I used to love the cold weather. As a kid, every day after school I would play in the snow. My mom was against it, but she couldn’t resist the sad faces of three boys.
Now I’m getting sick and tired of it. I want to move somewhere warm. Hawaii is nice this time of year. Once I stop running, I get cold instantly. My sweat starts to turn into ice, which makes me even colder. I try to make this work. In the cold, I try to have fun. I pretend I’m smoking a cigarette. I never smoked a cigarette before in my life. I kind of wish I had one right now. Breathing in the smoke might raise the temperature of my body. It might also get my heart to beat faster.
I breathe in the cold air. It’s a stupid idea I know, but I just pretend it’s really hot. I heard that’s how lava feels. You touch it and for a brief moment you think you’re touching an ice cube. Then a few milliseconds later your hand melts. I don’t want my organs melted. I want to be able to blow rings of smoke. My little brother can do it, he’s a smoker. I try to pucker my lips and blow. I see my breath frozen in mid air. Then it disperses itself with the other gases. It looks like I’m blowing cold fire. I try a couple of more times.
I left all my warm clothes back at home. I’m wearing three long sleeve t-shirts, gloves, and track pants. I don’t have a hat on. My ears are turning red. Well I can’t be too sure of that. I can’t really feel them. Maybe they’re blue and purple.
I just want to curl up in the fetal position. I remember once when I found a bird in the snow. I thought it was dead, but it just flapped it feathers and flew away. Maybe I can do the same thing. There’s not much snow on the ground, but I’m sure I can burrow the ground enough to make it a suitable sleeping place.
How long has it been? Four minutes. Sigh. Ok. I’m going to close my eyes and pretend I’m in Hawaii.
I'm definitely getting a strong sense of you in your place, the interior landscape. From here, I'd also really like to have a sense of the place itself, the exterior landscape, what it looks like, literally, what it sounds like, what it smells like...
ReplyDeleteI think what I like best about this post is the description of the lava. I've heard that extreme heat initially feels cold as well, but I just love the image of a hand melting. I can imagine the skin puddling like an ice cube left on a counter top--nothing grotesque but sort of like Dali painting, just completely surreal.
ReplyDeleteI too have tried to blow smoke rings with my breath in the cold, but I can't blow them the few times I've smoked so it seems a futile effort to do so. It never keeps me from trying, but even with that illusion it never warms me either.