I am scrolling with my forehead today and opening doors with my face
For those of you on a different meridian, if that’s even a thing, this is our first real snow and it’s cold and dangerous and wonderful. Snow, like water, is a great equalizer. Unless you got spikes that is
Everybody’s on the same playing field in the water – you know – it’s even. Everybody’s hair is a mess. Nobody’s wearing makeup. We’re all blotchy and rashy, fuck off spellcheck, and nobody’s bathing suit is consistently flattering or even flattering once, because there’s bubbles and folds and yanking necessary and lack of symmetry and sometimes you have to clamour and claw and gasp and cough and choke.
It’s all part of the fun
Same with snow except snow has the added bonus of instability. You gotta get your snow legs which are like sea legs but without the notice if you know what I mean because WHAM it’s ice and you’re down.
If you’re lucky that is.
Because if you’re not down, chances are you had to perform some sort of gangster-ballet and along with busting those moves, you ripped something – fabric or muscle – and peed a little
Also maybe somebody filmed it
And you have me to thank because whatever sorcery I performed yesterday to extend and intensify the storm into today seems to have worked – I mean it’s certainly white – but it didn’t work enough. We are a little short on chaos and please accept my apologies. There’s not quite enough snow to make it impossible to get around, it only takes longer and is more of a pain in the ass, and I’m very sorry. Also driving is difficult and my son is going to get up and expect to drive to the subway station and I’m going to have to get all bossy and weird about it. Unless you’ve spun out on black ice or floated across a frozen bridge or slammed into a snowbank or something else, you’re not afraid.
He seems to think winter driving has improved in the same way dentistry has
I’ve got something circling in my head that I started thinking about this morning when I opened the door to let Daisy out into the pre-dawn darkness. I could see every single branch on every single tree because each was supporting, effortlessly, a few inches of snow. There was absolutely no wind. That snow was balancing, flake over flake, upon long swoopy branches thinner than a pencil. And the cedars were gorgeous, the sky pink, and the far-away howling wind made me remember.
I read this in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves a long time ago. I don’t know if you’ve ever read that book but it sort of decapitates you in a way. I was maybe 20 and that kind of writing shocked me. It really did. It was thrilling and I could barely keep it together, whatever it is, and then she quoted this little poem and it replaced my entire head.
O Western wind when wilt thou blow that the small rain down can rain
Christ that my love were in my arms and I in my bed again
It was written anonymously which I think increases its value because it feels like it wasn’t even written, doesn’t it?
It feels like it just is, you know, like the waves and everything else. It feels organic in the same way some music feels organic, that it belongs to you right away, and you remember it effortlessly and always because it just couldn’t go any other way, and it nestles right into you, and you can hear it between dreams if you listen for it
Elton John’s Funeral For A Friend, does that for me.
Mark Twain said he could live for two months off a good compliment, which is how I feel after reading or listening to things like that poem or that Elton John song which btw includes Love Lies Bleeding. Also sometimes, and I hope this isn’t weird for you to hear because it’s a little uncomfortable to say, but sometimes I get that feeling from my own writing, and that’s what makes my world go around.
