Baby, it's cold outside.
Based on my drive to see Nikolai this afternoon, it's going to be another fun drive home tonight. A very merry Christmas, indeed.
We had our first wicked nasty storm of the winter last weekâfirst of many, as all of Rochester knows. Somehow it was not the blizzard experience I expected, the one I'm used to. Stressful, dangerous, yes, but the long ride home from work that day was the most meditative hour I've had in a very long time (and probably the only truly meditative hour I've ever spent behind the wheel of my car). I've passed so many seasons of ice and snow here, but how long has it been since I could actually appreciate the way the world is transformed in a white-out? The route I travel every day is made unrecognizable, guiding signs are invisible or bowed to the ground, and everything changes from frantic and reckless to slow and deliberate. On this particular night, every last car had reduced speed, everyone was patient with those who felt the need to go a little bit more slowly, and there was the sense that each person isolated in each little shell of a car was part of a choir of nearly identical thoughts - thoughts of getting home safely, of the safety of their loved ones who might also be driving home, and even of the safety of the strangers around them. Sometimes you get to see the good in people. There were none of the usual jackasses on my stretch of 390, the ones who think they are invincible and fly right past you, the ones you see in a ditch a few miles later. We didn't want to compete for a better place on the road, and we gained no satisfaction from seeing each other in ditches. We were just glad to be warm and protected in our little vessels.
I've never really seen March of the Penguins all the way through, but I'd caught a few minutes of it the day before, and that's exactly what we looked like. Yesterday we had been robots organized into single file between painted lines, all programmed to race each other to different finish lines. The whims of the sky erased all order and structure and turned us back into living things, making our steady, jumbled way toward a common goal. Back and forth every day to work, back and forth every year to wherever penguins go for sex, whatever the weather, what's the difference? Why do we keep doing it? I guess it just is what it is.
Lately I've been a bit more nuts than usual, lashing out in all directions, reducing whatever or whoever is nearest to me to a pile of shreds and then hating myself for it. It was exactly what I needed, to have all that energy forced inward for a time. God only knew how long it was going to take me to get home, and there was absolutely nothing to do but keep on going (life itself in 25 words). It was the perfect opportunity to do some thinking, to contemplate the taillights in front of me, to consider my own life and the lives dotting the highway all around me. I suppose snow is a blessing if it can get me, the original Hysterical Woman, to be calm and quiet down her craziness. If I do someday move to a warm climate, I may actually find myself missing Rochester winters. I hope I can find a reason to slow down, and I hope I can find some love for all of those strangers flying alongside me... even when they cut me off. How long will it take me to go over the edge in a world of perpetual shouting and honking?
We had our first wicked nasty storm of the winter last weekâfirst of many, as all of Rochester knows. Somehow it was not the blizzard experience I expected, the one I'm used to. Stressful, dangerous, yes, but the long ride home from work that day was the most meditative hour I've had in a very long time (and probably the only truly meditative hour I've ever spent behind the wheel of my car). I've passed so many seasons of ice and snow here, but how long has it been since I could actually appreciate the way the world is transformed in a white-out? The route I travel every day is made unrecognizable, guiding signs are invisible or bowed to the ground, and everything changes from frantic and reckless to slow and deliberate. On this particular night, every last car had reduced speed, everyone was patient with those who felt the need to go a little bit more slowly, and there was the sense that each person isolated in each little shell of a car was part of a choir of nearly identical thoughts - thoughts of getting home safely, of the safety of their loved ones who might also be driving home, and even of the safety of the strangers around them. Sometimes you get to see the good in people. There were none of the usual jackasses on my stretch of 390, the ones who think they are invincible and fly right past you, the ones you see in a ditch a few miles later. We didn't want to compete for a better place on the road, and we gained no satisfaction from seeing each other in ditches. We were just glad to be warm and protected in our little vessels.
I've never really seen March of the Penguins all the way through, but I'd caught a few minutes of it the day before, and that's exactly what we looked like. Yesterday we had been robots organized into single file between painted lines, all programmed to race each other to different finish lines. The whims of the sky erased all order and structure and turned us back into living things, making our steady, jumbled way toward a common goal. Back and forth every day to work, back and forth every year to wherever penguins go for sex, whatever the weather, what's the difference? Why do we keep doing it? I guess it just is what it is.
Lately I've been a bit more nuts than usual, lashing out in all directions, reducing whatever or whoever is nearest to me to a pile of shreds and then hating myself for it. It was exactly what I needed, to have all that energy forced inward for a time. God only knew how long it was going to take me to get home, and there was absolutely nothing to do but keep on going (life itself in 25 words). It was the perfect opportunity to do some thinking, to contemplate the taillights in front of me, to consider my own life and the lives dotting the highway all around me. I suppose snow is a blessing if it can get me, the original Hysterical Woman, to be calm and quiet down her craziness. If I do someday move to a warm climate, I may actually find myself missing Rochester winters. I hope I can find a reason to slow down, and I hope I can find some love for all of those strangers flying alongside me... even when they cut me off. How long will it take me to go over the edge in a world of perpetual shouting and honking?
posted by Kristen | 11:28 AM
|
0 comments
