I like to think of Hell the way Dante paints it: the deepest circle of Hell is frozen ice, because it is the farthest removed from the warmth of God's love.
Hard not to think of that in this long, bitter winter.
The most remarkable thing about the cold in Wisconsin isn't the cosine wave of temperatures, making it rain one day and freeze the next. Nor is it the possibility of ice quakes in Lake Mendota, which cause all the lakeshore buildings to quiver briefly, as if a giant had tried playing patty cake with them. It's our failure to find any other subject matter to be used in small talk.
Everyone has their own prefered topics of small talk. Mine is currently the progress of the Writer's Strike, and how that's affected life. Yet we all have this one thing in common. This one thing that unites us to get behind a stranger's car and heave it out of its rut. We all suffer together, and in the cold, we find solidarity.
I stand behind my belief that it is dull to talk about the weather everywhere else in the country, but in Wisconsin, it's just so damn fascinating.
1 comment:
aptly, aix's contingent of wisconsinites unites around the small talk of "oh my gosh, isn't it BEAUTIFUL out today?" (even though it's 60 and sunny every day, and it's never really news). have to say, i don't miss the weather. not even a little.
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