WINTER IS ICUMEN IN
Meditations during the great storm of December '09.
Ezra Pound was none too pleased at the prospect of winter (Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM). That's a pretty typical reaction. Winter gets a lot of bad press and for good reason.
This is a season that has teeth. Winter winds will gnaw your flesh away if you linger outside for too long on a really cold day. Fall through the ice and you have minutes to live. Forget to pay the electric bill and you have hours before you slowly slip into the big sleep.
Winter is all about being prudent. Prudence is an underrated virtue in these self-indulgent times. Growing up in the New England of the 1950's, when the winters were still very hard, one quickly developed a natural caution.
You didn't just go outside. You thought about what to wear, the condition of the roads. You sniffed the air, trying to catch the scent of any snow that might be heading your way. You always made sure there was enough milk, bread, and toilet paper — the Holy Trinity of winter survival — to last a fortnight if need be.
That prudence was the legacy of a uniquely New England inbred Puritanical fear of too much of anything, a haunting fear that made you hedge your bets. Prudence served as a flywheel that kept your life from spinning out of control. Not so much any more, or so it would seem.
Well, its noon and we are up to a foot of snow. For now, I'm content to watch the snow fall and listen to a little Desperate Man Blues from John Fahey's album Blind Joe Death.
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| Desperate Man Blues |
December 16, 2009
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