Crowded Exile - The Cold

Friday morning, dry and desperate. I shuffle across the frozen tundra that in happier times would have been called a campus. My wherewithal not entirely substantive at the moment, I try to recall where I am heading. Not a clue in the whole damn world. No frostbitten clue.

Oh, how ignoble of me. After all my scorn and ignominy toward the shivering masses, I myself have forgotten my own wretched loathing for the icy depths of mid-January. In spring, at least, there's moisture in the air in which to lose oneself. No such luck these days. Nothing but flat, dry, uncompromising exposure.

A stiff breeze stabs at my right hand, dangling beside me, like some forgotten appendage. And, similarly forgotten, yet still held in that hand's grip, resides my viola. Oh right, I was heading off to go practice. Fuck, it's too damn cold to remember where I'm going even when my goddamn destination is thirty freaking feet in front of me!

It's at this point of the year that most people seem to withdraw into themselves. Maybe for warmth. Huddling seems to be in these days, too. But I can't freaking do that. Then your forced to smell other people's breath. Which is why I'll shortly be sitting on a bench outdoors, bracing the cold on my own while surveying the landscape and people... unless I decide to go duck feeding; God, it's been far too long.

Thus the days go by darkly, and I'm overcome with a strange anxiety, as if there's ever so much that has yet to be done, and some unfulfilled desire left unattended. I'll laugh at this wanting as heedless desire by April, but perhaps the cold brings out my only brief period of clarity. I used to think this anxiety had something to do with the lack of sun.

But that shit ain't true. I can't stand the sun.

Evenings are horrifying. I often have something to do, someplace to be, but the outdoors are just too foreboding. I wouldn't venture out there if Rod Serling came back from Jesusville to show me the way. But my conscience will likely prevail, and the anxiety will be ever-so-slightly satiated.

My one solace would be snow, but that's a folly. Though it brought on holiday cheer back home, where it had long been missed, it's naught but a furtive dream here, or so the voices tell me. As Stephen Colbert put it, "There can never be snow [here] - only that endless grey deathscape...".

So I'll be on extra alert for ice. Ah, how I would spend the days at home biking to the frozen river. I'd stare at it for hours, talking to it, for no other apparent reason than it's really fucking fun to talk to shiny shit. And you gotta admit, ice is pretty damn cool. Unless it's cold. That was the downside - the bike ride back was always a bitch.

It seems I always seem to be finding ice around here when I'm accompanied by our fashion reporter, Clive Dangerously. There was a frozen wishing well in Clarendon (pictured below), a frozen fire hydrant in Bethesda, and his icy, icy heart.

So it stands to reason that our dear Clive is an ice god. I shall therefore attempt to appease him as follows:

Here's to hoping this satisfies your vengeful, vengeful wrath, Clive!

Until such time, I will have to wander on in my Crowded Exile.