Thoughts of Winter in the Middle of Summer

The past few days my post on Signs in Nature of Winter to Come has been one of the most read articles. That is odd. It’s still summer for almost two more months. Then there is still the wonderful autumn.

Are people already thinking about winter?

Maybe it has been hot where they are sitting at their computer and the thought of a crisp winter day sounds appealing. I will admit that I had that thought yesterday while watching a program about Tibet. The snows of Kilimanjaro that Hemingway showed me are melting away. It’s that climate change that some people still believe isn’t happening, or don’t believe that people are making it happen at a much more rapid pace.

I fell into an image on the television of a doorway view of the Himalayas. It became my daily poem. The snow reminded me of how beautiful a blank sheet of paper can be. Some writers (maybe artists too) say they panic at the blank page. I find the untouched, unspoiled potential of the blank sheet quite nice.

Some artist papers are quite beautiful. Even if they are “white” they have some color and texture. You can put the lightest wash of phtalo blue across the paper and there is a sky.

The blank page – even on a computer screen – has such possibilities. No words that you read over and realize that they don’t really say what you intended to say.