Surreal

Well, a little snow was thrilling. And a lot of snow is: mindboggling. Yesterday and last night it came down, and kept coming down, and kept coming. It’s still falling, like sifted flour. Everything is completely covered now, every tree branch, everything. Several trees have completely keeled over from the weight of snow. There’s nothing but white out there. And I don’t know if it’s Winter Wonderland, or The Shining. The power keeps going out and last night we had an eerie, beautiful dinner by candlelight. The generator got pumped up in time for the presentations (incredible, illuminating and quite dramatic talk on the history of Social Security, and then a poet/paramedic who is one of the founding members of Ground Zero Rescue Workers for Peace). Both fantastic and we sat around talking for hours afterward.

I have 58 minutes of power left on my laptop and after that I guess it will be the old fashioned pencil and paper. I don’t mind. I’m not sure when the power will come up long enough for me to post this. It’s just gotten more and more dreamlike. (“I fell asleep, and when I woke up the entire landscape had disappeared…”) I guess I’ve seen snow like this in Tahoe, but I expect it there. I can’t believe that two days ago I was out paddling around on the lake. Today it’s snow-tubing down the hill behind the big house, and building lots of fires.

2:21pm: they powered up the generator and I juiced up my computer for a little while. I’m back up to two hours of writing-time. There’s a line of people waiting to use the Internet. The pay phone still has no dial tone.