sundur

The air is cold enough to feel like water, like splashing into a lake you've swum in before, but that surprises again and again -- how did you ever swim in this chill? You know you have, but it seems unlikely. Striking forward into the clear, diamond-like stuff, into the grammar of it, all the muscles seem sluggish and the tongue stiff. You roll and yaw and float, but off balance. Then the mind extends a membranous, stiff, finny wing that has been folded up since January (feeling it unfold, you have to rethink your whole idea of your own symmetry), and it catches the katabatic wind and speeds you forward, faster, faster.