No Snow to Speak Of

I’ve got nothing to say – and I blame it on the weather.

Not just any, or all weather – our weather: this half-assed excuse for a winter, specifically.
Don’t look surprised: I’m just like you. My thoughts are not my own. I am – as the psychics like to say, just the conduit.
Did you ever notice that the psychic channelers always seem to be channeling princes and emperors, great warriors or priests?
Did you ever notice that when, under hypnosis, people remember their past lives – there’s almost always a person of great wealth, rank, or significance in there someplace?
Not me.
When I channel for this column I usually bring forth news of squirrels in the attic – literally, or wells that won’t pump, or what kind of candy the kid brought home Halloween night.
I channel the average, everyday stuff that we all deal with – but hopefully with an interesting slant, a different perspective.
And what inspires me is the average and the everyday.
But not today.
Today, this week, this month, I have been suffering from poor reception, from a stuttering imagination, from a lack of inspiration because for the past thirty days the average and the everyday have been absent from these parts.
Maybe they’ve gone on vacation.
Look around you.
You call this weather?
Is there anything more inspiring to the imagination than a sudden blanket of white?
When the landscapes that we know so well suddenly disappear, and the background sounds that we expect to hear are muffled, and the schedules that we usually maintain are unavoidably altered, it shocks the system and stirs our thoughts.
And at a time of year when we instinctively crave anything that can awake us out of our stupor – weather is oftentimes our best and only friend.
But we haven’t had any – any weather that is.
At least not ‘round here.
Oh sure we’ve had a taste of rain, a snap of cold, a smattering of sleet, and a sheet or two of ice: but no snow to speak of.
The weather people would argue of course: they’d bring out their charts and cite the statistics.
According to the statistics we’ve had a few inches, here and there.
But that’s not snow, it’s the Dandruff of the Gods: and they’re not sure what’s going on either.
They’re up there, on Olympus, scratching their heads.
It’s not just me either – all of the so-called news has been affected.
People aren’t really interested in Anna Nicole Smith – they’ve just got nothing better to think about.
My youngest son is out there now – not in the Bahamas, in the backyard I mean: out back trying to scrape up enough of that dirty, crusty stuff to make a dandruff man.
“Can you come out and play in the snow with m”, he asked?
“If there was snow to play in, I would”, I promised, but I was not going to get down on the ground and grovel around, pretending.
Of course there are plenty who would.
Of course that’s what they’ve been doing down in Florida, and now in California, and soon in the Bahamas: groveling around in the dirt, trying to scrape up enough stuff to make a story.
Sad to say, the Anna Nicole story is like the weather we’ve been having: hardly enough news there to measure.
And now that the story – and the poor woman herself, have been lying around for more than a week, it’s gotten a bit dirty, a bit crusty too.
That’s the genius of Andy Rooney on Sixty Minutes: somehow he turns what annoys him, into the subject of his weekly ‘column’. Somehow what annoys him, amuses us.
But Andy’s secret is – I imagine, that he is amused by what annoys him too: he actually revels in his own annoyances.
I just can’t manage the same enthusiasm for what bores me.
I can’t manage to find inspiration, in its lack.
So, we’re moving.
Taking a vacation of sorts.
We’ve rented a house up near Syracuse, New York. The owners were left in the lurch, when the last tenants moved out giving no notice at all.
The house is fully furnished. The refrigerator is full. The previous tenants pre-paid for six months of satellite TV.
And they’ve got enough inspiration piled up, to last at least until June.
I’m bringing my own shovel: stay tuned.