Snow Again

snow in the back
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

I wasn't expecting the blizzard of the century; good god, I thought it was just going to be another rainy lonely weekend wherein I didn't feel very well and kind of aimlessly puttered around twittering, reading bad novels and trying futilely to vacuum pet hair out of small Oriental rugs. It's a good thing that I actually got my ass out of the house this morning and took a muffin and a cinnamon roll and the NY Times (picking up the Sunday paper is so poignant these days, you know, I mean it's like what's black and white and red all over and DYING) over to the QOB in the rain. We didn't know it was going to snow; in fact, I was pointing out the tulips in her front yard and telling her about surprising daffodils on the corner. Yes, that was March 1 but apparently somebody's been fucking around with the space time continuum again and we're back in January. Argh.

The snow is beautiful but somehow I am less enthusiastic about this snow day than I have been about all the others. The novelty has worn off and besides, given all the flus I've had lately, I can't really have any fun. Drinking makes me throw up - so does eating, for that matter, so I have high hopes for the diet - and cigarettes make me cough AND throw up which is too much even for a dedicated addict like me. This is horribly like pregnancy: if it was even vaguely possible I'd be peeing on a plastic stick right around now, I must say. Meanwhile, the dogs, for some reason possibly related to the fact that I cleaned the house up (it is fairly embarrassing, yes, to have your dogs think that you only clean up when company is coming) keep assuming that there's a party about to happen. They keep dashing to the door with their tails wagging, barking expectantly but there is nobody there. How metaphoric of them.

Yesterday I finished the first Haruki Murakami book I've ever read: Kafka on the Shore. It was excellent. I want to talk to somebody about it. I have questions. I have comments. I am all excited. It made my brain spin around in circles and I'm almost - not quite, but almost - driven to either google Hegel or ask my philosopher brother to give me the Cliffs Notes version. I'm not used to books doing that. I'm used to books that I can sink into, watch a lot of muscly, very good looking people trade sword blows and quips and save some world vaguely based on middle earth while they're at it and then I can emerge, notice that a week in the real world has gone by and then forget the book entirely. And I like those books a lot, but you know, there are some books - not, alas, all that many - where you can do both: disappear and think. Or, as Kafka on the Shore would have it, lose and find yourself, simultaneously.

In other news, it's been just a little over six months since my mother died. I miss her every day and part of me is still floating a little over my head, looking down, looking for her, looking for me, trying to figure out what there is, now, you know, when my anchor is gone. I hope I'll find my way before I hit the rocks.