I woke up to a good half a foot of heavy wet snow with more falling, straight down, like the stuff was poured out carefully high above and shaken through a sieve.
The first thing was, I built a fire. Sometimes there are coals enough to set a couple of aspen sticks on. If so, I set a couple of piñon chunks on top of that, close the door, and just stand back. This morning there weren’t any, and I lit an eight-inch chunk of pitch wood with a single match to start the blaze. The second thing was, I went outside to feed the birds. Holy moley, all that snow! The big elm tree was shedding clumps that fell with little “whoomphs.” There wasn’t any wind.
Afterwards, coffee and a little playing on the internet. (I don’t do politics these days so much as actual events and underlying forces.) The signs were ominous: it was like the world was floating in a cold dark ocean, and sharks had eaten all the smart people. Something really big is incubating, I thought, with all this anger and no outlet. It made me want to hear some PUNK! Where are all the angry mobs and loud guitars? Where’s the passion in the culture? What happened to our spirit, to making something WORK?
Just then the power went out. No internet or anything else. This could take a while, I knew, so I went outside to clear a few paths through ever-deepening snow: first to the two bird feeders, then to the woodpile, and last to the top of the driveway, where we’d parked the car. That’s when I got cocky and decided to back the Vibe in and out, to mash some ruts while I still could. It all worked fine, until I cut the curve too sharp and fast and got stuck cross-ways in the road. A little shovel work and woodstove ashes soon took care of that, and I gave up on the poor man’s snowplow thing.
The electricity was still off. Fortunately the house was toasty, thanks to running the wood stove day and night. I stood there, snow melting off my boots into the carpet, and realized I had to go right back outside to get more fuel. Always the hauling, the cleaning, the kneeling down before the stove… It works, though, for all the hassle. What if there were no more electricity ever, I wondered? Would everybody live like this?
Half an hour later, the refrigerator started humming again: POWER! — and lunch in front of the iMac. (Click, click, click… I was right about the sharks, all right, but why was I still here?)
The wind picked up outside, and heavy snow squalls blotted out the mountains. Not surprisingly, I needed to take a nap. We both did, actually, only she nabbed the sofa and the yellow blanket first. Coming to the business late, I had to lie on top of the bed with my battered fleece bathrobe for a cover, but I went under fast. The weather, the drama. Getting stuck. The snow, the shoveling. The fire, always the fire. Winter! Cold. The sharks would come next for the merely sane. Sleep, sleep, forget…
For me, a rest is sometimes dangerous: I wake up in another house, another time, in perpetual soft spring. Not here, though, not today, with snow still flying past the windows! The dissonance was palpable. Ever driven, I grabbed my hat and coat and walked out to check the mail.
On the way back, walking past my neighbor’s dead cars while holding my hat down tight against the gale, I thought: JESUS CHRIST, it’s COLD, everyone is NUTS, and I have HAD IT! It’s all too much, good-bye. Just give me a farm somewhere, a little place with water and good soil, where I could plant fruit trees and raise a few chickens. It would be warmer there and less insane. We’d walk a lot and be real healthy. I’d write all morning and then go do my chores. To hell with a country that won’t pull its head out of its ass. I’d just write, take care of us, and be a goddamned mystic. Of course, I am a goddamned mystic! (What else is there, really?) And I had fruit trees where we were, but didn’t want them then. Now it sounds like paradise, what gives?
Maybe it isn’t where I am, but what I do. Even in America, by God, and especially right now.
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