Friday Night Frolic — The Low Anthems of a Dysfunctional Winter

A Scene on the Ice -  Hendrick Avercamp 

No ice
not even snow
on this island
that sits low
by the sea

Ponds long
to be cut
with silver blades
a fishing hut
or a puck

No such luck.

Where has winter gone?

Suburban soliloquists
take trains
stare out windows
at city's winter rains
dreaming of frost

Skis of copious length
on which to mount
a field of firn
to linger, scout
a winterland struck

But fuck.

Where has winter gone?

To the Dutch
they've it all
ice, skates, kolf
snow wonder they stand tall
on glacial ivory

The brilliance
of a Vermeer
Jan Davidsz de Heem's
flowers, oh dear!
Steen's palette instructs

Winter's not amuck!

As it should be:

Swirling, whirling crystal
fleecy drifts severe
white-out hypnotics!
The island's absent pearlescent smear
and Khione's heart despairs

So to Avercamp
the scenes he'd deliver
lustful heads turn
toward his frozen river
away from this muck

What's known as winter yuck.

A dysfunctional winter.

* * *

The north wind blows and brittle branches scratch against the clapboards, yet I don't hear the siren calls of winter. Temperatures have dipped (somewhat), but the blizzards of last year seem merely a dream. How can that be? The last time we Rhode Islanders saw snow around here it was cavorting with fall, just before Halloween. That was the trick. The treat has yet to follow, and I fear my friend snow may not remain as it should: a going concern. 

In a corner of the garage, my cross-country skis sit lonely, and I almost want to curse our pulsating sun that fights the brume for attention. This is not as winter should be. Not here. Not in Lil Rhody!

What we do have, though—even during abnormal winters—throughout the year, is a vibrant music scene, and a history of serving as a launching pad, or at the very least, sowing seeds, for several remarkable bands. Members of the Talking Heads met at RISD. Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lisa Loeb, Duncan Sheik, Jesse Sykes (Jesse Sykes and The Sweet Hereafter), and Chris Keating (of Yeasayer) graduated from Brown University. And let's not forget one of my very favorites (especially when he's with his partner, Gillian Welch), David Rawlings, who grew up in the very next town from where I was born and raised.

In Providence, the local music scene includes, among others, The Mighty, Mighty Bosstones, Deer Tick, and The Low Anthem:

Ghost Women Blues—as well as other songs from The Low Anthem's most recent release, Smart Flesh—was recorded in an abandoned pasta sauce factory located in Central Falls, RI (home to Stanley's famous burgers), which is, like most places in R.I., barely a stone's throw away from my home. 

Oh My God, Charlie Darwin (2009) was recorded on Block Island—in the midst of its deep-freeze winter months. TLA is known for using locally found materials as percussion instruments, as well as its album sleeves and art. (Ah—a dumpster's treasures.) And I wonder what charms they dug up along the bluffs of one of the Last Great Places.

On My Space, TLA describes its music as minimalist, psychedelic and comedy. I think it's beautiful. (Or, wicked awesome, as the locals like to say.) And hope for more treats from them, as a going concern.

Now, please, Khione, bring on the snow!

Cruising With Khione

I don't know why, but I have a distinct feeling something is coded in the snow's weekly plummet to earth. It may be global warming, the shift in climate, or just my wild imagination, but the downfall occurs with such regularity of late that I sense there's more to it. So I got out in it, in search of it's meaning.

The heavy fall began near rush hour this morning, but no school delay was called. Rather than have to make up yet another day lost to snow, school officials opted for an early dismissal. Thus, I had a porthole in which to voyage solo aloft the glistening, fleecy ground cover.

There is something about getting out on my cross country skis, alone, scraping through fresh snow, cutting a trail, that awakens me. There is an immediate peace, an instant sense of becoming one with nature. And even though my trek was along suburban streets, it was still for some time quiet but for the Song Sparrows' trills from across the partly iced-over brook. I wondered if this were not the message—the snow, and the birds, warbling in harmony just for me (skiing the flats has this effect, delusions surface, and I can see crystal clear beyond the horizon)—a dawning of a virginal earth, unstained by human nature.

Until the snow plow hammered past, leaving noxious fume in its path, returning me to Earth present.

(When I return home nearly two hours later, I am to find via research that people have been cross country skiing since prehistoric times—meaning since human beings first appeared on Earth—along the Baltic Shield. That's right, snow has never immobilized Scandinavians. And the repetitive motion of my skis are the same as earliest man's. This makes me feel even more like a snow goddess. Khione. I am she.)

* * *

Presently, I make my way along Rawson, down a small decline, and onto a flat with a certain cadence: a slightly bent leg out front,  the back one in a deeper bend at the knee, dragging behind. I let it linger there until I can glide no more, and then thrust the back leg forward, and the other falls behind. The arms—poles in hand—do what the leg does opposite, and the method is repeated until I reach a soft coast.

I glide past homes where large icicles cling precariously to rooflines, azalia bushes are buried in white fluff, the rims of basketball hoops are salted like margaritas, and a small trampoline looks like a snow cone. I see a "land clearing" sign, and I feel a wisp of sadness.

No one, except for a few cars passing slowly, is on the road but me. I am alone, keeping my own pace, no one to catch up to, no one to wait for. I've got a rhythm going, and it feels good. I feel it's all I really need. But then I see the hill ahead, and my heart rushes. I hurry up the incline, suddenly aware that I want to get to the top. I am in full stretch because I need to get to the top.

Because I need to go down.

And so I reach the crest and circle round, adjusting myself at the top, peering down to the bridge, where I know my downhill coast will come to a halt. I dig my poles into the snow under me, and push off. A joyful scream erupts (I am not even conscious of this) as I careen down the small slope, pass over a stream and arrive atop the bridge, where my stride is broken.

I do this three more times. It is like a drug. A selective-serotonin reuptake inhibitor. 

On my final descent, a car passes and I notice it's a neighbor bringing her daughter home from school. They smile and wave. Another car passes, and it's also a mother and child. I begin to feel guilty for not picking my kids up at school. I begin to wonder if I don't live for my kids. But I don't live for my kids, I realize. Is this a horrible thing to discover? Is this the message? Wait, maybe I'm not thinking straight. I live with my kids. I feed them and clothe them, and give them everything they need. Is this not enough?! Why, I do live for my kids, don't I? I am confused. I begin to think that I mustn't love my kids amply, for if I did, I'd be fetching them at school. I begin to feel less like a goddess, and—gripping my poles—more like something that is horned, tailed, and wields a pitchfork. This is the message, I decide. I need to get off my drugs and return to the real earth. Or perhaps I need a different drug. Something more like Xanax.

I leave the mountain and head toward the flats again. I turn down a side street in Arnold Mills and ski past the pond. More cars drive by. It's odd, but I think that one can tell a lot about a person simply by observing his or her reaction—especially to that of witnessing one skiing on a snow covered street. There is snow. Lots of it. I’m not on blacktop for Heaven's sake. So I can’t help but wonder why some people seem so puzzled. Or annoyed. Or doubtful. While others grin gaily.

And then there is the snow plow and its driver, whom doesn't care much for me. Not at all. Nor I for him. Not at all.

Alas, my son is soon to be jettisoned from a big yellow clunker, so I slide back toward home and wait by the the street corner's snowbank—my journey complete, though no portent had been decoded. Or had it?

At the corner, I greet the little man, who seems no worse for the wear. He doesn't mention the extended ride, or the fact that other children were picked up at school. I wonder if my daughter will feel the same way.

I wonder if I'll be going out for another winter hike when she returns home. I wonder when we shall see the next snowfall.

Demophobia

Internet source unknown

Per Murr, I’ve been eating prolific amounts of oatmeal and yogurt on a daily basis, so when my week’s supply ran out today, I had to hoof it to the market before the crowd surged. At 1:00pm, the snow had just begun to fall—the commencement of yet another winter storm—and the great milk and bread rush would, no doubt, soon be in full tilt.

I’m no Chionophobic, quite the contrary, however I loath the inevitable confluence of panic-stricken personages at the grocery, so I don’t ordinarily food shop pre-blizzard. But dammit, I needed more than milk and bread. I needed oatmeal. And yogurt. I had a real emergency.

So there I was at Dave’s, where parking was miraculously still available. It seemed people had actually pre-prepared for this one. How lucky. I tucked my reusable bags under my arm and sashayed (yes, that's right, sashayed—I am a snow goddess, I am Khione herself, lady of mountain gales, I sleep in frozen vapor, ask hubby, he controls the thermostat) my way inside. And while there, at Dave’s, why not throw a few veggies in the cart for good measure? Oh, and the salmon was on sale; as were the blueberries (remarkably!). I was enjoying myself so much that I poured myself a cup of coffee and spent a little time with the cheese.

Over at the deli a small crowd was forming, the ticket dispenser wildly whirling, numbered-pink-paper-slips fluttering to the floor. The market was swelling, and I realized I’d have to pick up my pace before I melted. (Make no mistake; one must execute extreme finesse under such occasion.)

Source

So, favoring perimeter shopping, I circumvented the deli—it’s much healthier, anyway—and made my way to the picked-clean milk section. All of this, mind you, in a matter of fifteen minutes, or so it seemed. A few yogurts lay sideways in the cold case, and I grabbed the last of them.

I pushed my small cart around the final corner, down the aisle, toward the cash registers, whereupon... to great alarm... there, I did see: an overflowing stream of basket-pushing buggers at check-out.  I began to melt. I did. I was flushed. I tugged at my scarf. I needed to get back out in the frost, in the snow, onto God's white earth. Fhark! I had spent too much time with the cheese! (Which is the very problem to begin with.)

Getty Images

Just then—as I was about to evaporate into an ocean of hysteria—I found a hole. Right there, in the other lane. Other people saw it, too, but no one was making a move. I looked about at agitated shoppers, wondering if jumping in the hole was a good idea. I paused, spied around once more, lowered my head, darted through the line and into the little culvert. I was there, right at the register, and I hadn't even cutoff anyone! Honest. It was as if the stream had parted its rising tide, and waved me through the watershed. Though some shoppers looked at me with envy, none dared cross the divide, and so I felt immediate relief.

Bags were packed tight, and I glided outside—the air so chilly, such solace—sashaying my way back to the chariot, where I gathered the reins, and headed, victoriously, into the valley of glaciers...

...without the oatmeal.

And school is closed tomorrow...