Today, it is snowing balls out. Fluffy snow is gently landing all over the ground. Its that type of snowy day when silence is amplified; every sound is muffled by the White, passively engulfing everything. The best part is that I can't hear any of those fucking cars whirring back and forth like remote-controlled toys on Wilmette Avenue. A rare time to happily accept nature's presence, and the unending peace that accompanies it. No more sounds of humans scratching on my dirt, writhing. The snow takes care of that nonsense.
I had to shovel this beautiful fluff off of my sidewalk so my Mom won't slip, fall and yell at me. She always has places to go. Always using that fucking concrete sidewalk to get to her car to go places. She refuses to accept nature's presence, at least not willingly. I happily start shoveling when she's out of the house.
I go out in my pajamas and grab a shovel. I don't have to work hard to glide this soft snow off my property, but I decide to work at it to burn off some energy. Tripping on my untied boots, I feel the cold sting of snowflakes landing on my bare neck. Its hard to distinguish this sting on my neck, and the sting I'm getting from looking around and simply being overwhelmed. That unnerving sense of a loss of control, a loss of familiarity.
Now I have to shovel the snow off my steps. The steps were pretty icy already, so the snow was a bit more resistant to my plastic shovel. I had to chisel and scrape at the steps. Every scrape I made echoed everywhere, cutting through the snow and the white and the silence. Every scrape I made felt like I was ruining something. Disturbing something that was too sacred and beautiful to be fucked around with by some faggot with a piece of plastic.
I was done now. I had successfully finger-painted over this beautiful snow. A perfect little path for my mom to get from her car to the steps to the house. I even shoveled a path on the main sidewalk cuz fuck, why not? I looked ahead, looked up, and saw all the snow that was still falling. My path didn't do shit. In about ten minutes, I realized, its gonna be swallowed up by the rest of the white, just like everything else. Its like the snow is mocking me, laughing at my silly attempt to domesticate the white. "Fuck you and your little path," it'd say. "Go ahead and keep trying to control this. Get it all out of your system."
I felt more of the sting and walked back into the house, grinning. I obviously got in way over my head with this shoveling shit. Good thing I've got a house with a top-notch insulation system. Good thing I can hide from all this strange silence, this strange whiteness that creeps up and swallows everything. A man can't handle the cold white for too long. The silence would be so loud, you'd go crazy. The sights, the neural trauma of seeing everything so white, pretty soon everything would turn white and you'd go blind. A man gets goosebumps when in the presence of Winter, and its not just because he's cold. He's also nervous.
One of these days, i should get rid of this sidewalk. Just tear these slabs of concrete out of the grass and dirt. Just give up. Let Nature claim what it had all along. For now, though, I'll just let the White have its day. Soon, my Mom's gonna slip, fall and yell at me.
When I was writing this, I realized today would be a perfect day to blog about Sigur Rós.
Sigur Rós is a four-piece band from Iceland that captures the dreaminess and power of Winter better than any other band I know. Living in a place like Iceland, I assume they naturally picked up on the frequency, and became in-tune with their natural surroundings. These guys speak the language of Snow fluently.
Their music is never fast, but it is almost always powerful and staggering. Like winter, Sigur Rós doesn't have to stir up violent blizzards to be amazing. The guys of Sigur Rós also know how to make a forceful presence, like its beloved season. Oftentimes, their live act consists of 10 to 12 different musicians, (including the band leader Jónsi Þór Birgisson, who sings like a Eunuch and plays the guitar with a bow). They are an orchestra of majesty, and seeing them live is still something I need to do before I die.
Sigur Rós is the perfect music for winter. Last year, I listened to them nonstop between the months of January and April last year. Hopefully, you won't get as horribly addicted to these guys as I did, but they are one of the best things to listen to for this time of year. I'm posting my favorite albums of theirs for you to dig in on. Happy Kwanzaa
Ágætis Byrjun Really good album. Listen to the first 5 tracks of it.
( ) part 1 Probably my favorite Sigur Rós album. the last song is amazing.
Takk... Great album... the first two songs are really good
P.S. You should also try to see Heima, a documentary about Sigur Rós and their hometown Reykjavic, Iceland. It has some of the best cinematography I have ever seen, and some terrific performances by the band. A really fascinating and beautiful film. Go see it on an HD tv or something. If you don't have the means though, here's the movie on Google Video:
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