Culling

While I am riding one of the stationary spinning bikes, Steve is sorting through the walk in cooler. He decides that the pineapples need to be cut up. They are perfect, remarkably so. Eating a slice of this tropical fruit reminds me of the places I have been to, where you can go outside bare footed and not have to worry about your naked flesh sticking to the metal grating and peeling off. Lately I think allot about swimming. I have all of this "ocean" around me but its surface is impenetrable. I go "sailing" off on my skis staring down the horizon. I imagine seeing birds come skimming along the waves. I look into the sun set and the deepness of the cold smells like salt. One of the science technicians tells me that salt particles have actually been detected in some of the airborne particular filters, so this is possible. I fill my lungs twice more despite the sub zero medium. The solitude is too easy to take for granted. The cold too easy to wish against. Other life styles trot across the mind like clouds in the sky. One minute this, another minute that. But the magnitude of simplicity and stillness and peace so gently reminds me that, despite the altitude and the flatness and the eye- lash- gluing freeze from my breath, the challenge here can also represents something so similar to that saline spirit of sailing; by allowing one the room needed to day dream about clouds in an atmosphere so clear, one can lay in bed and watch Sirius blink and flash and twinkle through binoculars, I sense the soul of the universe and my heart is content with just that.