Cold snap

 We're experiencing a spate of cold weather here in sunny California. I realize it won't be cold by the standards of anyone existing in the more extreme latitudes, but for us, here, it's bloody cold, okay? It's in the low 30s at night and it's not topping out much higher than 55 during the day. They were threatening snow. I think I caught a glimpse of a tiny patch right up at the top of Mt. Diablo, but I could be mistaken--I was driving at the time, and the sun was coming up over the mountain, so it was a bit tricky to take a good look. It's happened before up there. In 2009 it came pretty far down the mountain, actually. That was a Big Deal at the time. That was also just a super shitty winter all around, if I remember correctly. It might have been 2010. Either way, there was snow where snow usually wasn't, and everybody freaked out. 

The next thing to say about cold weather is that I don't heat my house. I have the original in-wall electric heaters from when this place was built in 1973, and they scare the ever-loving crap out of me. I keep thinking about replacing them, but I don't use my air conditioner in the summer, either, so it always ends up being a "what's the point?" in my head, and I move on. I do have a little space heater that I use when it gets really bad. It's terrible, but it does just enough to take the chill off. I wear layers and sit under blankets and have a pair of fingerless gloves so I can still do things while being a bit less cold.

Why, yes, my electric bill is quite low. Why do you ask?

I only ever had one snow day in the history of my academic career, and it was while I was doing my Master's degree in London. The entire city shuts down over a foot of snow. I'm still baffled by it. You'd think they'd have a plan. I mean, it's not like it's unheard of to get snow in the south of England. But no, school was called off for the day, as were the trains, the Underground, and the busses. I had a snowy exploratory of Hyde Park--I lived a block away--followed by a Nutella hot chocolate in a cafe somewhere in Bayswater. It was cold. The snow was novel. 

For a day.

After that, it was just a nuisance. I don't like snow. Some people who grow up in the climate to which I am accustomed go out of their way to get to snow. Lake Tahoe isn't all that far away from the Bay Area, and I've known people to get ski passes and make the drive most weekends between November and March. I've always thought they were touched in the head, but there you go. No, I'm not a big fan of the cold, fluffy white stuff that falls from the sky. It's wet, and it makes it hard to get around, and I have no particular interest in going up and down a hill all day in a silly puffy pair of overalls.

Ice skating is fine--at least that's contained. But I'd rather a mall basement rink than an outdoor ski lodge rink, or--God forbid--an actual frozen lake any day. I did once have my very own personal ice skating rink. It would have been 1990 or '91. We had a big freeze, and a water pipe burst. The water let out onto our patio, where it froze, and for a week or so I got to go "skating" in my sneakers every day. And what self-respecting child is going to turn their nose up at that?

In between

There’s a quote I remember from my dancing days that I can’t seem to locate in its original context, but the gist of it was that what dance really is is the movement between the steps—it’s how you get where you need to go, how you fill the space.

The other day, I re-read a short story of which I am particularly fond. The beauty of this story is that no matter how many times I revisit it, I get something different out of it. The words don’t change, but my mental state does. Different plot points or descriptions or dialogue exchanges will stand out depending on where I am emotionally. On this reading, it was a gift given by one character to another. The gift was an artwork crafted from pieces of the characters’ relationship—pieces that one of the pair found after their partner packed up and left.

“The background was an immense thicket of branches. Not forming any particular shape, but spreading outward from a single swirled point. Woven within the branches were pieces of things, all different shapes and sizes and colours. … A piece of pipe, a ticket for a show, a key. Shreds of printed paper next to a piece of handwritten paper, carefully folded into an origami star. A scrap of flannel and a scrap of brown leather pinned together with a bent nail. A piece of yellowed glass, a rubber bracelet, a condom packet with a picture of a pizza on it, labeled ‘I Like Pizza, You Like Pizza, I Am Bad at Poems, Let’s Bang’. Torn fragments of photographs, the label from a bottle of beer. In the center was a miniature sculpted thing that looked like a seashell made of cake, nestled next to a sculpted piece of bread.”
--Trolley Problem, Marginaliana

What really got me this time around was the depth of feeling and thought and passion and love behind this piece of art. It had always been a touching moment in previous readings, but this time around it hit deeper than it ever had before. Because there is something about the things that are left behind, the little bits and pieces of a person who meant something to you, for whatever duration of time, whatever the basis of the relationship. You tend to forget about those infinitesimal scraps of soul when you have the whole picture in front of you—you take them for granted, if not necessarily intentionally. Of course, this is a fictional gift, born of one character deciding that the relationship they were in lacked the depth they were seeking, and the other character only realizing what the problem was when they started finding all those bits of memory in the wake of the first character’s departure. The movement between the steps. Filling the space.

I realize that this is a highly romanticized version of ‘it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey’, and I promise I will vomit at my own saccharinity later. It’s also about rewiring your brain to acknowledge that things that may seem banal and pedestrian can be so much more than that, if you look at them the right way. You’ve heard it before; slow down, look around, take a breath. You’re leaving your story in every broken earring, every Post-It found behind a desk years after you wrote “Don’t step on the Mome Raths” on it, every bar coaster you’ve surreptitiously slid into your pocket on your way home after a really great booze-up. I’m not suggesting that you should become a magpie and obsessively stockpile mementos. I’m suggesting that these are the ways the space has been filled, is being filled, will be filled. The movement between your steps. Sometimes these need to be acknowledged as much—or more—than all those traditional life milestones.

Let me give you one of mine.

It’s the autumn of 2006. I’m studying abroad for the first time at Royal Holloway, University of London. The campus is outside the city of London by a 45-minute train journey in a little hamlet called Egham. Across the road—the A30, in fact—from campus is a pub. It’s called The Monkey’s Forehead. It does amazing business and is always full of students. It’s lunchtime, and we’ve just finished our morning lesson. A group of us, ten at least, decide to go ‘over the road’ and have something to eat. In the front, right-hand corner of the Monkey’s is a booth tucked into the wall. It has a burgundy velvet bench seat surrounding a large table on three sides. We get lucky—it’s available. We cram into the booth and take it in turns to go to the bar to order. We bitch about our morning tutor. We squabble about nothing. We banter. We laugh. We share our food, our thoughts, our secrets. When everyone is done eating, a couple of people light up. (This was before the smoking ban, after all.) The afternoon light is buttery yellow as it filters in through the window. The smoke creates a gentle haze as two of our cohort engage in what will ultimately be a failed attempt at blowing smoke rings. It’s a warm press of bodies. A meeting of minds. A cacophony of joy.

It’s the first time in my life I feel like I truly belong somewhere.

I will never be able to describe that moment in a way that will express just how much feeling there is associated with it. I could describe it to you for ages—how Alex sat at the open end of the table in a backwards chair, eating his cheesy chips with gravy. The line of Tom’s throat and the up-tilt of his chin as he tried to blow those smoke rings. The feeling of Anna sat beside me, just to my left, her right half matching me from shoulder to shoe. How precariously I was balanced on the edge of the bench because there were so many of us trying to occupy the same space. I can still see it when I close my eyes. Feel the warmth. Smell the smoke. Taste the gravy-covered chip Alex let me steal. It hits me directly behind my sternum every time. A warm, wonderful pressure.

A small moment, yes. But its worth to me is infinite.

Getting the hang of Thursdays

“This must be Thursday,' said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. 'I never could get the hang of Thursdays.” --The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

A Development! We've started a one-day-per-week work-from-home rota for my team at the office. My day is Thursday. January is our test period, and if things go well, we'll continue on. We may even bump it up to two days per week!

Look, it's an improvement, all right? I'll take it where I can get it. At the moment, it's one more day out of the office where the potential germs are. It's also one more day of keeping my potential germs to myself.

It's a mixed bag, though, working from home. You have all the comforts, yes. You don't have to put on real pants if you don't want to. You don't even have to shower--it's not like anyone can smell you on a Microsoft Teams meeting. As long as your equipment and connections hold up, everything's fine. There are fewer distractions, like people popping their noggins over your cubicle wall for a chat. On the other hand, at least if you're me, when there's no one else around, you tend to forget to take your breaks. My office is practically militant about taking breaks. It's better than the alternative, of course, but on the odd occasion when you're up to your arse in it, the last thing you need is to be held responsible for swanning off for fifteen minutes--labor law or no labor law. It can also be tiresome if you can't raise anyone when you need them. It's not always as easy to get someone's attention when you have to call them or ping them, rather than just swiveling around in your chair and yawping at the nearest unfortunate soul.

Of course, for me, the office is my only current source of real, live social interaction. Much as I'm all for working from home for practical reasons in the current climate, it does take away just that much more 'people time'--which I already lack. Yes, even this most introverted of introverts occasionally likes the company of her fellow humans.

Occasionally.

Mind you, it's nice to be able to snuggle a squeaker during working hours. Especially as we seem to have entered the palliative care stage with poor Sarah, bless her. Yes, Miss Sarah Bellum has had the Respiratory Thing for a while, and we can't seem to get ahead of it with the antibiotics, so it's treats and snugs and ear scritches and sitting in a woobie while Mom sits through Thursday meetings.

If no one can read my mug on the webcam, it's not like they'll notice a pair of ears and whiskers.

Just a little black raincloud

 I'm feeling particularly dismal this week.

When is the appropriate time to run up the white flag? Give up the struggle? Stand on top of a hill in a thunderstorm brandishing a golf club? I'm pretty sure we're headed for it at break-neck speed, if we haven't blown past it already. 

I don't think there is any recovering from this.

We've let everything go on too long with half-assed (at best) attempts to stop or at least contain this stupid virus, and all it got us was a new strain for Christmas. Or so I've heard--I'm back to avoiding the news with more fervor than usual. 

Take a hint, humanity. You're yesterday's cold mashed potatoes.

"The way things used to be" is exactly that, now. The odds of us getting back to how we were living before this happened are slimming down as we speak. You've had your last Coachella, kids. No more live games, sports fans. No more cultural or media events, hobnobbers. No more sip-and-stroll-style local doo-dahs, hometowners.

No more painful compulsory school recitals. I'll put that in the "Pro" column. You're welcome, parents with ears.

At this point, I'm beginning the mental preparations for living in these 614 square feet and not seeing my friends or family for the rest of my life. It makes you wonder what the point was in the first place. I mean, that's a whole other can of worms, the "what is the point of life" argument, but if all this nonsense hasn't converted you to the "it's definitely pointless" side, you may want to get your head checked.

I'm trying to fill the space, I swear. I have so many things sitting around here half-finished. Things I'm still definitely interested in completing! But then that old "why bother" comes to visit and I'm circling the drain again.

I bet most of you are feeling some or all of this--or more. You're dealing with it differently. We're doing the best we can with what we have. What more can we do, right? It's just a matter of waking up and pushing through and falling asleep at night to the pleasant thought of the sun possibly going supernova while you're sawing logs and taking the strain off you.

Burn it to the ground and start again. Except maybe don't, because this version of the experiment was an unmitigated failure.