strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
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Feb 16 07: deliquescence
The snow is melting. We were excited when we heard it was on its way, because the City has been frozen solid for weeks with nary a flake of nothin’. But when it first started to fall on Wednesday it was already disappointing: hard and granular and not flaky or fluffy in the least. Like having somebody flick the contents of an unflavored sno-cone on your face, very fast, for the whole time you were outside. Still, it piled up on the cars and the newspaper boxes prettily enough, and even if it made lousy snowballs the kids in my building all seemed delighted.
Unfortunately the honeymoon phase never lasts. The boots and trucks and taxis and Chinese-food delivery bicycles rapidly get the whole entropy thing underway, and soon the sidewalks are shin-deep in grey-brown slish. By Wednesday night the intersection of 96th and Broadway was a vast and nauseating lake of Scuzz Margarita.
We watch it go with mixed emotions. End of today, or tomorrow morning at the latest, it’ll be gone again, and we’ll be back in the same stultifying, sinus-cracking deep freeze we had before. (A science moment: when the weather drops below a certain point, iPod headphone cables lose their flexibility. Turn your head too fast and they pop out of your ears, twanging back and forth in mid-air, unable to keep up with you. Re-seating them requires taking your hands out of your pockets, though, so do it quick.)
By night I dream of the beach.