This can’t be right. I have my window open and it’s December. I have my window open and I can count down 25 days until Christmas. What it is about the weather that has us always talking about it and thinking about it and wondering how much to put on the morning and how much to take off at night.
Maybe because (like turkey at Thanksgiving) we can use weather as something to remind ourselves, that despite everything else that doesn’t feel like it makes sense, from work to relationships (or lack thereof), to family and friends (even when they’re far away), we know, no, we count on the fact that the weather will always be warm in summer and cold in winter.
The tree lighting at Rockefeller caused gridlock in Manhattan last night. I walked through the crowds to get home and got stuck in them, metal barriers stopping me, holding me back, telling me I wasn’t allowed to go any further. So I stopped on the steps of St. Patrick’s and stood among the crowd and watched their eyes all looking skyward in silence, listening as the people across the street tucked behind the buildings along with the tree none of us could see, counted down. And then the cheers came and I couldn’t see standing right there on 5th avenue what the rest of America could see right in their very own living rooms. Sometimes the way New York looks on television is an easier place than it really is.
That tree lighting every year at the end of November is something we count on. We count on that tree the way we count on people and God and love and getting paid, getting laid, getting drunk, getting out of where we are now to one day get somewhere else. We count on time and our lives and the delusional idea that nothing will ever change.
I have my window open and it’s December and it just feels like one more thing that doesn’t make sense.
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