Escapism

"I was talking to a cat the other night. He said what everybody’s looking for is, what everybody’s looking for today, they’re looking for ‘escape-ism.’ " James Brown's nocturnal feline conversation hit on a Great Universal Truth. Escapism is one of mankind's defining inventions. JB is singing about drugs and alcohol, and how you need to steer clear of 'escapism' to stay real. A serious message to the brothers. Yet there's also the petty escapism. Vanilla distractions. Activities in which humans indulge to take their minds off everyday cares and woes. Watching TV, movies, shopping, music, reading fiction, surfing the web. And we do all indulge, to some degree.

Personally, my preferred form of escapism is travel. Transcendental, hypnotic views of The Road (while driving, the landscape unfolds directly in front of you), or, if on a train, the scenery viewed at a 90 degree angle.

Today's journey - a business trip to Krakow - transported me by train from dreary Warsaw to the winter wonderland of rural Malopolska, with the sun shining through the morning mists on landscape white with snow and hoar-frost (szadź)

Winter has arrived early in southern Poland in mid-November. It's been like this for over a week now. From the window, this could be Minnesota in the 1940s or '50s. The steady bu-DUM bu-DUM, bu-DUM bu-DUM of the train puts me at ease, opens my mind to alternative realities.

These photos are my first (of many this winter, I hope) shots of hoar-frost covered trees this winter. Szadź is a beautiful thing, forming when fog freezes overnight on trees.