L'Hiver...

As I rode to a meeting this evening it struck me that it was 6pm and there was still some light left in the sky; during the darkest days of winter the light shrinks away nearly two hours earlier...the days are getting longer! And as I pedaled and coasted into the winter's cold wind I stopped for a minute to snap the above photo. Yes, during the dog days of summer when I'm sweating on my a bike and sweating even more facing a stove at work I'll likely pine for the cold refreshing feel of a winter's eve, but for now my thoughts are set on spring (it's not too far away). Because it's not really the cold and the snow that gets to me during the winter months; it is the darkness, the short grey days and the long dark nights.

“Although it was only six o'clock, the night was already dark. The fog, made thicker by its proximity to the Seine, blurred every detail with its ragged veils, punctured at various distances by the reddish glow of lanterns and bars of light escaping from illuminated windows. The road was soaked with rain and glittered under the street-lamps, like a lake reflecting strings of lights. A bitter wind, heavy with icy particles, whipped at my face, its howling forming the high notes of a symphony whose bass was played by swollen waves crashing into the piers of the bridges below. The evening lacked none of winter's rough poetry.”

--Théophile Gautier

Urban Simplicity.