one hour intervals. From Los Angeles, the Times Square ball dropped anew at 1200 precisely, as it had at 1200 one, two and three hours before in waves across the continental USA. This staggered staging of the precise ball-drop moment when 2015 ends and 2016 begins makes the two uncomfortably aware of the arbitrary nature of time and the artificial construct of a point in time where the reset button is pressed and the count returns to 1.

Still, they drank their champagne and sang those words of Auld Lang Syne that they could remember (could old acquaintance be forgot and hmmmm hhmmmm to mind... could old hmm hmm hmm doo do do and do do auld lang syne) and in the morning they mumbled white rabbit (at least, she did; he mumbled rabbit rabbit, because they remembered the rules of the new year superstition differently.)

They planned on pulling down the old calendar and putting up a new one like always, but they forgot and their smart phones slid a new day/month/year across their screen without fanfare. Besides, they liked the picture of the waterfall from December 2015 so time stood still in the hallway and flowed like liquid in their pockets.