B&W Variations

The sky is the easel and the color is monchrome, a seamless wheel from white to near black. If eyes could find a cloud amid the uniform texture, perhaps the fat, dark smudges in the East would be threatening. Instead pupils shrink and swell in response to the shifting shine that illuminates some distance beyond the gray firmament. The entire-arc of the sky is a creased penumbra, as if the earth were too close to grasp the full scope of the eclipse.

This sky does not belong to morning, because the sun doesn't rise. It portends a forbidding near-future, a gloom ripe with imminence and disaster. Like a sword drawn from its scabbard, weather such as this will not retire until it has drawn blood and spent itself in the fury of the elements.

It was just at this point that I got the bill for my hot chocolate at the chichi cafe across from work. After choking down the mouthful of cocoa that I nearly sprayed across the table, romantic notions of the weather vanished and I realized my stomach was growling in protest of the expense. Ah well, something tells me Hemingway would have drank ersatz coffee before he set foot in a place like that. I shoulda known better.