I get it, the weather
Arrived back in breathy LA last night, late, strung out on decongestants and streaming Virgin America channels consisting exclusively of Sex in the City (I forgot how ___ it is), and then I remembered about weather. When I moved here in August I left the Eastern Seaboard summer behind and LA seemed temperate-er but otherwise only a move from Earth to Mars rather than purgatory to paradise (it’s the palm trees, they’re so alien).
But in Boston, the night before I left, it vomited what, nineteen inches of snow, and I walked to the bar to meet my friend, and I felt myself to be utterly stoic and solemn because oh the booted effort of it all. The snow is nostalgic and grand, it isn’t bad or deserving of hatred; it makes you feel Herzog. But, it’s the kind of physically challenging that’s only sexy in a limited way: at some point you realize you haven’t gotten dressed in the morning with any more strategy than wrap-naked-flesh-in-as-much-fabric-or-soft-matter-as-possible in quite a while.
Whereas! LA is full of fruitless mulberries and magnolias, etc, (I missed the angry mud gods,) and I’m experiencing a kind of opiated ecstasy that comes only when easiness is preceded by the sense of a previously hard-fought struggle. Weather is strange this way: while much has been said about the insidious effects of climate on group behavior, I think it might be most deeply affective at first contact, and in great contrast. It’s why in Philadelphia we all went reliably crazy every April and climbed onto our roofs with bare legs, clutching six packs and proposing doomed trips to Atlantic City.
