It only hurts when I laugh.

Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.

Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.

Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.

yoko ono

We are in the d-e-e-p freeze here in Minnesota. As I write this afternoon the windchill temperature is -25. Regarding the first photo above, when I took Pashka out that morning it was only -13 at 7 a.m. I couldn't get my key to the building to work in the outside locks so I had to keep going around the building until I found a door that would work. In the meantime, call me a mouth breather, but even my tongue was starting to feel as if I'd burned it on some soup. Frozen nose hairs and ice cream headache weather!

Good day to stay in and watch a movie. I can now recommend another: The Namesake. This is based on the novel of the same name written by Jhumpa Lahiri about a [arranged marriage] Bengali couple who move from Calcutta to the U.S., raise their children here and the conflict therein. Lahir said about her characters' themes of alienation and displacement: “Things for which it was impossible to prepare for but which one spent a lifetime looking back at … things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.”
Watch for the 'bridges' motif and remember, 'the greatest journeys are the ones that bring you home.'