Dark Side Of The Moon

Snow, moon, bitter cold.

Dull grey orb in winter sky

Searching for some fire.

I've been writing so much about winter, lately, that I thought I could at least do something a little creative with it. That image, by the bye, was what I saw outside the Rand Building when I came to work.

(For non-Buffalonians: the Rand Building is an old-school skyscraper, dating to the late 1920's. White stone, broken up by mostly dark windows [at least this time of night], it rises 26 stories, topped by a gigantic radio pole antenna. It's named for an executive of the bank that built it, and somehow survived the Depression that followed its construction. [It thrived well into the second half of the last century, in fact, before being absorbed into a Hong Kong-based holding company. Sic transit gloria mundi...] There's a rumor that it was designed to facilitate radio broadcasting. I don't know if that's true, but there has always been at least one station based here. It was the home for the Buffalo Broadcasting Company in the 30's, an early example of the kind of station grouping that's now common in this industry. WJYE, and its ancestor stations, has always been located here.)

If you've never experienced an American Midwest winter [I firmly believe Buffalo is the real beginning of the Midwest], around now is when some of us begin to think God has abandoned us to the fate of Perpetual Winter. (Some persons, skiers mostly, wouldn't be terribly upset by that sentence. Myself, I like to see Spring and Summer. Call me Ishmael...) The cold, the snow, and the ice seem to be establishing property lines, and looking to run phone, electric, and cable lines as well.

Then again, there is a sense of beauty in the whole thing. Tonight, I saw the flurries lit up by street lights and headlights. They looked like confetti dropped by a reassuring sky, trying to remind us that, yes, this Winter thing seems to be going on forever but, don't forget, better, or at least more interesting things are coming. Not that the snow flakes weren't interesting in their own right. The Moon, shining behind a gauzy curtain of clouds, looked mysterious, foreboding, and yes, sultry, all at the same time. I'd never seen it in quite this way before. I wish I could paint or draw, to give you a view of what it all looked like [I suspect it was too dark for a photograph.].

And the silence! If you're not from here, this part of the city is deserted when I come to work at night. (Don't mis-understand: I love adding music and words into the Void. But how often, in our busy everyday lives, do we really get to Just Enjoy The Silence? We need more of it, more of that lack of aural pollution.)

Please: when you leave your home, or school dorm, or whatever today; look around you. There is beauty in even the most plebean of scenes. Keep a mental picture to sustain you, to remind you that Life has its moments.

Enjoy...