Winter Wanderlust
Winter is here like a punch in the face. I saw it coming, but I never imagined how much it would hurt. My own face is a peachy pink for those several minutes before I defrost indoors. Within ten minutes outside, my nose loses its dam-like qualities toward mucus, and my scrunched upper lip pulls double duty. Even inside the relative scorching temperatures of my jacket pockets, I have to flex my hands to keep their circulation going. (Note to self: Must buy gloves. Must buy boots.) This is the sort of epic cold that wars are fought in. The valor of each side made all the greater by their mutual enemy. Yes, it's that cold.
Still, I walk the 8km to the Slovenia Times office. This is masochism without a center...it is the invention of masochism. And oddly, I'm picking up bits of enjoyment from it. When I walked this stretch in the summer, my thoughts were always my own. A chronicle of memories and ideas, sensations and hypotheses. Under the current conditions, such solipsisms last less than five minutes. It's too cold to concentrate. Instead I've taken to making observations, and then recording them through forced recitations. Today, I noticed that traffic lights here have an intuited protected left. Before, I saw the lack of left-turn lights and thought I was in baby LA. But, no, the traffic of one side is stopped, while the other is free to continue apace. Not a brilliant revelation, but a landmark alternative to a candy necklace of hiccuped thought.
Last night, the weather was spectacular. At 6:30PM, the sky feathered out cottonwood, goose down, burnt-page snowflakes. Any that hit my face or hands instantly became water, which gave me the weird illusion of sweating. It was that snowfall where you look up and wait for just that one flake which should hit you in the eye but at the last minute you outsmart gravity and move. You could actually see a field of perspective through the snow; it was that thick. I was outside on the phone with my grandmother during the heaviest part of the fall. She was trying to convince me to give her my landlord's number. "We're not that close, Ma. I'd feel uncomfortable doing that." "We need the number of someone there." "No, you don't. Call my cell." And all this old people worry just ate me up. Here I am in the middle of my social circle...meaning not "in the thick of it," but that everyone I care for is equidistant from me. I should be more bothered with myself, I resolved. And as I listened and discouraged and assuaged, the snow stopped. Like a switch. And the cloud cover climbed easliy twelve stories off the ground. This whole event took maybe fifteen minutes; a flutter of a bird's wing when you're on the phone with my grandmother. It was as if the sky were being vacuumed, cartoon-style. And the spectacle was not over; two minutes later, fireworks started going off in the northern part of the city. No one knew what they were for, but residents and shopkeepers were standing in front of their places, watching the tracers bat through the clouds and into frosted colors.
Much of this could be described as a miracle. Were it not just so typical.
Still, I walk the 8km to the Slovenia Times office. This is masochism without a center...it is the invention of masochism. And oddly, I'm picking up bits of enjoyment from it. When I walked this stretch in the summer, my thoughts were always my own. A chronicle of memories and ideas, sensations and hypotheses. Under the current conditions, such solipsisms last less than five minutes. It's too cold to concentrate. Instead I've taken to making observations, and then recording them through forced recitations. Today, I noticed that traffic lights here have an intuited protected left. Before, I saw the lack of left-turn lights and thought I was in baby LA. But, no, the traffic of one side is stopped, while the other is free to continue apace. Not a brilliant revelation, but a landmark alternative to a candy necklace of hiccuped thought.
Last night, the weather was spectacular. At 6:30PM, the sky feathered out cottonwood, goose down, burnt-page snowflakes. Any that hit my face or hands instantly became water, which gave me the weird illusion of sweating. It was that snowfall where you look up and wait for just that one flake which should hit you in the eye but at the last minute you outsmart gravity and move. You could actually see a field of perspective through the snow; it was that thick. I was outside on the phone with my grandmother during the heaviest part of the fall. She was trying to convince me to give her my landlord's number. "We're not that close, Ma. I'd feel uncomfortable doing that." "We need the number of someone there." "No, you don't. Call my cell." And all this old people worry just ate me up. Here I am in the middle of my social circle...meaning not "in the thick of it," but that everyone I care for is equidistant from me. I should be more bothered with myself, I resolved. And as I listened and discouraged and assuaged, the snow stopped. Like a switch. And the cloud cover climbed easliy twelve stories off the ground. This whole event took maybe fifteen minutes; a flutter of a bird's wing when you're on the phone with my grandmother. It was as if the sky were being vacuumed, cartoon-style. And the spectacle was not over; two minutes later, fireworks started going off in the northern part of the city. No one knew what they were for, but residents and shopkeepers were standing in front of their places, watching the tracers bat through the clouds and into frosted colors.
Much of this could be described as a miracle. Were it not just so typical.
posted by J Wilson at Tuesday, November 22, 2005
3 Comments:
Take the bus every now and again, you idiot. Next time I see you I want you to have a nose and fingers.
Baci, baci, baci per te, lo mio ragazzo bello.
I tried to warn you with my old poem--about what I don't know.
omigod. You're really writing. You're doing it. You make me want to do it back. You're good. You're actually really good. Not cryptic. Not obsolete. Not drowning. Just resonant. Wow.
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