Watching ice melt on an unusually warm autumn evening.
We drove three hours north from Québec City to Alma, Québec, Canada, to present an evening of performances at the gallery Langage Plus. Again, it was unusually warm for September, even that much further north. People were enjoying the reprieve from the impending winter, and I was enjoying it as well. But I also couldn’t stop thinking about the Arctic ice melting.
I sat opposite the front door of the gallery, holding a ceramic sieve full of balls of ice. I was in place before the first audience members arrived, sitting and watching the ice melt. I held the bowl out so that it could drip onto the cement of the step.
There were several performances that evening, and the audience came out between performances to chart the progress of the melting. The ice spheres became smaller and smaller, and after two and three-quarter hours they disappeared to become the puddle of water at my feet.
I left my chair to go inside to the performance space to watch the final minutes of the last performance. I did not stay at the front door to witness the puddle of water evaporate into the air.
