There's a million different ways you can be a million miles away. Sitting in my car waiting for a glimmer of heat, this very thought crossed my mind. Yes indeed, this weather we've been experiencing has in a word, sucked. Yet like many other character building moments, there has been a subtle lesson to be learned. If you blinked, you might have missed it.
Yes, life is full of metaphors. It is like a cold Minnesota day. You can bundle up and try to cope with the elements, yet you never really are able to get comfortable. It is so cold out that your garage door freezes shut, and you struggle to dig out in order to get anywhere at all. Slippery slopes, black ice, white out conditions. You drive carefully, yet you have to deal with others who are either going much too fast and are in their shortsightedness causing potential harm to many others, or too slowly and are causing equal danger by being too careful. You don't feel quite in control of your vehicle and at any moment you might hit a slick spot and spin out of control. Fish tailing.
The Arctic air bites, the wind howls, and the snow blows. Yet if you are careful enough, you can survive the harshest of elements. Does it all bother you? Why yes, it does. But you get by. It's better to stay inside anyway. You can buy a fish, name it Grace, leave it in its own bowl for a friend to care for. That friend might not be knowledgeable in fish care and the water may evaporate and turn green as well as Grace's gills, but she hangs on in a pool of fish food and filth. Inspiration for us all. We are all victims of our environments, yet there is such a thing as survival and determination. It takes some effort and some advanced preparation and maybe even some luck, but in the end things often come out the way they always have in the past. The routine remains much the same, only a bit colder.
Week indeed. Give me a palatial office, spend some time with a friend, prepare for a test or two, and damn even the daily morning slick five mile per hour drive from Lake Elmo doesn't seem so horrible. This is Minnesota in January after all, and through the media hype and despite the media hype, it does get cold this time of year in this part of the country. Stop the presses! I think not. Believe it or not this is to be expected. This can be predicted. This is normal and there is no need to be alarmed. It may indeed have been the storm of the century. Felt like it anyway. Yet the Chicken Littles of the airwaves got to be a bit much. Weather people are often wrong, and a storm like this just makes them seem all the more important. Keep me away from those sharp implements.
This isn't weather for the weak of heart. It's times like these that make us all heartier Minnesotans. Sure you could move to sunny Southern California, say San Diego, or even Portland Oregon, but they have their elements too. You my friend, are destined to remain the same. Sad but true, it may be all over now baby blue. Stompin. The walls shake. So this is the end. Like every weekend for the past few years I find myself snugly sealed in my apartment typing away to beat another deadline. It's chilly out there, some may even go so far as to call the world cold, but you would never know it thanks to the forced air heating and warm woolen mittens in this here part of town. The rest of the usual Saturday night newsletter staff is absent, and the one who I usually bounce my ideas off is truly missed. A mystery unfolds on this week's episode of One West Waikiki and I'm sure that Ms. Ladd will take care of things in due time just as surely as that Rice Krispie bar sure went down smooth. A door slams somewhere off in the all too distant past, and we have just about completed another issue, another week. Brrrr.
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