The Big Chill

The sun crept through the window this morning brightly, yet ashamed of its self. It was like that of a candle, in a large cold room. Trying to warm and comfort a space that was beyond its scope. I lay in the bed, peeking from underneath a warm comforter, lamenting the sun’s defeat. I wondered when old man winter would retreat for a time and allow the cold ambivalence of New York City to break away from its frigid state to the less hurried welcoming faces of spring and summer. Coiled into a ball beneath the plumage of hundreds of unfortunate fowl, I imagined myself a thousand miles away. I found myself on the shores of a warm unfamiliar beach where the smell of ocean and coconut oils complimented, this most auspicious moment of imaginary delight. Within minuets of my private paradise escape, somewhere in the distance, my cell phone rang a constant reminder of an urgent text message that required my attention, there was the annoying phone call from some God-awful telemarketing group, and then my alarm started to go off. Well, so much for my suspended moment of disbelief. I was soon on the cold floor, coughing, quickly losing the morning erection, trying not to trip over an already fat enough cat that while begging for food, kept crossing my steps. My bathroom was reminiscent of an igloo and I a displaced Eskimo suffering frostbite and shrinkage.

The big chill has come over us and swept us beneath a cold white blanket of hurried steps, almost unnoticeable smiles and the layering of garbs over bodies already weighed down by deffense mechanisms and indifference. Are emotions seasonal? Why are there so many invisible liners and barriers keeping us from the warmth of the outside world? People can never really seem to say what they feel or really mean. It would seem that interpretation is a shallow pool beneath icicles of intention awaiting salted moments of defrosted warmth, layered beneath parkas and goose bumps.