The Premonitory Glint

684/5

That was a spring of storms. They prowled the night;
Low level lightning flickered in the east
Continuous. The white pear-blossom gleamed
Motionless in the flashes; birds were still;
Darkness and silence knotted to suspense,
Riven by the premonitory glint
Of skulking storm . . .

from “The Land,” Vita Sackville-West*

When I woke up this morning, it felt like a storm of spring with temperatures in the mid-50s, sporadic jolts of thunder, and incandescent flashes of lightning. Even though COVID has destroyed the linearity of time, it is still jarring to to be pulled out of its stream because of the weather. But the winter season has reasserted itself and now, a few hours after sunset, the wind is out of the northeast at 22 miles an hour and it feels like it’s six degrees below zero. I half expect to see the Abominable Snowman lumbering down the street.

It’s a good night to stay in and read a book (or several) but I just finished writing an article about Donald’s digital trading card grift and the final January 6th committee hearing and I realized, between traveling and being among people to a degree I have not been in a very long time, there is a lot I haven’t really processed recently. It seems to be a symptom of the age in which we live that there is no downtime. Or, rather, when we do take a step back from the constantly breaking news, there’s the sense that we’re somehow abdicating our responsibility. Or that I am, at any rate.

But it’s impossible (and unhealthy) to stay engaged all the time. So, instead of working more tonight, I am going to read. At the moment I’m in the middle of Henry James’ The American; Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (the greatest British novel ever written which I’m reading for the twelfth time, for reasons I’ll explain in the not-too-distant future); Hilary Mantel’s memoir, Giving Up the Ghost; and, to keep it light, Anthony Horowitz’s The Sentence Is Death. (Yes, I read many books simultaneously.)

I hope you are all able to be inside tonight. If not, please stay safe and as warm as possible. It’s brutal out there.

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* I highly recommend signing up for” Poem-A-Day” from the Academy of American Poets at Poetry.org