Ah, it’s a winter day and the breathing of the year is slowing down, agonal, soon to stop. The endless circling of the stars and the thin shafts of sunlight spear down into the earth and bring a certain gladness, it seems to me, to the birds who go about their business above me. The frost retreats from the heat of my thumb, pressed against the grainy glass of the windshield in passing, a reminder that I still have within me the heat of the life-force, the soul-ember that can melt the deep cold that exists between the planets, that exists between men of the same bloodline who should be…