Still Winter

Penetrating cold: we seem too weak to be able to shake off winter. The confusion settles behind my shoulders, in for the long haul.

I hear someone singing, very faintly, far away.

It's one of those strange bardos, a roll-up time. A market adjustment. Things slip, a little. The cargo shifts.

It was still light when I started my massage last night, and the skin as I rubbed in the oil gleamed like wet, dark chocolate. Such a beautiful color. English is still poor in vocabulary for such skin. "Black" and "jet" and "ebony" are simply wrong, not red enough; "brown" is hopelessly vague. "Chestnut" is too light. "Chocolate" comes closest, and conveys some of the richness and delight, but it has no dignity. What we want is the black equivalent of "alabaster." We don't have it, yet. There's a sort of reddish obsidian that has that glow and depth, but when you say "obsidian" people think "jet."

Night fell. She slept, and woke, and slept.

I don't know why people apologize for sleeping. It's rude to fall asleep in the middle of a spoken conversation, but massage doesn't work that way. The conversation goes on, awake or asleep.

I walked slowly, this morning, daunted by the cold and gloom. I seldom understand why people don't like the weather to be cold and dark, but this morning I did. I usually like the cold and the dark because I can feel the torch of my body burning so strongly against it. This morning the flame was feeble and uncertain. I felt I could gutter in the cold, be lost in the dark.

Our German exchange student seems to want to have nothing to do with us: he spends all his time at the host-house of another, pretty and female, exchange student. I daresay we are rather dull. He decisively nixed the idea of going over the mountains to the Warm Springs Reservation. We're a bit baffled by him, and I think he's a bit baffled by us. But anyway, it's only another week. And he liked the Nike outlet store.