Rose Red weather.
I awoke this morning to find the world leached of all colour and blanketed in white. I absolutely love the snow (even if I hate winter). It may be a white Christmas in the city for the first time in years (I’m being optimistic here) and I’m glad I got to see it before I left for sunny and warm Los Angeles.
I remember the first time I ever experienced snow. It was the first time I ever went skiing. I was four years old and my family had taken me to Big Bear. I must have scarcely been taller than three feet and I remember my dad having to keep me between his legs as we rode the T-bar up the slope because I was so small it would whisk me along so fast I ended up being dragged on my stomach. It felt like a small private world being in Dad’s arms: his large gloved hands on either side of my small mittened ones. The snow was coming down heavily and I didn’t like it, not then, not the way it stuck to my eyelashes when I didn’t have my goggles on. My dad laugh as I made a face and told me to stick out my tongue.
A quiet alley behind my apartment.
“Catch a snowflake,” he said.
I obliged him and was shocked at how it almost stung.
“It hurts!” I complained.
“No, Knucklehead,” he said gently, “Snow is soft, see?” He reached down and picked up a handful and pushed it against my face. It still stung with cold, but when I was four I didn’t have the verbal capacity to say so, nor did I recognise that it was cold and not pain. I had always been distantly aware of snow from the storybooks I read, especially around Christmastime, but I was a child of sun and surf and imaged snow was like sand, only lighter and fluffy.
The flakes and ice crystals melted away. “Where did they go?” I asked my dad.
He smiled. “They melted away. Vanished. Like magic.”
Of course, even as a small child I maintained a healthy dose of skepticism in front of my parents even as I nurtured wondrous fancies in my private time. Still, snow is magical, especially in how the world becomes hushed and silent, as though it’s holding it’s breath.
Will be off to New Jersey soon to see my Teddy Bear. First semester is over and we plan to celebrate before I go home on Sunday. Christmas party tonight then ice skating in New York tomorrow. But what to wear?
My dad's lumberjack hat! I am aghast to discover my head is bigger than his.
If there’s one thing I love about winter, it’s the fact that it’s hat weather. I make no secret of the fact that I fetishize hats the way many women do shoes or handbags. I pulled down my chest of hats from my closet and began riffling through it for appropriate head gear. I found my dad’s old hunting hat (even though I don’t think my dad has ever held a gun or even been within 5 feet of one, much less gone hunting) but White-Harp wanted to wear it instead. She’s always been such a meanie Harp.
White-Harp thought this looked cozy.
So I brought out the kitten hat next. I love my kitten hat; I bought it at the Christmas far in Union Square when Bex and I were walking our way downtown from our offices in midtown to attend the reading at Kettle of Fish in the Village. In all my chibi drawings of me, I’m a cat. Bear is, of course, a bear but I’m a cat because he said I look like one. We both have winter gear relating to our respective animal counterparts; I gave him a pair of furry bear paw mittens from the fair at Bryant Park and I have a hat with a cat.
My kitty hat! Alas, the ears have flopped down so you can't see it.
Unfortunately, when wearing a hat, you have to be committed to wearing the hat, otherwise you’ll end up with horrific hair. Alas, since we are to attend a Christmas party, I probably shouldn’t take my kitten hat. And because my hair is deciding to do the wonkiest things today (it’s at that length in which my hair is too short to wave properly but too long to stay straight), I’m busting out the winter cloche, which just covers my entire head.
With my now-Louise Brooks hair, I've got the perfect coiffure to pull this off.
And that is your picspam of the day.
No comments yet.