At the end of my words

What other writing prompt would a person need besides a pale blue sky, six minutes before sunrise on a January morning? Icicles on the gutter outside the window are bumpy, knobby from freeze and thaw. Thin clouds over the houses on the east side of the street brighten slowly, warm white at their centers, with lavender edges. Scan the lacy black trees and you see clumpy old nests holding memories of last summer, waiting, maybe, for inhabitants' return.

I've been awake since shortly after five. Read the New York Times in my bed cave, under flannel sheets and warm comforter. I flipped through this: an art lesson on collage, cubism and the early 20th century, presented online, mobile-friendly, as an immersive experience. Close-ups to draw your attention to this and that in the image under study. And pulling back into the world around and beyond the object to talk about information overload in Paris pre-World War I.

Oh, art. 

People explaining paintings can capture my attention, but only to the point where they don't explain too much. Tell me what the artist is doing. Where's the break with reality? Where's the window into more reality? Don't try to tie it all up in a box with Meaning printed on the wrapping paper.

Because there are too many words in the world right now. Maybe that's because, confined to our homes, we experience one another through screens. Through recordings and Zooms and national media, Facebook posts, tweets, verbal battles in virtual worlds, crafted selves (like this one, in this blog). Words fail us when we look for something more real. Or at least they're failing me. 

What nonsense she's writing this morning! 

The nitty-gritty of life in an America pandemic, circa 2021: the dreary hunt for vaccination appointments, which requires keeping track of passwords for this or that app, this or that website. Words in headlines tempting you to click, to read repetitively about the tiny advances made over yesterday's mess. Words in thought pieces trying to make sense of the same things I'm trying to make sense of. Words that make a shell that few words, if any, can pierce. 

Blue sky, clear today, snow tomorrow. There's a crazy patch of light on a pile of snow across the street. Crazy -- I looked to see what strange spotlight or headlight could make that glow at that angle. I don't understand it, but it must be, somehow, the sun, which I can't quite see yet. Forty minutes past sunrise it's still hidden behind the houses on the east side of the street. But it's there, making that crazy patch of light, moving now across the sidewalk to the street. 

With the sky, it's enough. I'll use no words to wrap it up, no words to hold it in.