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David Fischer, checking for a weather report at
FjordWisconsin(dot)com, the official Web site of his
town, found on a sunny day in February that the current
reported temperature was something below zero degrees,
“American.” He noticed some newly posted photos at the site,
snow pictures, a couple dozen. In one of them he recognized
his own home, the one in which he was warmly dwelling in that
present moment. If a thousand persons perused that photo, if it
appeared on a thousand lighted screens, not one viewer but Fischer
would have noticed the minuscule fraction of the frame representing his
front porch, or the east half of the high, octagonal window of his coat closet.
Still, he felt a thrill. Like glimpsing a whale’s leap from the sea. Why,
he had once wondered, why in the world, should a speck way out at the
ocean’s horizon, perceptible for but an instant from the shore, make his
heart swell with joy? And, now, why in the world, a world away from the
warm place he had lived for decades near the sea, would a snowy scene
of Wisconsin and a sliver of porch excite him on this February afternoon?
Two rocking chairs rocked on that porch last June.
Two friends smoked cigarettes and drank cold beer.
Fischer stares at the computer screen. He contemplates the snow and the cold.
Fourteen hundred forty minutes fill each of Fischer’s days. Isn’t it amazing,
he thinks, now, staring at his porch on his computer screen, that a two-minute
phone call at bedtime from a certain female former friend would excite him
like a whale’s leap, but would grant Fischer a peaceful, good night’s sleep.
♦
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