Just when it looked like winter was lost … leichter then stärker then mäßiger Schnee! Aber später kommt Regen, und dann der Schnee ist verloren.
Tag Archives: Winter
Uferstr Schnee – 4
Uferstr Schnee – 5
Uferstr Schnee – 6
Uferstr Schnee – 7Krähe Schnee Baum
The cold is waning, though perhaps remain a pair or more days when – at least in the nights – winter will descend over Berlin. Privately, I was disappointed with the warmth, outlook undressed by snow, and the unwintery light. Possibly it is the moisture in the air which causes the distinct opalescent light only to arrive deep below freezing; this for me is winter, and the crisp, empty sound of the world once white decked.
The plummeting of mercury (yes, the thermometer outside our former-BVG office window is certainly that most fleet of metals) was for me then a release from disappointment – riding towards the Spree with cheeks, ears iced and burning, a thin warmth of wan sun when caught at the lights, blackened piles of chewed-up snow, unheimlich sublimating massifs of tyre grit, oil and ice.
Winter. I barely notice, shrouded in thick walls, heating, double-glazed windows and my perch on the floor only seeing boughs of the trees and sky. Yet to look out, sometimes I see, as I did last Thursday, the symbolic representation of the season arrayed; lifeless, cropped dark skeletons of trees, whitened on their upper reaches as they are mossy on their northern, whiteness moreover on any surface of repose, that light again, and always crows.
Krähe Schnee Baummmm … mits!
I thought perhaps there was a mistake, alas (or yay!) no; as I ate breakfast, it was warming up to -19.7º. And so, having put off for long enough the unavoidable, I rode southwards, not in search of warmer climes, just a nice pair of winter gloves for cycling please.
Stumbling into Fahhrad Frank on Torstr, I found my perfect winter friends. And so, winter, I shake my clam-like mits at you and mock your pathetic attempts to suffer fingertips with frostbite. Even better, I can pre-warm them and have 8-10 hours of hand-hot-watertbottles. It’s quite depraved.
Shall have to buy a hat now to avoid losing ears, however.
clam mits (with heizsysteme)Schnee
Distracted from reading in bed this morning by an indecipherable mumbling. ‘Was?’ … ‘Schnee!’ About time!
Snow und Schornstein
Snow over Uferstudios
Snow west on Uferstrasseparc forest winter
A dusk walk in the leafless forest.
parc forest – 1
parc forest – 2
parc forest – 3
parc forest – 4
parc forest – 5
uferstrasse snow
It’s not the Gulf Stream collapsing. It’s not going to be the coldest winter in 1000 years. The North Atlantic Oscillation is in a weak phase though, and yes, “if the simple model is correct, the cold winters we in Europe are experiencing at the moment are a consequence of global warming.”
It may be one of the last. Today it rains, the snow is slush and trickling, dripping water beating a tattoo upon Uferstrasse. It’s warm even; 4º. Grey though, of course. Yesterday in the cold a peek of sun set the whitened trees aglow, shot with colour between me at the window and the scraps of undressed sky behind.
The day before as the heaviest of falls yet this winter brought a haze across the canal and Hallen, air dry and cracking, the Berlinerwasserbetrieb still out making tunnels and therein tunneling, the light that particular intensity only of winter in the north caught in this, as if eyes unfocussed and drained of colour these very colours become overwhelming, in this I took some photos.
uferstrasse snow – 1
uferstrasse snow – 2
uferstrasse snow – 3
uferstrasse snow – 4
uferstrasse snow – 5
uferstrasse snow – 6
uferstrasse snow – 7
uferstrasse snow – 8
solstice
Taoism struggles against the cultural preference for the “light.” The Tao Te Ching, especially, champions the low, the dark. Darkness is an attribute of Tao (Way). In passage 21 (Legge translation), Tao is referred to thusly: “Profound it is, dark and obscure; Things’ essences all there endure.” Dusky, obscure, dark are all words used to describe Tao. So, why be afraid, if dark is Tao?
A Taoist would not be afraid of Winter Solstice. Nor would he/she celebrate it as the imminent return of the light. Rather, a Taoist would embrace the dark in and of itself, knowing that it is not permanent (nothing is in Tao) but that it is essential and, in its own way, beautiful.
solstice
landwehr kanal mit schneeregen
Snow and ice in the early afternoon in Berlin. In November. I shall no longer pretend it is still autumn.
landwehr kanal mit schneeregen
splat …
Fat snotty lumps of snow pushed down the river from the breeze as it coiled over the hills above Zürich, driven lake-ward by a lurking, soot heavy storm front. There’s nothing quite like getting slapped in the face by the first frigid snows of winter.
snow over the limmat