The Cold Outdoors in anticlimatic

I keep getting plagued by these vibes of bygone eras.

The way the 80s smelled like expired basement shag carpet and B.O.

The knick-knack alcoves built into the cigarette oiled walls with figurines and treasures that meant something to my Godmother, at least during those holiday parties with the grown ups where I’d sit on some foreign knitwork overlay on a corduroy sofa, smelling those cigarette walls and puzzling over the knick-knacks on display in the alcoves. In that one memory before she took a long walk into the woods and departed these lands.

A jazzy saxophone on a rainy city evening; the silhouette of a man in a loose suit jogging to a pay phone. That smell of rain and motor exhaust.

They come in these brief and severe flashes while meditating. Little windows to worlds that, at one time in my life, left such an impression on me as to stamp something even more significant than a memory. Vibes, man. Fuckin vibes. Way more groovy.

I remember leaving the house in the winter when I was a kid, just when I was old enough to reach my father’s jar of change in the closet above the washing machine. Four quarters out of that bottomless abyss and I could afford two candy bars from the old gas station two blocks away.

It was the first time I remember having to “deal with” the oppressive nature of nature itself, in a more adult way than I had before. The dark and the cold would set in before I’d make it to the store, and while I’d wander around town just to pass the time and explore and eat my candy, my hands and face would ache. Everything outside of my house I realized was cold and sterile and uninterested in doing anything but resist anything I try to do. Even the little ATM room, which had some heat and which I would stop inside briefly to warm up, was lonesome and unwelcoming with it’s large red floor tiles and dim side lighting.

If you’ve ever frolicked in the fresh snowfall in heavy winter gear and admired the way the snow lays on the branches of short fat pines, maybe tasted it fresh off the top of a drift, sparking in the street lights or moonlight- you might be tempted to regard nature as something beautiful and magical.

But the truth is more grim. More Lovecraftian. The only real warmth comes from the home; from within.

Last updated August 18, 2024