Old, cold winter

The sun is bleaching the snow a blinding white and where the sun is kind enough to leave it alone, not hit it quite so hard, it is blue – a washed out blue – like the snow is tired of itself. Like I am tired of myself, and the snow.

When I step out of my car, the flag clangs against the cold metal pole as if announcing my arrival. It bellowed the last time I was here, so I notice the repetition like an omen. I’m hardly out of my car, before I get back in. It’s windy and cold and I’m in a bad mood. I’ve forgotten my notebook and I’m resigned to write on an old Dunkin Donuts bag that is on the floor of the back of my car because I don’t like to throw things away when I know I can compost them. I try to write and the pen is stodgy and difficult. It barely writes. My cursive looks like Morse code. Today, I want a divorce from my place. It’s ugly and unloving. Today I need sympathy and it’s kicking me in the shins.

I think about the rants we read for class this week and I wonder if my utter hatred of the cold is enough of a justification to go off on a tangent about my distaste for the cold. I hate the cold. I hate this city in the cold. I hate I hate I hate it all.

But that sounds more like a tempertantrum, than a well thought out rant. It doesn’t seem… insightful… not like Jamaica and her post-colonial rant - or insightful, the way Gessner asks us to be creative, step out of our comfort zone, out of genre, out of specialization and into the grand expanse.

Rants can be of fire, but if they burn the skin instead of melt the snow, it’s as bad as a desert sun, no?

I moved to Florida once. For a year and a half, I lived with muted seasons. There was division of time, sure, but it was less         murderous, less        devastatingly long

And I was blessed to be there during a season without any personified storms – no hurricanes, just torrential rains… rains that dissolved into sunshine and the shimmer shiver of rainbows in the humid air. And it was good there. Beautiful in a way that beautiful is – easy to see, easy to love. And easy to romanticize. Especially now, when every bit of my bones feel heavy as lead, soaked through with cold.

When I moved back to Pittsburgh, it was the middle of December. It was the coldest recorded winter in 80 years. (I’m sure you can imagine the comments I got about that… Every northerner hates the cold, but we never make the exodus. We just stay here and bitch. But Why? In March, I always wonder why?) That was four years ago and the winters seem to have gotten worse. But I grew up here. I should be used to this cold, right? Well, I’m not. I think it might be because humans are dumb sometimes. By dumb, I mean: We say we are adaptable, but adapting means change. We haven’t changed… we haven’t grown more hair, thicker skin, higher body temperatures, a better way to store fat. No. We simply pretend we’ve adapted… and suffer instead. We build houses and shiver in them. Or roast and waste our resources. Either way, we’re not the bears or the birds – they are at least smart enough to hibernate or get the hell out.

Anyway… Not all birds fly south for the winter. There are birds out today. Tiny little palm sized sparrows. Are they dumb too? Or aren’t they cold? How aren’t they cold? For all their chirping and soaring, they don’t seem cold. I’m not chirping, and I’m sure as heck not soaring. I’m slumped like a turtle without a neck under a coat and a scarf, my feet are tired of posing as Clydesdale-feet, furry hooves clodding about. But maybe they are… cold, I mean. Maybe they’re chirping a rant. Maybe they’re talking about how stupid birds are – the ones that stay in this inclement weather. How sparrows should learn to adapt – grow more feathers, fatten up. Or maybe they’re not. Maybe their chirping about how beautiful the view up here is – like I was last week, and all the ones before.