random thoughts – Day 1,793 – (Wednesday) – temporary art

Broken downspout
 ice art.

The gutter icicles on the shady side of the house when viewed by evening light are kind of pretty. As I stood outside trying to get pictures, a man walked with his leashed dog to the end of the street. They climbed the snow-covered path to the top of the Beaver Brook embankment and then I heard some mild cussing and saw that the guy had landed on his butt on the hill. Oops. 

I hope he didn’t see me and think I was taking his picture as I stood there with my cell phone. I was trying to get an interesting angle of the side of the icicles closest to the house. Plus, I knew it was a smidge too dark and I wouldn’t get a good image of him sliding on his butt down the hill from where I stood anyway. But he probably wouldn't know that. 

My icicles and the block of ice at the end of one of my downspouts are mildly interesting as temporary art installations, but they are nothing compared to some of the ice and snow frosted creations spotted downtown today. The benches on Merrimack Street near the bank have uneven coatings of snow that look like my tween- and teenage amateur attempts at frosting cakes.

There is a crosswalk near the snow-covered benches and there was no traffic in either direction, so I made a break for it and crossed the street several blocks earlier than usual. That decision led to the decision to walk up Kirk Street instead of walking on Merrimack to John Street. It was a good decision. 

Iron stairs ice art.

On the corner of Merrimack and Kirk Streets is a tall brick building. There is a drainpipe on the Kirk Street side of the building that is missing a couple sections and the result is clumps of ice at the disconnected pipe ends. They look like floating crystal sculptures hung on the building.

A few feet away from the busted drainpipe is an iron fire escape. The black iron was adorned with ice globs on the top surface of the step and icicle like chandelier drops suspended below the underside of the step. I would say it stopped me in my tracks, but I had only just turned from the drainpipe discovery and immediately spotted the stairs, so I wasn’t even in motion yet. But if I had been moving, I would definitely have stopped.