Anniversary of a Snow Day
[I wrote this post before I had a blog, back when it was just called a journal, on another snow day exactly one year ago. It's mildly angsty, fits in with my theme of late, so here it is.]
From my living room window this morning, I could see that a man across the street had strapped on a pair of skis. He was all suited up - snow pants, parka, goggles, hat, gloves, ski poles. I watched him for nearly an hour. He would start in his backyard and get himself going with the poles. He would shoot across the twenty-foot stretch of midland between houses and into his neighbor’s backyard. He’d disappear for a few minutes, I assume to take advantage of a slightly more substantial slope on the other side. And then he’d do it in reverse, shooting back between the yards and stopping to turn around again. Back and forth on these baby slopes, on this baby snow.
It occurred to me that, had he seen me, he'd have found my actions just as strange: I was dressed in my pajamas and spinning a three-pound hula hoop around my waist. My laptop was perched precariously on the arm of a chair, pointed towards me, streaming an episode of This American Life from the year 2000. Half-read books were scattered, open, on every surface in the room. Every few minutes, I'd laugh at something on the radio show, causing me to lose my rhythm and the hoop to wobble and fall down around my ankles.
Of all the things we do when (we think) no one is watching, the most interesting is that we open ourselves up to our own truth. Here in my living room, I'm able to admit that I prefer not to get dressed before noon. I keep after the almost hopeless cause of achieving abdominal svelteness, while studying my media, my handbooks, my tomes. My neighbor, too, seems to have made an admission: he's in the wrong place. He fancies himself atop an Alp instead of in the twenty feet that separates his small home from the one next to it. Maybe today is his first time on the skis he bought five years ago with grand intentions, and now, inspired by Torino, now that the kids have trudged off to school and the wife has gone to work, he’s free to pursue Olympic gold. It will take years of practice and a lot of equipment he doesn’t yet have, but he’s spent his whole life learning to be patient. In the absence of a mountain, he makes do.
From my living room window this morning, I could see that a man across the street had strapped on a pair of skis. He was all suited up - snow pants, parka, goggles, hat, gloves, ski poles. I watched him for nearly an hour. He would start in his backyard and get himself going with the poles. He would shoot across the twenty-foot stretch of midland between houses and into his neighbor’s backyard. He’d disappear for a few minutes, I assume to take advantage of a slightly more substantial slope on the other side. And then he’d do it in reverse, shooting back between the yards and stopping to turn around again. Back and forth on these baby slopes, on this baby snow.
It occurred to me that, had he seen me, he'd have found my actions just as strange: I was dressed in my pajamas and spinning a three-pound hula hoop around my waist. My laptop was perched precariously on the arm of a chair, pointed towards me, streaming an episode of This American Life from the year 2000. Half-read books were scattered, open, on every surface in the room. Every few minutes, I'd laugh at something on the radio show, causing me to lose my rhythm and the hoop to wobble and fall down around my ankles.
Of all the things we do when (we think) no one is watching, the most interesting is that we open ourselves up to our own truth. Here in my living room, I'm able to admit that I prefer not to get dressed before noon. I keep after the almost hopeless cause of achieving abdominal svelteness, while studying my media, my handbooks, my tomes. My neighbor, too, seems to have made an admission: he's in the wrong place. He fancies himself atop an Alp instead of in the twenty feet that separates his small home from the one next to it. Maybe today is his first time on the skis he bought five years ago with grand intentions, and now, inspired by Torino, now that the kids have trudged off to school and the wife has gone to work, he’s free to pursue Olympic gold. It will take years of practice and a lot of equipment he doesn’t yet have, but he’s spent his whole life learning to be patient. In the absence of a mountain, he makes do.
posted by Tracy at 8:08 PM
1 Comments:
Hi. I navigated to your page randomly but i enjoyed your posts. I am new to blogging, just started mine a week or so ago. I am also from the Baltimore-area. Its neat to see someone elses perspective of the world around them.
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