i want a lumberjack hat so i can keep stuff in it, like hot air. i want to walk around with a hat on with hot air in the hat in the space between the fur and the hat and my hair, i want to be like a cloud of floating air-hat-hairness for as long as this postnuclear winter wears on.

you know, i don’t usually include biographical details in these things, it’s a voice thing, it’s actually physically my voice i’m talking about, my voice cracks when i talk about myself, not like, squeak, you know, in the middle of what you’re saying. i mean like you’re supposed to crack an egg on a flat surface, and that’s how i normally, you get a clean break and you don’t have to pry your fingers under the shell to get what you want of it out of it. the egg i mean. but when i talk about myself it’s like i cracked it on a countertop edge and you’re not supposed to do that, the shell turns into a crater and all this shrapnel gets between your teeth and you get proteins and amino acids all up and down your fingers and you get salmonella from that if you don’t wash your hands.

ok?

this winter’s making me sick, i’m not joking, stepping on dirt in january and feeling it sag underneath your feet when it’s not supposed to do that? not seeing snow down here’s not natural, so late in the winter i mean. it’s giving me these dreams, i’m not making this up, i’m having extremely vivid dreams about people transforming into very friendly and human-like animals. like a man and a woman get trapped in an exercise ball, fighting each other to the death with samurai swords, and then when they go still inside of there because holy shit, they probably killed each other, you open it up and find a dead kangaroo which you know you can bring back to life with your sincere encouragement and brotherly love, and you do, and you get it to hop around even, and then you get to hop around too because you’re also a kangaroo.

i thought my spirit animal was a killer whale. i’m not exaggerating when i tell you that writing a sentence like that last winter, when i was waist deep in crime and punishment and chewing my nails waiting to make up my mind and grow up and stuff, spirit animals were the farthest thing from me. i got what i needed, it was cold as fuck the whole time, did what i needed i mean, it was awesome. the nose smells what it expects.

i’d like to take this moment to observe that in st. petersburg the sun shines about a thousand hours less than it does in boston, every winter.

i’d like to slush through sidewalk moats and not think about three months ago, the storm we got on halloween, when everybody lost power. i don’t know if i’m alone in this, but the first thing i did when the lights came back on was play fallout 3. i don’t know if that means anything, and i don’t know if i’m alone in that either.

 

Photo by Derrick Tyson.