Tuesday, February 4, 2014

The Dog Days of Winter


In his poem No Possum, No Soup, No Taters, Wallace Stevens writes, “it is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice.”
The poem title leads one to believe it probably doesn't get much better from there.
Sorry, bro!
Excepting the worst drought California has ever experienced—and it’s seen some doozies—this year so far has seen lots of metaphorical possum, soup, and taters.
The first of January saw Mario’s new 6'4 looking like this:
 While I was in Southern Baja doing this:
Then back home to Sonoma County where the shit got fifty shades of shreddy and looked like this for a solid week:
Then Mario’s board suddenly looked like this: 
And this:
And this! And, again, our pots were full o' possum.
Clearly, we need rain. Shakespeare's no Punxsatawny Phil, but it would be great if February goes something like  act five, scene four of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, when Don Pedro greets Benedick with, “what’s the matter, That you have such a February face, So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?”
We'll take some of that.