boston/winter.

boston is an adventure these days. walking anywhere feels just a little risky. it requires preparations! boot laces must be solemnly secured, mitten holes mended. you can daily spot the fallen, done in by some bit of black ice or an aborted attempt to hop a snow bank. the streets echo with the disappointed groans of those who have miscalculated the depth of one of the slush puddle that can be found at the base point of every lowered curb. only about half of the sidewalks were plowed or shovelled, and the rest have been trampled to varying degrees-- ranging from wide swaths of mightily compacted slush to tortuous foot-narrow dotted lines. you have to move carefully. and it's marvelously quiet. oh! that pleasantly slight air of danger. i glance at my bike every time i leave my office where it sits, propped safely up, more, in all honesty for it's own protection than for mine.

and where i'm always going is where i think i can write the most and best. all i want to do is recount a particular little philosophical conversation with insight and precision, to make some modest and incisive contribution to it, and then just run right up the center and spring effortlessly into everything above and beyond it. that's all. what i'm going to settle for is an earnest if slightly muddled interpretation of what someone said and a couple of earnest if slightly muddled suggestion for saying something more usefully specific.

i'm going to post my paper here when i'm done with it.