.: So, it is a brumal night: my fingers have felt like cold, dead iron, scattered across my desk like abandoned railroad ties in winter. It has made me think of snow, of my lost horizon of the old world I passed though this last yule-tide. Which puts me in strange friction, for as I shuffle, dead-eyed, through sheafs of student papers, I stare out at the secret greens and chaotic, subtropical lushness of Southern California. Warm to my eyes, cold seeping to my bones.

As I write, the darkness has arrived, and now I feel the shivering wight of cold sink down to my gelid toes. What is left to say? Is this really a corner of California?