Hieronymus Bosch in a down parka
It’s been cold outside today. Cold in an empty-void-of-outer-space kind of way. I was out there wrapped in my warmest coat, two hats, hands inside gloves inside pockets and I could tell you exactly which square inches of my body were not covered in enough layers. (Ankles, bridge of the nose, toes.) And it’s times like that when you begin to grasp the speck-like insignificance of humanity, that the very air around you is not your friend as it tries to suck the life out of your body and the heat out of your skin. It makes me glad that medieval artists didn’t know about physics, because if they had, the center of the most ghoulish painting or carving depicting the horrific depths of hell would not have Satan at the center, but Thermodynamics, represented by a blank-eyed quadruple-fanged serpent with an empty belly drinking the warm life-force right out of its innocent victims, diamond-studded eyes staring with the cruel impersonality of a relentless, mindless force. (Or maybe I shouldn’t have watched any of Queen of the Damned on basic cable last night, a truly awful movie by one of the more awful writers of paperbacks I loved when I was a teenager, because it’s making me feel Gothic and tragic and positively overwrought. Moreover, to expand this parenthetical aside past the point of reason, Van Helsing was on basic cable tonight and I can confirm that it really sucks. I mean, you can’t even watch it for more than a few minutes at a time because the pain in your head intensifies with every second. Normally good actors acting very badly, bad actors acting badly, special effects that look completely cheesy, David Wenham’s appallingly terrible haircut, etc. Yeesh.)
Now I’ve lost my train of thought. Anyway, it was damn cold today and I’m someone who likes it cold. At the same time, for the next several days I’ll be the only person in this big house and that’s exacerbating this cold feeling. I’ve been blasting the TV and the music, and that helps. The next step is tossing this tiny stone into the giant ocean of cyberspace and causing a couple of ripples to remind the world that I’m over here generating heat, using electricity, and just generally being alive. Hey, remind me not to play “Log Cabin Fever” by Split Enz this week, okay? At least, not until Swami gets back from his trip to China.
2 comments:
There are two tricks that help me to feel better when the daylight hours are short and the temperature outside is cold. My first trick is calculating the number of days until pitchers and catchers report for baseball spring training. Sixty-something days from now. Doesn't seem too far away.
My second trick is the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. It helps me to remember that even if the temperature is freezing in Boston, somewhere in the world there are beautiful girls in bikinis on beaches where the temperature is 85 degrees and the sun is shining.
Of course, your results may vary. :-)
If you feel lonely, you're always welcome to drop by my house for a visit. Want to help my son memorize the symbols and atomic weights for the 20 most common elements in the Periodic Table? It may not sound exciting, but you won't be lonely. :-)
Hm, not sure how useful I'd be on the periodic table. Although I do recall that lead is Pb, right? As for the swimsuit models, you're on your own, pal!
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