05 March 2001 ~ Snowbound...

After inadvertantly causing the Seattle Earthquake last week, via my psychic communication with the spectre of Johnny Cash (is he dead?), I somehow managed to cause a blizzard in the Northeast. Eight to twelve inches already on the ground, and another foot expected by tomorrow.

Broome County is in a state of crisis. Not crisis, exactly: nobody's bleeding yet, and nothing bad ever really comes of these things. Schools are shut down, businesses are shut down, and time slows down. And VH-1 looks more and more appealing as the seconds drag by. One really, really old guy will die of a heart attack while shovelling snow, and everybody will get really upset, and the news will call it a tragedy and offer "snow safety tips," even though a ninety-six-year-old guy with a heart condition ought to freaking know better than to shovel his driveway without help from the news.

But yes, in a way, it is a crisis. For gahd's sake, I'm OFF OF WORK! They called and told me not to come in; they're closing early. (Because nobody in their right mind would be out and desperate for coffee, and the management doesn't like me working with customers who AREN'T in their right minds...) So, to celebrate, and before the grocery stores could get it into their minds to close, I bought a can of semi-sweet chocolate syrup, a carton of milk, and two cans of soup. Then, because solitary hot chocolate is awfully lonely, I sneaked sloppily to Norman's apartment, getting about eight pounds of snow in each sock in the process, only to find Norman's housekey missing. I didn't have the heart to bang loudly on the the door and wake him up, not even for chicken soup, hot cocoa, and snuggling, so, for two horrendous blocks, which seemed very much like a ropes-course, I unsteadily trudged home...

The girls upstairs sound like they're having a tickle fight. The old guy downstairs just got in from shovelling the porch. (What IS it with these old guys?) Norman is presumably still sleeping cozily, oblivious to mountains and mountains of white shit covering probably the entire world. Everything is fairly cozy, really. I may spend a good portion of the morning watching snow fall outside my kitchen windows. I wish I had some decent jazz music lying around; nothing in the world is better with snow than jazz.

I've been told that when North Carolina gets an inch of snow on the ground, entire towns are shut down and a state of emergency warning is issued, because North Carolinans cannot drive in snow, even an inch.

I'm living on the west side of Binghamton, precisely two blocks from what is properly called "downtown," and so the storm isn't really frightening. I know, come hell, high water, or another foot of snow, the gas stations will remain open in case I need anything. I know Lost Dog is probably open, and while travel may be slow, it's not impossible. It was much, much different when I was growing up, living seven miles outside of town. Our road was the last one plowed. We were cut off from the rest of the world by a seemingly-unthreatening (in good weather, of course) hill. We may as well have been living in the Overlook Hotel. The grocery stores were open, but if the cupboards were bare, we just dealt with it, because even the monstrous power of a Ford Taurus couldn't always overcome the calm antagonism of a hill covered with a foot and a half of unplowed snow. Many are my memories of sitting in the passenger's seat of my dad's car, ducking my head into my lap as the car slid recklessly across the road. You had to wait until you were certain no other cars were coming, because you had to use both lanes to make it. Usually, we just stayed home.

Snow days were rare. Johnson City schools, like gas stations, NEVER close. Johnson City's superintendent doesn't bother taking into consideration the ten or twelve kids snowbound on the hill. Our bus was invariably late. My brothers and I invariably missed half of first period. When there WAS a snow day, we knew it was bad. I sat inside, a half-finished crocheting project on my lap, listening to the radio, making mix-tapes, writing letters, even watching VH-1 when the boredom became unbearable. My brothers either followed my example, or took their snow tubes out, trudged across a quarter-mile-long reservoir dam, and spent the day screeching down a hill. (You knew the fun was over when they started arguing about whose turn it was, and who'd splashed snow on whom... Somebody almost always came home crying, and they BOTH always came back cranky...)

Sometimes, it was really terrifying. Sometimes, it was like being trapped in a box. It always seems that, no matter what, the world keeps running. When even the postal service shuts down, when announcements are made on the radio about doctors and lawyers staying home, when the roads eventually close, it becomes suddenly and intensely clear that Nature is much, much stronger than us. We live our lives believing we're invincible, with our warm little houses and our electric lights; with our computers and phones and supermarkets and furnaces. We never really believe, until a snowstorm hits, that we are nothing more than small animals burrowed into the side of the hill. For all our technology, with all our plows and sources of energy and hot cocoa mix, we can't stop the snow, can't keep everything running indefinitely. We are inconvenienced, of course, by having to shovel and stomp through mountains of snow, but it's also a rather humbling experience, which no one who's never experienced a real snowstorm can understand: we are made small.

I just noticed that my kitten is curled up in a ball of fluff at the base of the furnace. I believe I'm going to go join her.

~Helena*