Orange Chair

If this is any example for my mind set, than I have become not only very dull, but also terribly out of date and worn. I spent the past seven days entranced in a misanthropic day dream about dance. I watched shorts from Don Quixote and Swan lake on U tube. I danced and stretched every day of the week and composed numerous letters to not only the adviser of the dance program at Western Washington University, but also to the few professional dance schools in Bellingham. I began researching ways to improve my turn out (the extent of one's ability to achieve a 180 rotation, from the hips, of the feet) and ways to become even more flexible. Every time I tried meditation to relive myself from this madness, I had to cut my time sitting short as I had to get up and move; Mozart was in my head, or Bizet. I have lost the desire to even try to control my mind any more. It is miserable to be stuck in this nihilistic day dream of something not real, but it is harder still to be quiet and to not move at all. I am not good at being like a sled dog buried beneath the snow; waiting.
So I go outside for some fresh air even though it is -50F and there is absolutely nothing out there to entice or supplicate one's needs. Well, yes, there is the sun, setting ( I do not get up early enough for the sun rise anymore). It rises setting. And as it drags itself along the Northern horizon it bleeds out some very dim streaks of sun - blood. Then the sky fills up with a powder blue fog which appears as a burial ritual and then all is diminished.
It really is quite bleak here.
But we have planned a holiday; Procrastination Day. Two days ago Steve took a 25 pound turkey out from the freezer. I was supposed to have taken it out three days before. It still has not thawed out yet. Hence the name for the holiday. Actually, most of what we do best here is procrastinate. Only a few things really ever need timely doing. Water, when low or empty needs refilling, same with fuel, food needs to be cooked, we need to call in over the radio every morning to let the world outside know we are alive. We need to keep the toilet paper stocked.
There is a little over 2 weeks until the crew change begins. On Tuesday, November 4Th the plane will arrive with four new camp staff , one scientist (who will be made to understand the harsh reality of problems that the mid winter sub sub freezing environment accrues on instruments designed in warm collegiate basements) and three full time company employees.
Together we will spend one week turning over the duties of camp life. Then we will get on the plane and fly away over the bumpy pinking snow-scape to a remote arctic city of 567 people where the earth, already covered in snow, will seem so abundant with life yielding grasses poking through the crust, white hares hopping, song birds chirping, ravens gargling, children playing, dogs barking, smells smelling...
Steve is watching the last of the unwatched, extreme ski movies. I pop around the corner just in time to see some dude land in a pillow of perfect powder. He is surrounded by a vista of evergreens sugared with snow. I walk away muttering, " snows pretty awesome when theres trees and topography".
Katy has just walked in bemoaning her brownies which are ,"bubbling...no they are boiling...there gonna SUCK"! High altitude baking is notorious for being troublesome.
It is four thirty in the afternoon and almost dark. My heavy(philosophically) book requires much page consuming in order for me to reach my goal of finishing off the season here with yet another book: Herman Melville's, Moby Dick. Its important to have goals, after all, without them, what would we have to procrastinate over?