winter in Georgia

Winter in Atlanta can be peculiar. I know... the weather is strange all over and the winter doesn't even last all that long here but it's still weird. In most places the winter is cold and once in a rare while there may be an unexpected reprieve in the form of a not so cold day. But winter in Atlanta is three seasons in one and the seasons can change in the course of a day. We had spring weather here on Friday--almost seventy degrees. Beautiful. Today, as I write this in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday, it is twenty-six degrees. Now I know that plenty of people today have snow to go with their frigid temperatures and I suppose I should be grateful that we don't have to deal with that, though I myself rather miss the snow. Winters in Atlanta are often cold, and often wet, but the cold and the wet never seem to coincide so as to produce snow. But we do have a daytime temp that's about forty-five degrees colder than it was the day before last. This curious phenomenon has a dreamlike affect; it feels as though the rules of nature, the regular rhythms of causation and time and space, have been suspended and one can slide effortlessly from one environment, one climate, one reality, into another without realizing it. Yesterday was just such a day. It started mild and damp, the sky was gray and there was some fog. Felt like an early spring day with precipitation imminent. The wet never made it to the party however and by late afternoon the sun was trying to dissipate the mist and the haze and the temperature was starting to drop. By dinnertime it was fall in Atlanta. After an evening's entertainment I returned to my car at about 2 a.m. and it was the dead of winter and the wind was blowing violently, shaking branches loose from trees and scattering trash around the streets. Time for bed and the comfort of less real dreams.