Deep in the Heart of Winter

I'm playing the wintery "Falling Slowly" from Once, intent on the relaxation that Sundays afford, drinking a Corona on the outskirts of Lent. I can't recall the Michael Dubruiel post a couple Lents ago but it was titled something like, "Let's Get Ready To Lent!" said to the tune of "Let's get ready to rumble!". It's a funny image for me if only because Lent seems, in some ways at least, the opposite of the testosterone-fueled violence of a professional football game. But it does have that similarity in the surge of adrenalin, and in the hope that attends any as-yet-unplayed game.

I look out the window and the sun is shining despite bitterly cold temperatures. Outside the hammock sits like the Lost Cause, full of recriminations about what would've happened has Stonewall lived. The sky is decorated by swirling white flakes, the winterly equivalent of fireflies. On the driveway side stands the handsome fence we erected last summer which I note with mixed emotions given its symbolism.

It's odd but by the middle of a season I get accustomed to it such that it's not so bad. Winter is definitely more of an introvert's season I suppose, if not a nature-lover's. "Deep in the Heart of Texas" - such a lively, winsome tune. I can think of few exhilarating anthems in praise of winter.

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In my mind's eye the week was saturated in beauty and lyricism. I read long from the masterworks, fed myself on reveries, got lost in the viney tunnels of Homer’s Illiad and Seamus Haeney’s poetry. This rich ferment inspired me to write many pages of an unfinished sea novel, a sequel to an earlier unfinished sea novel. In my imagination I wrote under the pseudonym of a sailor responsible for the rigging of ship sails. I don’t know anything about ship riggings but then who wants to write about what they know? Isn’t the point of novels – for reader and writer – to explore terra icognito?

It got so that during the writing of it I could feel the spittle of the salt sea upon my brow, or maybe it was our dog who was panting inches from my face. It’s hard to wax poetic in prosaic circumstances but I’m always willing to give it a go.

This particular week was marked special by a visit to my boss’s house. He had a couple of us over to check out his sixty-thousand dollars worth of home improvements. He’s the artsy, loft-type, which is actually sort of refreshing given that the old-fashioned Monet look seems a bit tired. It's likely a sad commentary that Monet seems too sweet and mawkishly sentimental to me, ala Thomas Kincaid. There was lots of abstract art on the walls. Odd lighting also, but not threateningly odd. Black tub, but I’m sufficiently utilitarian to have only wondered if it concealed dirt better.

“It’s a duller world,” opined NR after the death of Updike and WFB because of their use of unfamiliar words. They added parenthetically “because less surprising”. And my boss strives to make his home more surprising by odd things like a striking retro photo of roller derby gals (“back when it was the real thing” he says). The pose caught two girls rounding the oval, looking very ’70’s-y, one with her mouth open and head back in a look almost post-coital. It was signed and personalized which didn’t surprise me since my boss is a very personal person. A throwback to an earlier age, I suspect he was frozen in his singularity by his eternal singleness.

That was Tuesday. Wednesday night was water aerobics, or H20 aerobics as I call it since it sounds more manly. I shifted and sifted the choppy chlorinated waters under the direction of our Germanic instructor, who has not an ounce of fat on her and yet doesn’t seem bothered by it. She wears very skimpy outfits which reveal greater muscularity than me, which is disturbing.

Some of the exercises I’m at a natural disadvantage compared to my fellow participants because I have less body fat but then not everything is a competition. The hour workout has a disproportionate impact on the week perhaps because it’s so different from the rest of the week.

I have a hankering for old country music, the kind you don’t hear except on scratchy vinyl. The new country is 90% crap and 10% pop. How good would it be to hear some Mel Tillis again? Or even Randy Travis? It reminds me of those winsome days spent in that atmospheric blue-collar bar (‘the Other’ personified).

I'm thinking of buying a new car, primarily for the satellite radio is like buying a house because your apartment won’t accept the cat you just got. (Not that that happened to me.) I’m set on the light gold color since all the dark colors are not compatible with Great Depression II. We need cheery light colors these days.

A line from Updike's "Widows of Eastwick" that resonated: "the monotony of sunshine" in New Mexico. It would be monotonous, wouldn't it? I felt a bit of joy, even such joy over the current grey and snowy weather such for the drama it creates.