Your prompt for January 6 is brought to you by Prajakta at https://anarmchairperfectionist.wordpress.com/ Your prompt is: “Tangible.” Use it any way you like. Make sure you stop by Prajakta’s website and say hello to her!

Thanks to Linda G Hill for setting this fun project up. And thanks to stand-in Rosemary for keeping it going!

Tangible

Where I grew up the sky was tangible. Most people don’t think of sky or air as tangible. But if your town was trapped between mountain ranges and the air currents trapped the air from Los Angeles. especially in the summers, the sky was yellow to tan. You felt that on hot days, in your lungs, of course, but if you were like me, your skin. I never felt clean during the summer unless I was swimming. We didn’t own a pool but we walked several miles to get to a pool and our two dimes let us stay for four hours, two sessions. Unfortunately, by the time we had walked home we felt dirty again. That was before laws were passed for cars and companies to reduce smog-causing emissions. By the time I had my own children and brought them to see their grandparents those laws had changed the sky quite a bit. It is still a bit yellow, I think, but maybe that is just the film covering my memory. No. Wait! I remember using GeoEarth to “drive” through the town and the sky in the pictures makes the place look hot and sticky, kind of yellow. But still not as bad as when I was a kid.

Now I live somewhere totally different. During the summer the sky is so dry as to make it the opposite of tangible, I suppose intangible. But the lack of H2O that, say, the southern states have in high quantities, is so lacking one needs to constantly smear on lotions or squirt themselves with water. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. For all seasons my hair looks like I am touching that huge machine they had in science class that makes static electricity (Had to look it up–electrostatic generator!) Touching metal items or pets or loved ones can cause tangible and visible effects. But the sky here is so clear and dark that you can see a million galaxies! Stars so close you feel they may be tangible.

I wrote all the above with this thought in mind. Last night we reached a low of -20. Today I am not sure we got above 12. The kitchen pipes froze and took some doing to start working again. But after days of snow that hasn’t melted since before Christmas, this morning’s air was tangible. It grew all over everything outside. The frost on the trees were big pieces of ice. I still can’t see out of my windows as the outer pane is covered with frost. It looks like a magical place.

Not so to my poor little rat terrier, Kali. She goes out to do her duty and she holds up one foot and then the other. The world is TOO tangible for her.