Beyond the kitchen window, a low January sun rises in all its auric splendor, gilding everything it touches. Somewhere out there too and barely visible through the panes and their lacy ice crystals are trees and roof lines, swaths of village pavement and silent lamp posts, trees and fences coated in ice. Then there is the sky, blue and purple and tinted rosy pink at its farthest reaches. If I look up with my eyes almost, but not quite closed, I can still see a star or two shining in the corners of this very cold morning.
Standing here with my mug of coffee at first light, I can hear shards falling from the eaves of the little blue house in the village and the branches in its sleeping garden. Falling ice shatters percussively on the diamond hard snow below, and it rings like tubular bells.
Everything is here, all the essential bits and pieces of life and mindful wandering, and lucky me, I have three sets of lenses to capture it with - these old eyes, this kitchen window, the lens of my trusty camera.