#penguinflight

North of the South Pole, as everything is, yet towards New Zealand, is a vast plain of white.  It appears desolate, empty and cold, but if you look closely there is a great deal of activity and even a surfeit of life.  Lots of it as monochrome as its surroundings, and penguin shaped.  Perceived often as clowns.  Birds that don't fly.  When anyone's looking...

This is the Ross Ice Shelf.

North of Antarctica, where the white stops, is a blue so deep that one imagines Robert Johnson never died, and every hurt that ever was came home.  Here too is life and an insane amount of activity.  A certain percentage of it cetacean, with huge hearts and very hot blood in a subzero world, also monochrome, chasing seals and penguins and dayglo orange things that fall off boats and splash around yelling too much.  They run very deep.  Then they come up for air.  Amongst other things...