Thursday, January 15, 2009

Ready?

















www.moore-warner.com/sightseeing.php


It’s the – what shall we call them – “Bear Days of January.”

The holidays have faded. Winter stretches out like a highway in Nebraska, running so far and flat that you can see the curvature of the planet in the distance. This year has yet to deliver the unseasonably balmy weather of the last few winters. It is COLD. The sun shines. The sun disappears within pearly grey skies. Either way, every time I look at the temperature it’s sliding somewhere between 19 and 31. The 40s hang back somewhere in the blue shadows of the 5:00 sunset, waiting for a brighter 6:00.

Oh, let’s not complain! Let us breathe in the crystalline air! Let all who were cheated out of a White Christmas do a ‘snow dance,” courting Jack Frost with cute little leggings and fake fur (because PETA said so) earmuffs. Let us wax poetic about the stark landscape, the bare trees (call it: fingers reaching to scratch an itching sky, for God’s sake). Let’s ski and ice skate and snowboard and practice curling (Whoever thought up that Olympic sport was high on somethin’). Let’s watch our breath morph into clouds before our faces, and yell, "Hey! That one looks like a dragon with a cigar!"

Or. We could just hide inside, where the insulation shields us from the wind. We can strike up a fire (umm … where’s the flue again?), throw on a … throw, watch independent films ONDEMAND, and brood about the color green.

I’m liking the second alternative.

Hey. I like making snow angels. As a matter of fact, I like snow so much, I used to run barefoot in it (don’t mention this to my mother. The passage of time has no effect on her outrage). I love the clear air. And, yes, the stark trees and grey-brown landscape do contain a certain rough, quiet beauty. But, I am an impatient hostess for winter, and January brings thoughts of fobbing Jack off on my friends in the Southern Hemisphere. Not to mention, a new year has dropped on top of the last strangely brutal/funny one. We are who we were last year, and we act like it. Our world has not changed. Local, state, national and global issues remain, like an annoying neighbor who just won’t move. And, buying a new calendar in Borders doesn’t change a thang.

Yet. We must really, really want a change. Maybe we want more than one. We made champagne buckets full of resolutions in search of changes of a most personal nature. Sure, we questioned our choices after the New Year’s hangover wore off. All that stuff about exercising more, eating less, saving more, bitching less, loving more, fearing less, traveling more, writing more, embracing more is daunting. And, all those promises we made to ourselves (or, mumbled about, for those of us who feared to step beyond the construction phase) may be a distant memory by May. Still, we made them. We took the step, if only in our heads. We made them, because we recognize the need to move forward.

We want to go … somewhere. We talk of incremental changes, but really we want to streak across the sky like a star, or (at least) a shuttle. We want to move, just to see who we are somewhere else. We want to fly to see if we will break the stratosphere, or get burned like Icarus, ignorant and far beyond our means. We want to try, and hope we have the fortitude to keep trying when no one else is looking or listening, or helping or caring. We want to move, because moving is life, and stillness is lassitude (just another word for death). We want to live, and dance and love and fuck and feel. We want to be, and have meaning in the being.




So, like sharks, like winter winds, like stars, like tentative lovers on the dance floor, we find some way to keep moving, driving across that stark, winter Nebraskan landscape toward the very curve of the world, in search of treasure (in all its many forms). In search of whatever’s out there.

“Hey, where ya going?”
“Why? You wanna come with?”
“Yeah.”
“Ready?”




5 comments:

rebecca said...

OMG she wrote "fuck!" F*CK! Oh, Felicia, Felicia, Felicia, you just got me in trouble with Mama Rivers and that sweet, little looking face looks like she don't play! Didn't you perhaps think of slowly merging into the dark side? No, of course not, you had to go for the mother of all mothers and go in full-force! I f*cking love it!!!!! Okay, enough of that. LOL!!!!

Okay, let's see: bear days of January......LOVE IT!!! crystalline air, walking on the snow barefooted, nesting indoors and all! All of it! Hey, and I like the fact you said fake fur....yes, Fe, fake, because we love animals. Now, if we could just stop being so damn hypocritical and stop eating them, we could really stand behind our words! But baby steps, baby steps...I'm working on this.

Change. I loved that paragraph on change. Every single word. So true. Daunting, yes, but we are children of hope and it is in our dna to want to change. Listen, because in plain Ingles, you said it best: "We want to live, and dance and love and fuck and feel. We want to be, and have meaning in the being." And that is the honest truth!

((hugs)) to you my sweet, my devil sister you!

CoyoteFe said...

Rebecca-wan-san -

You are the prototypical force of corruption! I tremble in your presence, and would suggest that hell lay in your future, but, you'd just end up running the joint. THEN, where would we be? Lucifer would just sigh, and light out for Bora Bora. Much better if you come-with to heaven where we can keep an eye on you. Your conversations with the angels will be the old e-ticket.

Yes, I wrote that word, and I'm glad! OK, I shuddered to give offense, but all will survive. Still telling my Ma that you egged me on, so YOU'll be the one to face her crazy-assed, vaguely penetrating stare.

And, I can eschew fur quite easily. It is beautiful, and feels wonderful, right on the beast that grew it. But hamburgers? Ummm ... hamburgers ... OK, I'm a hypocrite. Hamburgers. But, I did give up veal at age 14 due to the horrific treatment of the baby cows, so I AM susceptible to persuasion. But, hamburgers ....

SO true about change in our DNA. Survival apparatus? Notice how a lack of change breeds a listless soul?

Try to behave for 5 seconds, wouldja? Just as a change of pace. :-)

rebecca said...

Fe,

You are toooo funny! Lucifer, Schmucifer....he ain't all that. I've met him, remember?!! Plus, one of his cronies seems to inhabit my home.... :) Oh, gotta love them devils!

I know what you mean about veal. You know I don't eat veal (well, i never did get a taste for it) and when I found out it came from baby cows, I nearly died. Never! On a serious note, Fe, the treatment of animals for our food consumption is beyond horrific. It really shatters my heart. I am trying. Seriously, I am trying. But damn if that steak or hamburger does not taste good now and again. And I don't mean that to be funny...I'm just being truthful!

Peace my beautiful sister,
Rebecca

CoyoteFe said...

Muhahaha! So is your personal, domestic crony YOU or someone else?

Agreed on the treatment of animals. And people. And land. Ah - we must do better, eh?

But hamburgers. And, shrimp. (sigh)

Be well your own bad self, Rebecca-san

Lori Skoog said...

Fe!!!you and Rebecca are too much. Stop by for an award.