Simply take a seat in a sleigh and, before being overcome by sleep, speed across a plain that’s as empty as a blank sheet of paper, boundless as life itself. Sooner or later this someone – perhaps it is a traveling salesman with a valise full of samples – will see great mounds of snow stretching along streets to the four corners of the earth, toward empty, icy expanses. He’ll see pillars made of icicles, their snowy caps lost in the dark of a wintry sky. He’ll draw into his lungs air as sharp as a razor that cuts feeling away from breath. He’ll come to appreciate the benefits of a climate forever unencumbered by restless springtime breezes, by the indolence of summer swelter, or the misty sorrows of autumn. He’ll take a liking to frost, which conserves feelings and capital, protecting both from the corruption of decay. Winter every day of the year and a darkness that softens contrasts and smoothes the sharpness of edges. In Stitchings the gloom would dissipate for a short moment around lunchtime.
