Uncreated Conscience

Oh look, an ice storm! On my fire escape! Pretty, but OH-SO-INCONVENIENT.

Dear winter: I am so over you it’s not even funny. In addition to the 50+ inches of snow you’ve dumped on the city this year, last night you saw fit to send us an ice storm. Which is gorgeous, by the way. Bravo, it’s one of the prettiest sights I’ve ever seen. But however pretty it might be, it is also incredibly inconvenient, especially as I don’t have a pair of skates to strap to my feet so I can glide my way to the subway station. I made my TV debut this morning by taking a header in the background of some reporter’s weather segment. Still, despite the slipping and sliding, it is kind of fun to crack the film of ice on top of snow like the glaze of a crème brûlée.

When I finally made it to my desk this morning, I saw that the internets was stirring itself into a frenzy over Bitch Magazine‘s inclusion and subsequent removal of a few books from their 100 Young Adult Books For The Feminist Reader. Mentioned in particular was Margo Lanagan’s TENDER MORSELS, the content of which includes incest, rape, and horrific violence. A reader said the book was triggering and asked that it be removed from the list.

Other people have said better than me why the inclusion and then removal of a few select books based on one reader’s comments is troubling (because heaven knows there are a ton of other books on that list with triggering content), but it made me think about “triggers” in general, especially as I had an experience myself last night.

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I am dire need of a divan, a fainting couch, a sofa, a futon–anything. When I first signed on for this gig, I knew there would be a lot of reading involved, but I didn’t quite factor in the occupational hazards. The volume of reading I can deal with, but it’s how I read that’s starting to catch up to me. Reading while sitting at my desk wreaks havoc on my neck and shoulders. At the moment I’ve jerry-rigged an arrangement where I lean the back of my desk chair against one angle of my desk while I prop my feet up on the opposite angle. This sort of approximates a reclining angle, but any sudden movement and I’m head over heels on the floor.

White-Harp Brrrrito! Also doubles as a neck pillow.

White-Harp often comes to work with me now to double as a neck pillow. Finally found a way to earn her keep, oh that Lazy Harp.

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Soon I shall be leaving behind the cold, slushy snow and will be back in the bosom of my family in Los Angeles. I can’t wait, although I am glad to have experienced New York’s first significant snowfall of winter before I leave.

Yesterday Bear and I and some of his friends from medical school spent the day as tourists in New York, wandering around the Christmas displays and skating in freezing cold weather. It was glorious (despite the bone-numbing cold) and beautiful in a nearly surreal way. Snow? Christmas in New York? Am I in a movie?

Winter Wonderland

I shall miss my Teddy Bear but my god, I am ready for some sunshine. Will write again from Los Angeles!

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.

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