Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I wandered out into the park this afternoon, and idly picked up a sheet of ice that someone had broken off the top of a puddle. And I flung it at a nearby tree-trunk.

*crash*

It wasn't a loud noise, but a satisfying one, so I did it again. And again. I stopped when I noticed delicate crystals clinging to the bottom of one sheet of ice. I set that one upside down on the wall, so I could look at the crystals in the sunlight, then continued flinging flat pieces of ice.

A little of what I did could be justified as useful: I knocked the ice out of a storm drain, and kicked some pieces of ice away from the center of the path, hoping that that area won't be frozen over again tonight. But that, as I told the neighbor who suggested I was wasting my effort, wasn't the point.

The point was the sound of the breaking glass ice against the tree, and the thump of ice chunks against the frozen-over bit of river below.

I don't know why I'd been feeling an impulse to fling glass or pottery of late—an impulse I have entirely resisted—but I felt much better, despite sharp edges against my palms and then the cold of damp gloves (donned to protect me from those edges).

I'll probably get the chance to fling more sheets of ice tomorrow afternoon, if it goes below freezing tonight.

Some of today's ice was thin enough that I heard it breaking as a mallard walked across it.