“Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.” –Jane Wagner.
I’ve created, in total, at least five blogs throughout my life. Some lasted years, some hardly lasted at all. This one, I think, will persist, if only to feed this burning ache inside of me that demands I put thoughts down into a visible form, where my eyes can explore them further. My writer’s itch.
Tonight is new years eve. Does this mean much, really? It’s the beginning of a new year, yes, but doesn’t one year just run right into the next anyway? The sun set tonight, behind a uniformly gray veil of snow-pregnant clouds, the same way it did last night and the same way it will again tomorrow. There’s no seam between this year and the next except the one that our culture creates. Invisible threads.
I’m disregarding it this year. Mostly because I’m alone. I could include the details, but I’m not sure it’s necessary. I don’t want this blog to lose it’s importance and become a mindless listing of the events of my daily life. I want it to be deeper. I can feel myself giving out when I forget to write about things. I need to narrate my own life. I need to put things into words.
Tonight, I went for a walk. I pulled on my dark gray wool coat, $30 at Super-Target. The one I don’t really like very much, but the only one I have. A belt around the waist, with big buttons up the front. I put a black leather leash on one of my dogs and she proceeded to squat down and pee right on it as soon as we hit the pure white street. I left my glasses in my purse in the house. The snow was coming down and it coated every tiny twig of every tree and every bush and it piled up atop the street signs beneath the ugly yellow of the lights, like tiny little forts built up in preparation for some sort of epic, miniature snowball fight. We walked to the park, through at least a foot of snow and there was quiet except for the snapping of her jaws in the powdery top layer and the swishing of my boots through it. They’re gorgeous boots. Square-toed chestnut-colored Ariats, with a light green top portion. I bought them at the All-American Quarter Horse Congress this year. Last year? 2007. I also bought a little stuffed paint horse who I named “Seven”. He’s my souvenir, since they were sold out of the sweatshirt I wanted by the time I made up my mind to get it. Once again, I should learn not to procrastinate. But I’m getting off-topic. We went for a walk, through the park. Sometimes on the path, sometimes off it. Either way, we ended up at the playground on the far side of the tennis courts. And I brushed the snow off one of the swings, the one in the center, but it was frozen and jagged underneath the powder. I flipped it over and sat down on the wrong side. I just sat. And listened to the snow fall. It does make a sound, you know? It’s just a whisper, really. A hush. Everything looked so pretty. The sky was light and the snow reflected it and everything just looked so pillow-soft. Even the orange and blue, the plastic and metal, of the playground. I used to play there when I was a kid. Played truth or dare on top of that slide. But what I was really looking at was the darkness of the trees, laced with white and starkly outlined against that peach-gray sky.
I felt like I was waiting for someone. I kept glancing towards the bridge. In an ideal world, a young man would have come trudging through that untouched snow, maybe with his own dog at the end of a leash. And he’d have looked up, his hands jammed deep in his pockets, and seen me as he crested the hill that that playground rests on top of, sitting on that swing with my jeans caked in snow halfway to my knees and my bangs damp with melted flakes and curled across my forehead. And we’d have fallen in love. Just like that.
But we didn’t and he never came, so I got up and walked back home, just as my nose started to go numb and my ears started to ache with the cold. And I could see myself walking, in the shadow thrown by those ugly street lights. How long my ponytail was. How far those curls go down my back still surprises me. How the shape of the coat framed my curves.
Maybe I do like that coat a little better than I’m willing to admit.
Filed under: Journal , future, holiday, love, thoughts, writing
