Now what? The weather is still frigid. We got a foot of snow and no where to go. The walls are closing in. I rose early to go to work. It was frigid at 0 degrees. The air held a stillness that I had to stop and appreciate. This is perhaps my first step towards a Wendellisian understanding. (I'll come up with a more intelligent description later.) Stopping for silence and pissing outside. They both seemed appropriate for the moment. Both were difficult to achieve in the mirthless grimness of an alberta clipper. Indoor plumbing and a car heater were much more appropriate. There are two truths that become immediately apparent on such mornings under such adverse conditions. Firstly, eskimo syndrome is the condition whereupon a man's pecker, being adverse to the cold and shrinking a distance directly proportional to the farhenheit value to which it is exposed, and a man's protective outer garments, being necessary in the cold and growing in thickness in proportion to the frigid temperatures encountered, pass each other on the way out leaving a frightful obstacle of length and gap to overcome. Put bluntly, it's a two inch pecker and six inches of clothes. Secondly, there is no silence as pure as the silence of a sub-zero morning in a snow shrouded land whether city or country. It was, as Jack London so masterfully penned it in White Fang,
"A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint of laughter... It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life."
With that thought nagging me I climbed into my car and drove to work on empty roads.
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