Friday, December 19, 2008

Handcuffed to a Naked Man in the Fridge

Winters accumulate, Summers drag, Spring disappears, and Fall is balding.  But Winters accumulate.  They collect in deepening pools.  Each year is a Winter added to the Winter bucket. One more Winter to drag around behind you like a shucked overcoat clinging at the wrists.  It may just be that Winter's astronomical phase is closer to the galactic norm, the elliptical skew showing us that much more night, that much more cold.  Winter's a reminder that we are floating in space and relative inches away from carbon based oblivion (hurray!).  

The city folds its little paper flowers every hour of every day, orbital phases be damned. Everything still moves, though old ladies and delivery men struggle in the slush and countless pedestrians drop knee deep into slush pothole pongee pits before being stippled with icy cabbie blow-back. Winter is an object lesson.  The sane are ushered over to the hob where they can reflect on Winters past and look forward to Spring.  

However widely the planet oscillates on its track the city picks up its own momentum and moves on.  Though once in a while the open clock works of the city gets caught on a sleeve of snow and stops long enough to enjoy pulling itself free.  On the twisted narrow streets in the older parts of Manhattan a good snow fall can sit for a day without salt or shovel. People walk in the middle of the street, breathe smoke and chatter in cliques. The sun rakes in benign in the early morning and for a minute it seems pristine, as natural a scene as a stand of cedars bowing beside a blue mountain.  The plows arrive, uncovering the oiled gray of the asphalt and the city's geometry returns.  There's nothing quite so beautiful as a New York City street deprived of its purpose.           
      

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