Snow

When it starts falling, on Friday afternoon, for the first few hours everything melts.  Nothing sticks.

When it stops on Saturday evening, it’s given birth to a different world.  Everyone is helpless, everyone is kind.  The streets are deserted and blank.  The only way to get around is ingenuity and desperation.  It feels like I’m back in Africa.

But we have such important lives!  So many things to do!

Walking to the coffeeshop is like crossing a mindfield.  You dance from clear path to clear path, dodge random vehicles that come barreling down the half-plowed lane, hope you don’t step in something that can swallow your leg.

At midnight, after some sporting event that seems ridiculously self-important and anti-climatic, I take Otis for a walk.  The drifts are higher than his head and he constantly jumps up on two feet to get his bearings.  Four girls pass singing “Who Dat?  Who Dat?”  — they’ve got a snow day coming, tonight they’re out late.

And it hits me, standing there in the unexpected wonderland, cold and white.  This is real.  So where has reality gone?  My life is staring at screens.  The information they spit out lodges in my brain and demands obsequiousness.  Will the bill pass?  Will it fail?  Did you see the plastic surgery that young woman got?  And that woman — eight babies at once! And ho, what a speech, what a speech, everything’s changed, nothing’s changed, they’ll save us all, they’ll put a hold on that, and five dollar footlongs! And LeBron dunked like so, check this reverse angle and the crowd’s reaction…and here’s video of dogs dancing salsa, dogs eating salsa, and I swear, the treasury secretary must resign! Greenland’s still melting! kids today, kids today, the things they listen to, I tell you, ya betcha, let’s start the next war, let’s restart the old one, and this new phone – my god, you can call the future with it! everyone’s got one, you got one? everyone’s got one, it can dictate time!  it can play every song that’s ever been written or even thought of — at once! and the beat goes like this: zoom, zoom, de zoom, zoom…

I shake my head to clear it.  Otis is looking at me.  Yo, his look says, where you spacing at?   Stay in the moment, bro.  Let’s go play in that field.

Ten more inches coming tomorrow.