The Death of Imagination

It's snowing again now, great fluffy flakes even bigger and prettier than the ones that fell during the Superbowl. The last for a while, if the weather report is to be believed. Our run of near-freezing temps is due to come to an end tonight as it actually gets cold for a change.

I feel bad that I never did come through on a post-snowpocalyptic account for the benefit of lil_m_moses. I really didn't see much of the chaos myself. If not for my brief trip to pick up furnace filters around noontime on Wednesday, I might have stayed shut in all day. By then, a couple of my condomates had already snowblown our walks and quite a few people had been out shoveling; the only stretch I really had to plunge my boots into was right along the edge of the park. (This was quite a change from when monshu left in the morning and his bootprints were the only ones out there.)

As I was returning home, though, I saw a couple of people get into an SUV parked opposite our computer room window and attempt to drive off, so I stopped to watch. To my surprise, they made it through the intersection before getting mired again. (At this point, a woman with a Caribbean accent who was dragging a small child on a sled through the middle of road turned to me and said, "This isn't weather to get in your car in drive!") I set the filters inside the entryway so I could reconnoiter the roadway ahead, since monshu had told me over the phone that he had to turn back when he hit the barrier of plowed snow at the crest of the slope.

(Yes, we live on one of the only streets in all of Chicago with a noticeable incline. And it was precisely this street that someone was trying to drive up in a half-metre of unplowed snow.)

To my surprise, Ashland was almost immaculate. Obviously a considerable amount of cleaning and salting had taken place since 5:30 that morning. Between there and the SUV, however, some serious drifting had taken place. Alongside the playlot, cars were buried up to the level of their windows. I clomped into the street here, clambered up a four-foot drift, and waved to the guys who were struggling to shovel out their car. They paid me no heed. I went inside for a bit and missed seeing them slam into it, but I did come back out to gloat a bit. "Did you not see me waving to you from on top that four-foot drift?" I asked one of them. "Hey, talk to him" he replied, indicating an older man. Someone asked the latter, "Where are you going to go?" "I'll park it in the [hardware store] parking lot," he said, as if he had no particular destination in mind.

monshu arrived home not too much later and I related the story, pointing out the car from the front windows. By now, there were a half dozen people aiding the effort, one of them with a snowblower. I kept checking on them regularly and eventually watch the car struggle the last twenty metres to Ashland and turn the corner--a mere two hours after they'd left a parking space just over a block away. By nightfall, a couple other cars had managed the same, and later that evening a bobcat came down the street and eliminated the challenge.

When I went into work the next day, I was impressed by the heroic job most of my neighbours had done. Even the indifferent snow-clearers had--for the most part--really stepped up their game. Three brownstones in a row on the north side of the avenue just west of Sheridan formed the chief exception. I was even more impressed by some of the snow forts I saw. One yard had been subdivided into three of them--it looked like the foundation of a neolithic settlement. Another, rounded like a huge chimney, stands at the next intersection from our place--and will for weeks, given the current conditions.

I woke up this morning thinking about how we've finally hit the really intolerable part of winter, when the snow has lost what charm it had and the cloud cover never seems to break. But now there are fresh flakes dashing down to cover the gritty gray relics of their predecessors, which justifies the lack of sun. I'm actually looking forward to a pleasant stroll downtown for Levantine cuisine.

Last night I belatedly got around to calling Vivanaut. He surprised me by trying to make it to our home for New Year's, but was caught out by a bizarre "feature" of eVite. (Apparently the details of the event aren't accessible once the start time has passed.) Googling for our address only turned up monshu's old apartment and, of course, in all the excitement I didn't think to check my e-mail.

He's the same mellow old hippie that I remember. If you can ignore the 10% or so of what he says that pure Newagey flakiness, then you can find plenty of interest in the remaining 90%. This time he was burbling about the fiftieth anniversary of the Freedom Rides (which he participated in) coming up, as well as the joys and challenges of being retired and trying to find connexion outside of the Internet.

I can particularly relate to that last bit. As I told him, I seem to know too many gay men who talk a good game when I see them but are absolutely terrible about getting together. They may come if I organise something, but otherwise I hardly hear from them. For his part, he confessed that he has no gay friends at all in Hyde Park.

I took the very first shuttle into work this morning in order that St Nicholas could do his work before any of my staff arrived. As you would expect on the first Monday of exam week, it was sparsely occupied and silent as a stone. After catching my breath and calming down a bit, I slid over to the window so I could watch the fine snow continue to sift over the landscape. I had planned to take a stroll around the grounds on my way to the rear exit, but then I saw someone leave through the main entrance and remembered our extended hours had rendered it exceptionally open this early. Now the chocolate has been delivered and I'm ferociously hungry, but I don't think there's any place around to pick something up just yet.

Saturday's events wore me out so much that I was in bed before nine last night. monshu was hardly better off than me, so Sunday was a day of sluggery; lebkuchen for breakfast pretty much set the tone of the day. I did manage to cook up a simple soup for dinner with the turkey broth (from the last remnants of the Thanksgiving bird) that he'd made earlier in the day. Oh, and bake up the Bethmännchen I'd made the previous day. (Why is it that the Germans are so fond of letting their Christmas cookies dry overnight?) I'm still not entirely convinced they're worth the effort, since there's so much almond paste in them it seems to me you'd be better off just munching on a Niederegger Schwarzbrot. I suspect the real added value to baking them is a chewy carmelised bottom, so to be sure, I'd have to make them again and be careful not to burn them this time.

The Winter Storm Watch that Chicago was under yesterday continued most of today. At first, we wrote this off as more alarmism. After all, as of this morning, the precipitation had weakened to flurry strength and there was little sign of the "up to 8 inches" that weathermen were chattering about. But though lighter, the snow simply never let up. And by early afternoon, it came so thickly you couldn't see more than a couple blocks in any direction.

So naturally we decided to go out into it.

In truth, plans had been laid a week ago for us to spruce up my old apartment in advance of putting it up for sale again starting Monday. Waiting a day would've been reasonable, but monshu is never comfortable putting things off, so we packed up a bromeliad and a floor lamp and headed out into the blizzard.

And I'm happy we did. As I told, as much fun as it is to watch the snow fall from the comfort of a roaring fire, there's joy to seeing more scenery than can be taken in from a window. Moreover, it felt so mild once we were in the outside air that I felt silly even thinking we might stay home. The main thoroughfares were plowed, the busses were running normally; getting to my place was fine. Spending four hours sweeping, swiffing, scrubbing, and straightening was less of a joy, but there were compensations: The moment we stepped out of the back door, we saw that the clouds had parted and a beautiful full moon was shining down upon us. I sincerely wanted to take a stroll through the park to admire it, but I knew monshu wouldn't be up for it.

So we turned our backs to the moon and marched on over slush the consistency of mashed potatoes to Thai Pastry so the Old Man could get his tom yum fix. (He talked me into it by waving the prospect of dessert before my nose; there's something terribly decadent about going out for ice cream on a snowy day.) I decided to go for the specials: panang curry calamari and an appetiser labeled "meang kum" (เมี่ยงคำ). According to the infallible interwebs, this means "leaf-wrapped morsel", which indeed it was: roasted splinters of coconut served on betel leaves with peanuts, scallions, a small section of lime, and a dried shrimp. The first didn't transcend the ingredients in the way I expected, so I figured out I wasn't adding enough sweet sauce; I was loving them by the end.

My calamari were less successful: Excellent panang sauce, decent stuffing, but only so-so squid. monshu had more luck with his soup and green curry. I hit the jackpot with dessert, however, for God so loved the world that he created buko pandan ice cream. When my server told me that the only flavouring was screwpine leaves, she lied: There were tender chunks of young coconut (the "buko" in "buko pandan", as I am now aware). It was glorious--far more interesting than the monshu's too mild scoop of lychee flavour.

We were back by around 8:30 and almost immediately leapt into bed. The GWO naturally fell asleep after reading for only a few minutes and I nearly followed him (sitting up, mind you, since I couldn't lie down and let the curry escape). The plan for tomorrow is plenty of nothin'. I can already see myself lounging in the front room making long-overdue calls to friends and family or huddled beneath the sheets plowing through Allende's memoirs.

As I was getting ready this morning, I noticed it was flurrying outside; just about the time I stepped out the door, this flurry became real snow. It's been so brown since the Great Melt Off at Christmas that I actually welcomed some whiteness. Of course, this being Chicago, the ice never completely melted and there were still a few frozen puddles on the walks. Yesterday, when they were in plain view, they were easily avoided, but this morning's stroll to the shuttle became a game of Memory. I decided to take a walk into town at lunchtime to admire the scene, but it must've been near the freezing point because it had pretty much melted from the roads and the foliage. Then, two minutes after I got back to my desk, it started snowing again, so who knows what to expect when I head out tonight.

Today is the Epiphany which means the tree will have to come down. (In the case of our little Norfolk, that means coming down off the side table to begin its existence as an ordinary floor plant.) I brought a Niederegger Schwarzbrot to share with my co-workers, but saved the Jijona for tonight's dessert. Finding it was a real coup, since (a) it's e.'s favourite kind of turrón and (b) it's the first damn thing I've looked for that's available at a local market and not at Family Fruit, where she and her husband regularly shop. Honestly, nine times out of ten when I asked them, "Where do I get [obscure ingredient]?", they tell me, "Family Fruit". So when it didn't disappear on New Year's, I decided I had to save it to make the last day of Christmas that much more festive.

Well I'll be damned! There really are a hundred Eskimo words for 'snow'!

It's it just me, or are people overreacting a bit to tonight's weather report as a result of Tuesday's nightmare rush hour? People left early to avoid a snowstorm that I have yet to see a flake of. And just now, I got an automated call from work telling me to check the webpage early tomorrow to see whether we'll even be open for business. Now I'd be lying if I said the prospect of a snow day doesn't fill me with childlike glee, but I'm really not expecting it to happen.

Ever since my first morning's commute from the new place, I've been wondering what it would be like in the snow. This morning's was scanty (about an inch when I left), but on the other hand it didn't seem like a single walk had been shoveled along the entire route. Also, rain changing to snow equals ice, so I had to step lightly. Still, it wasn't bad; I probably only added a minute or two onto my time. (The shuttle was late, so it ended up not mattering anyway.)

My biggest--and most pleasant--surprise has been how bright the place was when I woke up. Another thing I've been waiting all fall for is the leaves to drop so I could see how much light we might get during the bleak midwinter. Already the difference was considerable, then you add in some reflective fields of white stuff and you almost don't need artificial illumination at all even on a cloudy day.

The most unexpected consequence of the snow was seeing so many neighbours outside de-icing their cars. I'm not sure if there have always been this many going in at the same time I am that I just don't notice when they're not standing outside, conspicuous in dark colours against the white, or if a lot of them were caught off guard by the snowfall and delayed.

Yesterday, I felt a twinge about booting the still-blooming mum from its place in the sunroom to make room for the Christmas sapling. Today its vivid rusts and golds look distinctly out of place framed against a snow scene.

You know the old joke about why women are so bad at math? Well, it's a wonder Chicagoans can do any arithmetic at all with the weather forecasters we've got. "ZOMG 8 INCHES!" They told us yesterday morning; by afternoon, that had been revised downwards to six. This morning, I don't think there was more than three inches on the ground outside of snowdrifts. It's good, wet, building snow, the kind that makes fantastic snow structures--and has the less positive property of compressing under pedestrians' feet to form an glacier-like mass that will freeze up good and hard tonight.

The wind is scattering it around a bit today, but last night was as calm as an Anglican matriarch and it piled up good and thick on the tree branches. After two burgers and a couple drinks at Big Chicks (I love David to pieces, but he still hasn't gotten the knack of making a good shandy), I went out for a walk by the Lake. Fabulous. I mean that literally: One tree in particular shone as if covered with outrageously full blossoms. I wanted to stay out longer, but I had too much at home to do--none of which got done, of course, because I ended up playing game after game of gomoku while sipping my linden blossom tea.

During my morning break, I went down to the Meadow and found a family of prodigious snow people, obviously the work of a number of strong people working in concert. The largest (considerably taller and wider not only than me but anyone I've done) had a pushbroom mustache made of straw and I was sorely tempted to give one to the more diminutive figure on his left. But they were so well crafted that in the end I decided to leave their hetronormativity inviolate. On the far side was a more average-proportioned figure whose lack of facial features moved me to pity, though not far enough to gift it any.

I know some people are anxious for winter to end, and I would be, too, if that meant easing into a proper spring with fresh green shoots and delicate pastel blossoms. But here it means weeks of cold rain, flooded sidewalks, and oozing sludge before you even see the first robin, so I'm just as happy to have all the dead grass, leaf duff, and dog poop covered up by shiny white snow for a while yet.

Winter doesn't get any more gorgeous than this. It's that perfect snow which the word always evokes but which reality can seldom match. Large, wet, slow-falling flakes that cling to every branch and bud. There's no sleet mixed in, no wind to speak of. Goddammit do I wish I could be standing out in glade right now listening to the subtle rustle as the clumps of flakes are broken up falling through evergreen branches and delicate shrubs. It also caught me much by surprise. Yesterday was mild, so when I looked up from my bed and saw white outside, I naturally it assumed it was nothing more than mist. It was already melting on the streets of my neighbourhood, but up north it seems to be getting thicker by the minute. How long will it last? Long enough to sweeten my lunchtime excursion? I don't think so. I'm just thankful I was able to experience as much of it as I did. Even winter weather grumps like felipemcguire can't resist its charms!

Also, in honour of the Apostle of Ireland, I drove all the administrators out of our building this morning!