(no subject)

Jan 24, 2004 01:35

I’ve never lived in a place where snow pants weren’t worn solely by disgruntled small children under the supervision of overprotective mothers, where “wear layers!” wasn’t a meaningless mantra popular only amongst balding, bingo-playing grandparents, where gloves and hats didn’t function primarily as a rainbowed array of oddly-designed fashion accessories. Before I came to Montreal, I’d never seriously conceptualized the idea of a place where snow banks didn’t give way to soggy green lawns within the week, and where threats of Dangerous Precipitation were so commonplace no one even considered frantically dashing to the neighborhood grocery to stockpile toilet paper and salt. Really, I don’t think I appreciated that there existed temperatures below “cold”, which I defined as somewhere between freezing and room temperature.

Now I think its truly cold when I can’t decide whether to breathe through my nose or my mouth. Inhaling means either the peculiar sensation of frozen nostrils, or the distinctive pain of aching teeth. Either way the moisture in my warm clouds of breath condenses on my scarf, leaving patches of frost replete with brittle strands of stray hair. On those days the approximately two song (less if its Led Zeppelin, more if its Lucksmiths) journey to campus feels biblical, and all thoughts are secondary to an overpowering concern for my fingers and ears, while every frostbite scene literature has given me dances vividly through my wind-battered skull.

By mid-winter you can’t quite imagine a time when people were anything other than red-nosed marshmallows careening around street corners, boots flinging accidental angry ice-clumps at unsuspecting fellow travelers. It hardly matters whether your clothes match in the morning, they’ll be mostly hidden by sweaters and overcoats. You spend so much of your time donning and removing various outwear, constantly on weary alert for errant mittens and unzipped zippers, that you wonder if this overpowering sense of exhaustion and responsibility isn’t a little bit like hauling around a collection of unruly toddlers.

My friends and I love watching the winter couples, plowing hand-in-hand through the mush. But we also idly speculate that few new relationships form in these eerie months- people seem to only half exist in winter, floating through the cold radiating waves of chilled discontent. Besides, hats take precedence over hairstyles, and even the clubbing crowd dresses for The Elements. Last weekend I tried to fight my own cold-induced lethargy, and stubbornly re-created my New Years Outfit, complete with skirt and sandals, before heading Out. But as we stumbled along icy sidewalks and stood, collecting wind, in motionless lines, I regretted allowing Fashion a temporary victory over Comfort. “You know Tara,” Madelynn commented, while we waited at yet another entrance, my toes pink and frozen in the minus 30 cold, “people aren’t thinking about how hot you are… they’re thinking about how cold you are!” Handfuls of strangers’ commentary in at least three languages confirmed her statement, though sympathy and respectful admiration seemed to dominate reactions: an old soldier sacrificing her legs to a higher cause, perhaps?

I haven’t learned my lesson, though. I’ll frequently uncover a gloved hand to plunge one expectant finger into new flakes, blissfully licking them off before discovering the pain of wet exposed flesh, to the exasperated bemusement of my traveling companions. I’ll stomp my way gleefully through snow banks, then leave soggy heaps of pants and shoes outside my door, creating the surreal impression that a person may have melted there. I’d like to say I’ve gained a respect for Real Cold, but that’s hardly true; at most I’ve occasionally grudgingly accepted the limitations it places upon my daily activities. And while back in Maryland over break, I almost elected to pack my winter coat away in my checked luggage, so faint and distant was the memory of the frigid world I’d be returning to. Any distance from the immediacy of the chill clouds my recollections of it, and even from the moment I slam the door upon reentering my cozy apartment, I’m already forgetting the intensity of suffering I felt only a moment ago. I suppose it’s the same reaction that allows women to undergo childbirth again and again; I can tell you just how utterly awful it will feel, in exquisite detail- but just the same I imagine I’ll soon be tripping down Prince Arthur in high heels again, catching snow flakes on my tongue.

Maybe the cold does “get to me”, but it hasn’t got all the way through to me. At least not yet.
Previous post Next post
Up