Summer is behind us now. The Hawk has arrived: a cold wind that screams across Lake Michigan. On the eve of Christmas, snow lies beneath a crunchy crust of ice. It is impossible to venture outside without fear of catastrophic slippage. We have been promised a blizzard. We received snowflakes the size of Rhode Island, but little more. Temperatures rose and snow became rain. Temperatures dropped; and fallen rain became ice. Power lines have snapped. Flood warnings redden the Chicagoland map to areas north and west of the city proper. The Hawk is a wet and sullen thing this year. Winter has always been a good time of the year for me. It remains so. I’m prone to cluster headaches, often triggered by heat. They’re also triggered by bananas, which might explain why I find such things excessively vile—though admittedly, I have pronounced adverse reactions to bananas in other ways as well. For me, they are a massive gag reflex. Winter is not the time for bananas, nor the time for headache-inducing heat. The one drawback is that there are no woodlice wandering around, but beneath the snow, beneath the ice, and blankets of fallen leaves, those diminutive crustaceans are tucked away like gems, like a promise, like hidden treasures no one knows to look for. Winter is a promise and Spring is its fulfillment. I am reminded of this when I see ice, when frost blankets glass like some strange and crystalline fungus, and when icicles hang like stalactites in strange and alien caves. This year, winter is a promise in many ways, and I hope for a quick and happy fulfillment, not just for myself (and for Victor) but for everyone else waiting (im)patiently for things to change, to begin...to emerge from beneath blankets of snow and ice, like infant plants marking the beginning of spring. *** Chicago lies buried beneath irregular layers of ice-encrusted snow. Winter is an ice storm that has triggered flood warnings for outlying areas. There are those who bemoan the arrival of ice storms, and I am one who remains indifferent to them. They are beautiful, and a photographer’s dream. I’ve had precious little time for photography, but I managed to capture ice today. Father Frost has arrived and endowed this city with strange and frigid beauties. For those who celebrate Christmas in its various incarnations, I hope that this is a happy (or at least productive one) and as this year comes to a close, I hope for all of us, that 2010 is a year of wonder and fulfillment. Pick a dream. Nurture it. Make it come true.