Hungry for Art

I’m writing upstairs with my laptop computer, not in my underground, windowless office, looking out the window over the deck into the woods. It’s because of a “phone card.” It’s a little “cell phone receiver” which plugs into your computer to give you relatively fast (150 - 800 KBS versus our constant 26.4 KBS previously on the phone line) internet access.

Before we got it, I was planning my life around trips to the library downtown, where they have wireless connectivity for free. I was thinking of becoming a regular patron at 2 Street Station, a nice coffeeshop which is another free wireless location. Always scheming ways to pack up my business and get out of the house.

This phone card dealie only works on our second floor. So instead of sitting in the dark, I get to kick back between thoughts and gaze out over the land. I actually sit with my nose two feet away from the window, looking out toward the south.

“South” is a really important word in Alaska. Every house siting, every garden chat, every “peak oil” conversation ends up asking, “how much” south you have access to.

For us in this new house, in summer, some (compared with our cabin in west Fairbanks where we have – almost none). Here, we’re sited with south facing windows. But in winter, there isn’t much “south” to speak of. We’re on the side of a hill, Birch Hill, and it’s in the way of the three-hour-per-day, low-rise sun. And even if the sun could get its face above the hill, there’s this web of birch trees arching up into the sky from the end of our snowy lawn, each branch covered with a toothpasty squeege of feathery snow.

There was a time in fall we were awfully hopeful, this being our first year in what Teo calls the “big brown house.” It was when the afternoon sun raked in our south facing windows, shining all the way across the house. We’d been amazed in summer when the sun sets for hours on end through our west-facing window, prying rosy light through the tree trunks. We thought we were incredibly lucky to have direct light as we faced the winter.

Turns out we don’t.

But there is another odd benefit to this arrangement. I mean, the “air card” arrangement.

It cuts down on our food consumption.

When I’m called to abandon my writing or e-mailing to come to supper, we turn off all the lights in the house, light the table candles, and then each of us lights our “gratitude for” candle – pretty soon we notice that Teo, with a mouth full of food, has stopped chewing, and is staring off into the darkness. Oh, we notice, the computer screen has gone on screen-saver. And the screen saver is a slideshow of photographs we’ve taken over the years.

Pretty soon we’re all engaged. “Where was that taken?” “Lookit the BAY-BEE! Who’s the BAY-BEE?” It’s First Friday (Fairbanks’ Art Gallery night each month) on Crest Drive.

Who needs “south” when you have art?