Cold Snap
Susie Kaufman
I remember a soundtrack of children with gravel-impacted wounded knees crying for their mothers in Riverside Park, games played with pink rubber balls against a counterpoint of sing-song chanting. In upper Manhattan, I could hear the cars honking and backfiring, the sirens screaming, hanging out of our living room window fourteen floors above Broadway. Workmen on scaffolding leaned over precariously the better to catcall at women in high heels wiggling by. Music punctuated the ambient noise. Girl groups, big brass sections, the wall of sound. The air was dense with radio waves, the pavements imprinted with a thousand feet trying to execute the Locomotion. In my memory, it was always hot, loud and crowded. On the IRT, our breath mingled, our bodies suffered indiscriminate intimacies. Even in winter, the hiss and percussion of the radiators made a racket and it was always sweltering inside. I did not come of age in cold and quiet.
You will understand then that when the mercury fell below zero last weekend in Stockbridge, descending to -17 Saturday night, I vowed not to leave the house, fearing for my lungs and my brittle bones. It seemed an opportune time to do some writing, to leave the overworked past and the flickering glimpses of a possible future behind and sink like a stone into the present. The trouble with trying to write about the Now on a bleak, cold day is that your blood has already gone gelid in your veins, so the words don't come to mind at their usual chirpy pace. Your thoughts are stuck on an icy road and don't have the traction to get up the hill of your brain and out onto the screen. I survived Saturday whipping up a boeuf bourguignon and baking chocolate chip cookies, reasoning correctly that the heat from the oven and the homey, nostalgic aromas would promote a feeling of wellbeing, however illusory. I also talked to myself gravely about the health benefits of consuming a lot of fat in a very cold climate like native peoples in the North eating whale blubber.
By Sunday, the novelty of camping out in the living room had worn off and the demons began to occupy. Newspapers and netflix did not furnish an adequate defense. There was too much empty space begging to be filled with regrets and anxieties. I tried to access my inner Rumi, treating each incursion from the jungle interior as if it were an unexpected visitor. "The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in," suggested the Sufi poet. I did not feel hospitable. Leave me alone! I implored. An enormous blank canvas like an overtired two year old demanded my attention. All day long, columns of recriminations advanced, gaining ground, closing off possible avenues of escape. Past moments of cruelty, insufficiencies of the heart and future imaginings of catastrophe lay in wait.
So here's the dirty little secret. I'm keen on contemplative space, emptiness, silence, when I'm in charge, when I set the parameters, when it's easy. But when I feel imprisoned by it, called to surrender to circumstances beyond my control, I'm about as contemplative as a bargain hunter on Black Friday. I want out. I want more and when I'm held against my will, I kick and scream. I'm going to need to get better at this because whether I like it or not, the space I inhabit will shrink as I age. Opportunities in the physical world, in the realm of flesh and bone, will diminish. Already, I don't drive after dark. I know who my friends are and when I allow myself to stare at reality without blinking, I understand that there will be fewer of them, not more of them, as time goes on. I can't see what's coming, but whatever it is, it will be quieter and less densely populated than the clamorous street scene of my early life. My last piece of pie may be concocted out of long years of slowing down, losing ground, or short days of living absent an awareness that life might end on any ordinary Monday morning. I listen for that song, but it's faint, in the background. When I do hear it clearly, it is strangely comforting. It settles my stomach and caresses my restlessness. It warms me whatever the weather.